New Sabre Jet/Rocket Engine vs Liquid LPG Injectors

[Luke Plaizier]

A bit left field here.

Word has it that a jet/rocket engine long in development in the UK has recently demonstrated operation of a special new heat exchanger, and I was curious whether the same technology was in use on LiLPG injectors.

A quick background.

The Sabre engine in the UK is meant to be air-breathing at low altitudes, but use Liquid Oxygen at very high altitudes to operate as a ROcket and reach orbit. If it works it will have massive implications for reducing the cost of access to Space. The problem to be solved, however, was that as the engine reached high Mach numbers, the temperature of the air as it is compressed into the combustion chamber is some 1000C, rendering the engine very inefficient at these speeds. The longer it can breath air, the less LoX it needs to reach orbit. They had the low speed and orbital speed stuff sorted, just this mid-speed high-mach-number issue was hurting them.

The trick to solving high-mach-air-breathing is in the development of a new type of heat exchanger, which is using a revolutionary new technology to cool the air from 1000C to -15C in 1/100th of a second, without freezing up.

And then the thought struck me. Liquid LPG injectors go through the same rapid temperature change as the liqud evaporates. Previous metallic injector technologies all froze up after operating. The current injectors seem to add some sort of non-metallic injector-sheath on the tip to prevent freezing.

Could there be some non-metallic heat exchanger technology in use on this Sabre engine like there is on LiLPG injectors?

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/sa...014783.article



Lukeyson