Building a DIY Transparent Hybrid Rocket Engine - NightHawkInLight

let's try that again hello everyone in this video I will be building a transparent hybrid rocket engine I'm excited for this project I have wanted to build a rocket engine like this one ever since I first saw a similar design on the channel Applied Science in a video he posted about four years ago before I get into building a hybrid rocket engine I think I should first talk about a more traditional design a solid fuel engine these are the engines you are probably used to seeing in fireworks and in the boosters used to launch this Space Shuttle into orbit these solid fuel rocket engines are used whenever it's important to be able to produce a huge amount of thrust and not especially important to finally control that thrust after the rocket engine has been ignited they are also the most economical type of rocket engine which is why they're used in fireworks a solid rocket engine relies on two primary components of the propellant an oxidizer and a fuel now in the case of a solid rocket engine the oxidizer is typically a powdered chemical that releases oxygen when it's heated now this finely powdered oxidizer is mixed with a powdered fuel as well in high-performance engines the fuel is typically very fine aluminum powder and in lower performance engines like fireworks the fuel is most often charcoal just like any other combustion reaction the fire exhaust from a rocket requires both of these components a fuel and an oxygen source when ignited individually neither component reacts in a very spectacular way in fact only the fuel is able to burn it all and that's thanks to oxygen that is supplied by the air around it this lump of charcoal can just barely glow on its own thanks to this atmospheric oxygen but of course it's not nearly vigorous enough to launch a rocket into space likewise this powdered oxidizer actually reacts in no way whatsoever even heating it with a torch only causes it to melt it's only once this fuel and oxidizer are combined that we see any reaction that looks like it has potential to lift a rocket in this particular demonstration this lump of charcoal is in one solid piece and so it's only reacting with the oxidizer where it is directly touching the pile beneath it suppose however the lump of charcoal were also crushed into a fine powder and thoroughly mixed with the oxidizer that would be a basic rocket fuel since this type of rocket fuel contains both the fuel and oxygen required to burn once it's ignited it's extremely hard to extinguish you can't smother it because the fuel has the oxidizer mixed directly into it the only way to extinguish a solid rocket engine once it's been ignited would be to lower the temperature of the fuel to be below the ignition point of the components in a practical sense it's basically impossible once you ignite a solid rocket engine its ignited until the fuel is completely burned away now what if you do need a rocket engine that can be turned on and off and more than that is able to be controlled in how much thrust it outputs at any given time that is where a hybrid rocket engine comes into play unlike a solid rocket engine where the fuel and the oxidizer are mixed together before the engine is even ignited a hybrid rocket engine has the fuel and oxidizer separate until the very moment that they're ignited and the rocket produces thrust this very simple setup is an illustration of how a hybrid rocket engine works I have an oxygen tank and a regulator with the output directed at a piece of wood now the oxygen tank is obviously the oxidizer in this scenario and the piece of wood is the fuel if I put an ignition source in front of the oxygen supply in this case a small ember and then turn on the regulator when oxygen starts flowing the Ember begins to burn very brightly and quickly ignites the fuel source which is this plank of wood notice how intensely the oxygen causes this wood to burn and also notice that the flame does not travel back toward the oxygen tank in fact I can pull the oxygen tank a good distance away and the flame still only occurs where it's meeting the wood this once again demonstrates that the oxygen itself is not flammable until it has a fuel that it can react with on a fundamental level this is how a hybrid rocket engine works we have a solid fuel supply and a gaseous or liquid oxidizer that is contained in a separate tank separated by a regulator by turning this regulator on and off we can then turn the engine on and off in addition having this fine control that the regulator provides allows us to limit the supply of oxidizer to the fuel without shutting the engine off entirely in this way the thrust of the engine can be very precisely controlled for whatever circumstance the engine is needed in now in a hybrid rocket engine basically anything can be used as fuel as long as it's combustible in the presence of an oxidizer in this case a one and a half inch acrylic rod will act as both the fuel in my racket as well as the housing for the rocket body itself since the acrylic will be burning from the