Reply To: Nuplex.

[Aeronaut]

Brian-

I confess to taking a few steps in faith. Since the early experiments will be using Deuterium fuel, it may be the end of the year before we know if this machine will actually burn pB-11 or just point us farther down that road. Rematog ran the numbers in the General Discussion->Heat to Electricity thread (forum page 2, topic page 2)

Rematog wrote: Heat is a GOOD thing.

Actually, I can see valuable uses for the heat energy of the X-rays�..as process heat.

Many industries require thermal energy, heat, as part of their process. Obviously some, kilns, etc. are too high temperature for Focus Fusion to be of use directly. But many use low level heat, hot water or low pressure (100 psig or less) steam.

I did a little math, If FF gets 0.98 of input power out in the ion beam and 0.57 of input power out as X-rays and can generate 5 MW net with 90% ion beam to electric and 80% X-ray to electric, I back calculate the input power to be 14.79 MW and the X-rays to be 8.43 MW(gross).

Assuming a �Thermal Generator� is built using the same fusion reactor with the ion beam still being used to make electrical power the reactor input, the outside make-up electrical power load would be 1.75 MW. Therefore X-rays could, at 95% conversion efficiency, be used to produce roughly 8 MW of thermal power.

So a Focus Fusion block, with an �X-ray boiler� in place of the X-ray electrical converter, could be used to generate heat at 460% efficiency from input electrical power.

A major question I�d have for the physics types (I�m a mechanical engineer, X-rays are not something I�ve ever dealt with) is would cooling water or steam become radioactive if heated directly or indirectly (a target heated by x-rays which is cooled by the fluid) by the X-ray output of a Focus Fusion reactor?

Rematog wrote: I’ve thought a little more about the use of a Focus Fusion Power Block as a process steam boiler.

If the X-ray energy converter could be designed to have a partial electrical conversion, just enough to make the unit self generate the electrical power needed for it’s own operation, then from my previous post, the 8,010 net (95% conversion) of the X-ray portion of the output would need to have 1,745 kw of electrical output before the “boiler” portion.

This would leave 6,265 kw of useful thermal energy(at 95% of total X-ray energy captured). This is 21.4 MBtu/hr, (roughtly 21k lb/hr of steam, depending on feedwater and steam conditions) which if provided by coal at 90% boiler eff. would require burning 1 ton of good coal per hour (12,000 Btu/lb, a good grade of bituminous, more is western coal (PRB) is burned), or about 25k scf of natural gas per hour.

This is not large by industrial standards. I think that the total CURRENT (at today’s energy prices) US demand for Focus Fusion power blocks would easily be double, likely triple, the 200,000 units previously mentioned to meet current electric demand. This is before added increase demand due to lower prices and the increase due to new uses (desalination, etc).

So I would be un-surprised to see a demand of almost 1 million Focus fusion units (if 5MW size) within 10 year (in the US alone!!!). This makes me wonder if labor to operate and maintain these units is available. This would certainly be a growth industry, lol.

JimmyT wrote: Exposure to electromagnetic radiation does not make things radioactive. Only exposure to particulate radiation (mostly neutrons) will do that. Otherwise when we “nuke” popcorn in the microwave oven we would have real problems.
Seriously though, this is true regardless of the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation, from radio-waves all the way up to gamma rays. (Yeah, I know about Hafnium. There is always an exception isn’t there?)

Concerning waste heat: Don’t forget the conversion efficiency of the input pulse to the plasmoid. I think Uber Lerner is using an efficiency for this step of 50%. This is a figure he has garnered from other research groups which have achieved this comparatively high efficiency; and not merely a number he pulled out of his, er.. I mean …. the air. Thus far though LPP has only achieved 0.01% efficiency in this step, (this in his Texas experiment). Lets hope for conversion efficiencys of 70% plus in this step as well; once our complete bag of tricks is applied.

These 3 posts are the gist of what I’ve been pestering y’all with in this thread. My apologies for not hunting that thread down earlier and saving us all a LOT of time and effort.

While I agree with Rematog’s output numbers, I haven’t been able to reconcile his input power requirements- initial or makeup. I’m going from Eric’s G Talk pB-11 fusion requirements, listing pk cap bank energy as 43kJ, and loosened the time to pinch from 1.6 to 2 microseconds; Inner and outer busswork are the assumed target values of 12 nH.

I’m seeing a minimalist system schematic like an RF tuner’s tank circuit, where FF is the cap and the drift coil is the coil. The major differences are that we’re emitting X-rays as well as releasing energy that used to bind nuclei. Thus we get an energy gain instead of “ringing” as the voltage succumbs to system losses.