Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #1072
    Ivy Matt
    Participant

    Energy/Matter Conversion Corporation is currently studying the feasibility of net power from fusion using Dr. Robert Bussard’s Polywell confinement concept. The U.S. Navy awarded them a contract in 2009, with the money coming from the Recovery Act. The Recovery Act requires quarterly updates from recipients of Recovery Act money. The latest update (for the Oct. 1 – Dec. 31, 2010 quarter) was recently posted. EMC2’s latest update can be seen here.

    The device under testing is known as the WB-8. I had assumed it would begin testing in the early summer of 2010, as the device was due to be completed by Apr. 30, 2010, but it looks like they didn’t really start testing until the fall. They achieved first plasma on Nov. 1, 2010, a little over a year after FF-1 achieved first pinch. Their final report is due at the end of this April, so they only have six months of testing. Note that the WB-8 isn’t intended to be a net power machine. What it is intended to do is thoroughly test the scaling properties of the Polywell design to see if a net power reactor is practicable.

    Also, EMC2 will only be testing D+D fusion in the WB-8. However, if the results are promising enough, they have an option to extend their contract to test p+B11 fusion. If they do, the new device (WB-8.1) will be due by Oct. 31, 2011, and the final report will be due a year later.

    If either the WB-8 or the WB-8.1 produces promising results, EMC2 will go on to build the WB-D, a 100 MW demonstration reactor.

    #9578
    AaronB
    Participant

    It looks like they’ve used close to half of their funding of $7.8M. I’m experiencing funding envy and just drooled on my keyboard. 🙂

    #9579
    Rezwan
    Participant

    Thanks Ivy Matt! I’ve posted this on the website. By the way, I desperately need to flesh out the rest of the “Aneutronic Contenders” section, so other aneutronic endeavors are welcome – collect links, some analysis. Start a new thread for each.

    Thanks again!

    #9580
    MTd2
    Participant

    Rezwan wrote: Thanks Ivy Matt! I’ve posted this on the website. By the way, I desperately need to flesh out the rest of the “Aneutronic Contenders” section, so other aneutronic endeavors are welcome – collect links, some analysis. Start a new thread for each.

    Thanks again!

    Do theoretical designs count as a contender?

    #9582
    Ivy Matt
    Participant

    Aren’t they all theoretical designs at this point? Of course, some are more theoretical than others. I don’t know what the criteria are for a “contender”, but if there are any aneutronic contenders, I can’t imagine omitting either Tri Alpha or EMC2. Of course, we have a lot less data on either of those alternatives than we do on LPP’s work.

    Here, briefly, is the case for EMC2:

    In 2005, after experiencing disappointing results (too many electron losses) with the WB-5 device, Dr. Bussard realized that he needed a redesign and hastily constructed the WB-6, in which the magnets had a circular (rather than square) cross-section, and were separated from each other, only joined by small “nubs”. This device was tested in November of 2005, achieving a rate of a billion fusions per second in four tests. During a fifth attempt a short in the magnetic coil damaged the machine and, as funding was running out anyway, the machine was not repaired or rebuilt. This is according to the testimony of Dr. Bussard.

    Bussard spent much of 2006 and 2007 attempting to gain funding for his research. That was when he gave his famous Google Tech Talk. In the fall of 2007, shortly before Dr. Bussard’s death, the Navy began to fund EMC2 again. Between 2007 and 2009 EMC2, now led by Dr. Nebel and Dr. Park, physicists on leave from Los Alamos, tested the WB-7 device which, according to them, validated the results obtained from the WB-6 device. They also tested the WB-7.1, a modification to the WB-7.

    In the fall of 2009 EMC2 was granted a contract to construct and test the WB-8 device to determine if it will scale as well as Dr. Bussard said it would. This is where EMC2 now stands.

    So, to summarize:

    Dr. Bussard reported a billion fusions per second in the WB-6.
    The Navy resumed funding of EMC2.
    EMC2 reported that the WB-7 confirmed the WB-6 results with improved diagnostics.
    The Navy granted EMC2 a contract to build the WB-8, with an option to build the WB-8.1 (p+B11).

