New "stealth drive"

[Piotrsko]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65958967

Ummm we have magnetic detectors on the patrol ships and antisubmarine planes. Might be quiet, but aint undetectable

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Would it also be suitable to operate on freshwater? What about other materials such as graphene for the electrodes, as it would be supposed to be less prone to oxidation?

[Logic]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Would it also be suitable to operate on freshwater? What about other materials such as graphene for the electrodes, as it would be supposed to be less prone to oxidation?

No fresh water is out as there's just not enough ions in it.
(On the other end of the spectrum are the undersea brine pools at 3X the salinity IIRC and The Dead Sea)

The gasses produced are hydrogen and chlorine so if all ships used this you'd end up slowly chlorinating the sea.

I NB that H is burnable and Chlorine is a powerful oxidant that one could use instead of oxygen in an ICE.
Ie:
One might have a 'floating' collector behind a MHD and burn the collected gasses in the ICE powered genset used on the Yamato.
But the exhaust gas ends up as Hydrogen Chloride and, in water, Hydrochloric Acid!
(Assuming said Hydrochloric Acid hasn't eaten your engine, what happens if you feed it back into the front of the MHD..??)

I remember some talk of a catalyst or electrode for electrolysing sea water where you get H2 and O2 like with fresh water + electrolyte.
Lets hope Susan Swithenbank is aware of that research.

But back to Piotrsko's point:
IF you do get this working; the huge magnetic field is NOT very 'stealth' at all, so the military wont be interested.
So Susan Swithenbank must have some clever idea for 'shielding' such.
Perhaps some sort of Halbach Array in a very ferrous 'shield' Piotrsko.

[freebeard]

Possibly something similar here?

youtu.be: Huge Geostorm Reveals Bizarre Secret Symbols in the Night Sky

In what appears to be a regular space weather channel, the first six minutes is pictures of point anomalies in the Aurora Borealis. Mostly concentric circles but one has radial spokes.

It appears to be spherical wave interference with a Fresnel effect rimlighting the shells.

So what's at those centers?

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Logic

IF you do get this working; the huge magnetic field is NOT very 'stealth' at all, so the military wont be interested.

There are many other applications it could cater to, such as industrial power generation. Or trying to get funding from the military to develop a shielding to keep it stealthy and, maybe even more important, less prone to either cause or receive interferences with other devices such as radio communicators.

[Piotrsko]

Reasonably certain it's hard to hide a carrier group underway. They are susceptible to long range precision missiles and aircraft bombs, also torpedos. The trick is to stop known incomming.