inside out the exterior of the rod should remain strong enough to act as the housing assuming I don't allow the rocket to burn for too long I first cut a section of this acrylic rod and then moved it over to my drill press to drill a core through the center my drill press is pretty small and it doesn't have a lot of downward travel so I ended up having to put shims underneath my piece of acrylic in order to lift it higher and higher as I drilled the core in stages with the core completed I then tapped some threads on one side so I would be able to more easily attach my oxygen supply I decided to use a steel brake line for the input and so the threads that I tapped were the correct size for a brake line fitting I then threaded a length of line through the engine and out through this fitting if you saw my previous video about my thermic Lance project you might be saying to yourself that this line may catch fire and while it is correct that steel is flammable in the presence of excess oxygen it takes such a high activation temperature that I don't think this rocket engine will be able to ignite it contrast that with a vinyl tube which in itself can act as a sort of hybrid rocket engine if you have oxygen flowing through it I do not recommend trying this for yourself I will however use vinyl tube to connect to the brake line that is mounted into the engine to my oxygen supply to allow a flexible line for me to get the oxygen tank a little further back the brake line should be long enough to keep the vinyl tube away from the combustion inside the racket engine so I don't have to worry about it Catching Fire but I will definitely be keeping an eye on things all the same this setup is quite simple as you might have noticed in fact I'm already ready to try a test burn I'm using a candle in this case for the ignition source and as soon as I turn the oxygen supply on you can see that the acrylic catches fire now this is pretty cool and it functions just like a real hybrid rocket engine but an engine designed in this way would not actually produce very much thrust because it doesn't have a nozzle to direct the flow some months ago a friend of mine supplied me with these random bits of graphite and a few of them I think would make a great nozzle for a racket graphite makes excellent rocket nozzles because it withstands temperatures far higher than most other man-made materials it so happened that one piece of graphite in this bag already had a hole drilled into it that fit very snugly over my acrylic rod so this is the piece I'll choose to make my nozzle now typically there are very advanced calculations that go into making rocket nozzles particularly these size of the exit hole and the angles at which the interior and exterior cone come together in this case my rocket is just for demonstration so I'm not especially concerned with extreme efficiency so I'm just using a stepped drill bit to create an entrance and exit cone [Music] with the nozzle formed it press right over my engine and since the end of the rocket is now completely sealed I need to come up with a slightly different ignition method I once again turn on the oxygen supply slightly and this time I insert a wooden skewer into the engine itself with an ember on the tip the excess oxygen quickly causes the Ember to grow into a very hot flame which has no trouble at all igniting the core of the rocket the engine can now be fully throttled and we'll see how this works you can see that I am able to very finely control the intensity of the burn by adjusting the valve on my oxygen supply and as I mentioned earlier that is one of the key features of a hybrid rocket engine to me this is the perfect demonstration of a hybrid rocket engine in fact if the oxygen regulator were a little more streamlined and I had a smaller oxygen tank the model may even be able to fly be sure to check out the channel Applied Sciences through the link I've placed in the video description below this video was heavily inspired by that channel and I'm really thankful for his videos I'm also extremely thankful for my patreon supporters you guys have been awesome the last few months you've been growing in numbers and I really appreciate that I do need your support if you are not one of my patreon supporters please go and check my patreon page out in the video description below videos like this one take a ton of time to produce and it also costs a lot for the materials not to mention the thousands and thousands of dollars in camera equipment and audio equipment that I purchased just to make videos for you guys so if you enjoy my videos please check out my page consider supporting if you can and if you can't thank you for watching and I hope you enjoy my future projects I'll see you next time

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 2,276,882

Rating: 4.8698845 out of 5

Keywords: Building, Transparent, Hybrid, Rocket, Engine, NightHawkInLight, How To, Acrylic, Hybrid Rocket, Rocket Engine, DIY, Do It Yourself, Oxygen, Pure Oxygen

Id: VI8gdmjEwKc

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2016