Microencapsulated Hydrocarbon Fuels in Hydrogen Peroxide Gels: The Next Step Toward High-Performance Monopropellants

Abstract

Microencapsulated hydrocarbon fuels in combination with hydrogen peroxide are a new type of monopropellant that unites the high specific impulse of a bipropellant with the efficient hardware of a monopropellant. However, the stabilization of these microcapsule/hydrogen peroxide mixtures is problematic as they tend to separate after a short period of time. In this work, organic gelling agents are used to prepare stable dispersions of the microcapsule in water and hydrogen peroxide. First, the compatibility of hydrogen peroxide with several gelling agents was investigated and found to be suitable. Next, the dispersion stability of microcapsule/gel mixtures was investigated and found to be stable even at high accelerations in the centrifuge with gelling agent concentrations as low as 0.1%. Together with the subsequent calculation of theoretical performance parameters, these results enable future work on the use of microencapsulated hydrocarbon fuels in combination with hydrogen peroxide as a new monopropellant with the goal of successful hot gas tests.