Electric-pump-fed Engine
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The electric-pump-fed engine is a bipropellant rocket
engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...
in which the fuel pumps are electrically powered, and so all of the input propellant is directly burned in the main combustion chamber, and none is diverted to drive the pumps. This differs from traditional rocket engine designs, in which the pumps are driven by a portion of the input propellants. An electric cycle engine uses electric
pump A pump is a device that moves fluids (liquids or gases), or sometimes Slurry, slurries, by mechanical action, typically converted from electrical energy into hydraulic or pneumatic energy. Mechanical pumps serve in a wide range of application ...
s to pressurize the propellants from a low-pressure fuel tank to high-pressure
combustion chamber A combustion chamber is part of an internal combustion engine in which the air–fuel ratio, fuel/air mix is burned. For steam engines, the term has also been used for an extension of the Firebox (steam engine), firebox which is used to allow a mo ...
levels, generally from to . The pumps are powered by an
electric motor An electric motor is a machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a electromagnetic coil, wire winding to gene ...
, with electricity from a battery bank. Electrical pumps had been used in the secondary propulsion system of the Agena upper stage vehicle. As of December 2020, the only rocket engines to use electric
propellant A propellant (or propellent) is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or another motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicle ...
pump systems are the Rutherford engine, ten of which power the
Electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...
rocket, and the Delphin engine, five of which power the first stage of Astra Space's Rocket 3. On 21 January 2018, Electron was the first electric pump-fed rocket to reach orbit. In comparison to turbo-pumped rocket cycles such as staged combustion and gas generator, an electric cycle engine has potentially worse performance due to the added mass of batteries, but may have lower development and manufacturing costs due its mechanical simplicity, its lack of high temperature turbomachinery, and its easier controllability.


See also

* Combustion tap-off cycle *
Expander cycle Expander may refer to: *Dynamic range compression operated in reverse *Part of the process of signal compression *Part of the process of companding *A component used to connect Serial Attached SCSI#SAS expanders, SCSI computer data storage, device ...
* Gas-generator cycle * Pressure-fed engine *
Rocket engine A rocket engine is a reaction engine, producing thrust in accordance with Newton's third law by ejecting reaction mass rearward, usually a high-speed Jet (fluid), jet of high-temperature gas produced by the combustion of rocket propellants stor ...
*
Solid-propellant rocket A solid-propellant rocket or solid rocket is a rocket with a rocket engine that uses solid propellants (fuel/ oxidizer). The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder. The inception of gunpowder rockets in warfare can be c ...
* Staged combustion cycle


References

{{spacecraft propulsion Combustion Rocket engines Rocket engines by cycle Spacecraft propulsion Thermodynamic cycles