High-test peroxide (HTP) is a highly concentrated (85 to 98%) solution of hydrogen peroxide, with the remainder consisting predominantly of water. In contact with a catalyst, it decomposes into a high-temperature mixture of steam and oxygen, with no remaining liquid water. It was used as a propellant of HTP rockets and torpedoes, and has been used for high-performance vernier engines.
Hydrogen peroxide works best as a propellant in extremely high concentrations (roughly over 70%). Although any concentration of peroxide will generate some hot gas (oxygen plus some steam), at concentrations above approximately 67%, the heat of decomposing hydrogen peroxide becomes large enough to completely vaporize all the liquid at standard pressure. This represents a safety and utilization turning point, since decomposition of any concentration above this amount is capable of transforming the liquid entirely to heated gas (the higher the concentration, the hotter the resulting gas). This very hot steam/oxygen mixture can then be used to generate maximal thrust, power, or work, but it also makes explosive decomposition of the material far more hazardous.
Normal propellant-grade concentrations, therefore, vary from 70 to 98%, with common grades of 70, 85, 90, and 98%.[1]
The volume change of peroxide due to freezing varies with percentage. Lower concentrations of peroxide (45% or less) will expand when frozen, while higher concentrations (65% or greater) will contract.[2]:4–39
Hydrogen peroxide becomes more stable with higher peroxide content. For example, 98% hydrogen peroxide is more stable than 70% hydrogen peroxide. Water acts as a contaminant, and the higher the water concentration the less stable the peroxide is. The storability of peroxide is dependent on the surface-to-volume ratio of the materials the fluid is in contact with. To increase storability, the ratio should be minimized.[3]
HTP has been used safely and successfully in many applications, beginning with German usage during World War II, and continues to the present day.[6] During World War II, high-test peroxide was used as an oxidizer in some German bipropellant rocket designs, such as the Walter HWK 509A rocket engine that powered the Messerschmitt Me 163 point defense interceptor fighter late in World War II, comprising 80% of the standardized mixture T-Stoff, and also in the German Type XVII submarine.
Some significant United States programs include the reaction control thrusters on the X-15 program, and the Bell Rocket Belt. The NASA Lunar Lander Research Vehicle used it for rocket thrust to simulate a lunar lander.
The Royal Navy experimented with HTP as the oxidiser in the experimental high-speed target/training submarinesExplorer and Excalibur between 1958 and 1969.
The first Russian HTP torpedo was known by the strictly functional name of 53-57, the 53 referring to the diameter in centimeters of the torpedo tube, the 57 to the year it was introduced. Driven by the Cold War competition, they ordered the development of a larger HTP torpedo, to be fired from the 65-centimeter (26-inch) tubes. HTP in one of these Type 65 torpedoes on August 12, 2000 exploded on board and sank the K-141 Kursk submarine.
British experiments with HTP as a torpedo fuel were discontinued after a peroxide fire resulted in the loss of the submarine HMSSidon(P259) in 1956.
British experimentation with HTP continued in rocketry research, ending with the Black Arrow launch vehicles in 1971. Black Arrow rockets successfully launched the Prospero X-3 satellite from Woomera, South Australia using HTP and kerosene fuel.
The British Blue Steel missile, attached to Vulcan and Victor bombers, in the 1960s, was produced by AVRO. It used 85% concentration of HTP. To light the twin chamber Stentor rocket, HTP passed through a catalyst screen. Kerosene was then injected into the two chambers to produce 20,000 pounds and 5,000 pounds of thrust each. The larger chamber was for climbing and accelerating, while the small chamber was to maintain cruise speed. The missile had a range of 100 nautical miles when launched at high altitude and about 50 nautical miles launched at low level (500 to 1000 feet). Its speed was about Mach 2.0. After a high altitude launch it would climb to 70,000 to 80,000 feet. From a low level launch, it would climb to only 40,000 feet but its speed would still be around Mach 2.0
The Blue Flame rocket-powered vehicle achieved the world land speed record of 622.407 miles per hour (1,001.667km/h) on October 23, 1970, using a combination of high-test peroxide and liquified natural gas (LNG), pressurized by helium gas.
Propellant-grade hydrogen peroxide is being used on current military systems and is in numerous defense and aerospace research and development programs. Many privately funded rocket companies are using hydrogen peroxide, such as Blue Origin and the defunct Armadillo Aerospace; and some amateur groups have expressed interest in manufacturing their own peroxide, both for their use and for sale in small quantities to others. HTP is used on ILR-33 AMBER[7] and Nucleus[8]suborbital rockets.
HTP was planned for use in an attempt to break the land speed record with the Bloodhound SSC car, aiming to reach over 1,000 miles per hour (1,600km/h). HTP would have been the oxidiser for the hybrid fuel rocket, reacting with the solid fuel hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene. The project stalled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and lack of funding.
