In this video we look at electroaerdynamic propulsion and explore if this is a feasible method of making silent and efficient aircraft.
In this video we look at electroaerdynamic propulsion and explore if this is a feasible method of making silent and efficient aircraft.
This is Ethan Krauss, the inventor of the first heavier than air ion propelled aircraft to lift its power supply and for sustained periods of time. I appreciate you mentioning my series of patented VTOL ion propelled aircrafts with onboard power. Here are some facts and a few corrections: It takes more than just lithium polymer batteries or ordinary modern power supplies to cause an ion propelled craft to lift its power supply in a VTOL manner. My series of crafts have been patented since 2014 for lifting their onboard power supplies onboard against the pull of Earth's gravity with ions. Therefore, MIT, a private college, and any other large entity that has been trying to do this without arranging something with me is flatly infringing upon my patents. People have been building multistage ion lifters for decades. That approach does not produce anywhere near enough thrust to lift its power supply. MIT will not succeed in this second attempt unless they infringe further upon my patents. One stage ion lifters, EAD crafts, have always produced about 1 gram of thrust per watt, and 2 stage lifters roughly 1/2gram per watt and so on. Barretts lifter strips on a glider produced almost exactly 1/2 gram of thrust per watt as an example. My much earlier patented series of VTOL ion propelled crafts produce a large number of grams of lift per watt due to the very large gap spacings, reduced thrust per length of collector utilized, and many times thinner emitter wires (about 2.5 microns in diameter). It has flown on camera, shown on my YT site, for nearly 2 minutes in VTOL mode with onboard power! The MIT craft only ran for a few seconds after being launched by a catapult. The earlier more efficient EAD crafts have also flown on one side gaining aerodynamic lift. The crafts are lightweight enough so that they don't need extra wings or a bungy cord. It has been shown by Dr. Adrian Ieta, Major De Seversky, and widely known electrochemistry/physics, that these crafts ionize O2 molecules not nitrogen. In a pure nitrogen atmosphere, they produce almost no thrust. O2 requires much less power to ionize and under the proper conditions, it just absorbs extra electrons since it is an oxidizer and is naturally electronegative. The UT craft that you showed the computer-generated image of, and most recent flight footages of, is actually propelled mostly by an extremely loud ducted fan. It can be seen and heard clearly in some of Pribanic's other videos of the craft. The ducted fan is tremendously noisy as it is a model airplane "jet" engine. To the best of my knowledge, it requires 2,500 to 3,500 watts to run it alone, and it requires a huge heavy battery. You can google 90mm ducted fan or flying ducted fans if you wish. Pribanic has recently posted two international patent applications. The first is for the above ducted fan powered craft that is steered by fins under the fan, there are many examples of such devices, with no ion lifter, and instructions how to build them online. His second patent application is for a heated cathode lifter, "ion booster," those were shown online on Blaze Labs for the past 20 years, and required more power per watt to fly, not efficient, and they do not really require a second power supply although that is how it was previously done. His first application claims "low noise," but I can't see how the physics of that type of fan will allow it to operate with a "low noise" level. While Severky had claimed to produce about 2 ounces of lift (56 grams) with 90 watts, his power supplies were indeed many thousands of times heavier than the tethered crafts. His invention was way ahead of its time though, and he was a big pioneer along with Mr. Brown's earlier EAD devices. Seversky's patents also covered linear emitter wires without spikes and his crafts shown in his famous flight video likely did not have emitter needles as those are normally not as efficient per watt as linear emitters. They can be used however to get increased lift per a given smaller area. There is much more to say but seeing as how this is just a comment section, that is probably plenty. I really appreciated your video showing this technology. I hope I have helped clear up a few a few of the details about what is out there. Thanks!
Thank you for commenting and giving us so much more information. Its an honour for the channel. I think with all the added information another video can be made.
@@ElectricAviation ⚠️ God has said in the Quran: 🔵 { O mankind, worship your Lord, who created you and those before you, that you may become righteous - ( 2:21 ) 🔴 [He] who made for you the earth a bed [spread out] and the sky a ceiling and sent down from the sky, rain and brought forth thereby fruits as provision for you. So do not attribute to Allah equals while you know [that there is nothing similar to Him]. ( 2:22 ) 🔵 And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down upon Our Servant [Muhammad], then produce a surah the like thereof and call upon your witnesses other than Allah, if you should be truthful. ( 2:23 ) 🔴 But if you do not - and you will never be able to - then fear the Fire, whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the disbelievers.( 2:24 ) 🔵 And give good tidings to those who believe and do righteous deeds that they will have gardens [in Paradise] beneath which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with a provision of fruit therefrom, they will say, "This is what we were provided with before." And it is given to them in likeness. And they will have therein purified spouses, and they will abide therein eternally. ( 2:25 ) ⚠️ Quran
@Nolan Davis Sure, back in the early 2000s I was building small ionocrafts with 10 pointed emitters on them. They flew really well with small external power supplies but took a lot more watts per gram than the linear emitter variety. I was using nicad 9v batteries that were capable of 10amp pulses for them! I even built a version that had 700 wire/needle points suspended over 700 holes on an aluminum foil collector. That one required too much power to fly. Every point creates a glowing spot that can be seen in the dark and represents heat and therefore a power loss. Linear emitters spread out the energy much more evenly and if they are sufficiently thin concentrate, it well. The more evenly the energies are distributed the better. Of course, the emitter surfaces should be much smaller than the collector surfaces. Thanks for asking.
