4 ms·

Any you can recall? I'm curious, and tired of having it pointed out to me that almost anything but solar is just a fancy way of boiling water.

rpedela 12y ago
Yes. LLP Fusion is building such a device. There are a couple others, but I don't remember their names off the top of my head. http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/ http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/
aperrien 12y ago
I'm no expert in this, but from what I've seen, most of the small players are working on variants of aneutronic fusion[1] a method that reduces the quantity and energy of the neutrons that come out of the reaction. There you have Polywell Fusion, Tri-Alpha Energy, and Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (Who are supposed to be running tests on their device this month). There's also Helion Energy[2], which is a YC startup, but their process seems to involve some sort of magnetic reflectivity from the fusion reaction. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion [2]http://www.helionenergy.com/ http://www.helionenergy.com/
danbruc 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion
infogulch 12y ago
We've become very good at the thermal energy differential -> mechanical energy -> rotational mechanical energy -> electrical energy system, just because it's trivially easy to get that first step since nearly every form of energy can be converted to heat. Some of our energy production machines use only a subset of these steps (e.g. internal combustion engines just use mechanical energy -> rotational mechanical energy), but pretty much everything save solar uses at least one of these conversions. So I find anything outside this cycle very interesting.
fleitz 12y ago
Who cares how fancy things are, in my province we generate 90% of our electricity from the sun. We have been doing so for 60 years, we were just smart enough to let the sun boil the ocean for us and harness the power of kinetic energy, rather than try to build fancy schmancy electronics. See the snow on the mountains? That's what we like to call a 'solar battery'. Often smart people making fancy things look down on those with working systems because the solution to the problem was so obvious that they couldn't make themselves look smart by doing something that actually works. Like really how hard is it to build a concrete structure that contains water, and allow that water to fall over a wheel... Who cares how inefficient or old it may be when it's so easy and cheap. It's like the guy who walks into a java shop armed with a few UNIX command line utils and bash and they all look down on him and call his system hacky when it works in a week and they're still figuring out their object model.
snarfy 12y ago
The hydrogen+boron fusion reaction produces three helium nuclei moving at about 2 million volts. All the energy is kinetic and held by charged particles, which means it can be extracted using normal electromagnetic techniques. Charged plates, coils, etc to step down the voltage are all that is needed, no 'boiler' intermediary step.

rpedela 12y ago

Yes. LLP Fusion is building such a device. There are a couple others, but I don't remember their names off the top of my head. http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/ http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/

aperrien 12y ago

I'm no expert in this, but from what I've seen, most of the small players are working on variants of aneutronic fusion[1] a method that reduces the quantity and energy of the neutrons that come out of the reaction. There you have Polywell Fusion, Tri-Alpha Energy, and Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (Who are supposed to be running tests on their device this month). There's also Helion Energy[2], which is a YC startup, but their process seems to involve some sort of magnetic reflectivity from the fusion reaction. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion [2]http://www.helionenergy.com/ http://www.helionenergy.com/

danbruc 12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion

infogulch 12y ago

We've become very good at the thermal energy differential -> mechanical energy -> rotational mechanical energy -> electrical energy system, just because it's trivially easy to get that first step since nearly every form of energy can be converted to heat. Some of our energy production machines use only a subset of these steps (e.g. internal combustion engines just use mechanical energy -> rotational mechanical energy), but pretty much everything save solar uses at least one of these conversions. So I find anything outside this cycle very interesting.

fleitz 12y ago

Who cares how fancy things are, in my province we generate 90% of our electricity from the sun. We have been doing so for 60 years, we were just smart enough to let the sun boil the ocean for us and harness the power of kinetic energy, rather than try to build fancy schmancy electronics. See the snow on the mountains? That's what we like to call a 'solar battery'. Often smart people making fancy things look down on those with working systems because the solution to the problem was so obvious that they couldn't make themselves look smart by doing something that actually works. Like really how hard is it to build a concrete structure that contains water, and allow that water to fall over a wheel... Who cares how inefficient or old it may be when it's so easy and cheap. It's like the guy who walks into a java shop armed with a few UNIX command line utils and bash and they all look down on him and call his system hacky when it works in a week and they're still figuring out their object model.

snarfy 12y ago

The hydrogen+boron fusion reaction produces three helium nuclei moving at about 2 million volts. All the energy is kinetic and held by charged particles, which means it can be extracted using normal electromagnetic techniques. Charged plates, coils, etc to step down the voltage are all that is needed, no 'boiler' intermediary step.