Availability
The available suppliers of high-concentration propellant-grade hydrogen peroxide are, in general, one of the large commercial companies that make other grades of hydrogen peroxide, including Solvay Interox, PeroxyChem (formerly FMC Global Peroxygens, a division of FMC Corporation),[9] and Evonik. X-L Space Systems upgrades technical-grade hydrogen peroxide to HTP.[10] Other companies that have made propellant-grade hydrogen peroxide in the recent past include Air Liquide and DuPont. DuPont recently sold its hydrogen peroxide manufacturing business to Evonik. High concentration HTP is offered by the Łukasiewicz Research Network - Institute of Aviation, with concentrations up to 99.99%,[11] and Jakusz SpaceTech, with concentrations of 85-98%.[12]
WEPA-Technologies can deliver both HTP itself as well as fully automatic plants capable to produce on a 24/7 basis HTP within a concentration range between 90 – 99,5%. The plants are using a containerized setup methodology and can be erected worldwide (capacity: 25 – 1500kg / day).[13]
Propellant-grade hydrogen peroxide is available to qualified buyers. In typical circumstances, this chemical is sold only to companies or government institutions that have the ability to properly handle and utilize the material. Non-professionals have purchased hydrogen peroxide of 70% or lower concentration (the remaining 30% is water with traces of impurities and stabilizing materials, such as tin salts, phosphates, nitrates, and other chemical additives), and increased its concentration themselves. Distillation is extremely dangerous with hydrogen peroxide; peroxide vapor can not ignite but the released oxygen can ignite any material that it is in contact with, detonation is possible depending on specific combinations of temperature and pressure, the detonation is the result of rapid reactive evaporation of the liquid resulting in high temperature and pressure resulting in a violent rupture of the containing vessel. In general, any boiling mass of high-concentration hydrogen peroxide at ambient pressure will produce vapor-phase hydrogen peroxide, which can detonate. This hazard is mitigated, but not eliminated, with vacuum distillation. Other approaches for concentrating hydrogen peroxide are sparging and fractional crystallization.
Hydrogen peroxide in concentrations of at least 35% appear on the US Department of Homeland Security's Chemicals of Interest list.[14]
Since many common substances catalyze peroxide's exothermic decomposition into steam and oxygen, handling of HTP requires special care and equipment. It is noted that the common materials iron and copper are incompatible with peroxide, but the reaction can be delayed for seconds or minutes, depending on the grade of peroxide used.
Small hydrogen peroxide spills are easily dealt with by flooding the area with water. Not only does this cool any reacting peroxide but it also dilutes it thoroughly. Therefore, sites that handle hydrogen peroxide are often equipped with emergency showers, and have hoses and people on safety duty.
Contact with skin causes immediate whitening due to the production of oxygen below the skin. Extensive burns occur unless washed off in seconds. Contact with eyes can cause blindness, and so eye protection is usually used.
The Kursk submarine disaster involved the accidental release of HTP in a torpedo which reacted with the torpedo's fuel.
Related Research Articles
Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical compound with the formula H2O2. In its pure form, it is a very pale blue liquid that is slightly more viscous than water. It is used as an oxidizer, bleaching agent, and antiseptic, usually as a dilute solution in water for consumer use, and in higher concentrations for industrial use. Concentrated hydrogen peroxide, or "high-test peroxide", decomposes explosively when heated and has been used both as a monopropellant and an oxidizer in rocketry.
A rocket is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely from propellant carried within the vehicle; therefore a rocket can fly in the vacuum of space. Rockets work more efficiently in a vacuum and incur a loss of thrust due to the opposing pressure of the atmosphere.
A hybrid-propellant rocket is a rocket with a rocket motor that uses rocket propellants in two different phases: one solid and the other either gas or liquid. The hybrid rocket concept can be traced back to the early 1930s.
A monopropellant rocket is a rocket that uses a single chemical as its propellant.
A hypergolic propellant is a rocket propellant combination used in a rocket engine, whose components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact with each other.
Monopropellants are propellants consisting of chemicals that release energy through exothermic chemical decomposition. The molecular bond energy of the monopropellant is released usually through use of a catalyst. This can be contrasted with bipropellants that release energy through the chemical reaction between an oxidizer and a fuel. While stable under defined storage conditions, monopropellants decompose very rapidly under certain other conditions to produce a large volume of its own energetic (hot) gases for the performance of mechanical work. Although solid deflagrants such as nitrocellulose, the most commonly used propellant in firearms, could be thought of as monopropellants, the term is usually reserved for liquids in engineering literature.
