The role of carbon and oxygen in cosmic gases - Some applications to the chemistry and mineralogy of enstatite chondrites
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Relative toxicity test data on 270 materials are presented, based on test procedures developed at the University of San Francisco. The effects of chemical composition, using data on 13 types of synthetic polymers and eight types of fabrics, are discussed. Selected materials were evaluated using nine test conditions with the USF method, and using methods developed at the FAA Civil Aeromedical Institute, Douglas Aircraft Company and San Jose State University.
There is increased interest in, and concern about, deposition and corrosion phenomena in combustion systems containing inorganic condensible vapors and particles (salts, ash). To meet the need for a computationally tractable deposition rate theory general enough to embrace multielement/component situations of current and future gas turbine and magnetogasdynamic interest, a multicomponent chemically 'frozen' boundary layer (CFBL) deposition theory is presented and its applicability to the special case of Na2SO4 deposition from seeded laboratory burner combustion products is demonstrated. The coupled effects of Fick (concentration) diffusion and Soret (thermal) diffusion are included, along with explicit corrections for effects of variable properties and free stream turbulence. The present formulation is sufficiently general to include the transport of particles provided they are small enough to be formally treated as heavy molecules. Quantitative criteria developed to delineate the domain of validity of CFBL-rate theory suggest considerable practical promise for the present framework, which is characterized by relatively modest demands for new input information and computer time.
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The theoretical feasibility inherent in the correlation interferometry technique is demonstrated. High signal to noise and increased information content in a given partial interferogram are attractive features of the technique. The separation of interfering gas species is overcome by a precise measurement program for spectral line parameters of methane and other species. There are optical, mechanical, and electronic difficulties with the interferometry hardware design. Flight data from Cessna 402 over southeastern Virginia during April 1978 yielded amplitude fluctuations that are explainable only as internal nonlinearities. Misalignment of the AGC/interferometer optical axis also contributed to a large error source in the flight data. It is concluded that no useful data on gas burdens was obtained from these flights.
The components resulting from the deposition of inorganic salts (e.g., Na2S04) and oxides present in the combustion products from gas turbine engines were investigated. Emphasis was placed on the effects of multicomponent vapor transport, thermophoretic transport of vapor and small particles to actively cooled surfaces, variable fluid properties within mass transfer boundary layers, and free stream turbulence.
Metal-foil collectors were installed on the external structure of Skylab to entrap precipitating magnetospheric particles. The foils were retrieved, and the entrapped helium, neon, and argon were isotopically analyzed in a high-resolution mass spectrometer. Solar and terrestrial helium and neon and terrestrial argon were detected. As expected, the isotopic composition of neon and argon in the high atmosphere was found to be strongly fractionated. Special techniques were used to estimate the initial particle energy of He-3. The measured He-3 flux is consistent with the assumption that precipitating solar He-3 is the major source of terrestrial He-3.
The Murchison carbonaceous chondrite contains three isotopically anomalous noble-gas components of apparently presolar origin: two kinds of Ne-E, (Ne-20)/(Ne-22) less than 0.6, and s-process Kr + Xe (enriched in the even isotopes 82, 84, 86, 128, 130, 132). Their carriers are tentatively identified as spinel and two carbonaceous phases, the principal high-temperature stellar condensates at low and high C/O ratios, respectively.
Described in detail is a laser induced fluorescence system which has been successfully interfaced with two aircraft sampling platforms (i.e., Sabreliner jet and an L-188C Electra). This system, which has been under development for four years, presently consists of the following major components: (1) a Nd-Yag laser driven oscillator-amplifier dye laser; (2) a sampling manifold with associated fluorescence detection optics; (3) an OH calibration chamber; (4) a laser beam steering assembly; and (5) sampling electronics and data processing hardware. During the last three years, this system has been flown some 50,000 air miles making tropospheric OH radical measurements over the latitude range of 70 N to 57 S. OH concentrations measured during these flights have ranged from 30 parts-per-quadrillion (3.7 x 10 to the 5th molecules/sq cm) at altitudes of 6 km to 0.8 parts-per-trillion (2.0 x 10 to the 7th molecules/sq cm) at 0.5 km. Computations have been completed which indicate that the existing aircraft system with modest modifications should also be capable of detecting natural tropospheric levels of NO, SO2, CH2O, NO2, HNO2, NO3, H2O2 and CS2 by using both conventional laser-induced fluorescence methodology and multiphoton techniques.
