Liquid Air Plane - Final

I have previously written about the liquid air powered plane. It had a major flaw in the pressure chamber. Liquid air needs to be heated to ambient temperature very fast. This cannot be achieved with heatsinks. Instead heat pumps need to be used. The evaporator section of the heat pump should be embedded inside the aluminum payload fairing. Then, the compressor would pump the ambient air’s heat to the pressure chamber. Heat pumps are 300 – 400 % efficient. Additionally, the energy lost on the compressor mainly turns into heat which is also utilized by the pressure chamber. The more heat that can be transferred to the pressure chamber, higher the efficiency of the liquid air engine would be.

The main turbine of the liquid air engine would be powered by the pressure of the expending air. When the engine is cold, main turbine would be heated by electric to start the engine. Once the main turbine is operational, it would run the heat pump which would generate the necessary heat for the engine. Main turbine would also run the liquid air pump and the electric generator.

Main engine would be a pressure chamber which would be fed by liquid air and internally heated by the heat pump’s condenser. The rapidly expending gas would generate pressure and would be exhausted by the rotatable engine nozzles. In this design, the wings would be stationary on the fuselage of the plane and only the engine nozzles would rotate. The plane would not be a VTOL but a short takeoff and landing plane.