Science Daily September 3, 2019
Electric solid propellants are being explored for use in dual-mode rocket engines because they aren’t susceptible to ignite from a spark or flame and can be turned on and off electrically. A team of researchers in the US (Missouri University of Science and Technology, University of Illinois, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center) compares a high-performance electric propellant with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a traditional propellant used in ablative pulsed plasma thrusters. They found that the electric solid propellant ablates about two times more than the traditional propellant. According to their analyses the physics of propellant ablation is similar for both electric solid and PTFE propellants with the differences in the observed specific ablation owing to differences in the thermodynamic properties between propellants…read more.