Fossil fuel-free jet propulsion with air plasmas

May have missed this but what are they using to power it? Batteries? If so, I can only assume they would be lithium based. For a plane, these would be quite large. Other potential issues may include

  • Charging times
  • Quantity of lithium required
  • Safety
  • Life of batteries

In principle, seems like an interesting idea, but practically, not so sure.
 
MrRockliffe said:
May have missed this but what are they using to power it? Batteries? If so, I can only assume they would be lithium based. For a plane, these would be quite large. Other potential issues may include

  • Charging times
  • Quantity of lithium required
  • Safety
  • Life of batteries

In principle, seems like an interesting idea, but practically, not so sure.
Click to expand...

Sony has a new type of Lithium ion battery in the works though still a few years off yet I believe that significantly cuts down the amount of lithium required and can extend the lifespan by an order of magnitude (though IIRC the actual capacity increase isn't huge).

EDIT: They are also working on a tech that can significantly decrease charge times using silver or something I'd have to look that up.

EDIT2: It is Samsung who is developing a battery that can charge a lot quicker using silver-carbon composite anodes. They also have a similar solid state battery in development.
 
Old Man said:
Looks very nice, so how long before it makes it to a full working prototype?

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-fossil-fuel-free-jet-propulsion-air.html
Click to expand...


As I have already said elsewhere regarding this story.

Like with an electric space ship engine, This propulsion system will require huge amounts of electrical power,

Concorde required 4 Olympus gas turbojets, some 250Mw overall, to be able to fly at Mach 2.

To achieve the similar performance using electric engines would need the aircraft to carry on its back, not just one, but two Sizewell B's. At the very least, possibly many times more.
 
The issue is the power source. The only sensible power source that isn't a fossil fuel is a nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactors can be made very small, but cooling is an issue.
 
Rroff said:
Sony has a new type of Lithium ion battery in the works though still a few years off yet I believe that significantly cuts down the amount of lithium required and can extend the lifespan by an order of magnitude (though IIRC the actual capacity increase isn't huge).

EDIT: They are also working on a tech that can significantly decrease charge times using silver or something I'd have to look that up.

EDIT2: It is Samsung who is developing a battery that can charge a lot quicker using silver-carbon composite anodes. They also have a similar solid state battery in development.
Click to expand...

Even if they can pull this off, the energy density of batteries just isn’t as good as kerosene. We will need quicker progression to achieve success.
 
As for future power sources, there's this on the way .. Few years old now with newer ones, but this one explains it well enough:

 
Quartz said:
The issue is the power source. The only sensible power source that isn't a fossil fuel is a nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactors can be made very small, but cooling is an issue.
Click to expand...

not to mention the R- word

the experiments that have been done into nuclear powered aviation arrived at the conclusion that it's not practical to get the power-weight ration required for decent flight whilst not irradiating the crew (or in the case of the russians the crew and everyone under the flightpath)

getting a plane to move with only electrical power isnt the issue, props and ducted fans will work just fine if they have enough power, and the simple fact is battery technology doesn't have the required power density.
 
Quartz said:
The issue is the power source. The only sensible power source that isn't a fossil fuel is a nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactors can be made very small, but cooling is an issue.
Click to expand...

There are more issues to having a nuclear reactor powering a plane than the cooling. Flying nuclear reactors are extremely unlikely to be safe enough for use even if the weight can be reduced enough to use in a plane without turning it into a doomsday weapon irradiating everywhere.

adolf hamster said:
[..] the experiments that have been done into nuclear powered aviation arrived at the conclusion that it's not practical to get the power-weight ration required for decent flight whilst not irradiating the crew (or in the case of the russians the crew and everyone under the flightpath) [..]
Click to expand...

The USA had one of those planned too. IIRC it was called Project Pluto. A fitting name, as Pluto was the god of the underworld, the god of death. They tested it. It worked. They binned it for being so nasty that just having it might provoke the USSR into war.
 
Angilion said:
Flying nuclear reactors are extremely unlikely to be safe enough for use even if the weight can be reduced enough to use in a plane without turning it into a doomsday weapon irradiating everywhere.
Click to expand...

That's not actually true. The Soviets sent reactors - not RTG units - into space. And reactors don't just explode. An airplane in a crash would not irradiate a large area if the reactor broke.
 
adolf hamster said:
the experiments that have been done into nuclear powered aviation arrived at the conclusion that it's not practical to get the power-weight ration required for decent flight whilst not irradiating the crew
Click to expand...


Submarines now manage it. There have been vast improvements since the 1950s.
 
Quartz said:
That's not actually true. The Soviets sent reactors - not RTG units - into space. And reactors don't just explode. An airplane in a crash would not irradiate a large area if the reactor broke.
Click to expand...

Nobody had mentioned reactors exploding. Which they don't. A damaged fission reactor can irradiate a fairly large area without exploding. That area could be an airport. Or it could be scattered over a very large area. One of those Soviet reactors you refer to contaminated an area of 124,000 square kilometers. It only had a 2KW reactor. Nor was it the only such satellite to fail. It's just that the other ones happened to dump radioactive waste and fuel into oceans rather than on land. The Soviets stopped using fission reactors in space. The USA experimented and concluded the risk was too high.

The most powerful reactors on the satellites had a maximum output of 6KW. Almost all of them had a maximum output of 2KW. The couple of 6KW ones interfered with astonomy because of the gamma radiation they emitted. A plane would required tens of thousands of times the power output and the only way to get anywhere near enough power without vastly too much weight would be a completely unshielded reactor. Which would irradiate everywhere and, of course, be fatal to fly in.

I think the evidence from satellites with reactors in them confirms rather than counters my statement of "Flying nuclear reactors are extremely unlikely to be safe enough for use even if the weight can be reduced enough to use in a plane without turning it into a doomsday weapon irradiating everywhere."
 
You generally need quite specific circumstances for a reactor to cause irradiation of note - the runaway cook off at Chernobyl doesn't easily happen by accident.
 
I would imagine we would see duel fuel setups. Couple of large av gas powered jets to help take off and then smaller nuclear powered units for cruise. Means a complete redesign or aircraft but when Westinghouse already have shilping container sized self contained reactors it’s certainly plausible although I believe these are only up to 40-50 Mw

great for cargo haulers though,

the concepts nothing new the US army has been building self contained reactors in shipping container sized packages since the 60s and their well proven with years of uninterrupted service.

russia is fiddling about with nuclear powered trains again and even the U.K. has looked at that option a few times.

the concept of a nuclear powered aircraft isn’t that far off really and they certainly can be built safe enough the smaller self contained units are not going to irradiate half a county if they crash like some people fear.

we already have working shipping container sized self contained reactors designed to be dropped off on site and left to their owne devices for 10-15 years Interestingly enough Canada seems to be the biggest backer of these with their nuclear authority licensing a few different designs for use
 
Quartz said:
The issue is the power source. The only sensible power source that isn't a fossil fuel is a nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactors can be made very small, but cooling is an issue.
Click to expand...

There was a stunning end of the world nuclear plane / rocket that the US developed if I remember correctly, it would fly in circles dumping radiation on the ussr.. They decided to scrap it when they realised the USSr were making or would have to make their own.... I'm sure it was up and running (maybe a more efficient version not dumping radiation everywhere but it was easy to make it throw bits if the reactor out the exhaust)
 
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