There are some days that I wish I had a garage with all sorts of tools in it to build projects like...umm...my own home made jet engine!!! I could use it to do all sorts of neat things like...uhh...cool beer! or...uhh...cook a hot dog!
Seriously now though, I know about jet engines because I worked in aerospace for a while as a mechanical engineer and thought they were really neat. I wanted to go work for Pratt & Whitney for a while.
A jet engine is a type of turbine engine. Essentially, it's two fans on a common shaft rotating inside a tube. The first fan compresses the air into the combustion chamber where fuel is added and ignited. The air then suddenly expands rushing out of the compression chamber to drive the second fan, which in turn drives the front fan which compresses more air and so on. The engine reaches a constant speed when the ignited hot air mixture rushing out the back of the engine provides enough power to compress the incoming air and the system reaches an equilibrium state. The air rushing out the back of the engine has lots of power left in it though and provides the thrust force that can enable a plane to take off from the ground. They're complex machines to set up and run and aircraft mechanics get paid a lot of money to keep these engines running without any problems.
I've keep thinking that it is plausible to design a turbine engine that uses concentrate sunlight heat the compressed air rather than fuel. After all, some power generators can concentrate enough sunlight to melt salt. So why not use sunlight to directly power a turbine engine on a smaller scale. Something like this stirling engine.
I started digging around and found a whole wealth of information about using automotive turbochargers. Some good sites are here and here.
I'll keep this project in the back of my mind. Maybe one day when I'm settled in a house I'll give it a whirl.
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