What an incredible build! I'm blown away (at 2.3 m/sec)

My thoughts on improvements: 1) Ducted airflow. Preventing air from moving out of the system until the end. 2) Adding a nozzle. The airflow velocity increases due to the constriction of the tube radius, therefore after the acceleration, you could decrease the tube radius to give more thrust. 3) Adding barbs to the emitters. Charge accumulates more intensely in sharper locations and will be emitted more freely. 4) Magnetic fields. Given the charges passing from one area to another are known, having solenoids creating magnetic fields around the ducts that induce a more significant flow would help the movement.

Interesting! I built an ion propelled aircraft grid that produced a breeze for my HS Science fair in 1966. Had to use high voltage rectifier tubes and a massive hand made capacitor for the construction. HUGE power supply for a little thrust. First saw the concept in Popular Mechanics.

Hi, I've been interested in ion wind ever since that first youtube video of the ion flyer. I saw your build on another video and had to watch it. You've outdone yourself, and have inspired me to try a build. Cheers

The light dimmed plasma shots were off the charts cool.

First of all 2.3m/s is like incredible for homemade device. 1. You would have covered the sides so that air current won't leak, 2. A constant DC supply would be better instead of pulsed 3. The wind speed meter you have used was having comparatively very heavy, so actually you might be getting more speed

Definitely want to see more on the ionic thrusters. Great work!

Add the entire build in a 1. tube, it will increate the thrust theoretically as it will create a pressure difference, 2. as well add at the input a donut shaped intake it will make another pressure difference 3. to pull more air, another thrust boost is to increase the tube incake and add some holes on the side, similar design as the blow torches which pull air from sides based on the pressure Hope you read this, i wanna see it in action :)

1. Enclose the thruster side walls 2. Experiment with various mesh densities on the 3 stages 3. Try different frame materials Finally mount this thing on a little blimp. It would be awesome :)

Quite similar thoughts all over: 1) shield airflow, add foil covers (minding weight increasement 2) play with intake air density, or gas composition therefore increasing or decreasng in output efficiency 3) adjust thicknessand weave pattern of the emitter wiring Lets see part 2 ! Have fun building that engine :)

I like the way you explained everything and also I like the design it's so cool when you turn off the light. That was awesome

That's what I call inspiring, qualitative video. I just subscribed because I'm feeling I will like your videos !

This is actually my first time learning about this kind of thruster. Never thought something like this could exist.

Inefficiencies: 1) Ion path scattering. Position the electrodes so that the ions all flow parallel, ideally. Otherwise their non uniform direction makes the overall thrust vector hit the wall of the device which eliminates much of the airflow. 2) Ion pathing. A dielectric rod ending at an oppositely charged sphere or grid will make the ions want to flow towards it, thus preventing them from diverging. Otherwise they may get attracted by other charges around the device and make the air diverge. Ideally, enclose the whole air flow to have control over what your ions are pushing and to recover a portion of you spent energy via the sphere/grid. 3) Electrode shape. Round them up on one side to make charge (and air) only flow the other side. Use needles. Otherwise ions will set up tiny back currents to the opposite direction. 4) Materials. Use hollowed frames to reduce the weight (which decreases thrust) by a lot. Good ones are Expanded Polystyrene and Kapton tape. Don't wait for Graphene windows. 5) Temperature. Use thermionic emission to get more ions. Cheap tungsten needles do exist. This is not an inefficiency btw, more like an improvement. 6) Air channel geometry. Close the walls to protect against side air currents. Otherwise air may not flow linearly, especially if ion path scattering is not dealt with. This necessitates that you build an appropriate container to facilitate smooth flow otherwise air can get stuck momentarily, creating "traffic" that may slow down the net flow locally thus reducing thrust. 7) Gravity. Always position the apparatus so it blows downward to take advantage of gravity, otherwise it is always eating away at your thrust as it doesn't let the air flow in line with the cylinder. Thermionic emission may fix that up a bit as hotter air tends to rise. You need to find the perfect balance with these two. 8) Another improvement. Use Integza's golden spiral fan to set up two air vortices that serve to both push as well as pull the air to and from the desired direction, and help counteract the side effects of both gravity and thermionic emission.

Definitely want to see more on the ionic thrusters. Great work!. This is an amazing build man, it's incredible!.

I keep coming back to this video. Thank you for sharing your work! Go Ions!

suggestion: use motors and a sensor to run a computer program to find the "sweetest" of spots. basically the program would test, move, and test again until it finds the optimal arrangment.

I am absolutely shocked (no pun intended) that this isn't 3D printed. It seems like every construction video I watch these days, from droids to racecars, are built using 3D printing. Your acrylic work looks way better. And this technology is quite interesting and I'm glad to have seen this.

