[Francisl]

As I understand your system, nothing enters and nothing leaves which makes it a closed system. Imagine that this system is placed on a four wheel cart with low friction bearings and the cart is on a level surface. When the system is off the cart doesn’t move. When the system is turned on the cart will move back and forth but stay in the same average position. This is the result of Newton’s Third Law of Motion that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
This system is equivalent to throwing a ball back and forth between your right hand and your left hand. The ball moves but on average you don’t move from where you are standing.
You may be interested in spacecraft propulsion.

[Francisl]

Here is possible method to produce an effect similar to glow discharge along the full length of the cathode arms. Indirectly heated cathodes could be placed along the full length and on both sides of each of the cathode arms. These heated elements would create a thermionic electron emission that would ionize the nearby gas similar to a glow discharge. The heating elements would only have to be operated a short time before each shot. A side effect is that the heater elements could also heat the chamber to a specified temperature so that there is more uniformity in shot to shot performance.

This approach could be tested in a college physics lab. Place a Jacob’s ladder spark gap in a bell jar with the same pressure and fuel as used in a dpf. Put indirectly heated cathodes along the sides of the spark electrodes. Observe the operation of the spark discharge with and without the use of the cathodes.

[Francisl]

If a glow discharge works well for starting the shot, would a glow discharge around all of the electrodes reduce the intense reactions along the whole length of the electrodes?

[Francisl]

Are the copper electrodes still available that were used before the tungsten? Maybe they could be coated with different metals and compared to the results with the bare metal.
Nanomaterials react differently than bulk materials. I’m guessing the same holds true for very thin coatings versus thick coatings.

It would be nice if a lab could perform these experiments with small coupons under dpf type conditions.

[Francisl]

I don’t know anything about the leaky valve. At room temperatures tungsten doesn’t react with water so that shouldn’t be a problem. The tungsten blank was formed by sintering and then machining. It had to be frequently heat treated to relieve stresses caused by machining. Sintering causes materials to be slightly porous and the high temperature makes tungsten reactive with oxygen in the air which caused the tungsten oxide.
I don’t know how thick the oxide layer is or how mobile the oxide ions are in tungsten.
According to this report a thin oxide layer should burn off with repeated use. The problem is not going away as quickly as hoped.
Coating the electrodes with a thin layer of silver should reduce or stop the migration of oxide ions to the surface. The only way to know is to try it. If the layer of silver is only a few atoms thick, it should quickly conduct the heat to the tungsten and far less silver should evaporate than if a thick layer is used.
Another advantage of using a silver coating is that it can be used as a base for adding other metals on top of it. Each arm of the cathode could have a different metal coating to see which one or which combination works best.
We have to remember that this is an experiment and problems or mistakes are just another opportunity to learn something new.

[Francisl]

Heating the chamber and valve would get rid of the loose water. New water is formed continuously with every shot as the oxygen from the tungsten oxide is released and combines with the deuterium fuel. Tungsten oxide is a surprisingly complex material. The color and temperature of the tungsten oxide reveals its oxygen content. Temperatures above 550 degrees C in a hydrogen atmosphere can remove the surface oxide layer. See the references here and here.
The reinforcing structure can’t take those temperatures. So coating the electrode surfaces with silver seems to be a reasonable solution.

[Francisl]

This may help:
Huge helium discovery ‘a life-saving find’

[Francisl]

There is no decree or conspiracy. People read the information and follow the links that are posted by volunteers as you have done. Success in any project is welcome news.

[Francisl]

Here is a link to a previous discussion about this topic.

[Francisl]

Check the links on this page and this page.

[Francisl]

You are asking questions that I don’t have answers for. I will give you some suggestions.
Question 1. It could be a printing error but I don’t know.
Question 2. Looks like an engineering choice. The designers of the particular machines would have to answer that.
Questions 3 and 4. There is some information available by searching on Google and Wikipedia. You may find that some of the information is behind pay walls. Some university and public libraries have subscriptions to these publications.

The e-mail addresses for Saw and Lee are listed at the top of their paper. You can try sending these questions to them to see what they say.

[Francisl]

The Plasma Focus- Numerical Experiments Leading Technology paper by S H Saw and S Lee will give you a substantial amount of the information you are looking for.

[Francisl]

This Wikipedia link is also a good overview.

[Francisl]

This link may lead you to the information you are looking for. It is a little older information but if you follow up on the links to Dr. Sing Lee and Dr. S H Saw you may find the direction for your future searches.

[Francisl]

We are all eager to see great results but we must be patient. This is very complicated and expensive work. LPP has a small staff and limited funds. They are gathering all the important data they can before they make improvements based on that data. Some of these parts take over a year to get.
There is a lot of useful information on this website. Many of these questions have been asked before and you can find some of them by using the Search function at the top of the page.

[Author]

Posts