Depends on several factors but Jet A is a good replacement for RP-1. We
burned it with no issues in the LR-101 regen. rocket engine in clusters of
4 on a common prop valve, see - neverworld.net. for videos and other rocket
info including Sea Dragon. Jet A also is available at most airports at ~
$5/gallon.
Ethanol is actually more expensive than Jet-A and performs 8-10% less than
kerosene.
But if you need a conservative fuel as far as heat flux to a newly designed
regen engine then ethanol with water is a safe choice.
I'm currently working with a high school group on a LOx/Kerosene flight
rocket with an ablative engine. If you wish to compare notes contact me and
I'll make the arrangements.
Ken
On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 9:42 PM Yucca Works <pyropickle1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.