Corn syrup as liquid fuel

[Nothalogh]

Corn syrup as liquid fuel for a rocket, is this a stupid idea?

[KerbMav]

Yes it is, because it wastes fertile land.

Build a dam to collect water for irrigation during droughts, and also for a water power plant. Turn the water into O2 and H2 with the produced energy and fuel your rocket.

But: Before you eat the stuff, better burn it in a rocket!

[vitekc45c]

Stupid? No, its a sweet idea.

[GoSlash27]

nothalogh,

No, it's not stupid. It's got high caloric content so it'll burn. Lots of problems with it, though. It's not going to want to flow or atomize well and will gum up the piping.

Best,

-Slashy

[malte]

This sounds like something fun to try! I have a bi-prop rocket engine lying around, which is designed for H2O2 / Gasoline. I can modify the injection and test syrup as fuel.

[Bill Phil]

It's pretty viscous, but if you can dilute it enough... Perhaps.

[SomeGuy12]

It's pretty viscous, but if you can dilute it enough... Perhaps.

Doesn't diluting it ruin it as a fuel? For rocket flight you need the maximum energy content per mass and volume. You'd need a variant that flows smoothly in native form, especially after heating.

[shynung]

It's pretty viscous, but if you can dilute it enough... Perhaps.

Dilute with what? If water, there goes your specific impulse; those heavy water molecules are a pain to throw around.

[magnemoe]

Dilute with what? If water, there goes your specific impulse; those heavy water molecules are a pain to throw around.

Yes, you could disolve it in alcohol or perhaps kerosene however both are probably better fuels alone.

[Tex_NL]

nothalogh,

No, it's not stupid. It's got high caloric content so it'll burn. Lots of problems with it, though. It's not going to want to flow or atomize well and will gum up the piping.

...

Would indeed be a lot more efficient to ferment it and distil it to pure ethanol.

Yes, you could disolve it in alcohol or perhaps kerosene however both are probably better fuels alone.

If you do that you'll end up with polluted ethanol/kerosene. Better indeed to stick to pure ethanol/kerosene.

[J.Random]

Salami as solid fuel is probably better than corn syrup as liquid fuel.

[Kerbart]

BE AWARE!

When buying rocket fuel, check the label. Make sure your rocket fuel contains pure ethanol and not high fructose corn syrup! YOUR ROCKET'S HEALTH IS AT STAKE!

[J.Random]

Should I also check for "asbestos-free" sticker?

[KSK]

Yes, you could disolve it in alcohol or perhaps kerosene however both are probably better fuels alone.

You could go for the homeopathic approach. Take some corn syrup, dilute in kerosene and keep on diluting until, statistically speaking, none of the syrup is left. You now have some supercharged 'syrup imprinted' kerosene, guaranteed to boost your ISP, TWR and general rocket health.

On a serious note - as others have noted, corn syrup could be used as a fuel in principle but most likely not in practice.

- - - Updated - - -

Salami as solid fuel is probably better than corn syrup as liquid fuel.

Cool - a genuine pork powered rocket. Highly recommended for the SLS.

[Friend Bear]

Part of the liberal agenda!

---

As for the idea...I wish I knew more about chemistry but I guess it would boil (*badum tst) down to combustion of oils compared to current fuels. Less power, more burned to get from A to B, more oxidizer, as well. But efficiency may play a role?

[Frybert]

Slowest. Rocket. Ever.

[PB666]

Sucrose can be made to 2M which is around 684grams per 500ml approximate of water. The energy content per gram and about 1/4th that of Oil and with the dilution it would be about 1/7th. That is the bad points

The good point is that more of the fuel goes into expansion than into heat because of the high water content, the problem is that in a rocket engine your gas accelerations are tremendous. To get those large accelerations you need also tremendous dV/dt, T = f(V²) v = velocity of gas relative to the comoving coordinate space in the gas. Therefore as the system is heated the ability for gas to accelerate increases. An excellent example of this is action is the speed of sound. As the temperature increases so does the speed of sound, suppose a projectile with a flat leading edge reaches the speed of sound. The molecules of air cannot move fast enough to move around the leading edge, they begin to stack up on the object until the density phase transition is a fusiform shape (taking into account turbulance) such that the air molecules that are not inside the high density phase can accelerate around the that phase. On the edge as those molecules that have stop slide off and accelerate they expand the phase transition maximum width creating a much larger dynamic pressure on the leading edge and the side that immediately follow. So basically inside a nozzle gas may accelerate to 30,000 m/s within the space of say 0.5 meter which means that acceleration is roughly 3,560 = a * t and d = 0.5 = 1/2 a t^2. 0.5 = (3560)t^2/t = 3560t roughly t = 1/7120. This does not seem to bad until we calculate a. 3560 = a/7120 which means a = 2 * 3560^2 or 25347200 of 2.5M g forces on our little gas molecules. Thats a hell of alot higher than the forces on air at the top of a rocket which means we are going to need a much higher temperature.

Could we guess at what that might be, e and T are a function of v^2 so if we are generating 1/7th energy we might guess that v would be SqRt (1/7th) so about one third. So in otherwords the amount of thrust is going to be cut down to about 1/3rd the exhaust gas will be substantially cooler and less energy wasted, but that is only because you burnt far less energy and lost alot of power. Its probably not so bad because you could take more syrup and less oxygen, but still you will be less than half the thrust per mass.

The bottom line for rockets is not so much about efficiency but thrust production per mass consumed the more thrust you get on these will determine the ability to efficiently carry a load up. Of course if you have to use a engine 1/2 the mass of the fuel that is going to substantially reduce the efficiency.

Note that you can make 3M sucrose, for example this is how syrup is made, its viscosity is in the 10s of thousands. You would have to heat it and keep it heated to keep if from crystallizing in your fuel lines. Corn syrup is made of dextrose, which interconverts to its aldehyde form which is much more reactive and can react with metal oxides and fuel lines, etc. So its not as stable is sucrose and at higher temperatures more of it will be in the less stable aldehyde form. At room tempature corn syrup is about 1500 times more viscous than water. So some of the weight would have to be fuel line heaters that kept the viscosity high. Another problem is that because syrup would not be a gas at the rocket inlet, some would burn before reaching the combustion chamber and would leave residue on the sides of the inlet potentially reducing flow to the engine and might even gum up the side of the chamber close to the outlet (though the temperature of the gas should ionize this).

Edited October 2, 2015 by PB666

[RainDreamer]

I am interested in this, because it sounds like it can be used as homemade rocket fuel...

[Kryten]

You certainly couldn't use it in a regenerative engine-it would coke and clog up the cooling pipes.

[shynung]

If you have ClF₃, anything can be used as rocket fuel.

That thing burns sand. And concrete. And asbestos. And starts roaring reactions with water.

Edited October 2, 2015 by shynung

[Kryten]

If you have ClF₃, anything can be used as rocket fuel.

That thing burns sand.And concrete. And asbestos. And starts roaring reactions with water.

Nobody tried to use chlorine triflouride as rocket fuel... people just bring it up without good reason any time anyone mentions flourine or chlorine.

[shynung]

That's because they know how reactive it is before they ever got a chance to put them into a propellant tank. There's been an accident involving a 1-ton spill of the stuff back in the 60s. It chewed through 30 cm of concrete and 90 cm of gravel underneath it.

[Kryten]

This is exactly what I mean.

[Frybert]

Jeb....Jeb will try it...

[monstah]

This sounds like something fun to try! I have a bi-prop rocket engine lying around, which is designed for H2O2 / Gasoline. I can modify the injection and test syrup as fuel.

Where else can you read such gems other than this forum????