That's neat and hilarious to me because I've read a lot about the challenges of working with liquid sodium in the nuclear field [1], that people would use liquid Na as a fuel.
Kinda funny though to think of airplanes dropping sodium hydroxide the same way birds drop uric acid. Probably not a problem if the plane is at 30,000 feet but I can imagine trouble on and around the runway.
As much as sodium fires have been played up as a danger in nuclear work, pool fires of sodium are downright languid and not dangerous for firefighters to get close to, although if sodium forms fine droplets in a spray the results can be devastating.
Aviation has so far shown itself to be entirely uninterested in qualifying new fuels that aren't compatible with old fuels. Thus unleaded avgas stuck around for 50 years longer than it should have and they don't even look at single entity fuels like methane, dimethyl ether, alcohols and other things that could be synthesized at less cost than jet fuel.
PaulHoule•8mo ago
Kinda funny though to think of airplanes dropping sodium hydroxide the same way birds drop uric acid. Probably not a problem if the plane is at 30,000 feet but I can imagine trouble on and around the runway.
As much as sodium fires have been played up as a danger in nuclear work, pool fires of sodium are downright languid and not dangerous for firefighters to get close to, although if sodium forms fine droplets in a spray the results can be devastating.
Aviation has so far shown itself to be entirely uninterested in qualifying new fuels that aren't compatible with old fuels. Thus unleaded avgas stuck around for 50 years longer than it should have and they don't even look at single entity fuels like methane, dimethyl ether, alcohols and other things that could be synthesized at less cost than jet fuel.
[1] burns in freakin' carbon dioxide!