The Focus Fusion Society › Forums › Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) Science and Applications › Two DPF devices facing each other?
Hi All,
Has anybody tried placing two DPF devices facing each other?
The aim is to force a secondary fusion process by colliding the resultant high speed Ion beams.
Of course the two DPF devices have to be fired simultaneously.
The purpose is to generate more neutrons per input energy.
Does this seem possible/feasible?
DPF is designed to be aneutronic, so you don’t want to be generating neutrons from alpha collisions.
Tulse wrote: DPF is designed to be aneutronic, so you don’t want to be generating neutrons from alpha collisions.
Yes , However we could also use some of its properties for Medical Imaging (Xrays and Neutrons) before we get Net Energy output.
Two DPFs firing at each other is about 30 years old. The concept evolved into what is known as the hypocycloidal pinch. It has promise for increased pinch lifetime but the energy input is much greater.
The energy cost for PF device to accelerate particles is far greater than a particle accelerator. Medical applications will likely use advanced accelerator technology like plasma wakefield accelerator in the coming decade.
asymmetric_implosion wrote: Two DPFs firing at each other is about 30 years old. The concept evolved into what is known as the hypocycloidal pinch. It has promise for increased pinch lifetime but the energy input is much greater.
The energy cost for PF device to accelerate particles is far greater than a particle accelerator. Medical applications will likely use advanced accelerator technology like plasma wakefield accelerator in the coming decade.
From the dense plasma pinch animation I assumed the direction of the resultant high energy ION Beam as a straight line. While the ION beam is directed outside the anode the electrons are going inside.
So 2 high energy ION beams can collide in the middle and potentially cause fusion.
That was my assumption.
You can fire ion beams at each other but you will get very little fusion. The total particle content of the beams is too low. Beam-beam fusion concepts always suffer from the low cross section of fusion. People have looked at them for 50+ years and the fundamental problem is the ability to accelerate ions and keep them going when they don’t fuse.
kurtul mehtap wrote:
Two DPFs firing at each other is about 30 years old. The concept evolved into what is known as the hypocycloidal pinch. It has promise for increased pinch lifetime but the energy input is much greater.
The energy cost for PF device to accelerate particles is far greater than a particle accelerator. Medical applications will likely use advanced accelerator technology like plasma wakefield accelerator in the coming decade.
From the dense plasma pinch animation I assumed the direction of the resultant high energy ION Beam as a straight line. While the ION beam is directed outside the anode the electrons are going inside.
So 2 high energy ION beams can collide in the middle and potentially cause fusion.
That was my assumption.if it was so easy to make ions fuse on collision… then there would be no need for two DPF devices firing to each other
you could just just use any simple and cheap proton accelerator (just few kEv’s!) and fire with the proton beam at the boron target
Unfortunately it does not work, because cross-section (or just probability in simple words) of fusion reaction is very low.
You’ll get few fusion reactions, but they’ll give you just a very little part of energy you spend on accelerating the ions.
The problem of fusion is to confine hot ions together for some time so that they could collide many-many times until some significant amount of ions would fuse.
asymmetric_implosion wrote: Two DPFs firing at each other is about 30 years old. The concept evolved into what is known as the hypocycloidal pinch.
I have a similar question about placing two DPF’s such that they are facing each other. My thought is that if you developed two couterrotating toroidal shaped plasmoids that they could then interact with each other and form a stable structure that would have a relatively long lifetime. From what I’ve read about the hypocycloidal pinch this is not the plasma structure that was forming. This could be because the there was no counter rotation. Howerver, if angular momentum is generated externally, then they could be made to counter rotate. Has this approach been tried before?
Ok, what about stacking a DPF iwth a focus device so that the electron beam of the former feeds the plasmoid of the latter. Admittedly I am throwing crap at the wall here but maybe something will stick.