To Infinity and Beyond: An Optimization Study of Kerosene and Hydrogen Peroxide Bipropellant Fuels

Abstract

Currently, hydrazine fuels are grossly inefficient in terms of environmentally friendliness and handling costs. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and kerosene bipropellants have recently shown promise as a fuel that is similar in efficiency to hydrazine yet superior in cost and environmentally friendliness. Previous research on H2O2/kerosene bipropellants view environmentally friendliness, cost effectiveness, and fuel efficiency separately, making comparison between these properties difficult. This research uses calorimetry to provide a new method of quickly and precisely finding optimal ratios of fuels in bipropellants. For different ratios of fuel, efficiency was measured by finding the fuel mixture’s specific energy, environmentally friendliness was measured by finding the fuel mixture’s efficiency per carbon released into the atmosphere, and cost effectiveness was measured by finding the fuel mixture’s efficiency per unit fuel cost. The Cobb-Douglas function was used to optimize for multiple fuel properties at the same time: environmentally friendliness and efficiency, cost effectiveness and efficiency, and environmentally friendliness and cost effectiveness. These double optimizations brought new properties of H2O2/kerosene bipropellant fuels to light, notably that the optimal ratio of fuel for environmentally friendliness coincides with the optimal ratio for fuel efficiency, and the bipropellant remains efficacious in terms of efficiency even while operating at the optimal quantity for cost effectiveness. In short, these findings reaffirm H2O2 and kerosene bipropellants as great potential candidates for an eco-friendly and cost effective replacement of hydrazine because of their unique potential to remain environmentally friendly even at optimally efficient ratios.