Talk:Aluminium borohydride

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:35, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Aluminium borohydride → — WP:RETAIN states that the variety of English used by the creator of an article (in this case, me) should be used in all subsequent versions of the article. WP:ALUM doesn't apply because that same page, farther down, states that a name which is more common may be used regardless of any other policies on that page or the decisions of IUPAC. --J4\/4 &lt;talk&gt; 19:49, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Currently all chemistry articles with aluminium/aluminum in the title use the international spelling.  This question comes up repeatedly, and the consensus has always been to use "aluminium".  There is no need to single out one article to be treated differently because it's creator disagrees with this consensus. ChemNerd (talk) 18:14, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. No exceptional reason to make this unexceptional article an exception to the spelling used for this element, a spelling that has consensus to use uniformly in this context by the WP:CHEM project in its MOS that is linked from the main WP MOS sets. DMacks (talk) 19:46, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Had more time to read, prompted by Favonian's noted contradiction below, so adding... The "farther down" statement J4V refers to says that using some other name (contrary to the WP:ALUM standard) is only by specific consensus. One problem with the MOS is that there are many specifically approved guidelines that are not necessarily aligned with the more general ones. Every MOS entry could have a "...unless another more specifically relevant for the article guideline says something else" notice. RETAIN is in the MOS, but the same consensus process that ordained that general guidelines also added the chemistry specific guideline. DMacks (talk) 21:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. There does seem to be a contradiction between WP:ENGVAR, quoted above, and WP:ALUM, which states that "These international standard spellings should be used in all chemistry-related articles on English Wikipedia, even if they conflict with the other national spelling varieties used in the article." However, the consensus on Talk:Aluminium/Spelling favors "aluminium", so that's how it's gonna be.  Favonian (talk) 20:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support. The British are just jealous that America's better. IUPAC tried to give America sulfur to make up for caesium and aluminium, but that isn't enough. Also, WP:RETAIN is in the Manual of Style, which trumps everything. --Jean-Luc Pikachu (talk) 00:00, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

If the Manual of Style in any way tries to encroach on WP:ALUM, we should re-write the manual of style! I've spent too long getting used to the combination of aluminium, sulfur and caesium that I'll fight to the death to keep it that way. :P

Ben (talk) 00:14, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It is no more than a matter of convention. WP has chosen "aluminium", and let us keep it uniform all through. Materialscientist (talk) 01:18, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose - back in 04-05 consensus was reached to go with IUPAC in science articles. Following that the near incessant edit warring over Al and S naming basically ended and relative quiet prevailed :) Now, I have taught chemistry in the US for 25 years and had to adjust to aluminium, but I survived and my students had some fun along the way pronouncing it with the -ium. Vsmith (talk) 02:35, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose more or less per Vsmith just above. --John (talk) 06:24, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Use as rocket fuel
I removed the (unreferenced) assertion that aluminum borohydride was a rocket fuel.

The compound and its derivatives have been proposed as candidates for such applications, as far as I can tell nobody has ever gotten beyond small-scale static tests. It's a nuisance to handle, and its performance hasn't tended to live up to predictions. See, for instance, the chapter on "exotics" in Clark's Ignition!, pages 128-9. Those tests mostly took place in the early 1960s, with discouraging results.

I gather there have been some recent(ish) fledgling attempts in some quarters to resurrect aluminum borohydride as a monopropellant, but as far as can tell none of those have gotten off the ground (ha!) either. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)