Development of a green bipropellant hydrogen peroxide thruster for attitude control on satellites

Abstract

This document describes the selection assessment of propellants for a 1-newton green bipropellant thruster for attitude control on satellites. The development of this thruster was conducted as a part of the project GRASP (Green Advanced Space Propellants) within the European FP7 research program. The green propellant combinations hydrogen peroxide (highly concentrated with 87.5 %(wt.)) with kerosene or hydrogen peroxide (87.5 %(wt.)) with ethanol were identi¦ed as interesting candidates and were investigated in detail with the help of an experimental combustion chamber in the chemical propulsion laboratory at the Forschungsund Technologietransfer GmbH ¡ Fotec. Based on the test results, a ¦nal selection of propellants was performed.

Green space propulsion: Opportunities and prospects

“…In order to suggest alternatives to toxic propellants, more than 100 propellants with significant reduced toxicity were established in a database and different propellants were investigated in different propulsion systems within the framework of the GRASP project [74][75][76]78,82,90,97]. A number of the investigated propellants were hydrogen peroxide [77,[79][80][81]86,88,89,95,96,98], ethanol [92], kerosene [101], ammonium dinitramide (ADN) [93,102,134,159,[169][170][171][174][175]179,181,183,[185][186]200], turpentine [101], dipentene [97], and high density polyethylene (HDPE) [74,75].…”

Hydrogen Peroxide as a High Energy Compound Optimal for Propulsive Applications

“…The situation, especially during the last decade, has seriously changed as hydrazine and its derivatives have been classified as extremely dangerous substances and HTP is gaining more and more attention as a near-future rocket oxidiser and mono-propellant (e.g. GRASP Project funded by the European Union where HTP was identified as the most promising oxidiser for rocket bi-propellant systems) [12].…”

Impact of Catalyst Length and Preheating on Transient Catalytic H2O2 Decomposition Performance

“…Several H 2 O 2 propulsion concepts have been under investigation by different groups, including monopropellant [3][4][5][6][7][8], bipropellant [1,[9][10][11][12][13], and hybrid systems [14,15]. The former two primarily address low-to-medium thrust ranges and are therefore mostly used for attitude control applications.…”