A rocket engine uses stored rocket propellants as the reaction mass for forming a high-speed propulsive jet of fluid, usually high-temperature gas. Rocket engines are reaction engines, producing thrust by ejecting mass rearward, in accordance with Newton's third law. Most rocket engines use the combustion of reactive chemicals to supply the necessary energy, but non-combusting forms such as cold gas thrusters and nuclear thermal rockets also exist. Vehicles propelled by rocket engines are commonly used by ballistic missiles and rockets. Rocket vehicles carry their own oxidiser, unlike most combustion engines, so rocket engines can be used in a vacuum to propel spacecraft and ballistic missiles.
A propellant is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or another motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicles, the engine that expels the propellant is called a reaction engine. Although technically a propellant is the reaction mass used to create thrust, the term "propellant" is often used to describe a substance which contains both the reaction mass and the fuel that holds the energy used to accelerate the reaction mass. For example, the term "propellant" is often used in chemical rocket design to describe a combined fuel/propellant, although the propellants should not be confused with the fuel that is used by an engine to produce the energy that expels the propellant. Even though the byproducts of substances used as fuel are also often used as a reaction mass to create the thrust, such as with a chemical rocket engine, propellant and fuel are two distinct concepts.
T-Stoff (; 'substance T') was a stabilised high test peroxide used in Germany during World War II. T-Stoff was specified to contain 80% (occasionally 85%) hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), remainder water, with traces (<0.1%) of stabilisers. Stabilisers used included 0.0025% phosphoric acid, a mixture of phosphoric acid, sodium phosphate and 8-oxyquinoline, and sodium stannate.
Hellmuth Walter was a German engineer who pioneered research into rocket engines and gas turbines. His most noteworthy contributions were rocket motors for the Messerschmitt Me 163 and Bachem Ba 349 interceptor aircraft, so-called Starthilfe jettisonable rocket propulsion units used for a variety of Luftwaffe aircraft during World War II, and a revolutionary new propulsion system for submarines known as air-independent propulsion (AIP).
A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket utilizes a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Gaseous propellants may also be used but are not common because of their low density and difficulty with common pumping methods. Liquids are desirable because they have a reasonably high density and high specific impulse (Isp). This allows the volume of the propellant tanks to be relatively low. The rocket propellants are usually pumped into the combustion chamber with a lightweight centrifugal turbopump, although some aerospace companies have found ways to use electric pumps with batteries, allowing the propellants to be kept under low pressure. This permits the use of low-mass propellant tanks that do not need to resist the high pressures needed to store significant amounts of gasses, resulting in a low mass ratio for the rocket.
The highest specific impulse chemical rockets use liquid propellants. They can consist of a single chemical or a mix of two chemicals, called bipropellants. Bipropellants can further be divided into two categories; hypergolic propellants, which ignite when the fuel and oxidizer make contact, and non-hypergolic propellants which require an ignition source.
A gas generator is a device for generating gas. A gas generator may create gas by a chemical reaction or from a solid or liquid source, when storing a pressurized gas is undesirable or impractical.
The Armstrong Siddeley, later Bristol SiddeleyGamma was a family of rocket engines used in British rocketry, including the Black Knight and Black Arrow launch vehicles. They burned kerosene fuel and hydrogen peroxide. Their construction was based on a common combustion chamber design, used either singly or in clusters of up to eight.
The Napier Scorpion series of rocket engines are a family of British liquid-fuelled engines that were developed and manufactured by Napier at the Napier Flight Development Establishment, Luton, in the late 1950s. The Scorpion range were designed and flight tested as boosters to improve aircraft take-off performance.
The de Havilland Sprite is a British rocket engine that was built by de Havilland in the early-1950s for use in RATO applications. A developed engine with slightly less thrust but a longer burn time was known as the Super Sprite, production ceased in October 1960.
The LR87 was an American liquid-propellant rocket engine used on the first stages of Titan intercontinental ballistic missiles and launch vehicles. Composed of twin motors with separate combustion chambers and turbopump machinery, it is considered a single unit and was never flown as a single combustion chamber engine or designed for this. The LR87 first flew in 1959.
Rocket propellant is the reaction mass of a rocket. This reaction mass is ejected at the highest achievable velocity from a rocket engine to produce thrust. The energy required can either come from the propellants themselves, as with a chemical rocket, or from an external source, as with ion engines.
The HWK 109-507 was a liquid-propellant rocket engine developed by Germany during World War II. It was used to propel the Hs 293 anti-ship guided missile.
The Rocketdyne AR2, also known by the military designation LR42, was a family of liquid-fuelled rocket engines designed and produced in the United States (US) during the 1950s and 1960s.
↑ Ventura, Mark. Long Term Storability of Hydrogen Peroxide. 41st AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit. AIAA. General Kinetics Inc. AIAA-2005-4551.
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