Hypergolic Studies of Ethanol Based Gelled Bi-Propellant System for Propulsion Application

The experiments conducted in this study examined the hypergolicity and ignition delay of the formulated ethanol gelled fuel and hydrogen peroxide oxidizer bipropellant system. The hypergolicity and ignition delay data for bipropellant system are very important for propulsion applications. It was observed that the ethanol based gelled fuel systems were hypergolic with hydrogen peroxide (90% pure) in a presence of a suitable catalyst. The observed ignition delay was within the range of 10∼50 ms, which was comparable with the existing liquid hypergolic bipropellant systems. Temperature profile also indicated that the hypergolic system attained a very high temperature profile range of 1000 °C to 1400 °C for a very small weight percent of fuel. Experiments conducted with two separate volumes of oxidizer, 14 μl and 50 μl. In both cases the propellant system was fuel rich. It was also observed that the formation of cage in the gel network, which could encapsulate the higher temperature gases and flame in a network, might be a plausible reason for recorded higher ignition delay.