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* [[Dinitrogen_tetroxide|Nitrogen tetroxide]] (N<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub>) and [[Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine|UDMH]] or MMH. Used in three first stages of the Russian [[Proton (rocket)|Proton booster]], most Chinese boosters, a number of military, orbital and deep space rockets, as this fuel combination is [[hypergolic]] and storable for long periods at reasonable temperatures and pressures. |
* [[Dinitrogen_tetroxide|Nitrogen tetroxide]] (N<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub>) and [[Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine|UDMH]] or MMH. Used in three first stages of the Russian [[Proton (rocket)|Proton booster]], most Chinese boosters, a number of military, orbital and deep space rockets, as this fuel combination is [[hypergolic]] and storable for long periods at reasonable temperatures and pressures. |
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* [[hydrazine]](N<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>) and Aerozine-50 are also used in deep space missions because they are storable and hypergolic, and can be used as a monopropellant with a catalyst. |
* [[hydrazine]] (N<sub>2</sub>H<sub>4</sub>) and Aerozine-50 are also used in deep space missions because they are storable and hypergolic, and can be used as a monopropellant with a catalyst. |
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{{Specific impulse}} |
{{Specific impulse}} |
The highest specific impulse chemical rockets use liquid propellants. This type of propellant has a long history going back to the first rockets and is still in use, for example in the Space Shuttle and Ariane 5.
On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard used liquid oxygen (LOX) and gasolineaspropellants for his first successful liquid rocket launch. Both are readily available, cheap, highly energetic, and dense. Oxygen is a moderate cryogen — air will not liquefy against a liquid oxygen tank, so it is possible to store LOX briefly in a rocket without excessive insulation. Gasoline has since been replaced by different hydrocarbon fuels, for example RP-1 - a highly refined grade of kerosene. This combination is quite practical for rockets that need not be stored, and to this day, it is used in the first stages of most orbital launchers, as well as the long-range offensive missilesofChina and North Korea.
Germany had very active rocket development before and during World War Two, both for the strategic V-2 rocket and other missiles. The V-2 used an alcohol/LOX liquid motor engine, with peroxide to run the fuel pumps. The alcohol was mixed with water for engine cooling. For other rockets, monopropellants were used, such as concentrated peroxide, hydrazine, and red fuming nitric acid. The experimental Wasserfall rocket for example used red fuming nitric acid.
During the 1950s there was a great burst of activity by propellant chemists to find high-energy liquid propellants better suited to the military. Military rockets need to sit in silos for many years, able to launch at a moment's notice. Propellants requiring continuous refrigeration, and which cause their rockets to grow ever-thicker blankets of ice, are not practical. As the military is willing to handle and use hazardous materials, a great number of dangerous chemicals were brewed up in large batches, virtually all of which were dead ends.
For instance, in the case of nitric acid, the acid itself (HNO3) is unstable, and corrodes most metals, making it difficult to store. The addition of large amounts of dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) makes the mixture red, but keeps it from changing composition, leaving the problem that nitric acid will eat any container it is placed in, releasing gases that can build up pressure in the process. The breakthrough was the addition of a little hydrofluoric acid (HF), which forms a self-healing metal fluoride on the interior of tank walls and makes Inhibited Red Fuming Nitric Acid storable. Although the development of military propellants was treated with the greatest secrecy, the trick to inhibiting nitric acid was published shortly after its discovery in 1954 and Russian rockets with the same fuel appeared shortly afterwards, the first being the SS-1B ("Scud"). Eventually the chemists gave up stabilizing HNO3 with N2O4, and just used straight N2O4, which is a slightly better oxidizer anyway. (In the propellant table below, note that N2O4 is always in equilibrium with NO2, and so mixtures are sometimes quoted with the latter.)