@Nolan Davis Hi Nolan, sounds like you're doing awesome work. I never heard of anyone using water for the collector. At 60kV, 0.1 amps of current is definitely lethal. My crafts use more like 0.0001 amps on the output or less, at about 42kV. While that isn't very dangerous for me to touch with one hand, it is still a bit scary to put next to the heart. Good luck with your exciting work. Stay safe!
@Nolan Davis On my YT channel and in the two patents listed there, the power supply is explained clearly. There is also a closeup video of one being tested under the videos tab. It uses a miniaturized resonant Royer circuit, like a small lamp circuit. It is used to run a custom-made button shaped low profile drum shaped transformer, I had to make the transformer cores and windings myself. The transformer/inverter part runs a custom made relatively novel voltage multiplier that is positioned between the collector and emitter surfaces on the craft. All of the components are carefully chosen surface mount parts that were picked and arranged to be as light and efficient as possible. There are actually a large number of details to make it work well enough. Most of the efficiency gain is in the structure though not the power supply. I hope that helps.
I believe the technology is not being used in the most beneficial way. It may or may not work as the "only" thrust mechanism, but what I think needs to happen is using this technology in conjunction with other technologies to improve efficiencies of existing designs. For example, this technology could be used to ionize the air on the leading edge of a wing (or other surfaces where drag is a problem) to help reduce turbulence and drag. It could also be used, incidentally, to help reduce friction on leading edges for hypersonic craft and therefore lower the heat buildup. And I'm sure there are many other ways this technology could be used to help with efficiency that I haven't even thought of.
Good ideas
@@ElectricAviation thrust can be improved using photoelectric materials to emit electrons
This is exactly what I was thinking. A purely ionic-driven aircraft will never be able to have much power output, but since it is very efficient, it would be awesome to have one of these systems built into the wings of conventional aircraft just to reduce the amount of engine power needed. I think that could result in significantly more efficient cruising and be especially useful for increasing the range of electric aircraft, making them more viable.
I believe there are many more tricks to discover in this field and the results will be incredible. Thank you for this wonderful channel!
I think so too. I think creating plasma my microwaving air has a lot of potential
@@ElectricAviation Imagine a craft with a small stellarator.
A lot of years ago I was very interested in this concept ( I remember when the Popular Science article came out in the 60’s). Years later, my thoughts were directed at the idea of using contra rotating discs to generate the high voltage electricity with electron stripping materials between the discs then use the electricity to make other parts of the disc surfaces “stickey” to the air and cause them to perform as impellers in various ways and to cause a high velocity airflow over the body shape to produce lift and thrust. I never tested the idea. At the moment I am more interested in making the Custer wing an effective drone where I have devised a method to make the wing transition from high lift low speed to low lift very high speed.
@@benoitavril4806 It’s pretty straight forward. Consider a frisbee which when it spins causes air to flow over the surfaces with Chanda effect on the upper surface drawing the air around the surface deflecting it downwards creating lift in conjunction with the low pressure zone above the disc. Now attach a motor shaft to the frisbee, and the motor drive Body to another disc. The two discs will rotate in opposite directions. Between the two discs apply an electron stripping material (Van de Graf Generator) to provide high voltage electrons to be used in a multitude of ways. The electrons can be used to make the main drive surface more sticky to the air to improve the impeller effect. It can be used to induce air flow between surfaces to enhance the Coanda effect at the skirt of the drive disc. Etc. There are many possible configurations to experiment with.
As a Fan of Electromagnetohydrodynamic Drives on Boats, this Title & Designs are truly intriguing!
Man! The whole point of this is that you don't NEED a fan!!!!
