Numerical Implementation of High Test Peroxide Thermal Decomposition

The space industry has rapidly developed a strong interest in H2O2 as oxidizer in bipropellant LRE. Hydrogen peroxide is employed as an aqueous solution called High Test Peroxide, where H2O2 weight concentration is higher than 87.5 % by definition. Despite its high efficiency and ease of handling at lower concentrations, above 98 % wt. HTP becomes a class 4 oxidizer, dangerous to handle and capable of spontaneous ignition. Therefore, performing test campaigns is quite cumbersome, expensive and requires special practice. Its usage is promising for a wide range of space applications exploiting both catalytic and thermal decomposition processes. The latter pathway is not fully developed and surely less popular in rocket applications. Yet, it can be used to avoid the well known criticality of the catalytic process, different researches have been conducted to study the phenomenon itself, the reacting scheme involved and how to employ this strategy in LRE. The increasing development of more accurate numerical solvers has greatly contributed to the research field, introducing some great advantages. Customizable and open source numerical solvers have been developed, such as OpenFOAM©, together with specific preand post-processing utilities to solve any kind of fluid dynamic problem. The consequent need of reliable numerical simulations sets the ground to model LRE engines with commercial CFD software such as OpenFOAM©, granting lower costs and risks. Still, the mentioned solver, has no libraries to treat the latter compound as liquid. Acknowledging the importance of reliable and fast numerical simulation, the final objectives of the research work are: (i) develop liquid H2O2 libraries to be implemented in OpenFOAM©, (ii) validate a reduced kinetic scheme for the latter liquid to thermally decompose after its vaporisation, (iii) validate the coupling of (i) and (ii) by creating a numerical double of an existing experimental setup.