[Aeronaut]

Ever notice how their machine resembles a direct-coupled motor-generator perpetual motion machine? 😉

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

[Hi Folks, we split this off from this post. It feels like a new topic. – Admin]

Another credibility issue springs from publicly aiming at over-unity. Same problem fission must have had until Nautilus sailed in 1957. Even if we had thermal unity today, with enough ion conversion to recharge the caps and run the pumps, we’d look like a long road to commercial amounts of electrical power. I spent a few hours this week trying to lay out even one slice of the “onion” like a glorified solar cell using CVD machinery to deposit the foils and insulator/cooling system. And the patent reads ~150 to 180 of these slices.
…

BUT- optimize for 125J/btu (sub-unity), and you might be able to get an industrial oven or furnace maker to buy a license, since it will be a proven way for the end users to cut their gas bills in half. Even if the first license sells for $10M (early mover’s special deal), that funds the rest of Phase I and all of Phase II and the rest is the history of the investment that got away.

I’m not sure which of us is confused, but “unity” means you’re not putting in more energy than you’re getting out. Why would you run anything at sub-unity, unless the nature of the output was so special that you were willing to pay the price? The generation of an alpha beam and X-rays doesn’t qualify, IMO.

And what’s with this “thermal unity”? I don’t see that as relevant in the case of a generator that is turning out electricity directly. It applies only to heat engines.

I know you are in love with trying to find some use for the excess heat in the FF reactor, but it’s a losing proposition to add on conversion equipment of any kind to exploit it, unless you have something like http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/32446 .

First off, I wish we could get the kind of coverage for “emerging science suggests” (think Lycopene ads or Popular Science magazine articles) that your link points to.

You’re absolutely right about the Joules in to Joules out definition of unity. The confusion I’ve been having with defining ‘unity’ milestones will surely be exploited by snake-oil sales types, especially before the onion is developed to any commercial degree, during which time system-level electrical unity gives us a salable furnace requiring only around 43kJ to start, in return for around 60M BTU/hr. We’ll get back to that number in a minute.

The reason that you’re so fun to bait on the thermal vs electrical vs Joules unity issues is that I can’t remember you showing any evidence of having thought through how to market and sell an over-unity Mather-based DPF. Let alone how to engineer and build one production prototype or engineer one or more plants, training, or supply chains to produce a model in any quantity.

If you had, you’d be familiar with the key issues imposed by decaborane fuel that Eric’s patent refers to in paragraph 144, which ends with “in the case of pentaborane, a gas at room temperature, control of the temperature of the electrodes are no longer critical and can be adjusted to optimize the efficiency of the cooling system”. I take that to mean that the fueling and cooling system engineering are greatly simplified by choosing pentaborane over decaborane for the preferred fuel. Engineering is not cheap. And cooling considerations are why Eric projects only 20MW top end. Thermal management will therefor be at the very center of any commercially viable DPF reactor.

Further, paragraph 167 states “for optically thick plasmas a pulse rate of at least 1khz is required (to prevent boron plating on the electrodes and adding the parasitic load of re-ionizing the fuel gas). Maximum pulse rates are limited by the cooling system, as described below.” and in 168, “a pulse rate of about 1khz is about the maximum that can be used for a single electrode.” (The rest of the paragraph detailed cooling a specific anode geometry at a specific current). This is not a cheap cooling system, even ignoring the onion’s cooling requirements. Thankfully the inductive converter is pretty much meat on the table.

Paragraphs 158-164 deal with designing and building the X-ray converter. I tried this again recently using the type of dual gas sputtering CVD equipment used in making IC chips, and it is going to be a formidable challenge for an experienced chip fab engineering team. And all I assumed was that I was going to keep it simple by using berrylium and quartz for each slice of the onion. Cooling channels and mostly, electrical bussing required to remove several MWe are where the landmines are buried.

And it only dawned on me yesterday that the thermal shock of resulting from each pulse’s X-ray insolation may rule out quartz. That adds an ME and possibly a materials scientist to the engineering dream team just for a slice of the onion Guess what challenges the onion’s going to present at its system level. :-S

So gimme unity at the Joules in/out level, and I’ll show you a thermal product LONG before an electrical product. The way I intend to do that is to move the >43kJ output from what the neutron detectors indicate was produced in the plasmoid (cylinder in the Lee model), downstream to where the ion converter is actually producing at least 43kJ. This is what I’ve been referring to as electrical unity. This produces free heat after the initial 43kJ.

[Aeronaut]

QuantumG wrote: Ok, here’s another one by the same authors, obviously they cleaned it up for public release:

http://quantumg.net/advancements_in_dense_plasma_focus_for_space_propulsion.pdf

It includes pretty pictures. The conclusions are similar, but only the “not wildly optimistic” results are presented 🙂

Eric estimated 2 ton mass (I’m pretty sure it was unshielded) in his Google talk video. A 360 degree water jacket 1 meter thick is the single largest and heaviest component. But I’m sure you can pretty much eliminate the shielding mass if the reactor’s on the end of a 100 foot long boom. Could be tough getting a net reduction of mass…

Eric’s first 2 experiments were funded by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. The incoming Bush Administration defunded the program that JPL was using to fund FF.