@@ianhenk dont really get the point of your point 🤔
@@mho... It was a rather stupid pun. Forgive me! :D
@@ianhenk u may be forgiven for the fan-tastik pun
Now THIS is EXCITING! Thank you
Another excellent video that makes me think outside of the box... The challenge with electroaerodynamic propulsion is Coulombs law: you need high electric field strengths to make the electrons jump out their outer shell orbitals. This means high voltages and very fine wires - ideally lots of them. The high voltage isn't a constraint as long as you can avoid flashover, but fine wires risk mechanical failure from the aerodynamic load as speed gets high. To my mind very fine aerofoil shape aluminium extrusions are the optimum to keep drag down and provide a sharp trailing edge for maximum N+ generation. The risk here is increasing wetted area so you create more drag than you remove. Propellers and rotors are actually a very efficient and practical solution to moving air, but electroaerodynamic modification to hold on to laminar flow near the trailing edge could definitely benefit high speed cruise in electric aviation speeds (ReN>>1E7)
As you said, they've really ignored the aerodynamic aspect of it so far. With ducting and entrainment it could surely be improved substantially.
I believe so too
I think the technology is really good for lighter than air craft. Particularly if you use a hybrid rigid, lifting body, lighter than air craft, with thin film solar panels. That gives you the area you need for all the solar panels without having to lift them purely aerodynamically.
yes. as the DARPA "Walrus" was intended to do. for fun this coming holiday, read "OMG A UFO"
also motor gliders with solar panels. removing the electric motor would be great for long duration flight and pseudosatellites. at the moment ionic thrusters are too inefficient
At CES this year a company called Frore showed their AirJet, something they called solid state cooling. It’s meant for cooling computer components, but it did seem like it could move a decent amount of air in a pretty thin package. All pie in the sky thoughts at this point, but it would be cool if this tech could be scaled up and used as propulsion. It would have interesting applications as active boundary layer control and thrust vectoring if integrated into the wings and flaps/ailerons. Might be something to keep an eye on.
Frore I believe is using ultrasonic vibration to move air not ionization.
Very interesting indeed. Efficiency numbers of sub 50% are going to be a challenge with Li batteries (hydrogen fuel cell perhaps?) but the lack of noise and the absence of moving parts means that this propulsion system is both quiet and safe. The two most significant issues with electric aircraft today. I'm guessing that enclosed tubular jets with multiple ionic thrusters are the way forward (rather like Linear Accelerators in Physics).
"safe", they still are under enormous voltages.
I'd say the biggest issue with modern aircraft is how polluting they are. Unless you're going supersonic, I don't think noise is that big of an issue comparatively.
thrust can be improved using photoelectric materials to emit electrons
Makes one think of propulsion in extraterrestrial craft... 🤔
you guys have to check out "Using Ion Propulsion in Model Aircraft" talk by Ned Britt on the South Bay Soaring Society channel, retired NASA engineer who was part of the team that designed their ion thrusts , waaay ahead of the game personally I'd love to have a go at using them as a second of three stage launch vehicle for cube sats, high efficiency atmosphere skimmer like along the lines of the X-43 😆
I think you would like my YT channel devoted to these.
Its truly amazing. Good suggestions at last How trust can be improved.
Bro this is deeply interesting 👍🏼👍🏼
Very interesting ideas here.
Very informative.
At the very least, it should work as a niche solution for aircraft that need to be less noisy. Camera drones come to mind, as well es intra-urban transport.
Or reconaisance aircraft.
Maybe if we ever have solar power satellites we can have ionocrafts just floating around endlessly. The microwave receivers for solar power satellites look pretty similar to ionocrafts already. Maybe there's a synergy there.
I love your videos.
I have been a subscriber of Electric Aviation right from the start. Easy to understand language used to explain complex topics is admirable. May I know the name of the author and his background?
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@@ElectricAviation Impressive! thanks!
There are studies dating back to the 1950s that describe tests on conventional air craft surfaces. What is found is that the laminar flow becomes much more stable and in situations like a climbing aircraft wing the vortices behind the lift wing are greatly decreased. Other later works study how air flow can be steered by using variable rear elements. Essentially connecting differing points as the receiving end of the static charged flow can steer the airflow. The third interesting study was published by the dept of the navy back in the 1950s. This study found that a large field created around a conventional jet could disrupt the air molecule flow behind the plane enough to disrupt the sound wave formed by exceeding mach 1. So a sonic boom muffler.
