18:44
Jay Samarth
IISER M
The prototype can create thrust without using any carbon emissions and could be a major breakthrough for decreasing carbon emissions from the aviation industry.
Plasma jet thruster has been in use in the aerospace industry for many years. NASA's Dawn space probe used a plasma thruster which used Xenon plasma generated from the Xenon gas stored onboard. The thrust generated by it was just 90 mN but in the near-vacuum of space there is no air resistance to take away the kinetic energy so the speed of the aircraft only increases and after months of constant acceleration, the spacecraft can achieve high velocity. However, this type of engine isn't useful in Earth's atmosphere as the air resistance is just too high. A research team from MIT also developed a plasma powered glider which uses needle discharge array to generate ionic wind which propelled the glider for 12 seconds and to a distance of 55 m. However, this type of thruster had a lifting force of only 6 N/kW and jet pressure of only 3 N/m².
In the report published by Dan Ye, Jun Li, and Jau Tang, they used plasma generated by pressurized air injected in a 2.45 GHz microwave ionisation chamber. Acc The prototype can generate 10 N of thrust at 400 W using 0.5 l/s for airflow, corresponding to lift of 28 N/kW and jet pressure of 2.4x10⁴ N/m². The prototype was able to launch a 1 Kg steel ball 24 mm into the air which is the same thrust as a conventional jet engine proportional to scale.
Commercial air travel is responsible for 2.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions and this can be significantly lowered in the not-so-near future if this technology is further evolved.
**Source: aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0005814
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