You'll find here some stuff related to rocket propulsion using hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). For the newcomers, hydrogen peroxide is a colourless, dense (1.36 at 85%), corrosive liquid, storable at ambient temperature/pressure, that can be used as oxidizer or monopropellant in rocket engines. It's only useful at high concentrations (> 80%), but unfortunately, such concentrated product isn't commercially avalaible, and has thus to be manufactured from lower concentration product. I personnally achieve this by selective evaporation, at moderate temperatures for safety. This is a potentially dangerous operation, since peroxide vapours can be explosive, and it should surely not be undertaken by anyone.
I've started designing an hypergolic hybrid rocket motor, which burns polyethylene and uses 85% hydrogen peroxide as oxidizer. Hypergolic ignition is achieved using a consumable catalytic bed, mainly made of potassium permanganate. It decomposes the peroxide as soon as it is injected in the combustion chamber, creating a stream of superheated steam and oxygen, which then causes the PE grain to auto-ignite. As far as I know, this motor is (one of ?) the first amateur hydrogen peroxide hybrid in the world.
Personal stuff
A small cheap demonstration motor was first built, and fired successfully a few times. A lot of extra subsystems were then needed to make testing of bigger motors easier and safer, so it took a lot of time; two bigger motors are now in the static test phase.
Other's H2O2 work
Amateur H2O2 propulsion isn't common; that can be explained both by the difficulties of manufacturing high concentration product, and by the risks associated with its handling (it is notably very corrosive). However, several groups around the world have done interesting achievements in the past few years (if I forgot someone, tell me !).
- ERPS: monopropellant research using silver catalyst, a lot of work done on apparatus to concentrate and purify hydrogen peroxide (by sparging and fractionnal freezing); their 'KISS' rocket reached an altitude of over 6000 ft.
- NEAR H-1: monopropellant thruster by Norwegian rocketeer Dag Lundesgaard; uses potassium permanganate as catalyst.
- PeroxidePropulsion.com: small monopropellant thrusters using silver catalyst, used to power autogyro's blade. Erik Bengtsson, the webmaster of this website, just started a plant to manufacture HTP and sell it around the world.
- REDG: by Jan Volckaert Benny Croonen, belgian guys (like me), hydrogen peroxide - gasoline engine, more that 70 firings; I've personally seen their setup, it's quite impressive.
- Sacramento L5 society: hydrogen peroxide / kerosene motor, tested only a very few times, there is some controversy on if it really worked or not (check out the discussion in the aRocket archives).
- Armadillo Aerospace: not really an amateur group, but their work (monoprop, mixed monoprop, and biprop) is incredibly well documented. They've now switched to LOX motors.
Documentation and technical stuff
- Physical and chemical properties of hydrogen peroxide.
- The safe supply and handling of HTP: document from Solvay Interox, the reference about safety measures and dangers of HTP.
- US Patent 5,727,368: by E. J. Wernimont, describes the consumable catalytic bed ignition method (the one I use).
- HTP propulsion workshop: lot of interesting papers, including one of Wernimont on hybrid propulsion.
- Development of non-toxic fuels hypergolic with H2O2: for use with very high concentration hydrogen peroxide; high-level.
- Self Pressurizing HTP feed systems: paper by J. Whitehead, use of HTP decomposition products to pressurize tank. Mainly for satellite propulsion.
- Utility to compute H2O2 concentration after evaporation: coded by myself, takes in account the losses of H2O2 in vapours (depending on the evaporation temperature). Has to be compiled; console use.
- H2O2/PE regression rates: the regression rates I measured during my successful tests; an approximation curve is shown.