Thank you ... The idea of lining up the thrusters genius ... I've been trying to amp up my thruster

I think the data you collected is amazing and well thought out. Time to scale up. Not a lot but bigger. This could revolutionize the way we travel. I could see this on a massive scale,possibly flying cars. I really loved your rig. And the different colors used. Great job. You definitely have a subscriber here. Keep up the good work you do.

This is awesome! Great video

A few thoughts: (1) An inlet funnel on the front to increase air draw & compress the air intake, (2) a cover (cowl) to stop the air from escaping out the sides , (3) more segments, (4) perhaps testing segment distances using the Fibonacci Sequence, as the Golden Ratio is common in fluid dynamics such as in cyclones and propeller vortexes.

Looks amazing and such a simple design (with know how that is ) .Fantastic work !

Awesome project wow 🔥🔥🔥 can't wait to see version 2

Couple of points i want to share: 1. will using a net instead of copper wire imropve the airflow? More surface area? 2. You should enclose the apparatus in a dielectric matarial so that air doesn't leak 3. it could also be the multiplier of yours, less current maybe? 4.why not try different metals? 5. you could also try to Use different voltages at the stages? 6. Maybe also try different nozzels at the output? 7. Force some air from the front? 8. Introduce magnetic fields as they interact with the electrons? Permanent magnet, changing fields? 10. Since it doesn't heats up you could use foaming 3d printed parts (foaming plastic are lot lighter then regular plastic) bringing the total weight down?

Actually did a project with the old ionic lifters back in high school for the science fair! Try applying a dielectric/insulator to the leading edge of the negative/ground electrode. Additionally, lengthening the (negative) electrode allows for more surface area for the charged air ions to apply force to. Just two suggestions!

This is simply amazing. Just think about all the applications, too many possibilities

A man of many talents, not only do you understand the science behind it, you also have the handyman skills to build and test your ideas.

I read a paper once where they grew carbon nanotubes on the electrode and it dramatically dropped the voltage required for air breakdown. I think it was used for some sort of sensor. Copper is a common substrate to grow tubes on, so copper wire should be possible. You need a catalyst and a carbon containing gas and relatively high temps.

This thruster may be ionic, but the content you put out is simply iconic.

What a great project! I think we should try increasing the diameter of the frame and the number of positive charge wires. Experimenting with different metals would be exciting. Finally creating a nozzle type frame work to direct the flow towards a smaller diameter end might increase the thrust.

This was an awesome build, I just wonder what kinda results you could get if you managed to have the segments adjustable during operations both in power control and spacing

Well, I think it's official. We're in a new Age of the Inventor. The idea that an individual person can experiment meaningfully with ionic thrusters is mind-blowing!

1.) Design it such a way that you're not stacking the stages "in series" but put them in parallel. 2.) Add roughness to the electrodes so the charged particles escape easier but not enough roughness to start arcing between electrodes. 3.) Your power source looks like push-pull topology converter which tends to be less efficient. Use a resonant topology with soft-switching like an LLC converter.

Many thanks for so many amazing videos with a number of technical information.

I was wondering if that could be used as a fan as well. That would be a pretty cool fan. Next, for this build have you thought of doing more stage. Like 4 and 5 and see what happens then. This was an amazing build thank you for this great information. Can wait to see the next steps in your plane build.

That looks sick!! I was going to build a similar thruster a couple years ago but I would never have done such an Amazing job as you did, that's incredible work!

Making the ground electrodes have a wing profile to avoid having turbulence right behind them could be one maybe? :)

Great approach to ionic thruster. I think you can get up the efficiency using Coanda Effect to improve the air pressure inside the "tube" near to 400% (3x). The same principle of bladeless fans. Cheers! 🥂

Great build and as for inefficiencies this build I'm assuming would eventually be enclosed on the sides, definitely needs to be built with lighter material's including the copper rods, and I'm not really sure of a third one but I feel like it's obvious lol 😅but again I love the idea and good luck in your designs 😁

I imagine one area of improvement is enclosing the entire thruster in a tube to act like a ducted fan and reduce losses to viscosity between the surrounding slower air and the air in the thruster. Not sure about the other two but really cool content and an excellently made video. Seeing the improved results from staggered voltage stages reminds me of the varying airspeeds in a conventional turbofan compressor, I'd love to see the number of stages taken to the extreme. Looking forward to seeing the project develop! (also I hope you have some patents in the work)

1. Put the "engine" in one sealed pipe with open ends, you have air/pressure losses on the sides. 2. Make it shorter, the longer it is, the more ineficient will be. Use 3 separate HV generators, 1 for each coil, and reduce the "engine" size from 50 cm to 10 cm. If it is done properly, the HV coils shouldn't interact with each other, even if there is 1 cm spacing between them. 3. Use a thermal camera to see the flow of the air. See if the temperature of the air (in) hot/cold-dry/wet-low/hight density, influence the output pressure. 4. Apply the same principles in jet engines-air compression-, start with a big fan(coil) , than a middle one, than a small one at end to increase the pressure. 5. Chance the shape of the coil. I would say that if your thruster coil have the shape of a triangle vortex(such as a tornado), will dramatically increase the pressure. Use only 1 coil long enough to create the electrical/plasma vortex. 6. Use a magnet with donout shape at the end to see if he concentrate the plasma flux in one point, thus increasing the pressure. 7. Search on google "how to increase the power of ionic thruster" :) 8.) Go on PDFDRIVE-dot-com and search for "ion thruster:. You have 933 "free :D" professional books to assist in your journey.

