A Japanese startup company called Interstellar Technologies created a successful prototype rocket that was powered by biomethane derived from cow dung. It was a true showcase of how useful environmentally friendly powered fuels can be. It is also better for the environment because we wouldn’t have to dig all the way through earth and then refine it through a factory which will release even more gas. It was also codeveloped with the Japanese company Air Water.
Throughout the years liquid methane has become the main choice for companies because it is much more sustainable. What I mean by this is that it is much more renewable than fossil fuels, this is because you can just turn dung into liquid methane whilst you have to mine and spend hours upon days upon weeks. That ends up burning a massive hole in these companies pockets. In the rocket world to measure rocket fuel the system of measurement is called specific impulse. It just means how much moment can be produced per unit of fuel, it is essentially miles per gallon. Knowing this the company Tesseract Space stated that a methane rocket will get you about a five percent increase over a kerosene rocket. Also methane is much more efficient and factoring other deciders methane can get up to 20% over kerosene.
In rockets one of the biggest problems that people always try to avoid is anything flammable. So the people who build it make sure that nothing from the cockpit to the body that nothing is flammable. So with that in mind a downside of using liquid methane as a gas is that it is highly flammable. That means it is at a much higher risk of combusting in ideal conditions then kerosene fuel. Another disadvantage is that liquid methane is much less dense than kerosene which means that if you want to have the same thrust for both you have to have a much bigger tank for the liquid methane.
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https://bright-r.com.au/why-the-next-generation-of-rockets-will-be-powered-by-methane/
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