China invents turbojet engine that doesn’t require fossil fuel

This is undoubtedly what can be qualified as a confluence of circumstances in history. The city of Wuhan in China has become notorious in recent months as the starting point of the coronavirus epidemic, but it is also there that a team of researchers has just made a technological invention that has the potential to revolutionize the aviation sector, underlines Futura-Sciences . Indeed, they have designed a turbojet engine that does not require kerosene to operate.

Scientists from the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University have published a paper in the journal AIP Advances that could be of great interest to players in the aviation sector. After all, the main criticism voiced in the world of aviation is often that of the carbon footprint. In Europe, for example, the 27,000 flights that normally cross the airspace account for 3% of the EU’s emissions. However, the turbojet engine developed by scientists does not need kerosene. It is powered by a stream of plasma and works only with air and electricity.

A small scale prototype
From a technical point of view, the prototype developed by the scientists compresses air at very high pressure. The air then circulates in a microwave ionization chamber and turns into plasma. It is the plasma jet that provides the propulsion. An important detail, however, is that the Chinese team is working with a prototype capable of lifting a one-kilogram steel ball. But at actual scale, it should provide a thrust comparable to that of a conventional turbojet. This is the next step for the research team.

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