alt Hacker NewsMy UV sterilizing lights make my room smell like O3 Ozone and that smells nothing like spent gun-powder to me. The only other time I have smelled the same thing is when there has been mass lightening events in the sky. Were they talking about actual black powder or nitrocellulose? I've smelled black powder at the range when people bring out their antique rifles and that also does not smell like Ozone to me.
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Photocopiers smell like ozone when they run if anyone’s forgotten the smell
I assume that they talk about black powder.
The dust that comes from meteorites contains up to 4 fractions: silicates, which cannot be oxidized, metallic iron, which oxidizes, but it does not form volatile substances that can be smelled, hydrocarbons in the form of a tar or pitch, which can burn but it cannot be ignited easily, and finally a fraction made of iron sulfide (troilite) with small quantities of other sulfides.
In contact with air, the sulfides will be oxidized, releasing sulfur dioxide. Burning black powder also releases sulfur dioxide, which is the main reason for its smell. Burning pure sulfur will produce the same smell.
The ozone report was specifically about space walks. The gunpowder report was about moon walks.
Presumably, moonwalks would also have some ozone like the space walk did. But, maybe the burning-moon-dust gunpowder smell was a lot stronger than the vacuumed-metal/paint ozone smell.
Sorry for the tangent, but you sterilise a whole room with UV light? Is that efficient ? Do you do it after tidying / cleaning ? Is there a medical reason for the extra part? Is it just cool :-)
‘Ozone’ is the smell of ionisation, ‘gunpowder’ the smell of oxidisation.