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6Second International Symposium «Safety and Economy of Hydrogen Transport»
IFSSEHT-2003
ACTIVITIES OF CHEMICAL AUTOMATICS DESIGN BUREAU IN HYDROGEN VEHICLE ENGINES FOR SPACE AND SURFACE USE
V. S. Rachuk, A. I. Belogurov, L. N. Grigorenko
Chemical Automatics Design Bureau (CADB), 22 Voroshilova ul., Voronezh, 394006, Russia Phone: (0732) 33-36-73, 33-36-80, fax: (0732) 33-41-22, 251-44-49, e-mail: cadb@comch.ru
Hydrogen engines for space application have been developed by CADB since 1965, from the beginning of development of the RD 0410 and RD 0411 nuclear rocket engines (NRE) with the thrust in vacuum 3.6 t and 401 respectively. The engines are designed for accelerating units to transfer payloads to geostationary and interplanetary orbits. NRE are designed according to a closed cycle, the engine reactors are solid core reactors based on thermal neutrons.
The use of hydrogen as a working medium has provided an increase of the thrust specific impulse to a level unreachable for chemical liquid rocket engines.
The state of development of these engines is presented, and the trends of further works on the NRE parameter improvement are outlined.
A broad range of scientific and engineering, production and technological problems are solved by CADB and co-contractors in the NRE development process have provided a basis for the development of nuclear engine-power plants (NEPP).
A number of three-mode and two-mode NEPPs have been considered, which are made on the basis of the
RD 0410 and RD 0411 engines, with the turbine energy conversion within a broad range of electric power (40 kW-10 MW) and thrust in vacuum (0,1 t-40 t). A possibility is provided to increase the NEPP thrust (by almost 4 times) due to liquid-oxygen augmentation cycle, i. e. burning with oxygen hydrogen being preliminarily heated in a reactor.
Measures on the assurance of the NRE and NEPP nuclear and radiation safety have been determined.
The results of developments have been given on the RD 0120 hydrogen-oxygen engine with the thrust in vacuum equal to 200 t for the «Energy-Buran» space system (1974-1997) being the most powerful for its time as well as the data on the RD 0146 hydrogen-oxygen LPE (liquid-propellant engine) with the thrust in vacuum being 10 t, which is being developed during the last years.
CADB activities have been considered on the use of hydrogen in ground vehicles - for piston and gas turbine engine with the power of 300-500 h.p. as well as power plants on fuel cells jointly with the RSC «EN-ERGIYA».
