Liquid rocket propellants

The highest specific impulse chemical rockets use liquid propellants. This type of propellent has a long history going back to the first rockets and is still in use in for example the Space Shuttle and Ariane 5.

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History

Early development

On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard used liquid oxygen and gasoline as propellants for his first successful liquid rocket launch. Both are readily available, cheap, highly energetic, and dense. Oxygen is a moderate cryogen — air will not liquify against a liquid oxygen tank, so it is possible to store LOX briefly in a rocket without heroic insulation measures. Gasoline has since been replaced by RP-1, a highly refined grade of kerosene.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 missiles of China and North Korea.

1950s

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 not stable, and gives off NO₂ fumes (hence the name white fuming nitric acid). Unlike nitrous oxide (N₂O), these nitrogen dioxide fumes are extremely toxic. 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.)

Hydrogen

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 flightweight 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 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.

Lithium/fluorine

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.

Monopropellants

• Hydrogen peroxide decomposes to steam and oxygen
• Hydrazine decomposes energetically to nitrogen and hydrogen, making it a fairly good monopropellant all by itself.
• Nitrous oxide decomposes to nitrogen and oxygen
• Steam when externally heated gives a reasonably modest Isp of up to 190 seconds, depending on material corrosion and thermal limits

Current use

Here are some common liquid fuel combinations in use today:

• LOX and kerosene (RP-1). Used for the lower stages of most Russian and Chinese boosters, and the first stage of the U.S. Saturn V and Atlas boosters. Very similar to Robert Goddard's first rocket.

• LOX and liquid hydrogen, used in the Space Shuttle, Energia, Ariane 5, Delta IV and the Centaur upper stage.

• Nitrogen tetroxide (N₂O₄) and hydrazine (N₂H₄). Used in military, orbital and deep space rockets, because both liquids are storable for long periods at reasonable temperatures and pressures.

Propellant table

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:

• adiabatic combustion
• isentropic expansion
• one-dimensional expansion
• shifting equilibrium

Definitions

Definitions of some of the mixtures:

• IRFNA IIIa: 83.4% HNO₃, 14% NO₂, 2% H₂O, 0.6% HF
• IRFNA IV HDA: 54.3% HNO₃, 44% NO₂, 1% H₂O, 0.7% HF
• RP-1: see MIL-P-25576C, basically kerosene (approximately C₁₀H₁₈)
• MMH: CH₃NHNH₂

See also

• Cpropep-Web an online computer program to calculate propellant performance in rocket engines