Combustion performance of hydrocarbon fuel containing nanoparticles in rocket

Adding high-energy metallic or non-metallic solid particles to liquid hydrocarbon fuel is an important means to improve the energy characteristics of fuel. Based on the liquid rocket engine platform, the theoretical performance prediction and combustion test research of pure liquid fuel and fuel containing nano-aluminum/boron particles are carried out with residual oxygen coefficient of 0.60-0.80, and the influence of adding nano-aluminum particles and nano-boron particles to hydrocarbon fuel is explored, the effects of slurry dispersion scheme and gel dispersion scheme are compared. The results show that the addition of 10wt% nano-aluminum/boron particles leads to a decrease in combustion efficiency of 1.2%/2.4%, and the corresponding engine density specific impulse increased by 6.5%/3.2% respectively. The addition of nano-aluminum particles has more potential in engineering applications. Compared with QC pure liquid fuel, the combustion efficiency of QC+B slurry fuel with 20wt% nano-boron particles added is decreased by 9.1% on average, and the density specific impulse is decreased by 0.9% on average, while the combustion efficiency of QC+B gel fuel with 20wt% nano-boron particles added is decreased by 5.8% on average, and the density specific impulse is increased by 3.9% on average. The gel scheme is more conducive to giving full play to the high energy density characteristics of nanoparticles than the slurry scheme.