New Anode Cooling 'Limits' Likely

[Aeronaut]

JimmyT wrote:

WOW! Just the 1st para looks like the machine I’ve been looking for over in the CVD marketplace. It also gave me some ideas for the onion, since it should be able to handle a drum-shaped blank.

I’m wondering if maybe the best way to build an onion is like orange slices. Design and build 1 slice. Repeat 40 times then fit them together. Could be sphere or cylinder, or anything in between.

To prove and test in a lab, using hand-laid foils, I’d use 4 to 8 panels for a boxy looking onion. Several panel formulations would be needed to capture over 90% of the X-ray energy, and then all of those panels would need to be stacked in a structurally sound manner that allows for cooling. All of this takes place inside the vacuum chamber, by the way, unless it, too, becomes beryllium.

Mass production units should be around 200 slats. Eric hinted at that near the end of the patent, due to the onion’s structural and cooling requirements. I can see the final price of a FF generator being tied directly to the degree of automated fabrication and assembly of the onion.

[vansig]

For the onion, use long, narrow, metallic/semi-conductive diode tape, and wind it like a ball of yarn. As x-rays scatter electrons to the next layer outward, it very quickly becomes a voltage multiplier.

Manufacture should be easy to scale up

[vansig]

Regarding the anode,
it can be hollow, and arranged coaxially; pump cool helium up the center “artery”, providing the majority of cooling to the part nearest the plasmoid; and vent it back along “veins” around the outside. if you can operate the helium output at 550-900°C, you can make use of IR-photovoltaics. and this can be done at fairly low pressure.

Can the anode be cone-shaped, overall?

For 2MW cooling, I’m getting a flow rate for helium coolant, with ΔT = 800°C, as .48 kg/s.
At atmospheric pressure,
that’s 3.68 m³/s at 100°C input, and 11.6 m³/s at 900°C output.

[vansig]

Also, I’m looking at the chart of x-ray absorption cross-sections, and notice that Carbon might not be very bad as arterial structure, graphene tubes helping conduct waste heat very quickly away from the tip, with much less radial heat flow to the helium input.

Here’s the comparison…

Beryllium
keV µ (cm-1)
3.0 37.9
10 1.08
30 .324
100 .247

Carbon
3.0 203.9
10 4.951
30 .567
100 .339

Copper
3.0 7034
10 1960
30 96.6
100 4.06

And, if you arrange the tubes parallel to the high-energy electrons, you’ll also drastically reduce erosion. That’s what leads me to the conical shape, ~20 degree angle, to agree with the electron exit beam

[Aeronaut]

Electrode design/ profile/ taper is left wide open in the patent. Made to order for marketing “advantages” and snake oil sales. Buying a FF core (swap) intelligently will also require that all parties agree on how the word Unity is used, as well as variations on true power vs apparent power. This is going to make solar panel calculations look tame and straight-forward.

[Author]

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