Improving the performance of electroaerodynamic (EAD) propulsion systems will require a combination of technological advances and a better understanding of the underlying principles of ionic wind propulsion. Some potential ways to improve the performance of EAD propulsion systems include: Developing more efficient ionization methods: Currently, most EAD propulsion systems use high voltage electrodes to ionize the air and create the ions that are used to generate thrust. However, these electrodes can be inefficient and can generate a large amount of heat, which can limit the overall efficiency of the system. Developing more efficient ionization methods, such as using lasers or other forms of electromagnetic radiation, could improve the performance of EAD propulsion systems. Improving the design of the propulsion system: The design of an EAD propulsion system plays a crucial role in its performance. For example, the shape and size of the electrodes, the placement of the ionization source, and the design of the thrusters all affect the efficiency of the system. By carefully designing the propulsion system to optimize these factors, it may be possible to improve its performance. Using advanced materials and coatings: The materials used in EAD propulsion systems can also affect their performance. For example, using materials with high electrical conductivity or low levels of resistance can improve the efficiency of the system. Additionally, using advanced coatings on the electrodes and other components can help to reduce wear and tear and improve the longevity of the system. Conducting further research and development: Finally, continued research and development is necessary to fully understand the potential of EAD propulsion systems and to identify ways to improve their performance. This may involve conducting experiments and simulations, as well as collaborating with other experts in the field to share ideas and findings.
I concur with all your suggestions
I always wondered about a venturi and whether that would help in an ionic ducted thruster
Mind blowing
We've been planning on using similar technologies in our semi ornithopter.
Intriguing. Have a link?
@@jamesdeath3477 Once we have something to show. A long way off. But I’ll be notifying this channel. Am a big fan.
Nice video, btw 👍
Thanks! 😁
This is what the future really looks like. The atmosphere is also full of electrical energy and a plane moving fast could probably gather enough energy and feed it right through these thruster to maintain its momentum. You can also use magnetics to heat or accelerate the ions.
Infact, if there are any engineers out there with real chops, I will seed a start up around this.
i believe this technology has potential as a silent propulsion method for lighter-than-air aerostats such as helium dirigibles or potentially future neutral buoyancy vacuum aircraft
What if you combined this principle with fan blades? couldn't a series of blades be electrically charged like the series of mesh grids?
Yeah it might be more effective with some kind of hybrid technology
I believe it has potential I also believe that undefined technology I think that's the name of the company and I are working on the same thing with a different power source. Also they're working on a drone project and I'm trying to develop a list device to work in the position of a like a forklift or floating pallet.
why not combine ALL the air-acceleration methods? I'm intrigued!!!
so i do not have the funds to try these experiments any longer. but please consider building the lifters into a half spherical dome shape. ball side facing downwards. this allows for lift and much better stability and by simple adjustments of voltage to certain sections you can give it direction. i know this will sound crazy but i have seen a ship with 2 of these it was not made by man. it made no sound but it was very real. i assume those half dome shapes were infact some type of ionic lift. no matter where i saw it this does make perfect sense.
Awesome. But similar magnetic energy there exist a lot of problems. Low trust as an example is one of the disadvantages of this technology. But according optimization we can use this technology. Furthermore, high voltage cause a lot of problems for the passengers body if it would be improved. Produce the high voltage is very hard for the aviation systems.
I felt it is just for fun, as the energy efficiency is really low. But the study can aid aircrafts to have more adjustability and manoeuvrability in the air when it is installed too the body.
Why such high voltage (+- 20kV)? Is it merely because of the distance between the poles? Or is it required due to some property of the nitrogen to be ionized?
Around 15kV is the threshold for ionization, but more is better because energy is only consumed at the creation and neutralization of ions. The longer the distance between the electrodes, the more use you get out of each ion. But you also need a steep voltage gradient to get high thrust, so wider spacing requires higher voltage.
It's hard to compete with electric propellers for main thrust. Controlling boundary layer and reducing turbulence is a much more interesting prospect for this technique.
Look up Mark McCandlish ARV. Using Ferrro-mercurial- cobalt barium plasma accelerated by a pulsating magnetic field & resonating circuit with very large capacitors.
Hard to imagine this EVER being able to be higher performance at a given speed than propellers. That’s all that matters.
