Safety and Performance Evaluation of a New High-Performance Monopropellant Formed of Microencapsulated Hydrocarbon Fuels in Combination with Hydrogen Peroxide

Abstract

A new type of monopropellant, consisting of fuel-filled microcapsules in combination with hydrogen peroxide as oxidizer, combining the high specific impulse of a bipropellant with the efficient hardware of a monopropellant, has been developed by our group over the past few years. This included theoretical considerations, synthesis and storability tests. In order to further develop this system for future hot-fire tests, a first ignition and combustion evaluation of the propellant was performed in this work using a strand burner setup. The influence of different propellant parameters (oxidizer to fuel ratio, hydrogen peroxide concentration and capsule diameter) on the combustion rate was evaluated. In addition, safety considerations based on BAM fallhammer tests were performed.