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Aha! Another opportunity to plug my fusion reactor! http://www.DDproFusion.com http://www.DDproFusion.com The design has a lot of similarities to NIF in some

Aha! Another opportunity to plug my fusion reactor! http://www.DDproFusion.com http://www.DDproFusion.com The design has a lot of similarities to NIF in some respects. I aim to create an ultra dense implosion of deuterium ions. Thats where the similarity ends though. The key to viability in my eyes is to recover the energy of the ions that don't fuse to create another implosion. In my device, ions leaving the focus are curved by a weak, uniform, magnetic field. Each ion travels along it's cyclotron trajectory to circle back to the focus at the right time for the next implosion.

yummypaint 6y ago
What provides confinement in the direction parallel to the field?
- pontifier 6y ago
  Positively charged electrodes provide a restoring force. The system effectively becomes a Penning trap. I'm trying to target 15kev ion energies with my prototype so I was going to aim for 60kv on the end electrodes, and 0.35T for the magnet.
  - yummypaint 6y ago
    Do you have a paper or technical document available for reference? Im mostly wondering about the standard fusion device questions such as: In the anticipated final device, i assume ion currents will have to be low enough to avoid interfering with the external field? How will charge balance be maintained between ion and electron species? What is the anticipated center of mass energy distrubution for the ions? Does the proposed focusing approach run afoul of the Liouville theorem?
    - pontifier 6y ago
      There is no peer reviewed paper or technical document. I've got the patent, and various grant proposals, and my various attempts to explain the concept online. You are right that the ion current will be small. I'm anticipating that the plasma will be a non-neutral deuterium plasma. The energy distribution will be thermal targeting 15kev for the prototype. I wasn't familiar with the Liouville theorem. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile this. Seems a bit paradoxical. I'm going to have to investigate further.
    - pontifier 6y ago
      It's been difficult for me to visualize the 6D phase space of the design. I'm starting to see the particles lie on something like a deforming 4D shell that maintains it's volume in 6 dimensions. Edit (further description of the 4D shell under the Liouville theorem): When the plasma has large spatial volume, the momentum of particles at any point creates a 1D line forming an empty 4D shell. When all particles enter the 1D spatial focus the particle velocities there are essentially random and have large variation in all 3 spatial dimensions. Essentially a 4D sphere with only 1 dimension in space. The result is a morphing 4D shell that collapses all particles into a focus with 0 volume once per period.
      - pontifier 6y ago
        Actually... On further visualization the plasma seems to just form a 4D sphere that rotates and translates in 6 dimensions. The flatness of the 2 "missing" dimensions corresponds to the quality of the focus and synchronization of the system, so they are not going to ever be completely missing. The focus is like what you'd get if you were looking at slices of a solid ball. You'd see a point grow into a large circle, then shrink again to a point. It's basically the view on the left side of the simulation on my website. The right side of the simulation video shows a different cross section. The x axis there is the one dimension of the 4D sphere that stays in 3 space.
pmayrgundter 6y ago
Is it similar to the Bussard reactor? Looks like a cylindrical variant of its sphere mechanism. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1992078142/building-the-open-source-bussard-fusion-reactor?ref=category https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1992078142/building-the...
- pontifier 6y ago
  The linked video and Kickstarter look more like a Farnsworth Hirsch inertial confinement reactor. Fusion reactions do occur in them, but a cold gas cloud forms at the center because of collisions with the physical electrode. What starts as a group of colliding and circulating beams quickly transforms into beam on target. The result is that ions only have a few chances to fuse before they lose too much energy. My understanding of the Polywell is that it uses a trapped cloud of electrons to form the central cathode, which can help keep deuterium ions hot by reducing grid collisions. The downfall I see is that you are still trying to "squeeze jelly with rubber bands". The Brillouin limit describes the maximum steady state density possible in a non-neutral plasma. In my device, the average density is well below this limit, but is briefly very very high. The goal is to have smooth and steady cyclotron trajectories most of the time, but all these trajectories intersect at the same point simultaneously.

yummypaint 6y ago

What provides confinement in the direction parallel to the field?

pontifier 6y ago
Positively charged electrodes provide a restoring force. The system effectively becomes a Penning trap. I'm trying to target 15kev ion energies with my prototype so I was going to aim for 60kv on the end electrodes, and 0.35T for the magnet.
- yummypaint 6y ago
  Do you have a paper or technical document available for reference? Im mostly wondering about the standard fusion device questions such as: In the anticipated final device, i assume ion currents will have to be low enough to avoid interfering with the external field? How will charge balance be maintained between ion and electron species? What is the anticipated center of mass energy distrubution for the ions? Does the proposed focusing approach run afoul of the Liouville theorem?
  - pontifier 6y ago
    There is no peer reviewed paper or technical document. I've got the patent, and various grant proposals, and my various attempts to explain the concept online. You are right that the ion current will be small. I'm anticipating that the plasma will be a non-neutral deuterium plasma. The energy distribution will be thermal targeting 15kev for the prototype. I wasn't familiar with the Liouville theorem. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile this. Seems a bit paradoxical. I'm going to have to investigate further.
  - pontifier 6y ago
    It's been difficult for me to visualize the 6D phase space of the design. I'm starting to see the particles lie on something like a deforming 4D shell that maintains it's volume in 6 dimensions. Edit (further description of the 4D shell under the Liouville theorem): When the plasma has large spatial volume, the momentum of particles at any point creates a 1D line forming an empty 4D shell. When all particles enter the 1D spatial focus the particle velocities there are essentially random and have large variation in all 3 spatial dimensions. Essentially a 4D sphere with only 1 dimension in space. The result is a morphing 4D shell that collapses all particles into a focus with 0 volume once per period.
    - pontifier 6y ago
      Actually... On further visualization the plasma seems to just form a 4D sphere that rotates and translates in 6 dimensions. The flatness of the 2 "missing" dimensions corresponds to the quality of the focus and synchronization of the system, so they are not going to ever be completely missing. The focus is like what you'd get if you were looking at slices of a solid ball. You'd see a point grow into a large circle, then shrink again to a point. It's basically the view on the left side of the simulation on my website. The right side of the simulation video shows a different cross section. The x axis there is the one dimension of the 4D sphere that stays in 3 space.

pmayrgundter 6y ago

Is it similar to the Bussard reactor? Looks like a cylindrical variant of its sphere mechanism. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1992078142/building-the-open-source-bussard-fusion-reactor?ref=category https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1992078142/building-the...

pontifier 6y ago
The linked video and Kickstarter look more like a Farnsworth Hirsch inertial confinement reactor. Fusion reactions do occur in them, but a cold gas cloud forms at the center because of collisions with the physical electrode. What starts as a group of colliding and circulating beams quickly transforms into beam on target. The result is that ions only have a few chances to fuse before they lose too much energy. My understanding of the Polywell is that it uses a trapped cloud of electrons to form the central cathode, which can help keep deuterium ions hot by reducing grid collisions. The downfall I see is that you are still trying to "squeeze jelly with rubber bands". The Brillouin limit describes the maximum steady state density possible in a non-neutral plasma. In my device, the average density is well below this limit, but is briefly very very high. The goal is to have smooth and steady cyclotron trajectories most of the time, but all these trajectories intersect at the same point simultaneously.