Depends on what you mean by 'higher performance'. I'm currently presuming you mean to use the term 'performance' as a stand in for 'units thrust per unit energy' or something along those lines, but unless I'm mistaken about your meaning, I feel you may be missing the point; overlooking what performance metrics the demonstrated systems seem to excel at in favour of where they clearly lag/fall short. I'm fairly certain that there are a number of instances where lower thrust per watt would happily be accepted in exchange for lower decibel levels, as drones that operate more quietly could find use in instances where propeller noise might be considered 'disruptive', and by that metric these 'ionic thrusters' seem to have _far_ 'higher performance'. For instance, I've heard a number of proposals for restaurants, bars, theaters, stadiums and other such venues that want to use drones to deliver food and/or drinks either directly to customers or else to some more centralized hub where servers would further distribute them, and one of the frequently cited sticking points is with the noise said drones would produce and how it might negatively impact a dining/viewing experience. A near silent drone would soundly address that issue, if you'll pardon the pun, and with the short flight paths expected and a sufficiently sized fleet alternating charge cycles the drone being less efficient may not be a deal breaker; leaving said proposals to fail in newer, more _innovative_ ways🙃 Other potential areas of use might be fields like wildlife observation or even law enforcement where being a less obtrusive presence in your surveillance could be the difference between subjects/suspects acting naturally and them being cautious or evasive. Drone delivery is also an area that might benefit, not because I think people would be so annoyed by the sounds of sub-urban drone deliveries that quiet drones seem like an urgent priority for the adoption of such things, but rather because I've had a truly remarkable number of conversations with seemingly otherwise reasonable people veer onto the topic of shooting down delivery drones with slingshots to steal packages... I suspect that less then ninety nine percent of the people I had that conversation with actually _would_ 'shoot drones for loot, holmes', but for the sake of not tempting that one percent maybe sometimes 'higher performance' means not letting them know a drone is delivering to his neighbors back porch. Now, it's fully possible this tech just doesn't mature to a point where it's actually useful in _any_ of those areas, or that other solutions come along rendering such things obsolete before it does, but it shouldn't really be needed to be said that different use cases have different performance priorities and that there is rarely a single engineering solution that is best across them _all_ cases. Even if they remain weaker and less efficient, they may still find niche application.
Le futur de la propulsion et de la sustention ! C'est celà sûr ! Aujourd'hui l'âge des pionniers !
Сложно сказать. есть ли будущее у этого проекта. Все зависит от новых материалов и источников энергии. Однако, планета возвращается к своему исходному состоянию климата, что даст повышенную влажность и атмосферное давление. Тогда и посмотрим на такие аппараты, если они еще будут.
I’m not really seeing the value of adding a duct. A duct can basically do three things: 1) the inlet shape can make trades between inflow air pressure and speed, 2) the duct can reduce fan blade tip losses, and 3) the nozzle shape can make trades between outflow pressure and speed. Obviously, fan blade tip losses are not a concern with a solid state propulsion system. At the inlet and outlet (nozzle), there is probably not a big enough pressure difference to make the added weight and drag of a duct worthwhile.
Thanks for saying it! Furthermore, all of these types of air breathing ion thrusters pull in lots of air from the sides, so covering up the sides just reduces the thrust and increases weight.
any updates on this stuff and efficiencies etc?
If it’s less efficient than a fan where is the energy going? Is it lack of ducting and nozzle or is it heating the air?
Heat it is
How would sagnac effect be used in this situation
Surprised that you didnt mention the B-2 and B-21 which use an onboard generator of various types (gas turbine et al) to use the electrodynamic thrust effect to improve aircraft range (so augments aircraft thrust, not replaces jet engine thrust).
Static or ionic field not magnetic field I think if a thin long box wing with a positive ionising wire electrode near the edge is used to concentrate the air followed a short distance by a negative ionising wire electrode to expand the air towards a positive collector electrode, an increase in thrust may result.
The first few powered flights of aircraft were indeed very short, maybe with sufficient development, this will become a "Way of the World" howeverlet us hope that we don't start manufacturing too much ozone in the process :)
Very interesting, if you somehow could accelerate the ions in a maybe O2 high enclosure to achieve more Wind at higher thrust.. Combine it with the betavoltaic battery wich yields high voltages at low amps? Need to find a way to rev up effiency but otherwise splendid. Soon we'll truly be of to see the wizard
Theoretically yes, although only a small percentage of the O2 is actually ionized. Good ideas, these types of thrusters do pull in lots of air and O2 from the sides though.
Propulsion of the future. This will probably be much quieter also than jet engine
Imagine if a wing could be charged in such a way as to produce thrust by pulling air over its surface! I can't imagine this being plausible in the near future, but in the far future, perhaps aircraft won't have visible thrusters at all.
They already did it. I have covered it in my video Jetoptera 2
@@ElectricAviation Wow, I'll have to check that out!
I thought thrust is a result of the volume of air x the speed of the air. If that’s true changing the exit nozzle diameter would change the speed of the thrust, but not the amount of thrust….kind of like how a higher gear in your car gives you more speed, but not more horsepower.
Basic electro gravitivcs creat a wheel around a wheel to counter act gravity then apply gravitivcs.im winging this sound achievable test it see if it has potential
This is great in space, but electric aircraft already struggle with flight time using propellers. I don’t think we need a less efficient system. When battery tech really improves (like a -lot-) this might fill a niche.
Untertassen form . Unten sammeln und durch kreisbewegung zusätzlichen Auftrieb erzeugen .
I think it's still sitting at a laboratory level of development. Little more than a proof of concept, and we will need to wait for appropriate packaging or a more conventional form factor before we will see widespread fiddling, which is where the huge development boom will come from. In it's current form, I think most people are going to be staying away for fear of electrical shocks, and property damage reasons, be they real or perceived.
