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Swiss secret sauce to power green choppers

Swiss helicopter uses hydrogen peroxide as environmentally friendly fuel.

Mark Rutherford
The military establishment's ever increasing reliance on technology and whiz-bang gadgetry impacts us as consumers, investors, taxpayers and ultimately as the defended. Our mission here is to bring some of these products and concepts to your attention based on carefully selected criteria such as importance to national security, originality, collateral damage to the treasury and adaptability to yard maintenance-but not necessarily in that order. E-mail him at markr@milapp.com. Disclosure.
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Mark Rutherford
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Hydrogen peroxide is not just for blonds anymore. It's also used to power an experimental helicopter that the developer says is more economical and environmentally friendly than any other rotary-wing technology in existence today.

SwissCopter AG of Murten, Switzerland is working to certify a "ultra-covert propulsion technology" based on a secret sauce called Perosin, a mix of 50 percent H2O2 and some unspecified additives. Hydrogen peroxide was used as rocket fuel as early as the 1930s, but mixtures of over 70 percent H2O2 are highly explosive, making them unfit for civilian use.

"Air is mixed with the fuel inside the rotor blade that leads to the combustion chamber at the tip of the blade where it passes an ignition system," the company explained. Gases ejected through the nozzles are what provide the power.(PDF)

The system is inexpensive and offers low operation and maintenance costs and can run on bio-ethanol and kerosene in addition to the Perosin, according to SwissCopter.

The company claims to have received a large number of pre-orders and plans to begin deliveries in 2010.