While there are plenty of places around the world to get a great cup of tea, no one has quite burned it into their culture like those in the United Kingdom. While they don’t have the climate to grow the plants themselves, they at least have figured out the art of heating water extremely rapidly in purpose-built electric kettles while the rest of us wait to heat water on our stoves and microwaves. But that’s still not fast enough for some, like [Finlay Shellard], who just completed this jet-powered tea kettle.

[Finlay] took some inspiration cues and parts from another jet engine he had on hand that was powering his toaster. This is a pulse jet design, which is welded together from laser-cut pieces of sheet metal with guides welded in place to allow water to flow around the combustion chamber and exhaust. Pressurized water sits in a reservoir at the top of the engine, and when it is up to temperature, a valve allows it to flow to the engine to heat up. When it has passed the jet engine section, it passes a tea bag holder and then out of a spout at the end of the engine.

A few tests at 100 PSI had the hot tea exiting the engine in a non-linear fashion, so the pressure was reduced. The device now makes tea at incredibly fast speeds, with the only downsides being access to some sort of jet fuel, and also the need for a protective hearing device of some sort. For anyone attempting to do this themselves, take a look at this build which includes a turbocharger design for improved efficiency of the pulse jet itself.

Thanks to [Lucas] for the tip!

” JET ENGINE POWERS TEA KETTLE ” Its NOT a Jet Engine!

It itself, is not a jet engine, but it does contain one. Basic set theory.

Also, predicting future comments that say: A pulsejet engine is not a jet engine. Read the name pulse**jet engine**. Also from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsejet: “A pulsejet engine (or pulse jet) is a type of jet engine”

I would imagine that anybody who lived in the southeast UK, in say 1943-44, probably both likes a good cuppa tea *and* is more than happy to tell you that pulsejet engines are irritatingly functional

“A jet engine is a type of reaction engine, discharging a fast-moving jet of heated gas (usually air) that generates thrust by jet propulsion. While this broad definition may include rocket, water jet, and hybrid propulsion, the term jet engine typically refers to an internal combustion air-breathing jet engine such as a turbojet, turbofan, ramjet, or pulse jet.”

It squirts hot air out one end. Q.E.D.

Yeah, but incorporate them into the combustor section (which are still kind of stuck in the 1950s design wise) and things get interesting…

https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/gasturbinespower/article-abstract/145/6/061011/1153607/Stability-Characteristics-of-an-Actively-Valved?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Excessive? Yes. British? Colin Furze.

That was my thought too – except this isn’t Colin!

Tea? Yus. Brutush? No – definitely a Kiwi :-)

He’s the Aussie Colin Furze! He pretty much admits to being so in the video description.

Wow. Some people have way too high an opinion of their entertainment ability. And slapstick “screwups” with a water valve? Why not be looking into the pipe and take a long squirt in the face, Stooges style. I had to listen to something else after the video started. It WAS entertaining trying to figure out what would require 14 minutes of steady chatter. I listened later at 2X and I’m so glad YouTube has that feature.

The whole thing looks like a great way to get a live steam burn. By the way, do people get skin cancer on their hands form the UV in arc welding? I sunburned my arms really good once that way.

You so can grow camellia sinensis (tea plant) in the UK, and Tregothnan is probably the best known UK tea grower. I’m not sure the Jettle design gets the best flavour extraction though – other ultra high pressure extraction methods are available too

“My grandad lost an ear, when his still exploded!” “Ha! MY grandad cleared ½ square mile, when his kettle boiled over!” “-“

“While there are plenty of places around the world to get a great cup of tea, no one has quite burned it into their culture like those in the United Kingdom.”

alone, this is a comic and innocent mistake (or even hyperbole). but in the context of centuries of violent extraction and chauvinism, it looks like an extension of something less palatable.

i propose that everyone who writes for hackaday should have heard of asia :)

This comment got sent to moderation, but I wouldn’t delete it for all the tea in China.

heating water on a stove? What savage country do you live in?

I’d like to see him “optimize” a microwave oven!

“In other news today half a neighborhood was terminally irradiated by a prototype microwave. Authorities are still baffled as to where the inventor found industrial grade fisionable material…”

While some might be super critical of that idea, I find it rather scintillating!

Cut to him heating up a chimichanga with the demon core, emitting a thin blue glow

Here’s something similar from way back (from NZ circa 2000 – a jet-powered beer cooler): https://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/

Pulse/resonant combustors are a known technology in some industrial processes. As far as the kettle goes, I’ll leave this here from 1952

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2715436

a bloke I know is a power station engineer, he told me about designing and building pulse jets for fluidised bed coal plants

pulse jets, with 150mm bores, 6 of them

It never fails to amaze me the lengths the British (and British descended) will go to for a cup of tea!

Seems like 600A from 12V for 30 seconds should be sufficient to raise 500mL of water from 0 to 100C.

Whereas 15A from 120V would take just under 2 full minutes, or 15A from 220V just a smidge over 1 minute.

So maybe something like one of these nifty lithium car jump start things cross bred with an electric kettle could be interesting. Good thing those batteries don’t catch fire anymore.

.. but of course that only gets you one round of hot water in a hurry – if you needed N>1 rounds in a row, with the recharging you’d still average no better than what the mains can supply.

Interestingly, those “nifty lithium car jump start things” have just about exactly the right output power (2 kW) and total stored energy (200 kJ) to raise a half litre of water from room temperature to boiling. Once. Per hour or so.

Maybe we should just adopt the Japanese type of kettle. With only 100V available from the wall, it’s common to just leave a low-power but well-insulated kettle on, keeping hot water available all the time.

I’m currently in NEMA-5 land, and still looking for a 240V 4.5 kW kettle, myself. It would happily run off the 20A split outlet in every darned kitchen around these parts, but you can’t find one to buy. The next kitchen renovation might need to include an on-demand 90 C water heater.

A normal person would use a teaspoon to mix the milk with his tea. A real technician uses a screwdriver….I like it the way you mix your tea?

Is ‘tea kettle’ the international formal name for a kettle? Like horseless carriage for car…

“While they don’t have the climate to grow the plants themselves”

Oh yes they can! The Tregnothan (Cornwall) plantation was shown on TV last week.

link: https://tregothnan.co.uk/

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