氧化亚氮推进技术研究进展

Research progress of nitrous oxide propulsion technology

随着环境保护的加强,人们越来越希望找到一种绿色推进剂来代替现有的肼类有毒推进剂。氧化亚氮作为一种绿色推进剂,无毒性,地面实验操作处理方便,不需要繁琐昂贵的防护;常温贮存性,贮箱几乎不需要主动热控制;饱和压力高,可采用自增压方式供应推进剂;绝热分解温度较高,可作为单组元和双组元发动机的推进剂。分析了氧化亚氮作为推进剂的性能及其主要应用领域,着重研究其在液体火箭发动机的应用。通过对氧化亚氮自增压供应系统,单组元推进的催化分解系统,克服催化床限制的氧化亚氮与燃料混合的NOFBX^(TM)技术,以及氧化亚氮作为氧化剂的双组元推进系统的国内外研究进展进行综述,指出当前研究工作中存在的问题,以期为该方面的进一步研究提供一定的参考。

With the strengthening of environment protection, people are looking forward to a green propellant for the replacement of toxic propellant such as Hydrazine. Nitrous oxide is a clean and non-toxic propellant, which is easy to handle for ground experiments, does not need cumbersome and expensive protection, can be stored in the environmental temperature, scarcely needs thermo-control for its tank, and has high enough saturation pressure for self-pressurization supply and high exothermic decomposition temperature as a monopropellant or bipropellant. The performances and main applications of nitrous oxide are analyzed in this paper, especially the application in liquid rocket propulsion systems. The research progresses of nitrous oxide self-pressurization feed system, catalytic thermal decomposition system of monopropellant, NOFBXTM technology blending fuel with Nitrous oxide to overcome the limitation of catalyst bed, and bipropellant propulsion system taking nitrous oxide acts as oxidant are summarized. In the end of the paper, the problems existing in the current work are pointed out and a reference for the further research is provided.