Modeling the effects of dissolved helium pressurant on a liquid hydrogen rocket propellant tank

Abstract

A model was developed using NASA's Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program (GFSSP) for the self-pressurization of a liquid hydrogen propellant tank due to boil-off to determine the significance of mixture non-idealities. The GFSSP model compared the tank performance for the traditional model that assumes no helium pressurant dissolves into the liquid hydrogen propellant to an updated model that accounts for dissolved helium pressurant. Traditional NASA models have been unable to account for this dissolved helium due to a lack of fundamental property information. Recent measurements of parahydrogen-helium mixtures enabled the development of the first multi-phase Equation Of State (EOS) for parahydrogen-helium mixtures. The self-pressurization GFSSP model was run assuming that the liquid propellant was pure liquid hydrogen and assuming helium dissolved into the liquid utilizing the new helium-hydrogen EOS. The analysis shows that having dissolved helium in the propellant does not have a significant effect on the tank pressurization rate for typical tank conditions (-423 °F and 30 psia).