Yes please! Show us more! The way to go!

A 5mph wind is a nice demonstration and you did some solid work there. I like it! It won't get anything off the ground at this scale, though. If you square the cross section of those grids, you might cube the output. If it's still too heavy to power an airplane, I would wager it could at least power an airship like a dirigible.

My first thought is that having it enclosed in a tube would increase your thrust, so long as you have enough primary air. You have too much secondary air, which I think may be slowing the air down and possibly could be introducing turbulence as the faster air hits the slower air. I think also putting the engine into a Venturi shape will increase the velocity. All of this has the downside of adding weight, but the engine would need to be enclosed anyways to be used, right? This is just a guess though!

Beautiful! Especially at 9:07 Thanks for the plasma colored highlight at the end!

This is an amazing build man, it's incredible!

Incredible video just happened upon your channel while browsing KZfaq I'm definitely subscribing!

The thing is this engine might generate good stationary thrust, but when the thrusters starts moving and thus there is a different freestream velocity, I think the seperation between the stages might need to be dynamically changed to keep up the thrust levels. edit: Also you do not know yet if it generates more or less thrust when moving trough the air, this might be very useful to test.

I would try having each stage rotated 90 degrees, in case of 2 stages and 45 degrees in case of 3 stages, the idea is to not have each stage blocking the next one as much. i would also test having the device inside a tube to see if its better or worse

Great video! Can’t wait to see where you go with this

Awesome video! Thank for making it.

Is there a different way to wind the electrode coils so that they form a “lensing” pattern similar to a fresnel lens which would “focus” the stream of excited air towards the center of your array and possibly accelerate the air more?

You should try adding a nozzle and building a sealing tube around the stages. I bet you’re loosing a lot of pressure out the sides that you could be directing rearward.

This is incredible. I am so excited to see how this will impact the aviation industry.

That was gorgeous! More please.

Congratulations on the amazing build man! Those low-light pictures are absolutely gorgeous, and I'm impressed with how much air you could push with just high voltage charges. Maybe you could get together with PeterSripol to develop a low-speed ultralight model aircraft for this thing to power!

Honestly the open design is probably lowering the efficiency quite a bit. The air pressure behind each stage is higher than in front which means it will be leaking out from behind each stage. Really excited to see the full ability of this new idea. I encourage you to experiment with harmonics and pulsed voltages because you may be able to find a resonant frequency of the ions traveling from the positive side to the negative side. My theory is to try finding the average time it takes for an ion to pass from one electrode to the other and match the pulse rate with that. Of course, I could try this at home myself... eh, probably best I don't. Very nice work here, thank you for the content.

Brilliant, very good stuff. Its all about power to weight ratio... and I think you have a strong indication of what this means and where we are going with respect to hydro-carbon fuels...

Congratulations! Great job!

1) Different voltages at different stages like a C.R.T tube to add to the velocity of the ions, having a constantly changing field 2) A rectified FULL-BRIDGE power supply with more voltage 3) Thinner anode and cathode, with many more wires and lighter construction

Experimenting with cowlings and compressive stages would also be interesting.

super cool. i love to see more of these.

Hahah this is awesome mate studying in the plasma field myself. Loved your vid mate u got a subscriber. :)

I recommend wrapping this in a magnetic field (solenoid) which will both accelerate the ions and serve as a feedback for free ions that don't lose charge at the outlet. That way you have an electromagnetic jet engine that is completely solid state. Depending on the work you put in, it would make an interesting eVTOL or drone.

Not only is your project here cool, it's actually really beautifully made, same with the camera work, truly an artist!

Thank you. Great job. Very scientific. I appreciate all your efforts.

impressive work my good sir very inspiring.

Congrats, these are amazing results! I've had some experience with corona discharge. My suggestions: - Increase the "sharpness" of the anode by adding spikes to the wires. - Enclose the thruster in a duct and maybe add a nozzle to increase air speed. - Measure the current into the cathodes (with a high voltage probe). It should be ~0. When the dielectric breaks so does the field gradient, and ionization drops. Finding a combination of voltage, distance and electrode configuration to reduce cathode current should reduce the power consumption and improve efficiency. Good luck!

The staggered thrust solution reminds me of how different turbine blade pitches throughout the stages. So each stage could accelerate airflow as it passes through.

