November 24, 2003
Wax Rocket Fuel
Just to give a plug to my old stomping grounds, Arif Karabeyoglu and Brian Cantwell over at Stanford have developed a Paraffin based hybrid rocket motor that functions quite well. Arif has been working on this for several years, and they have finally made the leap to a commercial venture.
The Stanford team first tested paraffin in a laboratory-scale rocket motor in November 1998 and found that like solid pentane, it burned three to four times faster than conventional solid fuels. To date, they have conducted more than 250 laboratory and field tests in collaboration with engineers at NASA Ames Research Center. They have tested rocket motors with 2,500 pounds of thrust, the amount that might be needed for a third stage rocket in a launch system. "Further scale-up tests are needed before paraffin-fueled rockets can be utilized in lower stage rockets requiring thrust levels of 200,000 pounds or more," Cantwell said.
Best of luck to them.
Posted by elkaim at November 24, 2003 03:08 PM