    It’s not much data, and EMC2 could be headed up a dead end, but I’d say they’re well into the testing stage, which puts them past the purely theoretical stage. But, as with any net power fusion reactor design, it still remains at least partly in the realm of theory.

    #9583
    Brian H
    Participant

    Ivy Matt wrote:

    ….

    The device under testing is known as the WB-8. I had assumed it would begin testing in the early summer of 2010, as the device was due to be completed by Apr. 30, 2010, but it looks like they didn’t really start testing until the fall. They achieved first plasma on Nov. 1, 2010, a little over a year after FF-1 achieved first pinch. Their final report is due at the end of this April, so they only have six months of testing. Note that the WB-8 isn’t intended to be a net power machine. What it is intended to do is thoroughly test the scaling properties of the Polywell design to see if a net power reactor is practicable.

    Also, EMC2 will only be testing D+D fusion in the WB-8. However, if the results are promising enough, they have an option to extend their contract to test p+B11 fusion. If they do, the new device (WB-8.1) will be due by Oct. 31, 2011, and the final report will be due a year later.

    If either the WB-8 or the WB-8.1 produces promising results, EMC2 will go on to build the WB-D, a 100 MW demonstration reactor.

    Those dates don’t make sense. Was that meant to say Apr. 30, 2011? Otherwise, there’s a lot of time travel involved in that sequence.

    #9603
    Ivy Matt
    Participant

    I suppose I wasn’t clear, but it makes sense to me. I hope this makes the sequence of events clearer:

    Sept. 11, 2009: Announcement of contract awarded to EMC2
    Apr. 30, 2010: Deadline for completion of WB-8 device build
    Nov. 1, 2010: First plasma in WB-8
    *six months*
    Apr. 30, 2011: Deadline for completion of WB-8 testing and delivery of data
    Oct. 31, 2011: Deadline for completion of optional WB-8.1 (p+B11) device build
    Oct. 31, 2012: Deadline for completion of optional WB-8.1 testing and delivery of data

    #9612
    Brian H
    Participant

    AaronB wrote: It looks like they’ve used close to half of their funding of $7.8M. I’m experiencing funding envy and just drooled on my keyboard. 🙂

    Heh. “Vitamin M”. (=Money)
    If you’ll excuse a short digression here, that term was used by a doctor I was in contact with about her psoriasis, and using Glycerin to alleviate it (a long term interest and crusade of mine). (It didn’t help her as much as I’d hoped, as she has the most severe form of it. It’s so bad it aborted her research career at Harvard, and she now works in geriatrics when she can.)

    Anyhow, we were discussing the original 2002 Georgia Med School animal studies on it, and the lack of follow-up with human clinical and biological studies, except for some effort to find patentable precursors and downstream compounds in cells. Glycerin (= glycerol, a 3-carbon alcohol) is public, generic, dirt cheap, and a glut on the market (byproduct of cooking and salad oil production, and from biofuel refinement, and many other processes), not suitable for generating income streams, so pharmas and even universities (heavily funded by same) aren’t much interested — as she said, “No Vitamin M”. Which, in her direct experience in the research labs, is a fatal deficiency.

    Sort of reminds me of Eric’s ostracization and loss of co-authors when he early on threatened to put up his low-cost alternative to Big Fusion: no immediate flows of “Vitamin M” for the profession.

    #9727
    Crazy Fox
    Participant

    Rezwan wrote: Thanks Ivy Matt! I’ve posted this on the website. By the way, I desperately need to flesh out the rest of the “Aneutronic Contenders” section, so other aneutronic endeavors are welcome – collect links, some analysis. Start a new thread for each.

    Thanks again!

    Crazy Fox – 28 February 2011

    An Aneutronic Contender is A.I.Koldamasov (deceased) modified theory. Based upon IEC via Turbulent flow induced electrostatic charge from cavitating hydrogel to double shell resonant plasma clusters in a hydrogel jet stream. Modified to the extent that aqueous NaBH4 in oil forms a hydrogel and gains electrostatic potential in a open channel conical colloid mill prior to discharge from a jet nozzle. I would recommend contacting NPL, Dr. George Miley. My recent communication with Dr. Miley informed him of my findings.

