Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[belbear42]

Tasmodevil44 wrote: …Although skeptics like Jimmy T argue against the idea of lithium…… that pB11 is still the so – called ” Holy Grail ” of fusion…… I still think that lithium may still have the best potential chance for a ” kick – starter ” to help get pB11 going. It has only three neutrons, which means less X – ray energy loss. It also has a lower ignition temperature. Which means it may ignite first before the boron does, dumping more energy into the plasma to pre – heat it more than the power supply alone can. And it might even help to extend the reaction time window beyond only 6 picoseconds so that more reaction events can occur. Forget large atom fission. I still think lithium has the best possibilities.

Hydroboranes like decaborane and pentaborane have only two chemical elements: boron and hydrogen. But there’s another class, or family, of chemical compounds which contain all three: hydrogen, lithium and boron. I wonder…… has Lerner thought about these as possible fuel candidates yet ?

Are you sure about that ignition temperature being lower for p-Li6 ?
I took a look at the “nuclear fusion” wiki and found several interesting fusion reactions compared.
Just assuming here these values are correct:
p-Li6 fusion has a lower optimal burn temperature (66keV) than p-B11 fusion, (123keV), but achieving practical ignition is a whole different story.
The power density of p-Li6 appears to be appallingly low, so it also appears to have an even higher ignition temperature (Ti=800KeV) than p-B11 (Ti=300KeV) These values take into account the bremsshtrahlung losses in a thermalized plasma.

Remarkably, I was surprised by the very high value (Ti=500keV) for the “mainstream” D-D reaction. Although it burns at a marginally higher temperature than D-T, D-D break-even is even harder to achieve than p_B11! That’s why all tokamak research focuses on D-T and its 50keV Ti, with the next (and for a tokamak only) possible upgrade being D-3He (Ti=100KeV). That’s why they dream of mining it from the moon!

I could be wrong, but it could as well be the other way around, p-B11 fusion serving as a kickstart for p-Li6 🙂
And besides that, I think using three reactants introduces two more useless collisions (Li-Li and Li-B), draining more energy.

Also interesting is the Pfusion / Pbremsshtrahlung ratio. For p-Li6 this is only 0.21, less than half of the 0.57 for p-B11
Both values are below 1, which means less fusion power than X-ray losses.
But Dr Lerner appears to have just found a solution for that little problem…