Salt-based fuel drives electric and combustion propulsion

The fuel is based on two widely available salts and has previously been proven to function as a combustion propellant. In the latest work, published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power, the U of I team demonstrated that the salt mix could also work with electrospray thrusters, where tiny droplets of the liquid propellant are expelled using electrostatic acceleration, creating small amounts of thrust. The NASA-supported research has implications for satellite technology in particular where in-orbit ion propulsion is already commonplace.

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“We need a propellant that will work in both modes,” said Joshua Rovey, associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“So, we created a propellant that is a mixture of two commercially available salts -hydroxylammonium nitrate and emim ethylsulphate. We have published other research papers showing that salt propellants work in the high-acceleration combustion mode. Now we know that this unique combination of salts will also work in the electric fuel-efficient mode.”