Many early rocket theorists believed that hydrogen would be a marvellous propellant, since it gives the highest specific impulse. As hydrogen in any state is very bulky, for lightweight vehicles it is typically stored as a deeply cryogenic liquid. This storage technique was mastered in the 1960s as part of the Saturn and Centaur upper-stage programs. Even as a liquid, hydrogen has low density, requiring large, heavy tanks and pumps, and the extreme cold requires heavy and/or potentially dangerous tank insulation. This extra weight reduces the mass fraction of the vehicle and offsets the specific impulse advantage. Most rockets that use hydrogen fuel use it in upper stages only, where a low thrust-to-empty-mass ratio can be tolerated and where a hydrogen stage's low total mass reduces the size of the lower stages. Those rockets that use hydrogen fuel in their lower stages, like the Space Shuttle, Delta IV, and Ariane 5, often use powerful and dense solid rocket motors at liftoff to improve their acceleration off the pad and thus reduce gravity losses early in flight.
The highest specific impulse chemistry ever test-fired in a rocket engine was lithium and fluorine, with hydrogen added to improve the exhaust thermodynamics (all propellants had to be kept in their own tanks, making this a tripropellant). The combination delivered 542 s specific impulse in a vacuum, equivalent to an exhaust velocity of 5320 m/s. The impracticality of this chemistry highlights why exotic propellants are not actually used: to make all three components liquids, the hydrogen must be kept below -252°C (just 21 K) and the lithium must be kept above 180°C (453 K). Lithium and fluorine are both extremely corrosive, lithium ignites on contact with air, fluorine ignites on contact with most fuels, and hydrogen, while not hypergolic, is an explosive hazard. Fluorine and the hydrogen fluoride (HF) in the exhaust are very toxic, which makes working around the launch pad difficult, damages the environment, and makes getting a launch license that much more difficult. The rocket exhaust is also ionized, which would interfere with radio communication with the rocket. Finally, both lithium and fluorine are expensive and rare, enough to actually matter. This combination has therefore never flown.
Here are some common liquid fuel combinations in use today:
Rocket | Propellants | Isp, vacuum (s) |
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Space Shuttle liquid engines |
LOX/LH2 | 453[1] |
Space Shuttle solid motors |
APCP | 268[1] |
Space Shuttle OMS |
NTO/MMH | 313[1] |
Saturn V stage 1 |
LOX/RP-1 | 304[1] |
To approximate Isp at other chamber pressures | |
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Absolute Pressure (atm) {psi} | Multiply by |
6,895 kPa (68.05) {1000} | 1.00 |
6,205 kPa (61.24) {900} | 0.99 |
5,516 kPa (54.44) {800} | 0.98 |
4,826 kPa (47.63) {700} | 0.97 |
4,137 kPa (40.83) {600} | 0.95 |
3,447 kPa (34.02) {500} | 0.93 |
2,758 kPa (27.22) {400} | 0.91 |
2,068 kPa (20.41) {300} | 0.88 |
JANAF thermochemical data used throughout. Calculations performed by Rocketdyne, results appear in "Modern Engineering for Design of Liquid-Propellant Rocket Engines", Huzel and Huang. Some of the units have been converted to metric, but pressures have not. These are best-possible specific impulse calculations.