The USF-NASA toxicity screening test method is primarily intended to indicate which materials are more toxic under specific test conditions, and not necessarily to explain why they are more toxic. Analysis of the test data obtained, however, in the light of the experience accumulated, can provide some insight into the mechanisms of toxicity and the importance of specific toxicants. The use of free-field movement offers both advantages and disadvantages relative to other behavioral paradigms, and the use of Swiss Webster mice offers both advantages and disadvantages relative to other species and strains.
New sets of cross sections for the production of krypton isotopes from targets of Rb, Sr, Y, and Zr have been constructed primarily on the bases of experimental excitation functions for Kr production from Y. These cross sections were used to calculate galactic-cosmic-ray and solar-proton production rates for Kr isotopes in the moon. The paper reports spallation Kr data obtained from ilmenite separates of rocks 10017 and 10047. Production rates and isotopic ratios for cosmogenic Kr observed in ten well-documented lunar samples and in ilmenite separates and bulk samples from several lunar rocks with long but unknown irradiation histories were compared with predicted rates and ratios. The agreements were generally quite good.
A Kaufman-type broad beam ion source, used for sputtering and etching purposes, has been operated with Ar, Kr, O2 and N2 gas inputs over a wide range of beam energies (200-1200 eV) and gas flow rates (1-10 sccm). The maximum ion beam current density for each gas saturates at about 2.5 mA/sq cm as gas flow is increased. The discharge threshold voltage necessary to produce a beam and the beam efficiency (beam current/molecular current), however, varied considerably. Kr had the lowest threshold and highest efficiency, Ar next, then N2 and O2. The ion beam current varied only weakly with beam energy for low gas flow rates, but showed a factor of two increase when the gas flow was higher.
The spectral line shapes of the radiation emitted from O atoms produced by the dissociative excitation of O2, CO, CO2 and NO are investigated. Doppler line shapes are derived from time-of-flight spectra of O (5S0) atoms decaying by the emission of 1356-A radiation after being produced in electron impact experiments at incident electron energies from 25 to 300 eV. It is shown that the effective line width of the radiation is large compared with the Doppler absorption widths of ambient O atoms in both photoelectron and auroral excitation, and thus the dissociatively excited component of the O I 1304-A airglow will behave as though it were optically thin, exhibiting pronounced limb brightening effects and a scale height characteristic of the initial, local source function. It is found that the average kinetic energy of the dissociation fragments inferred from O I (5S) time-of-flight spectra is in good agreement with that of O I (3S) atoms in the electron impact dissociation of CO2, although not for O2. Finally, it is suggested that although electron impact dissociation of CO and CO2 contributes to the 1304-A emission in the upper atmosphere of Venus, it cannot be the dominant source of this radiation since the absolute cross sections for the reaction are too small.
Five carbynes (triply bonded allotropes of carbon) have been found by electron diffraction in the Allende and Murchison carbonaceous chondrites: carbon VI, VIII, X, XI, and (tentatively) XII. From the isotopic composition of the associated noble-gas components, it appears that the carbynes in Allende (C3V chondrite) are local condensates from the solar nebula, whereas at least two carbynes in Murchison (C2 chondrite) are of exotic, presolar origin. They may be dust grains that condensed in stellar envelopes and trapped isotropically anomalous matter from stellar nucleosynthesis.
Coupled radiative and convective heat transfer is investigated for an absorbing gas flowing in a finite length channel and heated by blackbody radiation directed along the flow axis. The problem is formulated in one dimension and numerical solutions are obtained for the temperature profile of the gas and for the radiation escaping the channel entrance, assuming both gray and nongray absorption spectra. Due to radiation trapping, the flowing gas is found to have substantially smaller radiation losses for a given peak gas temperature than a solid surface that is radiatively heated to this temperature. A greenhouse effect is also evident whereby radiation losses are minimized for a gas having stronger absorption at long wavelengths.
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An optoacoustic detector for gas analysis is implemented with Stark effect cell modulation for switching a beam in and out of coincidence with a spectral line of a constituent gas in order to eliminate the heating effect of laser energy in the cell as a source of background noise. By using a multiline laser, and linearly sweeping the DC bias voltage while exciting the cell with a multiline laser, it is possible to obtain a spectrum from which to determine the combinations of excited constituents and determine their concentrations in parts per million.