ASSESSING THE PERFORMANCE OF A GREEN LIQUID FUEL HYPERGOLIC WITH HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IN A 50 N BIPROPELLANT THRUSTER

The last decades have witnessed an increasing interest in the development of green propellants for propulsion systems. Particularly in the low thrust domain, where a feasible alternative to the storable liquid bipropellant system hydrazine - nitrogen tetroxide is yet to be fully demonstrated, the application of green hypergolic propellants such as ethanol and H2O2 90 wt% appears to be a promising one. This work presents the design and firing test of a 50 N bipropellant thruster based on the H2O2 90 wt% - monoethanolamine-ethanol hypergolic pair catalyzed by Cu2+, previously developed by our research group. The 5 s firing test, conducted under a swirl injection scheme, yielded average values of 50.38 N, 147 s, and 1210 m/s for thrust, I-sp, and c*, respectively, with the target value of 5 bar for the chamber pressure being reached after 2 s of operation. Alongside with a c* efficiency of 84%, these results suggest that the assessed green hypergolic bipropellant pair may be a promising alternative for applications in the low-thrust range.