    Note: Critical is the water micelles cross section of 2-4 nanometers prior to discharge from the nozzles and the ~200 degree F. working fluid base temperature. Cavitation implosion initiates double shell plasmas that cluster to form mini Polywell microwave resonant IEC cells. The reaction is aneutronic B11 p + H where 3He heats salts and fractions to drive a steam driven hydraulic engine. Temperature of fractions ~350 degree F. after expansion.

    #9729
    QuantumDot
    Participant
    #9730
    Crazy Fox
    Participant

    I am talking working engine, not theory. Cavitation fusion is not on your list of fusion devices. I recommend talking to Dr. George Miley. IEC is possible in Cavitation fusion. A billion degrees Kelvin for 3 nanoseconds……. A working engine is running aboard the Submarine Sarov. They call it a steam engine. State controlled information on heat source of course. An engine in Dallas Texas circa 1970 ran on fusion heat.. It was later supressed and the inventer died from heart failure.

    #9740
    Ivy Matt
    Participant

    I would suggest that an aneutronic contender should be a device of which at least one physical iteration has actually been built and tested, and that reasonable extrapolation of the results of such tests suggests that at least the D+He3 reaction is feasible. Or, if that is too strict, at least a simulation of the device, or some sort of mathematical calculation, should demonstrate its potential feasibility. I would also suggest, particularly given the current paucity of threads in this particular forum, that it might be best to create a new thread to introduce each aneutronic contender and allow us to consider each one separately.

    #9742
    Crazy Fox
    Participant

    The Sarov Institute has built and is currently testing an engine of the type I talk about in previous posts. The Submarine Sarov, by name, completed preliminary trials this summer. The result of those test has prompted the Duma to appropriate a large sum of money to upgrade existing and new ship power plants.

    They use Deuterium + Tritium reactions to drive their engine. However, you are correct and I am sure you can understand they are not going to post on this thread to satisfy your preferred and classic method and apparatus via mathematical models and mechanical design parameters. Neither shall I. I recommend you contact Dr. George Miley about dielectrophoretic migration of electrostatic charge from oil to water micelles in cavitation implosion. Plasma thus formed are unbalanced and form resonant clusters that provide the temperature for aneutronic fusion. In German it is called zwitterbewegung and Dr. Kenneth Suslick has lectured on this subject at the Jena Institute. In any case, no one is going to post a theory and all it’s solutions at this forum. I believe this forum should provide leads to specific areas of study and not provide solutions.

    #9744
    Rezwan
    Participant

    Great stuff, thanks folks! Now if there was someone willing to come up with a way to explain them comparatively. A simple stat sheet for each. As you say, we don’t want to explain them fully, just direct people to the right place. What is the minimal information required.

    My goal is an “Aneutronic Contender Template”
    Think in terms of a “baseball card” or “racing car card”. If you were to give a kid a card that he could hold in his hand that would have all the key information. OK, front and back, since the front would be half picture.

    And of course, the stats would link to the deeper info elsewhere.

    #9745
    Crazy Fox
    Participant

    Actually, aneutronic fusion is a rather narrow field of study. That being said,direct conversion to electricity or rotary engine and steam conversion (not very efficient) are modes of operation that the military and commercial power companies look for. At the moment marine power plants will come first based upon priorities set forth by Loyds of London for rotary engine upgrades.
    Next will come direct conversion applications in aerospace with airships using electrogravitics. Electric superconducting motors instead of gas turbine engines would prevail.

    The point I am making here is obvious. Without a market aneutronic fusion, whether it is the Earth Mantel fracture cavitation or on someone’s desk top in a jar, has only academic value.
    Application should be a point to ponder.
    Fuel elements used for aneutronic fusion.
    !8% Neutron emission limited.
    Size and weight of the reactor.

    I am sure the list by our members may be more specific. I am not a physics specialist but only an analyst of current research. Marine engines have been of the aneutronic type in my most recent studies.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.