Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[asymmetric_implosion]

Tulse wrote:

It’s not 100% clear why, but a plasma focus seems to work better with individual cathode rods. People speculate that some of the gas between the anode and the cathode needs to be pushed out while others cite debris as the reason.

If the problem is gas circulation, then one presumably could just weld the cathode rods on the inside of a series of rings, which would make the assembly one piece while still allowing circulation.

I get the sense that there is a lot of interesting testing to be done on cathode parameters.

Welding is a poor alignment technique. If you are talking about alignments of 100 microns that is very difficult with welding. Machining can be done at the 25 micron level but it costs much more than welding.

I don’t know how much interesting physics will come from the cathode. People have studied it on and off for years. The largest gains in fusion yield or x-ray yield tend to come from anode changes. The anode is closest to the pinch so it seems to influence the final result much more than the cathode. Who knows though? I could be very surprised.

The real problem I see is the size of the parameter space. You have the diameter the cathode rods reside on, the number of rods, the diameter of the rods and the shape if you wish to explore blades, machined tubes, triangles, etc. Toss in materials and you can study for years burning up millions of dollars.