A RP-1,2 alternative…
We static tested and flew an LR101
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4zow8f4ePg> with JP-8 biodiesel that we
got from Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC). It worked great.
I’ve always thought about testing peanut oil.
I have burned Jet-A (obtained from the Mojave Airport) in several LR-101
burns. No duration was longer than 20seconds. There was no noticeable
coking in the cooling passages. For burns of 30-75 seconds I always used
RP-2, not because I was worried about coking, but because they were
commercial tests where we could afford the RP-2.
Where will you test & fly? If you’re near FAR, you might contact them,
because they use to have a few barrels of RP-1.
--- Carl
*From:* arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *On
Behalf Of *Yucca Works
*Sent:* Tuesday, October 13, 2020 9:42 PM
*To:* arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [AR] RP-1 versus ethanol for a student rocket?
Hello all, my team is considering RP-1 and ethanol right now (to be paired
with LOX) for our main propellant and I was wondering if anyone has any
input on which fuel to use given some constraints and thoughts to follow.
For one, we don't have an infinite budget at our disposal so Ethanol
becomes immediately appealing because it is easy to source, this is on top
of the fact that Ethanol is not ITAR protected and can be mixed with water
for "inherent" cooling. What made RP-1 appealing was the fact that it is
used in the industry so gaining experience with it seems extremely
appealing and, I think, would make our work more "useful/notable" but
sourcing RP-1 is difficult and it is expensive. A slightly tangential
consideration is using lower grade kerosene which I have seen other college
students do but I am concerned with using low-grade kerosene in regen
cooling channels and it obviously has poor performance.