[zapkitty]

Francisl wrote: We currently use 400 psi steam for power generation and 150 psi and lower pressure steam for process heat. We have two generators that produce about 5 MWe but can go to about 6MWe. If we had much cheaper electricity we could change our process so that we would need less heat.

I’ve read hot side temp estimates for the DPF cooling system that range from 800-1200 degrees F so I don’t think there will be a problem with keeping your current steam heat setup if you aren’t running any turbines etc with it.

And as a bonus you still get much cheaper electricity… so perhaps in the future you might be able to afford incrementally switching out the steam units bit by bit as time goes on and replacing them with electric heating units that might be cheaper and easier to maintain.

[zapkitty]

Aeronaut wrote: What do you do with the steam besides make electricity? Is steam absolutely required for your heating requirements? FF is a lousy candidate for making the high pressure, high volume steam for driving turbines, but it is well suited for making low pressure hot water industrial and institutional boilers. The energy mix is expected to be ~5MWe and 8MWt, and none of the heat is required for fusion power generation.

8MWt? I thought it was ~5MWt?

If so then that’s ~3.2 MWt for the 2MWe container… that crowds the single fan cooling iteration a bit. Dual fans will cover 3.2 MWt easily, and at less electrical overhead, but I was hoping to save the volume…

edit: “will cover 8MWt” typo

[zapkitty]

MTd2 wrote:
…
So, we would have, at the very best, 20 years to finish all boron.

I hope I am wrong…

The researcher’s figures are somewhat different… 🙂

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewreply/229/

Boron is not in short supply. About 500,000 tons are produce per year for a price of about $700/ton. Since each GW of focus fusion power takes a ton per year of boron, the entire current world production of energy would only consume about 10,000 tons per year. If, in the far future, we ran short, we can get boron from seawater. Total resources would last billions of years at current rates.

[zapkitty]

Francisl wrote: I work in an industry that uses about 200 tons per day of coal for combined heat and power. We use about 5 MW of electricity from our generators and the rest of the heat is used to produce steam. It would be nice to have DPF units that could produce equivalent results. I’m guessing that the electrical coils in the front of the device could provide our electricity and the x-rays coming from the back of the machine could produce our heat. This could be a simpler and more robust design for many industries.

As I understand it the the device produces opposing beams of electrons and ions. The electrons are supposed to be reabsorbed by the plasma and increase the temperature and thus the fusion yield. The ions are to be captured by coils and thus provide the electrical power for the next pulse.

The x-rays are not emitted as a beam but are generated by the plasma pinch in a fairly spherical wavefront that must be captured and put to work as the net power part of the device.

The current plan is to use a version of the photoelectric process tailored to x-rays as x-rays are “just” very energetic photons.

In addition the “standard” 5MWe unit is supposed to produce roughly about 5MWt, which can be either used or discarded..

A notable difference… at this point with gas turbines or other power plants a Heat Recovery Steam Generator is used to reclaim some of the heat from the exhaust of the plant in order to provide additional electrical power…. but with a fusion generator setup that HRSG unit would be bulkier and much more expensive than just buying an additional fusion unit to provide whatever additional power you need 🙂

[zapkitty]

That was something that I was going to bring up but was distracted by a cooling system iteration 🙂

The logo derived from the peace symbol, at best, does nothing good or bad outside a discussion of its beneficial effects in reducing nuclear proliferation. Save it for that area.

[zapkitty]

MTd2 wrote: Hmm, I’m back… But the update was not done!

Is anything bad going on???

None Compost Mentos.

[zapkitty]

Ivy Matt wrote: Well, I have to say I like it. On first sight I was impressed. On second sight I wondered why the electrodes were green.

Beats green coal 🙂

Ivy Matt wrote: After maximizing the image, I still like it, but I think I’d prefer it if the edge of the sheath between electrodes were a bit more parabolic.

Yes indeed… and I’d like the central star to have more slender arms as well… but snap-to-grid at 32x mag on a quickie only gets one so far and it still took me four days to finish it this much… but the purpose was to get the ball rolling so that’s fine…

I expect it to be redone by other people… several times… it’d be somewhat disappointing if no one did anything with it 🙂

Ivy Matt wrote: But that’s purely personal aesthetic taste. I don’t know much about how the sheath is supposed to look in real life.

