# What is the products of a catalyzed reaction between Hydrogen Peroxide and Ethanolamine with Copper(II) Chloride?

I found this article about Hypergols, specifically H2O2. It mentions in table 3 and in the body of the paper that they found that Ethanolamine with Copper Chloride reacted vigorously. In my search for relatively non-toxic hypergolic fuels, this whole paper piqued my interest. From what I can tell, although a chemistry wiz I am not, the products of this reaction would be atomized Cu, Chlorine gas, and Water/Steam. Am I right? Is there a general template I can follow for this? and can anyone explain to me the chemistry going on here, so I can be a bit smarter when I stumble on my next possibility? as a sidenote, anybody have any bright ideas that I should take a look at?

• I’m voting to close this question because, while tangentially related to rocketry, it's primarily a chemistry question. Mar 19 at 22:17
• This is an amazing find I’ve always been interested in pseudo hypergols usually just involving h2o2 and a dire proportion of catalyst and a typically low ISP but this sounds really promising- only 1%! Mar 20 at 3:05
• I'm voting to reopen because it's sufficiently related to space exploration to be of interest to readers of this site. Any rocket scientist or engineer will tell you that you must know the reaction products when designing a rocket. They enter into the thermodynamics and ISP calculation and into the materials choices for the nozzle. We have many well received questions about chemistry here, and reaction products feature regularly in questions and answers. There's no benefit to prevent answers to this question, and it presents a loss to future readers.
– uhoh
Mar 20 at 10:35
• – uhoh
Mar 20 at 10:39
• How do you calculate what percent of hydrogen combustion is turned into heat vs pressure? +6, 2 answers, Is methylsilane CH6Si ever considered as fuel in rocketary? +6, 1 answer, How do rocket propellant combinations rank in terms of “brightness”? +10, 1 answer. All of these required reaction product-based chemistry answers. These are all chemistry questions because rockets are chemical reactions!
– uhoh
Mar 20 at 10:42

TL;DR: The result will probably be mostly water with significant proportions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas. Small proportions of copper(II) oxide and hydrochloric acid may also be released. There could be other species like nitrogen oxides, chorine oxides, unburnt CuCl2, and other carbon compounds that I'm not considering.

I'm not an expert on combustion chemistry, but I think we can make some inferences just looking at the stoichiometry. According to the paper, here is what we have (in percentage by mass):

Fuel

• 80.1% hydrogen peroxide (90% H2O2, probably 10% water)
• 19.9% ethanolamine

Mixture: Fuel + 1% CuCl2 catalyst

Let's say we have 1000 g of this mixture. Then we have:

• $$\mathrm{H_2O_2}:~0.99 \times 0.801 \times 0.9 \times (1000~\mathrm{g}) = 713.691~\mathrm{g}$$
• $$\mathrm{H_2O}:~0.99 \times 0.801 \times 0.1 \times (1000~\mathrm{g}) = 79.299~\mathrm{g}$$
• $$\mathrm{ethanolamine}:~0.99 \times 0.199 \times (1000~\mathrm{g}) = 197.01~\mathrm{g}$$
• $$\mathrm{CuCl_2}:~0.01 \times (1000~\mathrm{g}) = 10~\mathrm{g}$$

Now we have to convert this into molecules, so we divide by the molar masses to get the number of moles

• $$\mathrm{H_2O_2}:~20.99~\mathrm{mol}$$
• $$\mathrm{H_2O}:~4.40~\mathrm{mol}$$
• $$\mathrm{ethanolamine}:~3.23~\mathrm{mol}$$
• $$\mathrm{CuCl_2}:~0.0744~\mathrm{mol}$$

Now let's normalize by the number of copper atoms:

• $$\mathrm{H_2O_2}:~282.1~\mathrm{molecules}$$
• $$\mathrm{H_2O}:~59.2~\mathrm{molecules}$$
• $$\mathrm{C_2H_7NO}:~43.4~\mathrm{molecules}$$
• $$\mathrm{CuCl_2}:~1~\mathrm{molecule}$$

So for every Cu atom, we have

• $$\mathrm{H}:~986~\mathrm{atoms}$$
• $$\mathrm{C}:~87~\mathrm{atoms}$$
• $$\mathrm{N}:~43~\mathrm{atoms}$$
• $$\mathrm{O}:~667~\mathrm{atoms}$$
• $$\mathrm{Cl}:~2~\mathrm{atoms}$$
• $$\mathrm{Cu}:~1~\mathrm{atom}$$

So we can make 87 CO2 molecules, with 493 oxygen atoms left over. We can then make 1 CuO, with 492 oxygen atoms left over. With that, we can make 492 water molecules, with just 2 hydrogen atoms left over. That happens to be enough to make 2 HCl molecules. Hydrochloric acid is a product in perchlorate combustion, so I think it might occur here. So what's left? Just 22.5 molecules of N2.

So in summary, my guess for the full reaction is something roughly like:

$$282\mathrm{H_2O_2} + 59\mathrm{H_2O} + 43\mathrm{C_2H_7NO} + \mathrm{CuCl_2} \rightarrow 87\mathrm{CO_2} + 492\mathrm{H_2O} + 2\mathrm{HCl} + 22.5\mathrm{N_2} + \mathrm{CuO}$$

• +1 for a great answer! I've started the reopen process for the question, it needs a few more votes.
– uhoh
Mar 20 at 10:43