University of Calgary engineering students building a biofuel-powered rocket engine

The BioRocket Team at the University of Calgary is made up of engineering students in their last year of studies.

The majority of rockets today are liquid-powered, using both a fuel and an oxidizer.

SpaceX fuels its rockets with methane or refined kerosene and the oxidizer is liquid oxygen.

The BioRocket Team at the University of Calgary is looking at substituting the fuel with diesel, ethanol or sustainable aviation fuel.

Nitrous oxide will act as the oxidizer.

"The nitrous basically lets it burn," said Lukas Kobler, BioRocket project manager.

"So, if you think, like, a can of hairspray on a lighter, that's what the oxidizer is doing. It's making the flame a lot bigger, a lot more powerful."

Kobler says rocket engines being reused now changes the cost structure of the process.

"Up until recently, the majority of the cost of launching a rocket was the rocket itself, because we would fly these rockets and we would dispose of them," he said.

"Now, though, we're looking at reusable rockets. So now, that cost balance is flipping and the cost is the propellants, so it's becoming more and more important to use fuels that are sustainable, affordable in the long run."

Rimoon Koryal, the manufacturing lead and in his final year of mechanical engineering, says biofuels will perform.

"They have the same energy density, so we're not losing too much performance," he said.

"However, we're cutting down carbon emissions, and overall environmental impact is a lot more minimized using biofuels compared to fossil fuels."

The task started in September and the students have eight months to complete it.

It's their capstone design project required to graduate.

"The capstone can give you professional experience while still being in school," Koryal said.

"It's a key point for when you're applying outside of university, you can say that you worked and collaborated with teammates. There's little academic involvement, so the professors are there to check up with you but mainly, it's your discretion on how you want to proceed."

Jayden Sorensen, the controls and electronics lead and in her final year of electrical engineering, says this is a chance for her to apply what she's learned over the past five years.

"Everything that I've learned thus far in my degree is coming together in this project," she said.

"I really have to reach into every single thing that I've done, internships, every course. It's all coming together on this project, which is awesome."

All the team members have years of experience working on the university's Student Organization for Aerospace Research team (SOAR), which recently won an international competition in its division at the Intercollegiate Rocket Competition in New Mexico.

That rocket is powered by a hybrid system with a solid fuel and liquid oxidizer combination.

"I feel like SOAR has been boot camp for this project," Sorensen said.

"I learned so much about how to integrate multidisciplinary systems and work under high-pressure environments and this capstone feels like the ultimate test of everything I've learned through my degree and through SOAR."

The team is building a rocket around its biofuelled engine and hopes to launch in spring 2025.

It's important that all the systems in the rocket "talk" to each other and that task falls on Jesse Gerbrandt, in his final year of software engineering.

"We have to do the control GUI and that's basically the interface," he said.

"It has all the sensor data on it, all the controls, all our valves and then all the onboard avionics have to actually control the engine, the pressure control, essentially how it works is we set a target pressure and then in software, it controls based on what the current pressure is versus that target pressure."

He's confident the team can build and fly a rocket.

"I think it's just, like, some of the most incredible engineering out there," Gerbrandt said.

"It's super inspiring to me that that can be done, and I could potentially have a part in it."

Kobler says at the least, the team wants to be able to fire their biofuel rocket engine.

"But we are designing a rocket around the motor, and we would like to fly that rocket," he said.

"We want to show that this propellant combination is viable and if it is, then it could potentially be scaled up and there's various applications for this kind of technology."

You can learn more about the team at biorocket.ca.