Investigation of Silver Nanoparticles as Novel Catalysts for Hypergolic Hydrocarbon Propellants with Hydrogen Peroxide

Abstract

To replace commonly-used toxic and carcinogenic propellants like hydrazine and its derivates, we developed new hypergolic propellants for space propulsion. Hydrogen peroxide and kerosene are promising candidates for hypergolic propellants because of their relatively low toxicity and cost, appropriate storage properties and good propulsion performances. On basis of previous studies, we chose silver nanoparticles as heterogenic catalysts for hydrogen peroxide decomposition. Most important factor in this study was stabilisation of the nanoparticles in the fuel. For this, different capping agents were investigated as stabilising additives and also gelling of the fuels was considered. By variation of experimental parameters like size of the silver nanoparticles and adjustment of catalyst amount, we created an optimised hypergolic propellant mixture with high concentrated hydrogen peroxide as oxidiser. The IDT (ignition delay time) of a stabilised bipropellant with 5 wt% of catalyst was decreased to 18.6 ms ± 1.6 ms. With higher catalyst amounts (8 wt%), IDTs of even < 10 ms are reached.