Both Blue Origin and Space X are using Methane in their new engines
currently under development.
Again both say they are shooting for very high reusability rates, rapid
turn around times measured in hours and 100's if not 1,000 cycles plus
target in the case of Blue.
I assume they must be using a high purity form of methane as described by
Henry Spencer to reduce the chances of coking, corrosion with the copper
inner chamber...
Can one get a non stenchant form of purified methane in bulk and or would
they both have to purify it (remove Mercaptans, any polymerizing compounds
etc) after taking delivery. i.e. is it legal, safe to road transport in
bulk in a purified non odour form.
Cheers
Brian Feeney
On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 12:30 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Sun, 2 Apr 2017, Graham Sortino wrote:
Is there any general guidelines in terms of the temperature or pressure at
which point coking in coolant channel occurs when using Jet-A (ie. some
kind
of max temp and/or pressure to avoid)?
Never heard of anybody looking into that, although it's not something I've
gone looking for. Possibly there might be something to be found in studies
of fuel stability in high-supersonic and hypersonic aircraft (where
friction heating can get fuel in wing tanks pretty hot) -- not quite the
same problem, and often dealt with by using special fuels, but it might
offer some hints.
It would be tricky to get good numbers for something like Jet-A because
there's so much variation in its exact composition.
Henry