Me neither 🙂

Ivy Matt wrote: I’m trying to think if there’s another logo in use that it could be easily mistaken for. (Well, I guess that’s why you have “Focus Fusion” next to the stylized DPF.)

It also helps remind me what I’m supposed to be doing at the moment as well….

Attached is a 3ds file of the model. Those with the inclination to mess with it are heartily encouraged 🙂

Attached files

focusfusion-3ds.zip (59 B) 

[zapkitty]

jamesr wrote: I like it zapkitty – simple effective logo, with strong typography.

The only thing I would tweak is the kerning slightly, so the C is the same width as the S (or vice versa), then the down stroke of the U would line up with the I below it.

The font is microgramma, specifically MS
MicrogrammaDBolExt, a leftover from my work on Homeworld SDL. Should be on current MS systems and office applications etc.

[zapkitty]

zapkitty wrote: A logo should be simpler. Indeed, it should be able to be rendered in monochrome or engraved on a stone tablet and still be recognizable.
…
As for symbolism… as this is for the Focus Fusion Society I’d think a stylized DPF electrode array would also lend itself to the concept of the many people focused on fusion.

A basic concept… can be upgraded by the artistically-inclined as needed… or by the visually adept for that matter…

The image can be scaled and enlarged to suite the subject at hand… substitute photorealistic plasma et al when the focus is tech… or since the sheath also resembles a cartoon word balloon when many people are saying the same thing at once you can,have the ‘trodes be a bunch of stylized heads all talking about fusion… a simpler symbol can be more easily adapted at need and still remain recognizable.

color
grayscale
b&w

Confiscate and mutate at will… or mutilate at will… and I thought a blind guy working on the graphics engine of a computer game was an odd pastime…

Attached files

[zapkitty]

vansig wrote:
without electrolytic capacitors, a glass ceramic capacitor array, of 129uF @ 50 kV, would fit onto a spherical shell, 5m average radius and 1.5 m thick (assuming 100 plates, spaced 15mm apart). The reactor would be, easily, as big as a house.

… but this would solve the caps lifespan issue, right? 🙂

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: Cut a secret $10-100M deal with a big utility to give them confidential 1 mo. advance notice of likely definitive achievement of unity or definitive proof it can’t be done. Give them a strategical leg up on the market!

More likely the utility ensnares you with a truly massive set of insider trading violations and the resultant furor buries the actual fusion results…

[zapkitty]

vansig wrote:
That is tremendously good news, because the 8-10 fold increase in yield will result in smaller x-ray emissions, as well.

… er… and if that 8-10 fold means 8-10 x the smaller plasmoids?

Haven’t checked the relevant figures on how much the smaller volumes were affecting the expected output…

[zapkitty]

Hmmm… no more traceless edits… that’s not going to do my reputation for infallibility any good 😉

[zapkitty]

A logo should be simpler. Indeed, it should be able to be rendered in monochrome or engraved on a stone tablet and still be recognizable.

The modified peace sign is neither here nor there, which is a not good thing, but the nuclei representations are just too much fiddlework to try and emboss and still be recognizable.

As for symbolism… as this is for the Focus Fusion Society I’d think a stylized DPF electrode array would also lend itself to the concept of the many people focused on fusion.

And while green and no weapons potential are both valid points of aneutronic fusion… the color as a logo took a severe hit with “green coal” and suffered a fatal blow with British Petroleum’s cute green flower logo.

[zapkitty]

vansig wrote:

I thought the trend mentioned was toward smaller, yet hotter plasmoids?

My reasoning is based on having to put 100 kJ energy into the plasmoid each shot. It may be hotter, but if it’s smaller, then less fuel gets burned. (unless smaller implies denser also??)
But I realize that since the machine hasn’t yet been optimized for boron, it’s a bit early to speculate.

From an update on the LPP site it seems that they believe they have a handle on that particular issue now and they hope to increase plasmoid volume and fusion yields by 8-10 fold…

http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=com_lyftenbloggie&view=entry&year=2010&month=09&day=06&id=16:switch-problem-resolved&Itemid=90

… and the primary focus of that update is that they’ve gotten the switches to working on cue.

Now if they can deal with the x-ray conversion issues so handily… 😉

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