JP7 Heater Build-Up / Installation

Safely Developing, Managing, and Testing Heated and Cracked Hypersonic Fuels

Sierra Lobo provides our government and commercial customers with expertise in developing, managing, and testing hypersonic fuels.  In 2004, Sierra Lobo built a fuel cracker for ISTAR hypersonic testing at NASA Plum Brook’s Hypersonic Test Facility.  In 2009, Sierra Lobo was selected to reproduce a 1/6 model of this fuel cracker at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC).

This turnkey system is housed at GRC’s CE-5 Facility within the Engine Research Building.  CE-5 (http://facilities.grc.nasa.gov/erb/cells/ce5b1.html) is a high-pressure, high-temperature flametube/sector combustion test facility with laser diagnostic and exhaust emission measurement capability.  The rig was activated in 2009 and achieved all of its design conditions.

During testing, engineers ran fuel through the bypass line at about 1-gpm and heated the fuel to 900F, 1000F, and 1100F respectively, and cracked fuel in the process.  For this test, Sierra Lobo engineers wrote a software program to model the system and were able to anticipate the pressure throughout the system at various temperatures and a constant fuel flow.

Sustaining Engineering

NASA GRC required a fuel heating system* for CE-5, in Building 5, in order to study the connection between the thermal input and combustion physics.  The intent of this heater system, which was designed and fabricated by Sierra Lobo, is to simulate the thermal environment(s) of high-performance combustors typically used in hypersonic engines.  This research equipment allows a quantitative study of the impact of both thermal and combustion variation on combustion performance in CE-5. 

Under a TFOME IWA, Sierra Lobo led the heater system integration effort to provide the CE-5 fuel heating capability.  We coordinated activities with facility management, the Pressure Safety Office, and the Combustion Research Office.  The primary goals were to lead the facility modification to interface with the Sierra Lobo endothermic fuel heater and cracker system, to perform validation checkouts, and to train facility operators on the heater sub-systems.  We also wrote and delivered an operational baseline report after checkouts were complete.

*A fuel heating system is defined as an integrated system consisting of a fuel reactor pallet, DC power supply, stand-alone PC with heater control PLC, HEX, and a scrap fuel tank.