Wednesday, November 27, 2019

physical chemistry - Why does CO2 diffuse through a butyl rubber membrane more readily than air?


I am a cyclist, and not a chemist. When I or my cycling buddies get a flat tire out on the road, after removing the offending sharp object (if any) remaining in the tire, we will typically replace the punctured butyl rubber inner tube with a new one, and then inflate the tire using a COX2 cartridge.


Inflating the tire in this way takes less than a second to bring the pressure up to 120 psi. At home, naturally, we fill our tires with air rather than a COX2 cartridge, using a floor pump.


When we fill our tire with an air pump the tire remains inflated for several days. But after filling it with COX2, the tire is severely flat again by the next morning. COX2 clearly diffuses through the butyl membrane very much more rapidly than air, even though COX2 is a larger molecule than either NX2 or OX2. Is it the shape of the molecule? Or its chemical properties?




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