Plasma jet thrusters make push for propulsion

The team from the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University describe the engine in AIP Advances.

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"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.