NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) have successfully launched a nine-foot rocket to a height of 1,300ft using an environmentally-friendly rocket propellant made of a mixture of water and “nanoscale aluminum” powder. The fuel, called ALICE, has the consistency of toothpaste with a high burn rate and achieved a maximum thrust of 650 pounds during this test.
The aluminum-ice, or ALICE, propellant is considered “green” because it produces essentially hydrogen gas and aluminum oxide. This is compared to current space shuttle flights, which consume about 773 tons of the oxidizer ammonium perchlorate in the solid booster rockets, with about 230 tons of hydrochloric acid appearing immediately in the exhaust from such flights.
ALICE provides thrust through a chemical reaction between water and aluminum. As the aluminum ignites, water molecules provide oxygen and hydrogen to fuel the combustion until all of the powder is burned. The key to the propellant’s performance is the tiny size of the aluminum particles, which have a diameter of about 80 nanometers. The nanoparticles combust more rapidly than larger particles and enable better control over the reaction and the rocket’s thrust.
I wish I had thought of that. Yeah, Purdue!
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