Increasing Demand of Propellant Tanks to Lower Spacecrafts’ Weight

Rockets are designed to be lightweight to help them rise above the Earth’s surface easily. The farther a rocket wants to go into space, the more fuel it needs, which adds more weight. Weight is the crucial factor that needs to be checked. It is because when the spacecraft is launched to enter somewhere such as Mars planet, it needs to be of lighter weight.

Have you ever wondered where the fuel in the rocket is stored? In this blog, we will be learning about different propellants used in spacecraft and how they are stored in the spacecraft.

What are propellants?

Propellants refer to the mixture of chemicals burned together to produce thrust in spacecraft. In other words, it can also be defined as those materials that push the rockets in the upward directions by providing thrust to them. Sir Isaac Newton’s third principle says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Similarly, a rocket works; the farther it wants to go in space, the more force it requires.

The propellants have been divided into two types, solid and liquid. These are explained as follows:

• Solid Propellants

These are said to be the simplest and the most reliable among all the designs of rockets. It is like a Roman candle that cannot be stopped until burned completely. They consist of steel, a casing filled with solid compound mixtures of fuels, and an oxidizer. It burns at a very high rate and releases hot gasses from the nozzle that results in the formation of the thrust to provide power for the rocket in lifting above the Earth.

Solid propellants consist of two family members that are composite and homogenous. Both are stable and dense at general temperatures and can be stored easily.

Composite is composed of a mixture of solid oxidizers like ammonium dinitramide, ammonium perchlorate, and ammonium nitrate.

These are easier to handle and store compared to liquid propellants. However, the only disadvantage of solid propellants is that they cannot be controlled or shut down till the whole propellant is burned.

• Liquid Propellants

Designing a rocket containing liquid propellant is different. In this, both oxidizer and fuel are kept in separate tanks and are linked to the combustion chamber with the help of valves, turbopumps, and pipes for burning them and forming thrust for the rocket power.

The engines of liquid propellants are more complex in comparison to solid propellants. This is because the flow of fuels to chambers and engines can be easily stopped and restarted.

How are propellants stored in rockets and spacecrafts?

Generally, in launch vehicles and satellite propellants, tanks are used for storing fuels. These are vessel-like structures in which the liquid fuels are kept before they are used in the combustion to form the thrust.

The materials used in the making of propellant tanks are steels, aluminum alloys, or carbon wound tanks. Generally, these tanks are built using the monocoque construction method, and they come in various shapes. However, the most optimal shape is spherical due to the low volume of spherical shape, resulting in the rocket’s lowest weight. Generally, propellants inside the tanks are stored at a pressure of 1–4 bars. This helps reduce the thickness of the wall, and hence the overall weight of the propellants tanks also gets less.

Market Insight of Propellant Tanks

There is a boost in demand for propellant tanks due to high launches of satellites that need effective propellants tanks to store the fuels helping them reach the targeted orbits.

Many commercial organizations like Ariane Space, Europe Space Agency (ESA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) started demonstrations for the new propellant tanks to be used in various launch vehicles and satellites between 1957–2021. Since then, technology has continually evolved and transformed the space industry by making different systems and products.

As per the recent report of BIS Research, the global space-qualified propellant tank market is supposed to touch $3,069.5 million by 2031 from $1,635.4 million in 2020, at a CAGR of 4.83% during the forecast period 2021–2031. The high escalation in the production and increase in the satellites launches are expected as the main factors for boosting the market’s growth.

Final words:

For entering the target’s orbit, the weight of the spacecraft is an important factor to be checked. The more targeted destination is far, the lesser weight of the spacecraft and more fuels are required by the spacecraft. So, by using the correct shape of the propellant tanks, a large amount of fuel can be stored without increasing the weight of the rockets. It is also expected that the demand for diaphragm tanks will rise due to the growing market of space-qualified propellant tanks in the coming years.