Zero-combustion Paradigm Approaching: Emissions Standards, Economics Will Push Research

As governments, businesses and scientists work toward creating cost-effective solutions for zero-emissions propulsion technologies, the possibility of a zero-combustion energy production and industrial fabrication model is emerging. Preservation of the natural environment and containment of emissions-induced global climate change both require new technologies that will allow full economic output, including industry and transport, that eliminate the need for combustible fuels.

Many renewable resource technologies currently being employed or explored require the burning of some form of fossil fuel at some stage of the production of the devices that allow for energy generation. Through a series of subtle changes to policy standards, extraction, production and transport of materials, and energy distribution networks, emissions tied to those elements of the production web.

But moving toward an entirely new standard in renewable energy extraction and implementation, we can begin to envision means by which automotive vehicles will actually be self-powering, requiring no fuel per se, and creating zero environmental disturbance aside from the space they occupy and the roads they use.

The zero-combustion standard is now within reach, as versatile revolutionary energy solutions first come online and then are expanded upon. The latest solutions will merge with emerging non-energy-related technologies and be transformed into consumer solutions for battery-like devices powerful enough to extract energy from their environment and power phones, computers, homes and even automobiles and aircraft.

Microwave Engine Applies Theory of Relativity, for Locomotion

ELECTROMAGNETIC DRIVE COULD MAKE WINGS, WHEELS, COMBUSTION OBSOLETE

Sentido.tv :: A new breakthrough in propulsion technology may enable a fuel-free engine with no moving parts to use microwaves to push satellites through space and automobiles on earth. The science is complicated and controversial, but appears to be sound and takes advantage of Einstein’s landmark theory of relativity to turn contained microwaves into a propulsion system, in the form of a non-mechanical engine.

The electromagnetic drive (emdrive) system is revolutionary because it enables human technology to interact with the physical environment in ways previously only dreamed in science fiction. Observers have referred to it as a Star-Trek-style “warp drive”, though for now it is far less powerful.

It depends on relativity specifically, because the microwaves inside sealed and specially shaped drive capsules “propel” the engine not by pushing againt the air or the road, or the rarefied material of outer space, but exhibiting more force against one end of the interior of the drive capsule, playing on the separation between the “frame of reference” within which it functions and that of the air or space outside.

At present, the amount of thrust generated by the emdrive system is minuscule, about 300 millinewtons, not nearly enough to make an automobile go on the ground. New breakthroughs in superconduction could multiply that figure by millions of times, bringing the thrust to 30,000 newtons per kilowatt, “enough to lift a large car”, according to the New Scientist.

If the emdrive system can be magnified to such levels of performance, automobiles could be made to hover, no longer needing wheels, and aircraft could be held aloft, while liquid-hydrogen-powered turbines provide forward thrust, eliminating wings, blades and atmospheric contamination. [Full Story]