[Aeronaut]

DerekShannon wrote: yeah, I had to suppress my urge to scream “Who cares about the stupid suits when you have all those tiny fusion reactors?!?” during IronMan.

Anywhoozle, I envision my focus fusion-powered space yacht as a mock-up of the NCC-1701 Enterprise with the generators jutting out as the warp nacelles. Center of gravity be damned!

Mine is more along the lines of the Lost In Space series’ Jupiter II. There’s a flight simulator for it online somewhere with a screenshot looking in the flight deck’s window. The fusion reactor is clearly visible on the centerline, using roughly 1/3 of the ship’s volume.

Brian, I was wondering when somebody was going to catch that unity detail and call me on it. Long as we’re on the subject of details, I’m thinking Eric’s going to prove unity and beyond using the neutron tof detectors to prove that this many Joules in resulted in that many Joules out. Joules convert to almost anything, while eliminating the confusion of thermal vs electrical unity without the hassle and expense of a ‘regulation’ test chamber.

Long as you’re ok with letting decaborane vaporization temp/pressure tables specify your electrode and chamber temperatures (to keep decaborane a gas), you’re required to highly engineer your cooling system or vary your PRF to favor cooling at the cost of electrical output stability. It’s in the patent’s fine print (para 144) that using pentaborane frees the designer to optimize for cooling system efficiency by providing a much wider operating temperature range.

[Aeronaut]

Ironman had fusion plants all over the place. And a prototyping system to die for.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: Hmm. Phallic?

OK, are there other designs out there?

Symmetrical, if nothing else, once both components share the center line. Didn’t you want to make FF sexy? 😆

[Aeronaut]

Googling podcast directories will give you a huge list, including NPR. If you’re running Winders, you can probably record in Sound Recorder or talk Media Player into recording MP3’s.

[Aeronaut]

Looks great, Belbear!

I’m wondering how it would look with the blue text’s centerline lined up with the FF’s. Partly for flow motion, partly to make it a phallic symbol.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote: I’m thinking “podcast”. How do we set one up? Then we could also have guest speakers and mini-lectures and – oh, songs. Who knows.

A podcast is just an MP3 file that you can record on your computer, then upload to the podcast directories.

[Aeronaut]

Interesting use of Space Elevator parts. 😛

[Aeronaut]

I just updated the headline block and eliminated the confusing bullet points and calls to action. No serious investor (or wannabe) should be able to resist the extremely visible Risk/Reward Analysis cta link. The page it links to should be up tonight, and the supporting graphic tomorrow.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

I don’t think we’ll have to ‘force’ people to accept ultra-cheap power. The single biggest challenge is getting most people to realize that it may be possible this year instead of 2050 ish. If then.

Irony. Humour. Exaggeration. Hyperbole.
All wasted. Pearls before swine. I’m dealing with clods, I tell you, dunderheads and clods! :-S ;-( :down:

“Seeing” is believing. Any ideas how to get FF-2 into a movie?

[Aeronaut]

I don’t think we’ll have to ‘force’ people to accept ultra-cheap power. The single biggest challenge is getting most people to realize that it may be possible this year instead of 2050 ish. If then.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:
Dr. B.;
yeah, that’s partly why I invented the cliché. :cheese:
But also to express how hard it would be to force people to accept cheap-cheap-cheap power. :coolmad:

I believe the single biggest challenge is getting people to believe that fusion can even be done, given the governments’ brainwashing over the decades, and now in the search engines.

Might be easier for many to imagine free heat and electricity in their apartment. That could also flip over to apartment owners seeing a competitive advantage by offering those for ‘free’. Especially in places like NYC or London.

Some of the less competitive keywords I was finally able to dig up revolve around Combined Heat and Power, and they were dominated by European companies using natural gas.

[Aeronaut]

Pete,

You’re already implicated by showing solid evidence of visualizing the machine and mass producing it. The more of our members who do that, the better off we all are.

I’d design all parts for maximum reliability, with a rapid drop-off in performance when servicing is required rather than “low price”, since it will cost thousands (at least) even for routine servicing, which would make a $5 savings meaningless. I’d also design for the likelihood that all 12 switches would need replacing within an hour or so of each other (run time). Replacing all 12 as a set could also be written into the regulatory requirements to keep FF from getting a poor reliability rap from those who try to run it too cheaply.

I doubt the electrodes would be a problem other than testing enough berylium-copper alloys and getting the dimensions worked out . An outfit like Brush-Wellman (I did some floors in their plant) could cast electrodes by the thousands, including threads, using the lost foam technique.

If I had your materials properties background, I’d be focusing on the capacitors and X-ray converter construction. Smaller, lighter cap banks and shielding as well as higher onion yields are going to fuel an ongoing manufacturing duel about who can make the smallest, lightest FF in a given power range.

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