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Carbon-neutral aircraft might work with ion drive
(Climate News Network, 11 Jun 2020) Ion drive works in outer space. Just possibly, plasma power could fill the skies with carbon-neutral aircraft.
Chinese engineers may have designed the basis for the first carbon-neutral aircraft, perhaps a commercial jet airliner powered entirely by very hot air through an ion drive. If it works on that scale, there would be no high-octane aviation spirit, no greenhouse gas emissions and no contribution to long-term global warming.
Nor would such planes be fuelled by anything defined as ordinary matter. The driving force that delivers the thrust and overcomes gravitational pull and air friction would be plasma, the fourth state of matter, and the power source of the sun and all the stars.
Think of a jet stream of ionised atoms − dismantled atomic particles − roaring through the engines to take the vehicle to take-off speeds. That’s the ambition.
Right now, according to scientists at Wuhan University, writing in the American Institute of Physics journal AIP Advances, what they have is a propulsion thruster that utilises air plasma induced by microwave ionisation. It would simply need air and electricity to produce high temperature and pressurised plasma.
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Climate News Network, 11 Jun 2020: Carbon-neutral aircraft might work with ion drive