Gorgeous! This is Ironman hand reactor technology to flight!!😍 You are a genius!❤

Absolutely brilliant, I do think though you could direct the outlet into a narrower Venturi to increase thrust.

Incredible work, looks really cool too. I wonder if the material of the frame affects efficiency. Acrylic has a pretty high dielectric constant, I’d be curious to see if using materials with a higher or lower dielectric constant would change things.

Directed thrust arrays. Also incredible how you have excited so many of us with this build. Cheers!

Congratulations, nice work!

The explosion video made me laugh hysterically 🤣🤣🤣 Nice project, well done!!

I can imagine future spaceships having that purple/blue glow behind them.

The whole concept and build is really cool but the most awesome part is when you turn out the lights and let us see the "generator" in operation! My first thought while looking at the ultraviolet blue lights was, "the man has brought to life the Star Trek Enterprise ~ with Dilithium Chrystals!" Great show, keep us informed of your progress.

You had me with if you are Not a Shmuck! Priceless line!

This is awesome! Great video. What an incredible build! I'm blown away (at 2.3 m/sec).

There is a solid-state wind generator that uses this effect backwards, to extract energy from wind. I'd love to see some experiments with that.

You should change pipes/cables to hexagonals and stack them like honeycomb, it will increase area of air acceleration. Nice work!

OMG !! such an innovation 👍👍🔥

Thank you for clarifying in the brackets

I love all of the practical demonstrations of things like voltage through arcing lengths. Helps build an intuition of the energy being dealt with. Very effective 👍

Add a bellmouth inlet, cover the whole assembly with a tube, and add a converging nozzle may also increase thrust noticeably. Test and experimentally determine the optimal staggered spacing for each stage too, since the air is flowing faster after each stage.

This was amazing… I had no idea of this kind of advancement and .. just wow

You are so brilliant and easy on the eyes too

I love seeing this in action and in the dark! Over 10 years ago friends and I did some pod racer designs in art school for fun. Mine was claimed to use an ionic thruster over the traditional jet engine, because sci fi. This is so cool watching a thruster being tested and refined in real life. Excited to see the next video.

I’m truly blown away by your project and I’m so intrigued to see where your next build takes you next. Thank you for bringing us along in your experiment. I can’t wait to see where all of this goes for you…

Super build! The improvement I would bring is placing the whole contraption in a tube, otherwise the flow of 1st thruster is going a bit in front and a lot in lateral, outside the build. If you place it in a tube, it will add. Success!

Bravo Jay way to go

Love this stuff. When your final version hits big, please continue to make these videos. I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for uploading!

you have used the same voltage on every stage of the thruster. What if you increase the voltage from stage to stage while reducing the distance of the electrodes?

Glad you made it happen, I was thinking of cascading the truster like that and it works!!! Congatulations!! Oh and try ducting it too, consider aero dynamics as well.

I WANT TO SEE MORE OF THESE!!!

Awesome project! I'd love to see additional stages as well- closer together. Also, if you created a perpendicular mesh on each stage, you could double your exposed surface area. Lastly, have you thought about enclosingthe stages in a tube... perhaps with venturi injecting fresh air between the stages?

Absolutely stunning! Probably one of your best vids yet. My 2c: How about incremental voltages for successive stages? The air is already moving at stage 1, and moving faster by stage 2, etc. I'm thinking saturation issues with a too-high voltage for air that is moving too slowly at that point. Keep stepping up the voltage.

Jay, I've just stumbled onto your channel today and I love what you're doing here. I really like the work with the ion thrusters in the dark. I've been into photography since the 1960s. You mention the MIT ion powered plane and I did some looking at that. From what I see, they set up a completely open ion grid and stuck some wings and a tail on it. While this worked, I think there are better ways to make it work. Your idea of a multi-staged thruster isn't a bad idea and on your later videos with the boat, this is proven out. I just left a comment on the catamaran video you just put out. However, with an aircraft being powered by ion thrust, I don't think you're taking full advantage of that thrust if you are focused on a typical round thrust pod like an engine. The aircraft flies due to the laminar flow of air across the surface of the wing. It flows faster across the top as it has further to go and this creates low pressure on top of the wing and produces lift, but I'm sure you already know this. But why not maximize that lift by elongating the ion grid the length of the wing and just above the upper surface so that the air moving over the wing is further accelerated by the ion thrust? Bell Aerospace ran a test in 1977 of their Bell-Bartoe Jet Wing. This was a single engine jet that had the exhaust split and re-directed to an outlet at the top of the wing's camber. They added a second airfoil just above the outlet to help maintain the laminar flow. The point was to develop a Short Take Off and Landing, (STOL) jet aircraft. You can read more about that here: www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/incredible-plane-ball-bartoe-jetwing/

I like it! Keep it coming.