Energy recovery coils

[EricF]

Would anyone mind elaborating on the recovery coils? Do they operate like a transformer, using the magnetic field created by the travelling HE ions? What would the recovery coils be made from, and would they work by simply running a good old fashioned electric current through them to create a second magnetic field for which the HE ions own field would interact with, or does it get more fancy than that? Thanks.

[vansig]

Yes, they operate like a transformer, and should probably be just as efficient (routinely, HV transformers are more than 98% efficient).

In fact it is exactly like a particle accelerator, but operating in reverse, as a particle decelerator. The currents in the secondary will be pumped by regular ion beam pulses through the primary, ( probably 900 or 1200 sub-microsecond pulses per second), and these will very likely be connected to one or more resonant circuits.

The conversion to electrical transmission lines will be interesting, since the ion beam pulse is quite short, whereas the power grid operates on 50 or 60 Hz. Among the components, I foresee a high frequency resonator, (perhaps 10 MHz?) in the circuit, and a gang of 15 to 24 phasing coils.

[EricF]

thanks vansig!

[andrewmdodson]

You are going to need some kind of energy storage coupling to this. Does superconducting magnetic energy coils sound nice? Due to the high expected rate of repitition, the functional size of an energy storage element might be not that large at all.

I do power systems design and would be interested in helping design such a system. Pulse fusion is intensely exciting and I would love to get on perhaps towards the end of the summer and use my work as a doctoral thesis!

How are the physics going to relate to the dimensions of the capturing coil?

[Lerner]

It would be great for you to do some work on this. But there is a big literature to look at because getting energy from a pusled beam to a cirucit is what hihg power microwave design is all about–gryotrosn etc. Except they use elctron, not ion beams. It is not a simple problem to get high efficiency, since not all the ions are traveling with the exact same velosity. The energy storage devices are going to be fast capacitors.

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