Magnethydrodynamics, aka thermomagnetohydrodynamics as a form of power production is an idea that just won't die.
The idea is pretty simple: any charge-bearing material passing through a field of magnetized coil will produce an electric current. It doesn't matter if it is the magnets on an electric motor, or the hot gas of a fire. Yes: pass a flame through a tube lined with a field coil, and you convert the heat energy of the flame into an electric current. That is TMHD, or MHD, as it is referred to for short. At the end you still have a fairly hot, fairly high velocity gas which you can run through a turbine and skim off a few more Watts.
The idea is simple, but there are a host of problems that go with it. The hotter and faster the flame, the more energy you get out of it. So you need a rocket nozzle and as hot a fire as you can get. The problem is rockets are short-duration items that require the utmost in quality parts, materials, design, machining and maintenance.
And then you need to line the tube with something like Inconel to last. Very expensive. You could use glass, and it would last longer, but it is very susceptible to thermal and physical shock, and it has to be thin. So, no luck there.
And then, if you add salt to the fuel for the fire, you get a huge boost in generated current. But now you've got a plasma that will chew right through that Inconel, IF your rocket engines don't burn-through first.
And of course, to get the most Watts out of it you have to use superconducting field coils. So now you have a fire in expensive equipment being corroded like mad, running through a tube that has to be cryogenically cooled, and you have to also have a supply of salt in addition to the fuel, and so far, what we know for certain is two things: there is no faster setup to get more watts of power, and there are no materials to make the damn thing long-term practical. They've been at it since the '70's.
The idea is pretty simple: any charge-bearing material passing through a field of magnetized coil will produce an electric current. It doesn't matter if it is the magnets on an electric motor, or the hot gas of a fire. Yes: pass a flame through a tube lined with a field coil, and you convert the heat energy of the flame into an electric current. That is TMHD, or MHD, as it is referred to for short. At the end you still have a fairly hot, fairly high velocity gas which you can run through a turbine and skim off a few more Watts.
The idea is simple, but there are a host of problems that go with it. The hotter and faster the flame, the more energy you get out of it. So you need a rocket nozzle and as hot a fire as you can get. The problem is rockets are short-duration items that require the utmost in quality parts, materials, design, machining and maintenance.
And then you need to line the tube with something like Inconel to last. Very expensive. You could use glass, and it would last longer, but it is very susceptible to thermal and physical shock, and it has to be thin. So, no luck there.
And then, if you add salt to the fuel for the fire, you get a huge boost in generated current. But now you've got a plasma that will chew right through that Inconel, IF your rocket engines don't burn-through first.
And of course, to get the most Watts out of it you have to use superconducting field coils. So now you have a fire in expensive equipment being corroded like mad, running through a tube that has to be cryogenically cooled, and you have to also have a supply of salt in addition to the fuel, and so far, what we know for certain is two things: there is no faster setup to get more watts of power, and there are no materials to make the damn thing long-term practical. They've been at it since the '70's.