Author Topic: Extracting energy from fusion  (Read 2373 times)

Offline scienceguy

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Extracting energy from fusion
« on: 12/11/2008 09:56 pm »
Hi

I just wanted to post what seems to be a good way to extract energy from a fusion reaction, instead of just using the products to heat water.

What if you just pass the charged products of fusion through a coil of wire? If the coils in the wire are at some angle, say 45 degrees to the direction of the path of the particles, then the charged particles should induce a current in the wire which will induce a magnetic field in the coil which will keep additional charged particles in the middle of the coil.

The induced current would be a source of energy.

You could use this method with say the pyroelectric fusion method discovered by Narajo et. el. (2005), and send the produced helium-3 through a coil of wire.

Granted the coil has be in a vacuum so that the charged particles will just fly freely down the coil without bumping into other particles, but for that reason it could make a good method to use in space, where a vacuum is ubiquitous.

Reference

Naranjo et. al. Nature 434 1115
« Last Edit: 12/11/2008 11:35 pm by scienceguy »
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline khallow

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Re: Extracting energy from fusion
« Reply #1 on: 12/12/2008 01:01 am »
One of the reasons aneutronic fusion methods are interesting. That is, not only can you keep the energy in your fusing plasma longer (because it's not being leached away by neutrons), but the resulting products are charged and you can harvest some of the energy in this way.
Karl Hallowell

Offline Damon Hill

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Offline scienceguy

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Re: Extracting energy from fusion
« Reply #3 on: 12/12/2008 05:05 pm »
Would this method work with polywell fusion? Doesn't the fusion reaction have to be contained in polywell fusion?
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline scienceguy

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Re: Extracting energy from fusion
« Reply #4 on: 12/12/2008 05:52 pm »
OK I looked over

http://www.polywellnuclearfusion.com/Clean_Nuclear_Fusion/Making_Electricity.html

And I see how polywell fusion would generate electricity. Perhaps my method would work by replacing the metal grid with long tubes of coiled wires. I don't know which method would generate more electricity.
e^(pi*i) = -1

Offline mlorrey

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Re: Extracting energy from fusion
« Reply #5 on: 12/13/2008 11:36 pm »
polywell fusion is going to be very useful for propulsion in a number of ways:

a) Launchers: clean fusion launchers ... SSTO with fantastically useful mass fractions.
b) B11-P fusion: Boron11-proton fusion is extremely low radiation, so need for heavy shielding on a spacecraft (not to mention a launcher) is negated, thus improving fuel requirements for interplanetary spacecraft.
c) polywell fusors can feed both electric propulsion systems and be used directly to produce thrust from reactor coolant.

Bussard said they can produce 1000x the thrust of a chemical engine at the same Isp or 1000x the Isp at the same thrust level. Talk about wishes come true.

Apparently EMC2's experiments of the past year confirmed Bussards tests before he died. EMC2 has got further funding from the Navy to develop systems that will be needed to make a 100Mw testbed reactor with a 3 meter diam core. If the development of those work out, then $100-200 million to build the testbed power plant.

This will not only make us independent of foreign oil, but put us into space affordably, in a big way, within a decade or so.
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Offline kevin-rf

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Re: Extracting energy from fusion
« Reply #6 on: 12/14/2008 09:12 pm »
Apparently EMC2's experiments of the past year confirmed Bussards tests before he died. EMC2 has got further funding from the Navy to develop systems that will be needed to make a 100Mw testbed reactor with a 3 meter diam core. If the development of those work out, then $100-200 million to build the testbed power plant.

Do you have a source on that bit of good news?
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Offline Damon Hill

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Re: Extracting energy from fusion
« Reply #7 on: 12/15/2008 04:08 am »
http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?pr=Focus_Fusion

Check out the animation; shows plasma being fired into a coil.

The very elegant things about p-B11 fusion are that it sidesteps thermodynamics and the waste is common helium.  There IS intense X-radiation that has to be shielded against and a host of other practical engineering problems; most we can hope for is that the current polywell experiments or other configurations will work well enough to be useful for large scale power generation.

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