Cryogenic fuels are fuels that require storage at extremely low temperatures in order to maintain them in a liquid state. These fuels are used in the machinery that operate in space (For example - Rocket ships, Satellites, etc.) because ordinary fuel cannot be used there, due to absence of environment that supports combustion (On earth, we have an environment of Oxygen, a supporter of combustion).Cryogenic fuels most often constitute liquefied gases such as liquid hydrogen.
Some rocket engines use regenerative cooling, the practice of circulating their cryogenic fuel around the nozzles before the fuel is pumped into the combustion chamber and ignited. This arrangement was first suggested by Eugen Sänger in the 1940s. The Saturn V rocket that sent the first manned missions to the moon used this design element, which is still in use today.
Quite often, liquid oxygen is mistakenly called cryogenic "fuel", though it is actually an oxidizer and not a fuel.
Russian aircraft manufacturer Tupolev developed a version of its popular Tu-154 design but with a cryogenic fuel system, designated the Tu-155. Using a fuel referred to as liquefied natural gas (LNG), its first flight was in 1989.
India developed the technology in 2008 for use in their GSLV rockets.
Famous quotes containing the word fuel:
“It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)