I think seachers must modelize very precisely the "maximum nitrogen's ions acceleration theoricaly achievable in a standard athmosphere pression" to calculate the real maximum efficiency achievable. If this one is equal to superior of a simple engine+propeller, so this thing has a future, since the problem of poor efficiency is just a design problem, and a static propulsion system has a huge advantage... of beeing static. If the max theoric is that inferior ( 50%) to a perfect theoric propeller ( about 80% ? ), so it will remain a dead end. Interesting but probably with very few achievement in the future.
Does it work in high humidity, or in rain?
Yes, to some extent.
thrust can be improved using photoelectric materials to emit electrons
Could you please give an example?
If the idea has been floating around for about 100 years, who was the first to write about it or get a patent on it?
Robert Goddard received a patent in 1906 for a low powered ion thruster. Then in the 1950s TT Brown made an air breathing one that could swing around a pole, powered externally. After him, Major De Seversky built a device with a large external heavy power supply as well, that could take off vertically, there are also many others that made small but notable improvements. I am the lucky one that has the patents for the first such device that can lift its own power supply vertically! against Earth's gravity! It cost vastly more money to develop it over the past 23 years than the project has earned at this stage. To those few that donated or invested, I am extremely grateful.
Spiders have been doing this for a long time now. Maybe if we want to fly ionically we should mimic spider sails instead of bird wings?
My Smartphone screen won't display your video. Perhaps some weird setting you have... Sad Very Interesting subject!
👍👍
I came up with the idea of a ducted ion thruster months ago. U had the same idea. Just make one with 100 ducted i ion thruster. Run it from a tesla coil for the power. U just need a receiver no battery
Devices that beam power in a straight line, like a laser for instance, are a lot better at transferring power. A Tesla coil radiates power in all directions, so the power rapidly dissipates.
What happens when it rains?
Does this type of ionic thruster work in space?
No not the ionic wind one. The ionic thruster does work in space, but you have to take a cylinder of Helium or any other inert gas for it to run. Once that gas finishes, it wont work
EA is exactly correct; it requires an added propellant to work in a vacuum. There is an exception though. If the voltage is increased up to several million volts and a really large gap is used, then a significant amount of thrust can be produced using relativistic electrons as a propellant. No one has ever tested it though, except mathematically.
the most impressive thing about the ion plane is the power supply design.
What if it rains?
😉😉😉👍👍👍
Isn't ionized air harmful to be around and produce?
If you breath it and ground crews will have issue with it, but it doesn't last very long in the air. What would be more concerning is the cumulative effect in the air over time if lots of these aircraft were being operated. It would not only ionize the nitrogen, but many other molecules and human-made chemicals in the air. It would have to be studied to make sure we were not making toxic or otherwise harmful changes to the atmosphere that might build up and hurt people/animals or things like the ozone layer.
@@ronrothrock7116 My Self-Contained Ion Powered (propelled) Aircrafts, do not produce an ozone smell even after a few minutes flying in a small room. They are designed to produce primarily negative O2 ions.
@@KraussEMUS1 ozone (or O2- ), but you'll also get N2- and probably other ions to a very small degree since other molecules make up such a small part of the air. My thought on the issue is not from your small unit, but from full-sized aircraft and people being around them all the time. Also if you end up with 100s or 1000s of full sized aircraft there is always the chance of chemical reactions from those ions, if not at ground level, then perhaps at altitude or maybe in the fog or in the rain. I'm not an environmentalist, but there are those who will shut you down if there is even a hint of "smog". OSHA, on the other hand, would simply look at what was produced and determine if there are concerns and how much exposure (for ground crews) would be allowed.
@@ronrothrock7116 My small crafts produce mostly negative oxygen ions like you would find naturally near a waterfall or other natural occurrences, rather than O3. I do not plan on replacing 747s or any other large aircrafts. I wouldn't know how to do that anyway. it is more of a gentle sustained force. I do think with small propellant tanks that it will be ideal in space, so it really isn't an issue for the tech I've been working on. I'm very positive about it. It is certainly good for reducing noise pollution as well. Thanks for commenting!
This prototype was created by "Atlantis civilization" a long time ago or should I say in other capsule of time
You should say 'in my fantasies'.
ionizing the air? Won't that increasing the risk of a lighting strike?
You ignore obvious of how static electric arc discharges can occur in twin rotor or counter stacked rotor helicopters so one could paint americium from an ionizer smoke detector to increase fuel efficiency of vertical flight.
And what if there will be used c-pump for acceleration of pressurised air with compact "ion engine"? Just need to use simple missile engine which uses accelerated by c-pump pressurised air which must be ionised by electric field, it must be increase output of thrust. Same engine with fuel-oxygen, but you have to use only pressurised air instead of fuel, and high electric field instead of oxygen. It would be more greener and efficient than traditional and ionic engine.
