Hypergolic Green Fuel Formulation

There is widespread interest in reducing the toxicity and environmental hazards associated with conventional bipropellants. Use of gelling agents has been shown to reduce the fuel’s toxicity. However the resultant gels often have significantly different rheological and combustion properties. Use of these materials requires extensive modifications to fuel storage and transport systems as well as combustion engines and may require high temperature combustion initiation systems. These modifications result in severe flight-weight and energy penalties. Ogden Engineering & Associates, LLC was awarded a Phase I SBIR project to address these ongoing needs and to gain a fundamental understanding and preliminary characterization of novel hypergolic green fuels. Through this Phase II proposal, the project team aims to further this understanding and intends to fully characterize a novel green fuel formulation as a potential replacement for existing, propellants that have undesirable toxic characteristics. Specific activities include optimizing chemical formulations and solvent additives to obtain reliable hypergolic combustion, and to identify conditions where the fuel can be used as a monopropellant and develop hardware for these applications.