Assumptions:
Ve | Average exhaust velocity, m/s. The same measure as specific impulse in different units, numerically equal to specific impulse in N·s/kg. |
r | Mixture ratio: mass oxidizer / mass fuel |
Tc | Chamber temperature, °C |
d | Bulk density of fuel and oxidizer, g/cm³ |
C* | Characteristic velocity, m/s. Equal to chamber pressure multiplied by throat area, divided by mass flow rate. Used to check experimental rocket's combustion efficiency. |
Optimum expansion from 68.05 atm to 1 atm |
Optimum expansion from 68.05 atm to 0 atm (vacuum) (Areanozzle = 40:1) |
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Oxidizer | Fuel | comment | Ve | r | Tc | d | C* | Ve | r | Tc | d | C* |
LOX | H2 | common | 3816 | 4.13 | 2740 | 0.29 | 2416 | 4462 | 4.83 | 2978 | 0.32 | 2386 |
H2-Be 49/51 | 4498 | 0.87 | 2558 | 0.23 | 2833 | 5295 | 0.91 | 2589 | 0.24 | 2850 | ||
CH4 | 3034 | 3.21 | 3260 | 0.82 | 1857 | 3615 | 3.45 | 3290 | 0.83 | 1838 | ||
C2H6 | 3006 | 2.89 | 3320 | 0.90 | 1840 | 3584 | 3.10 | 3351 | 0.91 | 1825 | ||
C2H4 | 3053 | 2.38 | 3486 | 0.88 | 1875 | 3635 | 2.59 | 3521 | 0.89 | 1855 | ||
RP-1 | common | 2941 | 2.58 | 3403 | 1.03 | 1799 | 3510 | 2.77 | 3428 | 1.03 | 1783 | |
N2H4 | 3065 | 0.92 | 3132 | 1.07 | 1892 | 3460 | 0.98 | 3146 | 1.07 | 1878 | ||
B5H9 | 3124 | 2.12 | 3834 | 0.92 | 1895 | 3758 | 2.16 | 3863 | 0.92 | 1894 | ||
B2H6 | 3351 | 1.96 | 3489 | 0.74 | 2041 | 4016 | 2.06 | 3563 | 0.75 | 2039 | ||
CH4/H2 92.6/7.4 | 3126 | 3.36 | 3245 | 0.71 | 1920 | 3719 | 3.63 | 3287 | 0.72 | 1897 | ||
GOX | GH2 | 3997 | 3.29 | 2576 | - | 2550 | 4485 | 3.92 | 2862 | - | 2519 | |
F2 | H2 | 4036 | 7.94 | 3689 | 0.46 | 2556 | 4697 | 9.74 | 3985 | 0.52 | 2530 | |
H2-Li 65.2/34.0 | 4256 | 0.96 | 1830 | 0.19 | 2680 | |||||||
H2-Li 60.7/39.3 | 5050 | 1.08 | 1974 | 0.21 | 2656 | |||||||
CH4 | 3414 | 4.53 | 3918 | 1.03 | 2068 | 4075 | 4.74 | 3933 | 1.04 | 2064 | ||
C2H6 | 3335 | 3.68 | 3914 | 1.09 | 2019 | 3987 | 3.78 | 3923 | 1.10 | 2014 | ||
MMH | 3413 | 2.39 | 4074 | 1.24 | 2063 | 4071 | 2.47 | 4091 | 1.24 | 1987 | ||
N2H4 | 3580 | 2.32 | 4461 | 1.31 | 2219 | 4215 | 2.37 | 4468 | 1.31 | 2122 | ||
NH3 | 3531 | 3.32 | 4337 | 1.12 | 2194 | 4143 | 3.35 | 4341 | 1.12 | 2193 | ||
B5H9 | 3502 | 5.14 | 5050 | 1.23 | 2147 | 4191 | 5.58 | 5083 | 1.25 | 2140 | ||
OF2 | H2 | 4014 | 5.92 | 3311 | 0.39 | 2542 | 4679 | 7.37 | 3587 | 0.44 | 2499 | |
CH4 | 3485 | 4.94 | 4157 | 1.06 | 2160 | 4131 | 5.58 | 4207 | 1.09 | 2139 | ||
C2H6 | 3511 | 3.87 | 4539 | 1.13 | 2176 | 4137 | 3.86 | 4538 | 1.13 | 2176 | ||
RP-1 | 3424 | 3.87 | 4436 | 1.28 | 2132 | 4021 | 3.85 | 4432 | 1.28 | 2130 | ||
MMH | 3427 | 2.28 | 4075 | 1.24 | 2119 | 4067 | 2.58 | 4133 | 1.26 | 2106 | ||
