Reply To: Fusion Oil

[vansig]

Rezwan wrote: Fascinating posts. Can someone do us a favor and summarize this (and other posts) – extracting the information and explaining to the broader readership what this is about and how it connects with the project?

The onion was proposed some years ago, as a way to capture otherwise wasted x-ray radiation (Bremsstrahlung radiation) at high efficiency (perhaps 80%). And it really captured my imagination, when i saw drawings of it for the first time, shortly after Eric’s Google tech talks video was published.

Such a system is as yet undeveloped, as no existing photo-voltaic power systems consider x-ray energy as a source, probably because Earth’s atmosphere blocks such light of cosmic origin.

However, in principle, x-ray photo-voltaics work much the same way as regular ones. it’s a matter of choosing the right semi-conductor combinations to catch the photon energy.

Some x-ray photodetectors are using wide band-gap semiconductors, but they saturate under the kind of intense pulses that FF-1 will produce, which would reduce efficiency and could harm the detector. But if the photo-voltaic system consists of thousands of layers of nearly x-ray transparent cells, (eg: 0.008% absorption), then we can limit the saturation in individual cells.

As this is fresh science, the fabrication methods and cost, and ultimate efficiency, of this is unknown presently. Our discussion, here, should try to pin down the constraints.