Reply To: Fusion Oil

[mchargue]

Henning wrote: Please be aware, that the discharge time is crucial. The switch has to operate 45 kV / 2.8 MA within 100 µs or better (something of this order). And the capacitors / electric sources have to supply them within that time.

I don’t have the graphs currently, but this is a steep increase in power over time.

True that. but if you look at what many compulsator’s are used for – railguns – the need is the same. Right now, a railgun’s payload spends very little time in the barrel. Projections for future needs – higher velocities & shorter barrels – means that the time is only going to decrease. From what I can determine, the technology’s not quite there yet – but mine was not an exhaustive search.

Mostly, I’m considering the advantages that would come from having to switch a much smaller current (on the order of 10kA) through the rotor field winding to control a much larger output current from the stator. The ‘compensated alternator’ (compulsator) is designed in such a way to produce large current/voltage spikes, and may be applicable to FoFu’s needs.

From what I can find, it’s not a hot topic of research outside of DARPA, but there are some PDFs that describe this well. In addition to this, I have seen other descriptions of experiments that have devices that come much closer (factor of 40) to what FoFu needs.

Some FYI:
http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1108&context=aerosp

Pat