UTeM Conference Systems, Malaysia University Conference Engineering Technology

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Electrolytic Decomposition of Hydroxylammonium Nitrate (HAN) Mixtures in Micropropulsion
Wahida T. F.

Last modified: 2014-10-31

Abstract


Hydroxylammonium Nitrate (HAN) has been considered as a next generation "green" monopropellant candidate because of its excellent good chemical performance but low toxicity, ease of handling and storage and clean post combustion products. In our previous work (Koh et. Al. 2013), large scale electrolytic decomposition of HAN solution has been studied and characterized using commercial copper wire and Aluminium respectively. In order to utilize the technology in a micropropulsion for future micro-spacecraft or micro-satellite application. A micropropulsion has been designed and fabricated with Poly-Dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as structural material. The transparent nature of PDMS enables visualization of reactive as structural material. The micropropulsion was fabricated using modified soft-lithography method and bonded to a piece of glass. The device consisted of a HAN mixture reservoir, transport channel as well as a reaction chamber. A pair of commercial copper wire was inserted into the reaction chamber to initiate decomposition of HAN mixture via electrolytic decomposition. In this paper, Electrolytic decomposition of 73 wt% Hydroxylammonium Nitrate (HAN) solution was successfully demonstrated with DC power 300W in carefully designed transparent PDMS-based micro-combustion chambers. Experimental results show that more vigorous reaction occurred at high inlet flowrate of 50µl/min (Re = 0.88) in which only 10 - 48% of space inside the micro-combustion chamber occupied by the un-decomposed HAN solution compared to 40 - 62% at inlet flowrate of 10µl/min (Re = 0.18).


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