If you do get around to testing peanut oil, please post it. I've thought that
would be an ideal propellant for years, given its thermal stability (smoke
point 450 F) and high density compared to petroleum fuels.
On October 14, 2020 at 7:54 PM, Carl Tedesco <ctedesco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A RP-1,2 alternative…
We static tested and flew an LR101 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.