I wonder how this technology would work in ZERO-G or in Space as a propulsion system on a spacecraft.
I REALLY want this to work, so (if) until it's proven to not work I'm going to say I believe!
This reminds me of early jet engines, the first of which were frankly pathetic, until ever greater understanding as well as materials technology upped the amount of thrust the fuel provided, and the systems became suitable for aircraft. Even so, those engines still had rather short operating lives to begin with. i suspect that fluid dynamics, resonance chambers, etc, will bring these power delivery systems much further with their efficient use of power. One thing concerns me, and it is the ionised air produced. Can anyone tell us what happens to it and over what period of time? going from one pollutant to another is an important factor I'd suggest?
I was thinking the same thing (about the comparison with jet engine development, that is; the ionised air as a pollutant matter didn't even occur to me, I must admit). Early jets were abysmal failure after failure, with quite a number of aeroengineers dismissing the concept as a curiosity, but never to provide worthwhile flight thrust. It is folly to make hard predictions about future designs.
Real thrust is pressure thrust. Need to figure out how to create hundreds of PSI pressure.
2:18. i argue the factuality of those statements... the whole concept, really. the only air you perform work upon to accelerate, the only mass with inertia, are the air molecules you ionise. the only air you perform an action upon, and can receive a corresponding REACTION upon the airframe itself. consider that it takes work to force a charge onto the electrode. that charge is transferred to an air molecule, the leakage current. then that air molecule in being repelled has to produce a corresponding reaction. against what? the electrode repelling it. if theres an opposite electrode attracting it, there must also be an equal "pull" for the same reason. the air molecule has inertia and wants to keep doing whatever it was before it was rudely disturbed. if the molecule weighed more than the vehicle, had more inertia... what would move? the air molecules that get "wacked" simply IMPEDE the flow, they get in the WAY of the air you ARE performing work upon. the acceleration of those molecules is caused by the collision of molecules you performed work upon. its like flat earthers thinking rockets dont work in a vacuum as they push on the air behind them... no they do NOT. they work on a pressure imbalance, and perform better when theres nothing in the way to impede flow. they work BETTER in a vacuum! personally, i think everyones got the wrong approach to ionic "thrusters"... should be working on attempting to get an air ass to oscillate... or better yet, ROTATE... simply moving air does not equate to thrust. you have to build PRESSURE. then an imbalance of pressure will create thrust. how does a cyclotron work? could you use that principle somehow, to compress air, to raise its pressure? why isnt anyone applying a magnetic field? electrostatic speakers? you need to perform actual work on the air to make thrust.
The silent propulsion is the biggest advantage
I just want to know, Is it viable? I watched the whole video and I still don't know
Yes.
This tech is interesting, but you are looking right now at EV motors that are over 95% efficient - and for most applications there is nothing at all wrong with using a propeller to convert that into thrust.
I understand ionic wind as "magnetic flux" which is a pretty oversimplified term.
Hey - I have an idea - lets create a flying vehicle with the **least** power-dense fuel (batteries) that uses the the **least** thrust dense form of propulsion (ionic propulsion). Yeah, lets keep re-inventing everything that just doesn't work.
Perhaps in the air intake of a ram Jet?
I always noticed the buzz about this type of propulsion...
I'm not sure. But couldn't this process be reversed to achieve a solid state wind power generator. That might be the fastest way to mature the technology.
Does Ionic propulsion produce NOx? If yes, this may have little future, NOx emissions are among the worse, it combine with H2O in air to generate Nitric and Nitrous acids, the more powerful corrodent known. N-acetyl-cysteine, available OTC and po, can protect respiratory tract, but not from massive attacks of pollutants. Blessings +
No it wont produce NOx
@@ElectricAviation Thanks. Perhaps the principle in Ion, Ionic propulsion could be applied to a machine as one of the Alexander Lippisch Aerodynes, patent US2918233 (see ESPACENET), it could even be proposed that the cigar shaped UAP, formerly UFOs, may fly under this principle. Blessings +
@@ElectricAviation Thus, the issue in this propulsion system, that looks similar to 'Thrust augmenters', eg, that by Sepideh Jafarzadeh, ASU/ NASA Space Grant program, is efficiency, perhaps also the source of electric power needs special attention. Gesund +
I very much doubt that fundamentally this can compete with mechanical propulsion. it seems that most of the energy is used on the ionization of air molecules as opposed to their acceleration. while in mechanical propulsion drag is the major loss. intuition tells one would be an order of magnitude more than the other
O2 molecules are naturally electronegative and can just soak up extra electrons like a sponge. Therefore, it does not require that much energy be added to create negative ions, provided the production of heat and other forms of power loss are avoided. Ion propulsion can move air or propellant with less turbulence than propellors in theory, so it ought to be quite efficient especially at low speeds. Building them to run on very low currents helps a lot. In space ion thrusters can move small amounts of propellant at very high velocities, making them especially efficient for that purpose.
