Research and Engineering Experimental Application of Liquid Oxygen/Liquid Methane Parallel Full Subcooling Fuelling Process
- Paper ID
97670
- DOI
- author
- company
LandSpace Technology Corporation Ltd.
- country
China
- year
2025
- abstract
This paper provides a detailed introduction to China's first Liquid oxygen/Liquid methane (LOX/LCH$_4$) propellant parallel full sub-cooling fuelling process and its experimental application.\par LandSpace Technology Co., Ltd (LandSpace) has built up China's first exclusive commercial and also the first LOX/LCH$_4$ launching site in Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China's first operational launching site.\par Based on the LOX/LCH$_4$ launching site and refueling system of LandSpace Technology Corporation, an unmanned fuelling process has been adopted, and a LOX/LCH$_4$ propellant parallel full subcooling fuelling process has been designed. This process enabled the LOX/LCH$_4$ in the rocket tanks to reach subcooling temperatures of 80 K and 100 K respectively, while reducing the propellant fuelling time to 1.5 hours and simplifying the fuelling procedures from 9-10 steps down to 5. \par Successfully applied to ZhuQue-2E (ZQ-2E) LOX/LCH$_4$ launch vehicle for fuelling by LandSpace. The application results indicate that the oxygen-fuel parallel full subcooling fuelling process reduces the propellant evaporation rate in the tank by approximately 70\% and increases the rocket engine thrust by approximately 3.5\%. This has positive implications for optimizing the structural quality of rockets, improving the payload ratio, shortening the fuelling and launch process, and enhancing the efficiency of testing and launching.