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RE: So, does ozone have an odor or not?
Original poster: "Ian McLean" <ianmm-at-optusnet-dot-com.au>
Hi Jim,
> Nitrous Oxide (N2O) is the racing oxidizer and anesthetic, and yes, it
> certainly is odorless and sort of non-toxic. (Although one
> could argue that
> anything that makes you unconscious is toxic)
>
> Nitric Oxide (NO) is yet another form - this is the form
> that's in heart
> medicine (Nitroglycerin, e.g.)
> Nitrogen dioxide NO2 (and a very similar form Nitrogen
> tetroxide N2O4) are
> the characteristic brownish red, pungent odor stuff you get
> from Nitric acid
> (HNO3)
Your chemistry is good too, and you have highlighted another mistake from
me. That's two. Doh. N20 is certainly the nitrous oxide anaesthetic gas,
not NO as I stated, and this oxide, amongst the others such as NO, nitric
oxide (thanks for the correction here), is likely only to be formed in very
small quantities in the heat of a plasma arc. I guess it is a good thing I
became a computer programmer and not a chemist ;)
A coils arc's gaseous output is likely to make you very sick before it ever
makes you high. NO2 is the most stable and abundantly formed oxide of
nitrogen, and is produced in reasonable quantities along with the equally
noxious ozone, especially if a continuous arc is allowed to burn in a
confined space. Yes, NO2 is the brown gas you see in these circumstances.
Enough said by me on this I think.
Rgs
Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
> Sent: Saturday, 27 December 2003 2:18 am
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: So, does ozone have an odor or not?
>
>
> Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>
>
> Nitrogen forms lots of different oxides, of various properties, etc.
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 7:24 PM
> Subject: So, does ozone have an odor or not?
>
>
> > Original poster: DRIEBEN-at-midsouth.rr-dot-com
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I always thought that O3 had a sharp, almost "sweet" odor
> to it. I assumed
> > that
> > this sweet odor that always showed up just about as soon
> as I turned on
> any
> > of my lower powered NST coils was ozone. Now we seem to
> have controversial
> > ideas as to whether the odor that we smell when playing
> with our wonderful
> > spark throwers is ozone or nitrogen oxides (NO).
> >
> > It was mentioned by someone that the higher powered coils
> don't produce
> > near as much ozone (or whatever produces that sharp sweet
> smell) as do the
> > smaller ones and I, for one, have indeed noticed this
> effect. I think that
> > it was Bert Hickman who stated that the higher powered
> coils are better at
> > producing the NO because it takes more energy (heat) to
> produce NO but
> takes
> > less to produce O3 from O2. This would seem to lend
> credence to the "ozone
> > has a smell" school of thought, IMHO. Also, Adam (Yurtle
> Turtle) Menchey
> > stated that they produce O3 where he works from pure O2
> and that the O3
> > they produce does indeed have this sharp odor. BTW, I've
> noticed the
> > "odor factor" is very low when operating a high powered
> (pig) coil and
> > I can run it in a poorly ventilated room for several
> minutes at a time
> > w/out any noticable adverse resperatory effects (or odor).
> OTH, the strong
> > odor quickly becomes overpowering when operating a small
> NST coil in the
> same
> > poorly ventilated room and if I don't cease the coil
> operation and get
> > to fresh air pretty quickly, I will suffer asthma-like
> resperatory pro-
> > blems that will take up to an hour to clear up once
> they're initiated,
> > even after moving to fresh air. It's quite apparent that
> this gas could
> > reach suffocating proportions in a fairly quick order, if
> one was not
> > careful!
> >
> > So, is it really O3 (ozone) that we're smelling or is it NO(). BTW,
> > if I'm not mistaken, nitrous oxide, that is used as an
> anasthetic and
> > as an aspiration additive for internal combustion gaslonie engines'
> > air intake manifolds to greatly increase the fuel consumptiom po-
> > tential and therefore, greatly increase the output
> horsepower, is odor-
> > less. I'm not sure if this nitrous oxide is the same NO compound(s)
> > that our sprking TCs are producing, but it is a thought.
> >
> > It seems to me that it is the ozone that we're smelling,
> not the NO.
> > BTW, does NO have the same detrimental effects to health
> at such low
> > concentrations as does ozone? Like I said, doctors and
> dentists often
> > deliberately make us breath nitorus oxide (some call it
> laughing gas)
> > to put us out so they can operate on us w/out us feeling the pain.
> > This form of NO must not be very toxic at all or it
> certainly couldn't
> > be used so freely as an anesthetic. Maybe some of the
> resident chemistry
> > majors could comment further on this subject?
> >
> > David Rieben
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> > Date: Thursday, December 25, 2003 10:06 am
> > Subject: Re: new single 833A VTTC
> >
> > > Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>
> > >
> > > "Original poster: "Jim Mitchell" <electrontube-at-sbcglobal-dot-net>
> > >
> > > I posted a description of ozone from a dictionary, and it says
> > > clearlythat
> > > ozone has a distinc smell, and it is even named for its
> smell, and
> > > it is
> > > a
> > > common misconception when ozone is mistaken for various nitrous
> > > oxides.
> > > "
> > >
> > > Or the reverse. In the case of coiler's, I think the smell
> > > attributedto ozone is often that of the nitrogen oxides. To me
> > > ozone has a
> > > different, somewhat "warm" small.
> > >
> > > Ed
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>