On Performance Evaluation of a New Liquid Propellant

Abstract

A blend of 3-carene and cardanol in 70:30 weight proportion exhibits synergistic hypergolic ignition with red fuming nitric acid (RFNA) as oxidizer. Attempts have been made to evaluate this new propellant by theoretical calculationof performance parameters and verification of the results by static firing of a 10 kg thrust rocket motor around 20 atmosphers of chamber pressure. At an oxidizer-to-fuel weight ratio (O/F) of 3.34 (RFNA used had 21% N204 and 5% by weight of concentrated sulphuric acid as catalyst), the propellant produced a reasonably smooth pressure-time curve with an ignition delay of 35 milliseconds. The theoretical characteristic velocity value matched well with the experimental. No carbon residue was left in the rocket motor after firing. Specific impulse (theoretical) of the propellant has been found to be 223.8 seconds at chamber pressure, 20 atmos and exist pressure, 1 atmos.