A study of an air-breathing electrodeless plasma thruster discharge

TL;DR

This study uses advanced plasma simulations to evaluate air components as propellants in an electrodeless plasma thruster, revealing promising efficiency at higher power levels and potential advantages of nitrogen and oxygen over xenon.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive 2D simulation model for air-based propellants in plasma thrusters, including detailed plasma chemistry and wall interactions, and compares performance with traditional xenon.

Findings

N2 and O perform better than Xe at higher powers.

Performance of N2/O mixtures is additive based on individual components.

O2 performance is similar to atomic oxygen, indicating potential for air-based thrusters.

Abstract

Plasma chemistry of main air components is implemented in a hybrid 2D axisymmetric simulation code to assess the air-breathing concept in an electrodeless plasma thruster. Relevant electron-heavy species collisions for diatomic molecules are included: rotational and vibrational excitation, dissociation and dissociative ionization. Plasma-wall interaction giving rise to associative recombination of atomic species into molecular species is included too. As reference, the plasma thruster is operated with Xe, at a power of 300W and a mass flow of 1mg/s. Simulations are run by injecting 1mg/s of N$_2$ and O independently for powers between 100 and 3000W. The performances and trends of plasma response for these propellants are similar to Xe, but displaced to powers between 1250 and 2000W. At optimum power, the thrust efficiency for N$_2$ and O surpasses that of Xe, due to the excess of re-ionization for Xe. Performances of 50/50 mixtures of N$_2$/O, which are a realistic composition in the ionosphere, are found to be linear combinations of the performances of each propellant. Performances using O$_2$, which could be generated from associative recombination of O at the intake, are very similar to those of the atomic oxygen.