Study of the Combustion of Beeswax and Beeswax With Aluminum Powder in Hybrid Propellant Rocket Engine

Abstract

This paper represents the study of the combustion of pure beeswax and beeswax with aluminum powder in a small-scale Hybrid Propellant Rocket Engine (HPRE) as a part of the long-term research of the combustion of non-conventional bio-derived hybrid rocket fuels. Paraffin, beeswax, and even lard are treated as advanced fuels which could replace conventional toxic and explosive fuels, and are planned to be used on the NASA sounding rockets. The goal of the long-term research is to study the combustion of bio-derived fuels including fuels with additives, obtaining regression rates, comparison of operational parameters of HPRE and investigation of losses of melted unburned bio-derived fuels. A small-scale HPRE, test fixture and instrumentation system have been designed, manufactured, assembled and used for the combustion research and analysis. The results of the research were presented at the 50 and 51 AIAA Meeting and Exhibits, and SciTech, 52 and 53 Aerospace Sciences Meetings. This paper is focused on the research of the combustion of pure beeswax and beeswax with 10% of aluminum powder and represents new findings, such as the regression rate formulas obtained for two different grain port diameters 0.5in and 1.0in, and analysis of the losses of unburned beeswax and influence of the losses on the combustion parameters. A comparison of the combustion of beeswax with paraffin wax is presented as well.