Ionic Liquid and Biofuel Blend: A Low–cost and High Performance Hypergolic Fuel for Propulsion Application

Abstract

Hypergolic fuel has unique importance in missiles and satellite launch vehicles. Hydrazine and its derivatives (Monomethyl hydrazine, MMH and Unsymmetrical Dimethyl Hydrazine, UDMH) are the continuous choices of fuel in bipropellant though it is carcinogenic and toxic. Development of new, green and costeffective fuel blends based on trust-worthy, ionic liquid and biofuel in different volume proportion have been reported. The blends exhibit reasonably good stability (chemical and thermal), low viscosity (h < 15 mPa·s), high density (1 > 1 g/cm 3 ), low ignition delay and high performance in comparison with UDMH -a proven liquid fuel presently being used as promising fuels for liquid rocket application. The reported blends appear to be a technologically promising, eco-friendly and affordable fuel blend to replace currently used liquid toxic fuels.Hypergolicity is a desirable property of liquid bipropellant for rocket application. It is the self-igniting tendency of fuel when it comes in contact with a liquid oxidizer. It is measured in terms of ignition dealy (ID), which is a time, lapsed between a physical contact of fuel and oxidizer, and the appearance of the flame. A shorter ID is very desirable for the safe and reliable functioning of the liquid rocket engine. The ID less than 50 ms is the acceptable limit for liquid bipropellant engines. [1] It depends on some physical parameters like mixing, mixing rate, droplet size and the diffusion rate of fuel and oxidizer. [2,3] The ID also depends upon the chemical reactivity of fuel and oxidizer, the chamber pressure, the oxidizer and fuel weight ratio, etc. In this context, the pre-ignition reaction plays a very important role. If the amount of heat generated during pre-ignition reaction is sufficient to take the fuel to its ignition temperature, then only ignition will take place. If the pre-ignition reaction fails to generate the required heat, then ignition may not take place, and only vigorous chemical reactions may be exhibited. If the system is hypergolic in nature, it does not require an external ignition source, and thus, the system becomes more reliable, and offers the start-restart capability to the engine. [2,4] Therefore, a hypergolic fuel presents unique importance of liquid fuel in bipropellant.

Hot Water Extraction Improves the Characteristics of Willow and Sugar Maple Biomass With Different Amount of Bark

“…Furfuryl alcohol, a product of catalytic hydrogenation of furfural, is being used in the production of foundry resin and furan fiber reinforced plastics (Schneider and Phillips;Yan et al, 2014). Recently, a new fuel blend that contains furfuryl alcohol and ionic liquid has been developed to be used in missiles and satellite launch vehicles (Bhosale et al, 2016).…”

Measuring the effectiveness of high-performance Co-Optima biofuels on suppressing soot formation at high temperature

“…These fuels were selected to address the rigorous screening criteria that include fuel properties, health hazard assessments, biodegradability, feasibility of synthesis, etc., modeled. However, it should also be understood that items learned from this transportation fuel study should also be applicable to other novel combustion applications (9,10). The candidate biofuels that were investigated have previously been experimented and modeled with using research combustion systems.…”

Ignition Delays of Mixtures of the Non‐Hypergolic Energetic Ionic Liquid Hydroxyethylhydrazinium Nitrate Blended with Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine

“…The vacuum specific impulse of hypergolic ionic liquid HIL-54 and HIL-64 [8] is approximately 316 s. However, the density vacuum specific impulse of HEHN is higher by 18 g-s/cm 3 . The hypergolic ionic liquid [EMIM][BH3CN] or HIL-64 was blended with furfuryl alcohol to improve the physical parameters such as density, viscosity, and performance parameters such as specific impulse and density specific impulse [15]. When compared to UH40 blend, all the compounds mentioned are fared poorer or at par with the HEHN-UDMH blend.…”

“…Hypergolicity may also be achieved by blending HEHN with another hypergolic compound. The blending of two fuels is also expected to modify the physical properties such as viscosity, density, and vapor pressure, so as to achieve desired ignition delays and less toxicity as compared to commonly used hypergolic fuels [15]. On another positive note, HEHN possesses a specific gravity of 1.42, which is expected to boost density specific impulse.…”