Investigation of heat sink of endothermic hydrocarbon fuels

Endothermic hydrocarbon fuels are advanced coolants for high-temperature structures of spacecraft. No data of tested-cooling-ability of endothermic fuels have been broadly discussed in literature. In this work a high-temperature flow calorimeter was designed, and the cooling capacity of six different hydrocarbon fuels were measured. Experimental results showed that these hydrocarbon fuels have capacity for cooling high-temperature structures, and that the cooling capacity of fuel N-1 can reach 3.15 M J/kg, which can nearly satisfy the requirement of thermal management for a Mach 3 cruise aircraft, whose heat sink requirement is about 3.5 M J/kg. The endothermic velocity of hydrocarbon fuels was also measured by the calorimeter.