Devising rocket power for smaller engines
- GEOMET Technologies Inc., Germantown, MD (United States)
Compact, high-power engines that burn fuel and oxygen could be made by winding copper tubing in a helix around boiler sections. With more than 1,000 horsepower per pound of engine weight, liquid-fueled rockets have the highest specific power of any engines designed for sustained operation. Yet those engines generally run for about only 1,000 seconds--nowhere near the sustained operation time for lower-power automotive and aircraft engines of more than 1,000 hours. In theory, at least, a fuel/oxygen rocket can be built that combines the best of both classes: high specific power (from perhaps two to 10 times that of a gas turbine) and a 1,000-hour service life. Such an engine would almost certainly be possible if the rocket`s exhaust gases could be simultaneously cooled and expanded by mixing water with the rocket`s exhaust and boiling it before it reaches the turbine. The technology itself is not new. variations of these rocket-turbine-type engines, for example, powered torpedoes during World War I. Some 30 years later, German V-2 rockets used fuel pumps, driven by the reaction of hydrogen peroxide with hydrocarbon fuels, to produce high-pressure steam that was directed against a turbine. Alternatively, fuel/oxygen combustion could produce steam to drive a piston engine. Either way, the challenge remains to construct a compact, long-service-life, high-specific-power boiler that burns fuel and oxygen. The new type of engine could be derived from recent research on electric vehicles (EVs).
- OSTI ID:
- 451984
- Journal Information:
- Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 118, Issue 4; Other Information: PBD: Apr 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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