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Old 6th Mar 2011, 04:26
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Jane-DoH
 
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Reaction Engines Sabre/Scimitar

These are pre-cooled turbojet engines; they use a pre-cooler that uses liquid helium to cool down the airflow going into it, the heat is transferred to liquid hydrogen which acts as a heat sink -- that vaporizes and is burned off as fuel.

Incoming-air is cooled just above the point at which it would liquefy (-150 C) as I understand. There was a guy who worked at Reaction Motors/Reaction Engines (I forgot which it was called) and he described the airflow going through the Sabre engine going from a few thousand degrees down to -150 C, so I assume the pre-cooler adjusts to keep cooling the air down to -150 C regardless of mach number.

Since LH2 is used as a heat-sink for the refridgeration system which runs on liquid helium, wouldn't that LH2 get really hot and as a result drive up the turbine temperatures?
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