Effect of porosity and permeability characteristics on the silver catalyst of the hydrogen peroxide monopropellant thruster performances.

Abstract

Thruster performances can be optimized by adjusting the geometrical configurations and its operating conditions. Attributes such as pressure loss across catalyst bed, mass flowrate, and velocity are essential parameter to its performance. The presence of silver catalyst as porous medium affecting the flow and reaction inside the chamber due to its properties such as porosity, permeability, and inertial resistance. Hence, this work is motivated by the scarcity of the available literature on this topic specifically in regards with the hydrogen peroxide monopropellant thruster. The effect and relationship of porosity and permeability characteristics on the silver catalyst to the thruster performances is yet unknown. To investigate the effect and also to find the relationship between thruster performances and porosity—permeability properties of a silver catalyst, a study is done using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In this study, species transport model with EDM turbulent-chemical interaction has been used with the realizable k-ε turbulent to simulate the reaction inside the catalyst bed chamber. Extensive analysis provided in the current work which considers the performances in term of mass flowrate, velocity, pressure loss, and thrust. From this study, it shows that the porosity of the bed is least important compared to the permeability and inertial resistance of the silver catalyst and these two factors are independent from the effect of porosity but linked between one another.