Cryogenic Rocket

Engine

Meaning of Cryogenics
In physics, cryogenics is the study of the production of

very low temperature(below 150 C, 238 F or 123 K)

and the behavior of materials at those temperatures .

History of Cryogenic Technology

The United States was the first country to develop cryogenic rocket

engines, with RL-10 engines, registered its first successful flight in

1963

and is still used on the Atlas V rocket.

Then The Japanese LE-5 engine flew in 1977 ,French HM-7 in 1979 ,

Chinese YF-73

in 1984 .

The Soviet Union, first country to put a satellite and later a human

in space, successfully launched a rocket with a cryogenic engine

only in 1987.

The first operational cryogenic engine

(Russian) - N 1

(AMERICAN) - ATLAS V

Cont..
To India the U.S., Japan and France would either not provide the

technology or do so only at an exorbitant price.

India made a deal with Russia for the transfer of this technology which

violated the Missile Technology Control Regime, which was intended to

prevent the spread of missile-related technology and fell foul of the U.S.
laws. Despite warnings from within the organization, ISRO opted to go
ahead with the import. In May 1992, the U.S. imposed sanctions on ISRO
and Glavkosmos.

A year later, Russia, which received the contract after the break-up of the

Soviet Union, backed out of the deal.

Cont.
ISRO then had no option but to develop the technology on

its own.
At the time, ISRO gave the impression that much of the

technology had already been acquired and further

development would be quick.
A GSLV with an indigenous cryogenic engine would be

ready to fly in about four years, Chairman U.R. Rao told in

July 1993. Instead, it has taken 16 years.

Production &
Manufacturing
The Indian cryogenic engine is produced by Godrej and the

Hyderabad-based MTAR Technologies working together as a

consortium.
Instead of ISRO first mastering the technology and

transferring it to industry, the two companies were involved

from the start and even the early prototypes were built by
them.

The Indian Cryogenic Engine

RocketGSLV D5

Components
The major components of a cryogenic rocket engine are the:

combustion chamber (thrust chamber),

pyrotechnic initiator,

fuel injector,

cryopumps,

gas turbine,

cryo valves and regulators,

fuel tanks,

and rocket engine nozzle.

Cryogenic Fuel
Various cryogenic fuel-oxidizer combinations have been tried, but

the combination of liquid hydrogen fuel and the liquid oxygen

oxidizer is one of the most widely used, producing specific impulse up
to 450sec is almost double when using Hydrazine.
Oxygen remains a liquid only at temperatures below -183 Celsius

and hydrogen at below -253 Celsius.

The incredibly chilly liquid hydrogen is used to cool the thrust

chamber where temperatures rise to over 3,0000 Celsius when the

engine is fired.

Working of few essential

components
A pyrotechnic initiator (also initiator or igniter) is a device

containing a pyrotechnic composition used primarily to ignite other,

more difficult-to-ignite materials, e.g. thermites, solid-fuel of
rockets.

A cryopump or a "cryogenic pump" is a vacuum pump that traps

gases and vapour by condensing them on a cold surface. The

cryopumps are always turbopumps powered by a flow of fuel
through gas turbines. Looking at this aspect, engines can be
differentiated into a main flow or a bypass flow configuration.

 A rocket engine nozzle is a propelling nozzle (usually of

the de Laval type) used in a rocket engine to expand and

accelerate the combustion gases produced by burning
propellants so that the exhaust gases exits the nozzle at
hypersonic velocities. The optimal size of a rocket engine
nozzle to be used within the atmosphere is when the exit
pressure equals ambient pressure, which decreases with
altitude.

Engine Cycles
In terms of feeding propellants to the combustion chamber,
cryogenic rocket engines (or, generally, all liquid-propellant
engines) are either pressure-fed or pump-fed, and pump-fed
engines work in either :-

a staged-combustion cycle,
a gas-generator cycle.

Staged combustion
cycle

The staged combustion cycle or pre-burner cycle, is a thermodynamic

cycle of bipropellant rocket engines .

The advantage of the staged combustion cycle is that all of the engine

cycles' gases and heat go through the combustion chamber, but gas
generator cycle, exhausts the turbopump driving gases separately
from the main combustion chamber, which leads to a few percent of
loss of efficiency in thrust.
Another advantage that staged combustion allow high expansion ratio

nozzles thus gives better efficiencies at low altitude.

The disadvantages of this cycle include harsh turbine conditions,

exotic plumbing to carry the hot gases, and complicated feedback and
control.

Gas Generator Cycle

The gas-generator cycle is a power cycle of a bipropellant

rocket engine. Some of the propellant is burned in a gas

generator and the resulting hot gas is used to power the
engine's pumps. The gas is then exhausted.
The advantage to the gas-generator cycle over the staged

combustion cycle. The gas generator turbine does not need

to deal with the counter pressure of injecting the exhaust
into the combustion chamber.
The main disadvantage is lost efficiency due to discarded

propellant. Gas-generator cycles tend to have lower specific

impulse than staged combustion cycles.

Why didn't the cryogenic engine of India

ignite?
The GSLV D3, which lifted off well from Sriharikota on Thursday,

April 15, 2010 later plunged into the sea as the indigenous
cryogenic engine failed to ignite.

The vehicle lifted off as planned at 4.27 p.m. and its

performance was normal up to the end of its second stage till

293 seconds from the lift-off.

An authoritative former ISRO official said: It is very clear that

the cryogenic engine did not ignite when you look at the curve
[of the vehicle's trajectory]

the vehicle developed problems when the cryogenic upper

stage should have ignited 304 seconds after the lift-off, and it
fell into the sea

Advantages
High Energy per unit mass:

Propellants like oxygen andhydrogenin

liquid form give very high amounts of energy per
unit mass due to which the amount of fuel to be
carried aboard the rockets decreases.
Clean Fuels
Hydrogenand oxygen are extremely clean fuels.
When they combine, they give out only water. This
water is thrown out of the nozzle in form of very hot
vapour. Thus the rocket is nothing but a high burning
steam engine
Economical
Use of oxygen andhydrogenas fuels is very
economical, as liquid oxygen costs less than gasoline.

Drawbacks
Boil off Rate
Highly reactive gases
Leakage
Hydrogen Embrittlement
Zero Gravity conditions

The next generation of the

Rocket Engines
There are a lot of plans for new engines that the NASA

scientists are still working with. One of them is the Xenon

ion Engine. This engine accelerate ions or atomic particles
to extremely high speeds to create thrust more efficiently.
NASA's Deep Space-1 spacecraft will be the first to use ion
engines for propulsion.

There are some alternative solutions like Nuclear thermal

rocket engines, Solar thermal rockets, the electric rocket etc.