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by krisoft
4958 days ago
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Can't say anything about the plausibility of the scheme you mention, but the diagram in the BBC article contradicts it. There you can see that the primary cooling medium is liquid helium, in a closed circuit and a liquid nitrogen heat exchanger. Obviously the diagram can be just flawed, either as a disguise or unintentionally. |
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Having a closed circuit nitrogen heat exchanger is interesting because it is a heat exchanger... you still need to get rid of the heat somewhere. For the demo (per the BBC), they evaporated some of the nitrogen to get rid of the heat, but that means you need excess nitrogen to boil off enough to reject the heat. I wonder how they plan to get rid of the heat in a real aircraft.
It also makes me wonder how they can have enough surface area to absorb the heat in the precooler but maintain enough airflow to generate the thrust they would need.