Experimental Study of Autoignition Characteristics of Ethanol-Methylcellulose Gel Droplet

Abstract

In present study, the autoignition of ethanol based gel propellant, which used methylcellulose as a gellant, has been investigated experimentally. The content of gellant is 9 wt%. The initial droplet diameter range of ethanol gel droplet was 2.5 +/- 0.3 mm, and suspended on 0.335 mm quartz fiber. The experiment was conducted at 500, 600, and 700 degrees C under atmospheric pressure, considering that the autoignition temperature of ethanol is 365 degrees C High speed camera was used for analysis with 100 images per second. General combustion behavior of gel droplet were observed such as swelling, micro explosion, and vapor jetting. It was confirmed that ignition did not occur at 500 degrees C At 600 C degrees and 700 degrees C, it had short lifetime, and the size of the droplet decreased linearly.