Towards N-Alkylimidazole Borane-based Hypergolic Fuels

Shi Huang, Wenquan Zhang, Tianlin Liu, Kangcai Wang, Xiujuan Qi, Jiaheng Zhang, Qinghua Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Over the past few decades, toxic and highly volatile hydrazine derivatives have been the main fuel choices for liquid bipropellants, especially in traditional hypergolic rocket engines. The search for new hypergolic fuels as replacements for hydrazine derivatives is of great interest to researchers. In this study, a series of N-alkylimidazole borane compounds has been synthesized and characterized. Interestingly, these compounds display promising applications as potential hypergolic fuels owing to their excellent physiochemical properties including low melting points, high thermal stability, low viscosities, and unique hypergolic reactivity. Compared with popular hypergolic ionic liquids, the cost-effective and scaling-up advantages of these materials highlight their promising potential as high-performance fuels in liquid bipropellant formulations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3528-3533
Number of pages6
JournalChemistry - An Asian Journal
Volume11
Issue number24
DOIs
StatePublished - 19 Dec 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • hydrazine
  • hypergolic fuels
  • ignition delay time
  • N-alkylimidazole borane
  • propellants

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