Technologies for Elimination of Hyrdazine in Aerospace Power

Physical Sciences Inc., Honeywell and ATK Tactical Systems propose to develop an environmentally benign monopropellant source to be used in aircraft Emergency Power Units (EPUs). The proposed system uses a catalyst to control the rate of decomposition ofa monopropellant. We anticipate that our system will eventually result in essentially a drop-in replacement for the currently used EPU systems which are based on hydrazine monopropellant. Our proposed system, however, will alleviate considerably thenegative health and safety aspects involved in hydrazine-based systems. The proposal discusses monopropellant and catalyst systems and outlines a set of key experiments which are necessary to guide further development. We anticipate that the proposedtechnology will result both in substantially reduced health risks to aircraft maintenance personnel and also in greatly reduced aircraft maintenance costs. This latter benefit follows from the reduced level of safety precautions that will be necessaryonce hydrazine is no longer used as an EPU fuel. The proposed technology also has direct applications to spacecraft propulsion systems.