N2H4 | 3381 | 1.51 | 3769 | 1.26 | 2087 | 4008 | 1.65 | 3814 | 1.27 | 2081 | ||
MMH/N2H4/H20 50.5/29.8/19.7 | 3286 | 1.75 | 3726 | 1.24 | 2025 | 3908 | 1.92 | 3769 | 1.25 | 2018 | ||
B2H6 | 3653 | 3.95 | 4479 | 1.01 | 2244 | 4367 | 3.98 | 4486 | 1.02 | 2167 | ||
B5H9 | 3539 | 4.16 | 4825 | 1.20 | 2163 | 4239 | 4.30 | 4844 | 1.21 | 2161 | ||
F2/O2 30/70 | H2 | 3871 | 4.80 | 2954 | 0.32 | 2453 | 4520 | 5.70 | 3195 | 0.36 | 2417 | |
RP-1 | 3103 | 3.01 | 3665 | 1.09 | 1908 | 3697 | 3.30 | 3692 | 1.10 | 1889 | ||
F2/O2 70/30 | RP-1 | 3377 | 3.84 | 4361 | 1.20 | 2106 | 3955 | 3.84 | 4361 | 1.20 | 2104 | |
F2/O2 87.8/12.2 | MMH | 3525 | 2.82 | 4454 | 1.24 | 2191 | 4148 | 2.83 | 4453 | 1.23 | 2186 | |
Oxidizer | Fuel | comment | Ve | r | Tc | d | C* | Ve | r | Tc | d | C* |
N2F4 | CH4 | 3127 | 6.44 | 3705 | 1.15 | 1917 | 3692 | 6.51 | 3707 | 1.15 | 1915 | |
C2H4 | 3035 | 3.67 | 3741 | 1.13 | 1844 | 3612 | 3.71 | 3743 | 1.14 | 1843 | ||
MMH | 3163 | 3.35 | 3819 | 1.32 | 1928 | 3730 | 3.39 | 3823 | 1.32 | 1926 | ||
N2H4 | 3283 | 3.22 | 4214 | 1.38 | 2059 | 3827 | 3.25 | 4216 | 1.38 | 2058 | ||
NH3 | 3204 | 4.58 | 4062 | 1.22 | 2020 | 3723 | 4.58 | 4062 | 1.22 | 2021 | ||
B5H9 | 3259 | 7.76 | 4791 | 1.34 | 1997 | 3898 | 8.31 | 4803 | 1.35 | 1992 | ||
ClF5 | MMH | 2962 | 2.82 | 3577 | 1.40 | 1837 | 3488 | 2.83 | 3579 | 1.40 | 1837 | |
N2H4 | 3069 | 2.66 | 3894 | 1.47 | 1935 | 3580 | 2.71 | 3905 | 1.47 | 1934 | ||
MMH/N2H4 86/14 | 2971 | 2.78 | 3575 | 1.41 | 1844 | 3498 | 2.81 | 3579 | 1.41 | 1844 | ||
MMH/N2H4/N2H5NO3 55/26/19 | 2989 | 2.46 | 3717 | 1.46 | 1864 | 3500 | 2.49 | 3722 | 1.46 | 1863 | ||
ClF3 | MMH/N2H4/N2H5NO3 55/26/19 | hypergolic | 2789 | 2.97 | 3407 | 1.42 | 1739 | 3274 | 3.01 | 3413 | 1.42 | 1739 |
N2H4 | hypergolic | 2885 | 2.81 | 3650 | 1.49 | 1824 | 3356 | 2.89 | 3666 | 1.50 | 1822 | |
N2O4 | MMH | hypergolic, common | 2827 | 2.17 | 3122 | 1.19 | 1745 | 3347 | 2.37 | 3125 | 1.20 | 1724 |
MMH/Be 76.6/29.4 | 3106 | 0.99 | 3193 | 1.17 | 1858 | 3720 | 1.10 | 3451 | 1.24 | 1849 | ||
MMH/Al 63/27 | 2891 | 0.85 | 3294 | 1.27 | 1785 | |||||||
MMH/Al 58/42 | 3460 | 0.87 | 3450 | 1.31 | 1771 | |||||||
N2H4 | hypergolic, common | 2862 | 1.36 | 2992 | 1.21 | 1781 | 3369 | 1.42 | 2993 | 1.22 | 1770 | |
N2H4/UDMH 50/50 | hypergolic, common | 2831 | 1.98 | 3095 | 1.12 | 1747 | 3349 | 2.15 | 3096 | 1.20 | 1731 | |
N2H4/Be 80/20 | 3209 | 0.51 | 3038 | 1.20 | 1918 | |||||||
N2H4/Be 76.6/23.4 | 3849 | 0.60 | 3230 | 1.22 | 1913 | |||||||
B5H9 | 2927 | 3.18 | 3678 | 1.11 | 1782 | 3513 | 3.26 | 3706 | 1.11 | 1781 | ||
NO/N2O4 25/75 | MMH | 2839 | 2.28 | 3153 | 1.17 | 1753 | 3360 | 2.50 | 3158 | 1.18 | 1732 | |
