Sugar rocket propellant: 3 methods

Описание: Today I’m going to show you different ways to make candy propellant using potassium nitrate and sugar.

I'll start by showing you the most conventional way:
To do this, simply mix 65g of potassium nitrate with 35g sugar and gently heat the mixture with enough water so that all the crystals dissolve. Feel free to add more water if it does not dissolve enough. Unlike smoke composition, the sugar must NOT caramelize. Avoid gas stoves because they heat up too much and could ignite the mixture.
To accelerate the combustion, it is possible to add one percent ferric oxide.
As soon as you get a thick paste, remove from heat and fill your engine tube. Here I’m using tubes made with homemade pyro glue (I’ll make a video about it later).
I don’t like this method because it is not very practical to fill the tubes and the paste requires a quite long drying time.

The second technique is simpler. Mix 65g of KNO3 with 35g sugar (and 1% of Fe2O3) once again. But this time, everything is (individually) reduced to a fine powder using a blender. Here I’m directly using powdered sugar.
This time, we obtain a powder that works just as well as the previous technique. In fact, it works even better sometimes =D

The third method is the same as the first one. Except that once you get a thick paste, you spread it and let it dry, stirring regularly. It is possible to put it back on the heat ten seconds occasionally to speed up the drying process. Once it is dry, we get what looks like a granulated powder. It is then crushed in a mortar with a pestle (you can also put it in a bag and crush with a hammer) to obtain coarse powder.
I particularly like this technique because it is quick and easy to fill tubes unlike the two other methods. It is also a good technique if you want to store it to quickly use later. This powder burns almost like commercial black powder and isn't hydroscopic like the molten sugar method.

You can find other techniques on http://xtrem-experiement.com if you want to get a faster combustion.

I will show you how to make rockets in an upcoming video ;-)