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Powering up

A new way to build a greener jet engine

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Fascinated

The reason R-Jet's technology is not being implemented despite some alleged interest from GE, has nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with expertise.

The bulk of the efficiency benefit quoted, comes from the elimination of the first row of turbine stators which, since it sits directly behind the burners require a lot of wasteful cooling.

However, as the name implies the stators are stationary so temperature is prety much their only problem.

Now rotate the burners and eliminate the stators and the hot gases will be directly hitting the turbine blades rotating at 20-30,000rpm. So the turbine blade have to cope with 1000s of lbs of Centripedal force and still deal with the same temperature problem as the aforementioned stators (minus R-Jets alleged improved mixing).

Current turbine blade material technology is already one of the most precious intellectual properties of an engine company, with every 20°C improvement lauded as a breakthrough. Until ceramic material are invented to cope with the mechanical and thermal stresses, this idea will stay in the lab.

(Turbine blades themselves are made from single crystals of exotic metals with intricate forced cooling flows and propriatory insulating coatings.)

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