4 ms·
Helion as already demonstrated recovering 95% of the energy from non-fusable plasmas and Q << 1 plasmas. Thousands of times. It's perhaps worth noting that the
by smaddox 4y ago
Helion as already demonstrated recovering 95% of the energy from non-fusable plasmas and Q << 1 plasmas. Thousands of times.
It's perhaps worth noting that the high speed, high power electronics required to implement their approach are fairly new. I don't know how old the concept of FRC merging is, but if it existed in the 70's they wouldn't have had the technology to build it.
Edit: and to be clear, I'm talking about the dynamic control circuits, not the capacitors. That's old technology.
- _0w8t 4y agoThe new video by the same guy who created the original criticism https://youtube.com/live/wK5v1Nw98xs https://youtube.com/live/wK5v1Nw98xs starting from 2:03:00 explains that 95% recovery efficiency is not the whole story.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smaddox 4y agoIon escape might be a significant consideration, but given the plasma density and magnetic field strength, I'm guessing it wouldn't degrade the efficiency too much. Presumably they've done the calculations. I have not. As for the input heating loss, presumably that's included in the 95% recovery figure. If it's not, then it would definitely be good to know what the actual figure is including input heating losses.
- DennisP 4y agoThe nice thing about colliding two FRCs is that they form a new FRC with all their kinetic energy converted to heat, and it's very efficient to accelerate an FRC.