What Are Electric Plasma Jet Engines?

Imagine a shiny modern airliner crisscrossing the globe powered exclusively by clean electricity and fresh air. That’s the grand vision of a new generation of jet thrusters making big noise in engineering labs around the world.

But is this technology the solution to runaway climate change and fossil fuel dependency – or just a load of hot air?

Join us today as we take a metaphorical test flight with the electric plasma jet engine.

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Imagery supplied via Getty Images

What Are Electric Plasma Jet Engines?

[Gabriel.Ponce.De.Leon.]

First they excite you, then tell you it can’t be made.

[FallLineJP]

On a serious note - the propulsion part of electric flight is relatively easy. As they pointed out, it’s the energy storage that’s hard.

[deadspeedv]

I guess with all these electric based thrust technologies they are all limited by low energy density in chemical based batteries. A portable fusion powered generator is the real holy grail. I hope ITER is successful in creating breakthroughs in fusion

[serpico]

Something else to keep in mind about planes, they get more efficient as they use fuel and get lighter. Batteries don't get lighter when depleted so the plane would have to carry around that "dead" weight throughout the entire flight.

[gregoryvernon]

Very well explained. I'm a RF engineer and loved the prototype.

[Futurelicious]

The research and development of this video is inspiring keep up the great vids!

[mvnorsel]

Such a cool sounding name for an engine, and I was impressed with ' hemi '.

[craigfisher]

Video will be worth a review in 10 years. Once enough engineers get their hands on it, plasma engines have come a very long way in the last 20 years, this is a very promising tech.

[maninthemiddleground]

The bit about conventional fuel is 43 times more energy per unit weight is true. Just to add to this, conventional jets get lighter as they go farther. Electric jets will barely get lighter. 🙂

[KerbalFacile]

France had been working on this type of plasma magnetodynamics way back in the 1980s, but never really made anything out of it, apparently. Japan had a boat propelled by magnetohydrodynamics in the 1990s (the yamato-1, built by Mitsubishi). But those accelerated the plasma-ified medium by running a current through it inside of intense magnetic fields directly, with no moving parts, rather than with a traditional compressor+turbine.

[originalbigtee]

For anyone interested, the small turbine footage is from warped perception. An awesome channel!

[stupidhead]

Brilliant! A video that isn’t slightly longer than ten minutes. Kudos and thumbs up.

[rangeslider]

Huge respect to Tech Vision! Extensive coverage of a broad range of well-picked, informative tech topics, made enjoyable to watch & learn from. Your consistency is commendable. You inspire me. Keep going. Cheers :)

[_percent]

they invented Tony Starks Patented Repulsor Lift Technology.

[Deimonik]

It gives me so much hope for the future to even see these things being discussed.

[mikgol]

answer: I can't imagine jetting off on a holiday on any powered aircraft, anytime soon

[gamerprohourpro]

Honestly this sounds so cool!
It's a way off before we get this technology, but I think the concepts and testing are a great sign for the future!

[JW-bewf]

I agree with the MIT professor. Most of the practical applications of this aren't possible without major breakthroughs in energy technology and material sciences and likely new physics that we haven't discovered yet. Not to mention the scale required.
The tallest structure man has built is the 1000 foot building in Dubai. You simply can't pile up another 1000 feet on it given our current knowledge and cost of materials. This is not how engineering works.

[Easedaray]

I really like your videos dude.
Very educational.

[carsongbaker]

Excellent balanced video! Not just hype but well thought out and researched