Monopropellant Engines

Rocket Propulsion:

– Thrust

– Conservation of Momentum

– Impulse & Momentum

– Combustion & Exhaust Velocity

– Specific Impulse

– Rocket Engines

– Power Cycles

– Engine Cooling

– Solid Rocket Motors

– Monopropellant Engines

– Staging

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By far the most widely used type of propulsion for spacecraft attitude and velocity control is monopropellant hydrazine. Its excellent handling characteristics, relative stability under normal storage conditions, and clean decomposition products have made it the standard. The general sequence of operations in a hydrazine thruster is:

  • When the attitude control system signals for thruster operation, an electric solenoid valve opens allowing hydrazine to flow. The action may be pulsed (as short as 5 ms) or long duration (steady state).
  • The pressure in the propellant tank forces liquid hydrazine into the injector. It enters as a spray into the thrust chamber and contacts the catalyst beds.
  • The catalyst bed consists of alumina pellets impregnated with iridium. Incoming hydrazine heats to its vaporizing point by contact with the catalyst bed and with the hot gases leaving the catalyst particles. The temperature of the hydrazine rises to a point where the rate of its decomposition becomes so high that the chemical reactions are self-sustaining.
  • By controlling the flow variables and the geometry of the catalyst chamber, a designer can tailor the proportion of chemical products, the exhaust temperature, the molecular weight, and thus the enthalpy for a given application. For a thruster application where specific impulse is paramount, the designer attempts to provide 30-40% ammonia dissociation, which is about the lowest percentage that can be maintained reliably. For gas-generator application, where lower temperature gases are usually desired, the designer provides for higher levels of ammonia dissociation.
  • Finally, in a space thruster, the hydrazine decomposition products leave the catalyst bed and exit from the chamber through a high expansion ratio exhaust nozzle to produce thrust.

Monopropellant hydrazine thrusters typically produce a specific impulse of about 230 to 240 seconds.

Other suitable propellants for catalytic decomposition engines are hydrogen peroxide and nitrous oxide, however the performance is considerably lower than that obtained with hydrazine – specific impulse of about 150 s with H2O2 and about 170 s with N2O.

Monopropellant systems have successfully provided orbit maintenance and attitude control functions, but lack the performance to provide weight-efficient large 

V maneuvers required for orbit insertion. Bipropellant systems are attractive because they can provide all three functions with one higher performance system, but they are more complex than the common solid rocket and monopropellant combined systems. A third alternative are dual mode systems. These systems are hybrid designs that use hydrazine both as a fuel for high performance bipropellant engines and as a monopropellant with conventional low-thrust catalytic thrusters. The hydrazine is fed to both the bipropellant engines and the monopropellant thrusters from a common fuel tank.

Cold gas propulsion is just a controlled, pressurized gas source and a nozzle. It represents the simplest form of rocket engine. Cold gas has many applications where simplicity and/or the need to avoid hot gases are more important than high performance. The Manned Maneuvering Unit used by astronauts is an example of such a system.

 


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