the articles and others on same topic does not mention the actual and prospective power source for the plasma engine as applied to air travel (as opposed to space travel), but I suppose something hydrogen might do
bloomberg.com
Scientists Develop Plasma Thruster That Could One Day Power Planes
Chinese scientists said they developed a plasma-thruster prototype that might one day lessen the aviation industry’s reliance on fossil fuel, bringing air travel free of carbon emissions a step closer to reality.
The device, built by a team from the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University, uses only air and electricity to generate propulsion with an efficiency comparable to a commercial jet engine under laboratory conditions. The team used the technology to lift a 1 kilogram (2.2 pound) steel ball over a quartz tube with a diameter of 24 millimeters (1 inch), it said in a paper published on Tuesday.
Plasma is the fourth fundamental state of matter beyond solid, liquid, and gas, consisting of an aggregate of charged ions. The team compressed air into high pressures and used microwaves to ionize it, which is then expelled to create propulsion. The researchers said a scaled-up system could provide enough power for an aircraft.
The team said its method differs from other types of plasma jet thrusters in that it compresses and ionizes air instead of xenon, argon, or hydrogen as used by spacecraft. The team is working on improving the efficiency of its device.
— With assistance by Charlie Zhu, and Chunying Zhang
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theengineer.co.uk
Plasma jet thrusters make push for propulsion
6th May 2020 11:05 am
Researchers in China have demonstrated a prototype device that uses microwave air plasmas for jet propulsion, an advance that could one day replace fossil fuel combustion engines.
A schematic diagram of a prototype microwave air plasma thruster and the images of the bright plasma jet at different microwave powers. This device consists of a microwave power supply, an air compressor, a compressed microwave waveguide and a flame ignitor (Image: Jau Tang and Jun Li)The team from the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University describe the engine in AIP Advances.
Waiting in the wings: How plasma could help revolutionise aircraft design
“The motivation of our work is to help solve the global warming problems owing to humans’ use of fossil fuel combustion engines to power machinery, such as cars and airplanes,” said author Jau Tang, a professor at Wuhan University. “There is no need for fossil fuel with our design, and therefore, there is no carbon emission to cause greenhouse effects and global warming.”
The researchers are said to have created a plasma jet by compressing air and using a microwave to ionise the pressurised air stream.
This method is claimed to differ from previous attempts to create plasma jet thrusters in one key way: other plasma jet thrusters, like NASA’s Dawn space probe, use xenon plasma, which they team said cannot overcome the friction in Earth’s atmosphere, and are not powerful enough for use in air transportation. Instead, the authors’ plasma jet thruster generates the high-temperature, high-pressure plasma in situ using only injected air and electricity.
The prototype plasma jet device can lift a 1kg steel ball over a 24mm diameter quartz tube, where the high-pressure air is converted into a plasma jet by passing through a microwave ionisation chamber. To scale, the corresponding thrusting pressure is comparable to a commercial airplane jet engine.
By building a large array of these thrusters with high-power microwave sources, the prototype design can be scaled up to a full-sized jet. The authors are working on improving the efficiency of the device toward this goal.
“Our results demonstrated that such a jet engine based on microwave air plasma can be a potentially viable alternative to the conventional fossil fuel jet engine,” Tang said in a statement. |
