Open AccessThe offered project of storage facility allows us to simplify and unitise the ground-based infrastructure objects. The storage facility implements a full preparatory cycle of the propellant components (PC) in all parameters. Another problem the developers of complexes of groundbased equipment face now is bulk receipt of PC from manufacturer. The tanks of launch complexes cannot accept such volumes of propellant. It proves that there is a need to create a storage facility. The facility solves problems concerning the components receipt, temperature preparation, moisture content (drying), gas content, and supply to consumers. For preparation the perspective technologies with low power consumption are used.
Receiving the propellant from the dispensing platform is carried out via filters of rough cleaning. Transfer from transport tankage goes using a pump. The received product passes through a gas separator to clean technological gas impurity.
To prepare propellant temperature, a technology of cryogenic bubbling by boiling nitrogen is chosen. To improve efficiency of cryogenic bubbling it is advised to use the specialized capacities. Railway dimensions, admissible for the trainload goods across the railroads of Siberia and the Far East, define their sizes.
As a drying technology and a gas content preparation the preliminary propellant filtration using vertical electro-separators is chosen to save a space. The chamber vertical electroseparators allow 2 — 3 times increase of dehydration capacity.
The article presents calculations to prove that using the chosen cooling and drying technologies is efficient.
Prepared PC can be supplied:
• to transport-fueling containers (TFC) with the subsequent transportation to the launch complexes either by the railway or by road;
• to mobile fuelling tanks, which feed rocket-carrier tanks on arrival at the blast-off;
• to transport capacities for transportation to the object outside the cosmodrome (spaceport);
• directly to tanks of the rocket-carriers through the pipeline.
A direct supply of the prepared component to the rocket-carrier tanks allows a significantly decreasing equipment demand at the launch complex (LC) owing to almost full abandonment of the near-launch storehouses and propellant-feed systems.
The pipeline fuel remnants are discharged through the branch in the sump from which fuel can be directed to the storage capacities to have its future preparation again.
Existing LC versus LC with the storage facility:
- Each LC has a separate near-launch storehouse;
- Each near-launch storehouse contains several charges to feed fuel tanks of rocket-carrier;
- Each LC has the unique systems of propellant preparation.
Application of storage facility:
- storage facility allows bulk receipt and storage of high-boiling propellant to meet needs of all LC of the spaceport;
- there are all means at the storage facility to prepare high-boiling propellant in all required parameters;
- high-boiling propellant can be supplied from the storage facility using both transport capacities, and pipelines directly to the rocket-carrier tanks.
Advantages:
+ possibility to receive and store the bulk high-boiling propellant
+ decreasing total demand of technological systems
+ simplified spaceport infrastructure
Disadvantages:
- decreasing reliability rates caused by a lack of reservation of technological systems