Chai Wai Siong, Sun Dashan, Cheah Kean How, Li Gang, Meng Hua
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, Zhejiang, China.
School of Engineering and Physical Science, Heriot-Watt University Malaysia, Putrajaya 62200, Malaysia.
ACS Omega. 2020 Jul 29;5(31):19525-19532. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c01804. eCollection 2020 Aug 11.
Hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN) is a promising green propellant because of its low toxicity, high volumetric specific impulse, and reduced development cost. Electrolytic decomposition of HAN is an efficient approach to prepare it for further ignition and combustion. This paper describes the investigation of a co-electrolysis effect on electrolytic decomposition of HAN-fuel mixtures using stainless steel-platinum (SS-Pt) electrodes. For the first time, different materials were utilized as electrodes to alter the cathodic reaction, which eliminated the inhibition effect and achieved a repeatable and consistent electrolytic decomposition of HAN solution. Urea and methanol were added as fuel components in the HAN-fuel mixtures. When the mass ratio of added urea ≥20%, the electrolytic decomposition of a HAN-urea ternary mixture achieved 67% increment in maximum gas temperature ( ) and 185% increment in overall temperature increasing rate over the benchmark case of HAN solution. The co-electrolysis of urea released additional electrons into the mixtures and enhanced the overall electrolytic decomposition of HAN. In contrast, the addition of methanol did not improve the but only increased the overall temperature increasing rate. This work has important implications in the development of an efficient and reliable electrolytic decomposition system of HAN and its mixtures for propulsion applications.
硝酸羟胺（HAN）因其低毒性、高体积比冲和降低的开发成本而成为一种有前景的绿色推进剂。HAN的电解分解是将其制备用于进一步点火和燃烧的有效方法。本文描述了使用不锈钢-铂（SS-Pt）电极对HAN-燃料混合物的电解分解进行共电解效应的研究。首次使用不同材料作为电极来改变阴极反应，消除了抑制效应，并实现了HAN溶液可重复且一致的电解分解。在HAN-燃料混合物中添加了尿素和甲醇作为燃料成分。当添加尿素的质量比≥20%时，与HAN溶液的基准情况相比，HAN-尿素三元混合物的电解分解在最高气体温度（ ）上提高了67%，在总升温速率上提高了185%。尿素的共电解向混合物中释放了额外的电子，并增强了HAN的整体电解分解。相比之下，甲醇的添加并没有提高 ，只是提高了总升温速率。这项工作对开发用于推进应用的高效可靠的HAN及其混合物的电解分解系统具有重要意义。