Interesting but not exciting at the moment. It's still nascent technology. HOWEVER I think it will get very exciting quickly over the next 2 decades.
Atmospheric ion thrusters are unlikely ever to be efficient. Due to high energy transfer to ions in subsequent collisions with neutral molecules most of the energy is absorbed by rotational/vibrational molecular states. Increase the ion density and reduce the field strengths and you run into space charge limits.
I think thrust per watt efficiency won't be competitive with fans/propellers without very high magnetic field strengths, in a magnetohydrodynamic/magnetoaerodynamic thruster using superconducting electromagnets. If future airplanes are powered by liquid hydrogen, you already have the temps for superconductors right there...
might be useful for some very special purpose applications, such as blowing dust off of solar panels on mars, etc. but not going to be useful for flying in our atmosphere any time soon. well, pretty much never. fun to think about, but no. interesting video, English accent is getting more understandable. :)
No sound?
i got sound
@@uninteressant2196 okay thanks
Apart from this being an EXCELLENT video as a summary of the topic (thanks!): The traditional way of generating thrust via ionic wind will never work efficiently. This is not just my personal opinion, but given by physical limitations, ultimately dictated by Paschen's law. Because.. what can you do to increase volumetric and gravimetric thrust? Electrode distances and electrode shapes+materials can be optimized, electrode pairs can be stacked and layered... Still, a given volume of air (at a certain temperature, density and humidity) will always only hold a limited space charge before breakdown occurs. Needless to say that the resulting unit will be bulky, heavy and fragile and will deal with lots of aerodynamic drag. And with very high voltage shielding passengers from ionizing radiation (xrays) may also be a concern. I'm aware of some rare examples that can at least carry their own power source for a few seconds or minutes (e.g. the devices by Ethan Krauss, as mentioned in the video), but despite admiration for the pioneer work, I'm still having a hard time calling such attempts anything but anemic. A possible solution, without violating any laws of physics: separating the two steps of ion generation and ion acceleration instead of trying to achieve both within a single electric field. Separating those steps and potentially chosing a different method of plasma acceleration may also imply that extremely high voltages are no longer required. Just for the ionization part, low single digit kV are enough. Any viable solution will imply a method of plasma acceleration that is not affected by the space charge dilemma. I'd also like to point out that typical needletip electrodes or thin wires are not the only way. When we look at research papers, the more exciting stuff is currently happening with plasma actuators and dielectric barrier discharge. Because these variants work with flat surfaces, there may be aerodynamic advantages for applications in the field of aviation. Combining these thoughts, I have recently completed the design of a prototype for a new principle of an atmospheric ion engine that I've been working on over the last two years. It will likely be much more powerful than anything we've seen so far - at least that's the hypothesis. Final assembly and tests will follow in a few weeks (I'm still waiting for some electronic parts from China...). Actually, efficiency is the least of my worries. All the basic principles are proven, just their combination is new - but there may be other problems, like e..g. transformer cooling, excessive ozone production or material durability under constant bombardement with ions and reactive oxigen species... We'll see.
Sounds dope post a video when it’s ready!
Hi again Christian. I appreciate you mentioning my crafts, but it is very unkind of you to call them anemic, although the particular flight video that was shown above was by no means the most vigorous flight of the craft that that I have shown and it could have been applied to that flight. It was and is still the only 100% ion propelled series of VTOL crafts in the world. I wish you luck with your personal attempt, but I think you will find it more difficult to build a VTOL ion propelled craft than you think, especially for sustained flights. Ion propulsion has other advantages besides heavy lifting, although that is easier to do with balloons and gliders for added lift.
DC solutions will not cut it. AC solutions that operate inside externally excited electromagnetic fields, will be the inevitable future of getting stuff into space.
Good idea
@@ElectricAviation Thank you, but I take no credit. That was Tesla, not me. :)
Unfortunately any radical progress wouldn't be allowed on this platform.. but moderate might. Personally, I'd work on something that wouldn't be allowed.
Taradutor Brasil
Caro amico, grazie per l'ottimo video, ma ritengo che sei un po' sulla strada sbagliata, se vuoi trovare argomenti sul tema, ti consiglio di guardare i video fatti molto tempo fa' dal mio amico Victor Grebevnicov, ciao
E 14biz santos Dumond
You need dilithium cristals to make it work!!!!!!!
Romulans have found out a workaround😂🖖