TDA’s experience with aerospace fuel systems dates to it’s founding in 1987. Our original work focused on endothermic fuels, the use of fuel reactions to remove heat. We have worked on catalytic, initiator driven and non-catalytic systems, and on heat exchanger and reactor design. Outgrowths of this work include additives to prevent the coking of tubes in the extreme environments of hypersonic fuel systems, which are directly applicable to industrial cracking and reforming. We also have a strong program in MEMS (micro electromechanical) fuel injection.
Endothermic Fuels: Endothermic fuels are used to manage the high heat loads that accompany high-speed flight through the atmosphere. When there is not enough heat capacity in the fuel to cool the engine, endothermic reactions can be used to remove additional heat. TDA has worked with reforming, dehydrogenation, cracking reactions, using both wall catalyzed reactors and initiators that are added to the fuel to increase its reactivity. We also developed innovative, compact reactors and heat exchangers specially designed to deal with the extreme environments.
MEMS Fuel Injection: Future high performance engines will need very small drops of fuel to achieve rapid combustion with low emissions. MEMS devices (similar to the head of an ink-jet printer) can produce such small drops, require only small amounts of power, and provide a very wide ranging and precise control over the rate of fuel injection.
Combustion Stabilization: Cavity flame holders are used to stabilize the combustion process in high-speed aircraft because of its low pressure drop and simplicity. However, acoustic instabilities originating in the shear layer can essentially blow-out the flame. TDA is developing low-drag, no moving parts methods for stabilizing the flame holder.