[Aeronaut]

I don’t see the Deuterium and D-T gangs as ‘the enemy’ , but as being irrelevant to their cover stories of safe, cheap power. I think you’re on to something with the edge turbulence modeling. Looking forward to more of your input around the FF forums.

Brian H wrote:

I’m fully aware of what DPF & ITER are. As Brian said, I was trying to suggest that although some may regard the large scale & expensive tokamak projects as ‘the enemy’, there is a lot of valuable research going on in that field to do with materials properties and the interactions of plasmas with solid interfacing components.

Some of this may be applicable to the plasma/solid boundaries in a DPF. We need to take advantage of all the modelling and experimental results they get.

I should disclose my interest – I have just finished a Masters in nuclear physics, and will be starting a PhD in a few weeks modelling edge turbulence and instabilities in tokamaks and stellarators. Initially using data from the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) at Culham, UK and the Large Helical Device (LHD) in Japan.

Although my research may be from the mainstream side (I needed funding), I hope to be able to apply it different scenarios like focus fusion.

James

Did you throw in a reference to global warming implications, just to multiply your funding? 😉 :cheese: Sorry! Just kidding!

[Aeronaut]

Sorry, Rezwan, but robots mapping links and doing mathematical analyses on that database is SEO, and it is a huge industry which is here to stay.

I’d set the program to nofollow ALL HTML links, across the board, except for the official links that need the ‘follow’ attribute. If a link really is pertinent in the thread, it can be copied and pasted into the address bar almost by reflex.

You may or may not also want to call the promoter out over at Warrior Forum and announce the new linking policy.

[Aeronaut]

Agreed.

[Aeronaut]

jamesr wrote: I would think a lot will be learned from the ITER like wall experiments due to take place in JET soon

I know the plasma conditions are somewhat different in a tokamak, but the fundamentals of high energy ions colliding with the wall/electrode are similar.
They are looking at tungsten coated carbon fibre componsites for the divertor plates which take the brunt of the ion flux, and berylium on inconel (a nickel alloy) for the rest of the wall.

The goal in the tokamak is to stop high Z (atomic number) materials being sputtered or boiled off the surface and polluting the plasma. High Z ions in the plasma will result in higher bremstrahlung radiation losses and cool the plasma.

see Overview of the ITER-like wall project G F Matthews et al (2007)

Brian, the reason I keep bringing up the co-generation is that the thermal energy is over 50% of the energy produced by the reaction. Also, at this point, FF is a lot more useful for making cheap(er) heat than cheap(er) electricity. The higher we get above unity, the more valid your viewpoint becomes.

Jamesr, Focus Fusion is a Dense Plasma Focus designed to burn pB-11 to harvest ions and X-rays in seperate direct conversion processes. ITER is a low density plasma designed to burn Dueterium to create neutrons that will make steam like in a conventional fission plant. The two design philosophies and resulting machinery reflects this. ITER is useful for studying plasma confinement and long-duration burns, not for producing cheap or safe electricity.

[Aeronaut]

Welcome to the Focus Fusion Society, Frank.

We can fill you in on the technical and possible social ramifications of clean, cheap, abundant energy, but Lerner and Aaron hold the patent. You’ll probably get further at the LPP parent website, http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com .

[Aeronaut]

Cool. It can be made in any color, size, and shape. Times Square signs and Vegas- style lighting will never be the same…

[Aeronaut]

Just shows the pre-conceived notions of fusion fuel that we need to overcome. Another notion that needs correcting is that the turbines are needed. Bottom line is a “one of these decades” mind-set that seems to be a staple of most fusion writing that’s fairly easy to find.

[Aeronaut]

I think what Breakable meant by “path of least resistance” is a biasing network, similar to biasing grids in a tetrode or pentode vacuum tube. Back then we wanted to minimize grid current. Now we need to maximize it in order to reach and exceed unity.

The most effective collecting layers will tend to be more negative, even before adding components to the biasing network. If we’re dealing with a fluctuating ‘signal’ (current flow) we may be able to use fast switching and/or capacitors to minimize power loss.

Frankly, I’m having problems seeing foils carrying huge currents. Anybody want to take a stab at the power, voltage, and/or current that Baby will output from the X-ray converter?

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

You’ll need an insulator for that, Brian. The x-ray collector works like a capacitor.

In what respect like a capacitor? The electrons knocked loose by X-rays are drained by grids between foil layers; I am suggesting use of the graphene for the grids. The last thing you want to do is insulate them.

The patent compares the converter assembly to a capacitor- the foils are your grids, collecting the electrons. Each of the foils is a different thickness to reduce the energy of x-rays with enough energy to penetrate them. Personally, this reminds me of control grids in a vacuum tube, all the way down to the biasing network.

Put another way, since the foils conduct very well, what is the gain of designing and producing another 1,000 or so conducting layers?

But no matter what the end design is, CVD is the only production process with even a chance of building these assemblies reliably. I suspect that this assembly is going to be the vast majority of the production cost.

[Aeronaut]

You’ll need an insulator for that, Brian. The x-ray collector works like a capacitor.

[Aeronaut]

It’s a good start. Ask me about my gravity wheel. 😉

[Aeronaut]

Found it at http://www.zamandayolculuk.com/cetinbal/faradaydisk.htm , buried in a Faraday dynamo analysis.

[Aeronaut]

Nope, you have to join to read their content. What kind of comments have you stirred up over there?

[Aeronaut]

dash wrote:

Even if I had read BBNH, I wouldn’t be able to follow most of it.

Two things we don’t want to do with FF is interrupt electrical or magnetic flows. Those are the machine.

Why wouldn’t you be able to follow most of it?

Anyway the principle of focus fusion is to start a big current flowing, which gives rise to a magnetic field, then cut off the current, which causes a collapse in the magnetic field, which causes the pinching effect which creates the fusion. The whole thing is pulsed, isn’t it?

Maybe my understanding is completely wrong — sorry!

-Dave

I seem to be one of the few around here without formal physics and higher math training, lol.

Yes, Eric’s estimating 330 pulses per second to produce 5MW of net electric energy. (Don’t tell Brian I told you this, but that should also produce ~17 MBTU/hr of “waste” heat available where co-generation is desirable). The pulsed nature makes it immune to runaway chain reactions and meltdowns.

You have to look close to see this sometimes, but there is a string of instabilities, each flowing smoothly into the next, so it can be easily mistaken for a single field charging and discharging. Other than that, you’re on the right track. You dump a lot of energy into the “spark plug” from the input capacitor bank, which will be recharged at the end of the cycle. All other electricity- the profit- ends up in the output cap bank, so the machine begins and ends in an equilibrium state, more or less, ignoring maybe some stray heat.

One of the things making pB11 the ideal fuel is that its far more stringent ignition requirements make it inherently safer than any other fusion fuel currently being considered.

[Aeronaut]

Even if I had read BBNH, I wouldn’t be able to follow most of it.

Two things we don’t want to do with FF is interrupt electrical or magnetic flows. Those are the machine.

[Author]

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