Oxidizers, propellant dinitrogen tetroxide

The strong oxidizing agent dinitrogen tetroxide is used for many applications. It is employed as a catalyst in oxidation reactions and as an inhibitor in the distillation of acrylates. It is also used in the manufacture of explosives and as bleach. In rocket propellants, it is used in a hypergolic mixture with hydrazine derivatives. The command module of the Apollo mission used a 1 1 mixture of hydrazine and N,N -dimethylhydrazine with N2O4 as the oxidant. 

They remain liquid under normal, ambient operating conditions (moderate temperature, atmospheric pressure). Safety in storage and handling should also be considered. A storable liquid propellant should not have an excessively high vapour pressure at ambient temperature. The leading storable propellant uses dinitrogen tetroxide as oxidizer and a 50/50 mixture of hydrazine-unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) as fuel [71], Nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH is another storable propellant mixture in use [73],... 

MON and high density acid (HDA) are variants of storable oxidizers based on dinitrogen tetroxide. The MON propellants consist of N204 and NO, as noted earlier, and HDA is a mixture of nitric acid and N204. Both HDA and MON behave similarly to IRFNA. 

In addition to the use of dinitrogen tetroxide as an oxidizer in rocket propellant systems, and as a potential nitrating agent is is also used as a cooling liquid in nuclear energy reactors under the name of Nitrin [61). 

Several nitrogen oxides, NO2 or N2O4, are known that are involved in the production of nitric acid. Dinitrogen tetroxide N2O4 is used as a propellant for missiles (i.e. as a fuel), where it is stored in tanks made of weldable high-resistance aluminium alloys 2219,6061, 5086 and 7020. 

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