
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. Credit: Jau Tang and Jun Li
Humans depend on fossil fuels as their primary energy source, especially in transportation. However, fossil fuels are both unsustainable and unsafe, serving as the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and leading to adverse respiratory effects and devastation due to global warming.
A team of researchers at the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University has demonstrated a prototype device that uses microwave air plasmas for jet propulsion. They describe the engine in the journal AIP Advances.
“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.”
Beyond solid, liquid and gas, plasma is the fourth state of matter, consisting of an aggregate of charged ions. It exists naturally in places like the sun’s surface and Earth’s lightning, but it can also be generated. The researchers created a plasma jet by compressing air into high pressures and using a microwave to ionize the pressurized air stream.
This method differs 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 cannot overcome the friction in Earth’s atmosphere, and are therefore 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 1-kilogram steel ball over a 24-millimeter diameter quartz tube, where the high-pressure air is converted into a plasma jet by passing through a microwave ionization 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.
The Latest Updates from Bing News & Google News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Microwave air plasmas
- Feed has no items.
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Microwave air plasmas
[google_news title=”” keyword=”microwave air plasmas” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Jet propulsion
- NASA's Perseverance Rover Set to Begin Third Year at Jezero Crater – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
This image of the floor of Jezero Crater was taken by one of the Navcam imagers aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Feb. 5, the 698th Martian day, or ...
- Watch NASA Engineers Put a Mars Lander's Legs to the Test – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Engineer Abel Dizon explains how drop tests are conducted for a prototype lander being designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the Mars Sample Return campaign. Morgan Montalvo, another JPL ...
- Verses Adds NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab As Beta Partner For Genius
More specifically, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the unit of the government entity that will be joining the program. They have joined the program as part of a vested interest to standardize ...
- Jet Capsule unveils 2024 Super Sport carbon fiber "mini yacht"
We've covered a few of Italian designer Pierpaolo Lazzarini's Jet Capsule compact motorboats since they hit the market back in 2013. The most recent version, which is set to be released in 2024, is ...
- French translation of 'propulsion'
These examples have been automatically selected and may contain sensitive content that does not reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company HarperCollins. The captain yelled to ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Jet propulsion
[google_news title=”” keyword=”jet propulsion” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]