Thermal Explosion Characteristics of a Gelled Hypergolic Droplet

When a sphere of one reactant is placed in the medium of another reactant with which it is hypergolic, a chemical reaction (modeled here as a zeroth-order one-step irreversible Arrhenius reaction) occurs at the common interface of the two reactants, and the heat generated at the interface then is transmitted away from it by thermal conduction. Depending on the nature of the problem, the system may approach an explosive mode, or it may settle into a steady-state mode. The critical condition defining the transition between these two states is determined analytically. In particular, explicit formulas for the ignition delay time for the explosive mode are provided for two limits, one in which an appropriately defined Damkohler number is large and the other in which it is closer to the critical conditions. This is accomplished here by deriving and solving an integral equation for the time evolution of the interface temperature, employing activation-energy asymptotics.