They would be better and cheaper

Dec 2, 2008 22:41 GMT  ·  By

Mark Gordon, a chemistry researcher from the Ames Laboratory in Iowa, has been striving to develop a more efficient rocket fuel type for more than a decade now. After many attempts and unsuccessful guesses, he now believes his current approach can be the lucky one. His attention is mainly focused on ionic liquids, the properties of which need a little bit more balancing in order to achieve the expected results.

 

The brown liquid he developed may soon represent the future generation of Air Force rocket fuel, as it unleashes an impressive amount of energy, while being a lot more environment-friendly than its predecessors and at the same time a welcomed relief for governmental pockets. Gordon, Iowa State University's Frances M. Craig, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and director of the Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences program for the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, is more involved in the theoretical part of the research.

 

"One thing that people like me do is take normal molecules and arrange them in more high-energy, less-stable materials," shared Gordon, as quoted by the official site of the Iowa State University. "And then we have to figure out how to make something like that so it's not explosive. We want rocket fuels, not explosives." His previous attempts of using hydrogen fuel augmented with boron, while viable in theory, were too unstable in practice.

 

So, he found an alternative solution in ionic liquids (salts that transform into liquids at room temperatures, made entirely of ions, electrically charged atoms). The concept is not new; the material is non-toxic and can be adapted to yield a lot of energy. Furthermore, it can be modified so that it can rely on chemical reactions for ignition, instead of the regular ignition mechanisms, easing the control of the process.

 

"We think we can figure this out," explained Gordon. "We need to optimize all the properties we're looking for. But some of those properties are in opposition to each other – to optimize one you minimize another – so the challenge is to balance all of this."