N2H4/Be 76.6/23.4 | 2872 | 1.43 | 3023 | 1.19 | 1787 | 3381 | 1.51 | 3026 | 1.20 | 1775 | ||
IRFNA IIIa | UDMH/DETA 60/40 | hypergolic | 2638 | 3.26 | 2848 | 1.30 | 1627 | 3123 | 3.41 | 2839 | 1.31 | 1617 |
MMH | hypergolic | 2690 | 2.59 | 2849 | 1.27 | 1665 | 3178 | 2.71 | 2841 | 1.28 | 1655 | |
UDMH | hypergolic | 2668 | 3.13 | 2874 | 1.26 | 1648 | 3157 | 3.31 | 2864 | 1.27 | 1634 | |
IRFNA IV HDA | UDMH/DETA 60/40 | hypergolic | 2689 | 3.06 | 2903 | 1.32 | 1656 | 3187 | 3.25 | 2951 | 1.33 | 1641 |
MMH | hypergolic | 2742 | 2.43 | 2953 | 1.29 | 1696 | 3242 | 2.58 | 2947 | 1.31 | 1680 | |
UDMH | hypergolic | 2719 | 2.95 | 2983 | 1.28 | 1676 | 3220 | 3.12 | 2977 | 1.29 | 1662 | |
H2O2 | MMH | 2790 | 3.46 | 2720 | 1.24 | 1726 | 3301 | 3.69 | 2707 | 1.24 | 1714 | |
N2H4 | 2810 | 2.05 | 2651 | 1.24 | 1751 | 3308 | 2.12 | 2645 | 1.25 | 1744 | ||
N2H4/Be 74.5/25.5 | 3289 | 0.48 | 2915 | 1.21 | 1943 | 3954 | 0.57 | 3098 | 1.24 | 1940 | ||
B5H9 | 3016 | 2.20 | 2667 | 1.02 | 1828 | 3642 | 2.09 | 2597 | 1.01 | 1817 | ||
N2H4 | B2H6 | 3342 | 1.16 | 2231 | 0.63 | 2080 | 3953 | 1.16 | 2231 | 0.63 | 2080 | |
B5H9 | 3204 | 1.27 | 2441 | 0.80 | 1960 | 3819 | 1.27 | 2441 | 0.80 | 1960 | ||
Oxidizer | Fuel | comment | Ve | r | Tc | d | C* | Ve | r | Tc | d | C* |
Definitions of some of the mixtures:
r | Mixture ratio: mass oxidizer / mass fuel |
Ve | Average exhaust velocity, m/s. The same measure as specific impulse in different units, numerically equal to specific impulse in N·s/kg. |
C* | Characteristic velocity, m/s. Equal to chamber pressure multiplied by throat area, divided by mass flow rate. Used to check experimental rocket's combustion efficiency. |
Tc | Chamber temperature, °C |
d | Bulk density of fuel and oxidizer, g/cm³ |
Optimum expansion from 68.05 atm to 1 atm |
Optimum expansion from 68.05 atm to 0 atm (vacuum) (Areanozzle = 40:1) |
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Propellant | comment | Ve | Tc | d | C* | Ve | Tc | d | C* |
Hydrazine | common | ||||||||
100% Hydrogen peroxide | common | 1610 | 1270 | 1.4 | 1040 | 1860 | 1270 | 1.4 | 1040 |
Propellant | comment | Ve | Tc | d | C* | Ve | Tc | d | C* |
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Concepts |
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Physical propulsion |
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Chemical propulsion |
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Electrical propulsion |
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Nuclear propulsion |
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External power |
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Related concepts |
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