Electrical Ignition of New Environmental-Friendly Propellants for Rockets and Spacecrafts

Monopropellant hydrazine is today widely used as propellant for missiles and spacecrafts. Hydrazine is however highly toxic. ADN-based liquid monopropellants seems to be a promising alternative to hydrazine, being substantially easier to handle, giving a 10 % higher specific impulse, and up to 60 % higher density-impulse, compared to hydrazine. This paper presents the results from electrical ignition experiments of liquid ADN-based propellants were the propellant is resistively heated by conducting an electric current through the propellant. Due to local phenomena close, or on the surface, of the electrodes, the required electric energy for ignition is small. The limited amount of energy required for ignition shows that this type of ignition method can be used in a flying vehicle as a missile or a spacecraft where strong weight and volume requirements apply.