Billionaire Boys Club Member Forum (BBCMF)

[mick]

Although it takes only a fraction of a second for the spark to ignite fuel, it entails an exceedingly dirty chain of more than 100 chemical reactions that creates several kinds of greenhouse gases and pollutants—not just carbon dioxide, which gets most of the attention, but also nitrous oxide, or NOX, which is 300 times more damaging to the climate, and methane, which is 85 times more damaging.

Igniting gas with plasma instead of a spark changes the entire picture. Plasma is gas made of molecules that have been stripped of one or more electrons, converting the molecules into electrically charged "ions." Because they're electrically charged, ions can change the way surrounding molecules react with one another.