A Survey on Energetic Ionic Liquid Green Monopropellants and Investigation of Feed and Pressurization Systems for Small Satellites High-Thrust Impulsive Propulsion

Green monopropellants play a significant role in miniaturization and rapid development of propul-sion systems for micro and nanosatellite due to their superior performance and safety over hydra-zine. Feed and pressurization systems develop-ment for such monopropellant systems especially in CubeSats is a modern-day challenge since it would impact the propulsion system performance, onboard power consumption, and the spacecraft size-optimization. Present-day use of small satel-lites evolved from passive planetary orbiting to being able to perform active orbital operations that would require impulsive maneuvers. Thus, novelty in primary propulsion systems for small spacecraft calls attention for high-thrust small-size propulsion systems that particularly utilize green monopropel-lants due to their favorable physiochemical proper-ties as compared to gaseous and bipropellants. Accordingly, current state-of-the-art green mono-propellants are surveyed with emphasis on Ener-getic Ionic Liquids (EILs), discussing their charac-teristics and performance, and presenting respec-tive tabulated comparisons. Further, an investiga-tion of feed and pressurization systems for small satellites is conducted introducing unconventional systems such as autogenous pressurization with micro electric pump feed cycle.