BERLIN, Germany (PNN) - May 20, 2017 - Imagine a jet engine that could propel an aircraft faster than a traditional engine, taking us all the way to the edge of the atmosphere, all without burning fossil fuels - and for a low cost.
That's exactly what plasma jet engines should be able to do, although thus far they have been confined to research labs, mostly those focusing on using the engines to move satellites and other spacecraft.
Now researchers from the Technical University of Berlin are working to bring them out of the lab and into the sky.
Instead of burning fuel and compressed air and then shoving the results out of the back of an engine to cause forward propulsion, a plasma jet engine mimics a fusion reactor or a star.
It creates electricity by exciting and compressing gas into plasma, and then generating an electromagnetic field.
Led by Berkant Göksel, the research team aims to marry the plasma engine and the passenger jet to come up with something that could fly at very high altitudes but still take off and land.
"We are the first to produce fast and powerful plasma jets at ground level," said Göskel. "These jets of plasma can reach speeds of up to 20 kilometers a second."
Several obstacles are still standing between the plasma jet engine that can carry us to the edge of space and reality. First, Göksel's team was using tiny plasma thrusters - about 80 millimeters in length.
It would take around 10,000 of these little thrusters to propel a standard commercial-size aircraft, so the current design is a non-starter. For now, Göksel's team intends to use 100 to 1,000 thrusters to move a smaller airship or plane, which ought to be feasible.
