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| SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Photo Credit: SpaceX |
Studying safer, cheaper rocket and missile fuels that could reduce health and environmental risks is the focus of a new $800,000 grant awarded to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Chemistry by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The project will be led by principal investigator Professor Rui Sun with co-principal investigator Professor Ralf I. Kaiser.
The grant falls under a broader push toward green chemistry—designing chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate hazardous substances. Current propellants can be expensive and toxic, creating risks during manufacture, storage and transport. The research seeks to help lower costs for space exploration while reducing risks to workers and communities.
The work will focus on ethaline-based Deep Eutectic Propellants (DeEPs), which are mixtures made from relatively nontoxic, low-cost components. DeEPs have low vapor pressure (they are less likely to evaporate), tunable physical and chemical properties, and can be formulated to ignite reliably in liquid rocket engines—traits that make them a promising, safer and cheaper alternative to the current propellants used in space missions and national defense.
“This project lets us assemble a multidisciplinary team of chemists, computational scientists and students to tackle a long-neglected area of chemistry,” Sun said. “It will create hands-on training opportunities for Hawaiʻi students and postdocs and build partnerships with Department of Defense laboratories and industry so promising findings can move quickly from the bench into real-world testing.”
Researchers plan to combine lab experiments utilizing novel droplet merging techniques within an ultrasonic levitator with advanced computer modeling and machine learning to understand how these propellants ignite and break down. The study aims to reveal the basic chemical steps (the reaction mechanisms) and the speed at which they happen (reaction kinetics). That basic information will play a key role in developing the next generation fuels for space missions and national defense.
Reference Number: chmm092125_01
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