F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
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Steven Sesselmann
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F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Hi Guys,

With the recent publication of my patent application, the FICS fusion concept is now on the table for discussion and experimentation.

As the actual patent document is hard to read, I have produced a short video (18 minutes) to explain the concept and the ideas that I am working with.

http://youtu.be/YKbbKNt7jq8

If anyone is interested in seeing or reading the actual patent application, it can be found at WIPO here..

http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/search/ ... 9&maxRec=3

(better to read the pdf as WIPO use ocr to convert text to web, which unfortunately introduces a lot of nonsense.)

I will deal with the building of the FICS fusion reactor in the Fusor Construction forum.

Have fun, and please ask if there is something I have not made clear.

PS: This video was done in one take, no rehearsal and no edits, please excuse my occasional stumbling.

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Richard Hull »

Excellent video! Thanks for sharing your ideas. I do not see this concept working for a number of reasons, mainly in that once again you are attempting to herd ions and regardless of various brilliant ideas, loses tend to always overcome gains, thus requiring more input energy to support the proposed process.

From what I was able to gather, your process is rather complicated in that a number of steps in it must go exactly as planned with results that, in the final case, will be self sustaining or at least not a net loss.

Without delving into the negative minutia, I would like to see you complete your work, (and it looks as if you are well underway), and or find an adherent here who will work with your idea and report back to us on the relative merits or pitfalls found. This is what you did with the "STAR" concept which was a good idea, at first, but just did not pan out.

You are certainly one of the most active thinker-doers here and this alone puts you in a special star circle among us. I applaud this with all my heart.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by JamesC »

Good Stuff Steven, always great to see new ideas being persued into reality 'against the odds'

So am I along the right track to imagine that what you are trying to do is create a (relatively) cool plasma which is compressed by the 100KeV but still cool. Almost a liquid of D+ ions. With the hope being that without the heat the average D+ seperation can be quite small, perhaps small enough to trigger a long range qantum tunnelling effect as an alternate fusion mechanism to tranditional kinetic coloumb barrier penetration. Perhaps the same something that has been hinted at in various cold fusion results.

-- Following with interest.

JC
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Thanks again to Richard for breaking the ice on this one, when you throw a curve ball, the posts often go a bit quiet.

James, your analysis is fairly close to the mark. If my theory (the one where the electron is nothing more than an anti-proton at very low potential) , then the Coloumb barrier ought to become lower at the rate of.

The mass energy potential of +1 hydrogen ion at ground potential, less the ions negative potential divided by the total mass energy at ground potential.

So at -100 kev potential a factor of ((10^9) - (10^5)) / (10^9) = 0.9999

Now since the current fusor energy quotients are in the order of 10^-11, a lowering of the Coulomb barrier by a factor of 10^-4 might be significant.

Thanks for your feedback...

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Chris Bradley »

Hi Steven,

I wanted to get a chance to hear out the whole of your video before commenting. (Sorry, few opportunities to do that, these days.) Richard has already given you the brownie badge for that one - a continuous, confident dialogue to camera for that long is an achievement in itself!

I agree very much with James C too; its good to see ideas be crafted and manifest in something real. (Hi, James! Glad to see you are still keeping an eye on the forum!) Unfortunately, being able to turn an idea into existence in no way means it'll work (as we both well know!).

In the hope of providing some reassurance and encouragement, I will quote from Tesla's autobiography (that a recent thread here encouraged me to revisit);

> "[The] ultimate purpose [of invention] is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements"

Anyhows, moving along.. I have the following points for discussion on your theory/comments;

1) You say in your video; "The electrostatic potential of the atom is what determines its energy in the energy potential well", with further comments indicating that you think a 1+ ion that has dropped through 100kV (say) will *have* 100keV energy. I'm unclear whether this is exactly what you are saying, but it may or may not have 100keV energy. It depends on its history getting to that point. If it has collided with a load of stuff on the way, it may have passed [some of] that 100keV of energy on to other particles along the route. If I understood what you said, you seem to be saying that the reason a fusor *doesn't* work so well is because there are *too many* of these high energy ions loitering in the centre of a fusor. This isn't so. What you find there, at the centre, is a thermalised mass of what-were-once high energy ions along with (and mostly) background atoms that have picked up the energy of the fast ions in thermalising collisions leading to a Maxwellian distribution of energies way way lower than the original ions' energies.

2) The arrangement to recover the energy for self-sustaining operation seems to rely on the fusion products travelling conveniently and in a well-behaved manner back up the accelerator tube. Surely, most of the fusion products would collide with the reaction chamber walls, as they are emitted isotropically?

3) If a [say] 2 MeV proton makes its way up to the end of the tube, I believe you are saying this will impart its electrical energy and drive the circuit around. Well, I'm sure it will, but its *electrical* energy is only 1eV. I don't think you'll sustain any useful current with that.

4) This bit worries me and either means we may find a smoking hole where Sydney once was (!), or you've not thought about feedback control: If a reaction becomes self-sustaining and is to be limited by external electrical resistance control, then how do you know you will have enough control over it to stop it going critical? I mean, if any reaction puts out more energy than it needs to maintain it, and that the reaction rate increases with more energy feedback, then you have the criteria there for an uncontrolled, exponential, spontaneous increase in reaction rate. What do you see would limit the reaction rate, excepting your proposed electrical control (for which I don't see any way of determining how fast the control needs to/can be adjusted to maintain control of the reaction rate)?
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Chris,

Your questions are well thought out as always. Answering your questions to the best of my current understanding as follows....

1)

In my video I explained that “The energy potential of an ion is a function of where on the electrical potential energy scale it was separated from it’s electron.” Take a moment and think about this, it is fundamental to understanding the nature of matter, for in my video I was talking about an electrostatic potential energy well of -100 Kev, but in reality, what we call ground potential is in the order of +1 Gev ., we know this because it is the mass energy of the proton, and what we call -100 Kev is actually +999 900 000 Volts potential. By changing our point of reference, we can see that mass itself is nothing more than electrostatic potential, and what is often referred to as mass defect is simply matter existing at an electrostatic potential lower than ground.

[snip - removed a false paragraph here]

As you correctly state, the ions in a standard tea kettle fusor will thermalize and have a range of energies, and at some point reach equilibrium. The outwards pressure being the thermal energy from the fusing atoms and the inwards pressure of the ions loosing energy from colliding with other ions. One of the points i think Rider makes, is that this Maxwellian ion distribution can never reach the point of ignition in a standard fusor.

I do not believe this to be the case when a plasma is mechanically confined to a hollow cathode. If a thermal plasma forms in a confined space at low potential, it relies on its temperature in order to escape. In the FICS configuration which has a single ended accelerator tube the escape temperature is a function of it’s electrostatic potential.

So providing we can maintain a hot thermal plasma inside a hollow cathode, ions are held in check, or herded into a corner as Richard might say, but being confined at such a low potential is not where such light elements wish to be. The lighter elements exist naturally above ground potential, and given a chance they will want to get back to where they belong, so they pull a trick out of the hat, and fuse. (In a similar way as a King in a game of chess, uses the towering move to escape check mate).

By fusing, deuterium nuclei combine to form Tritium or He3, and a proton or a neutron, and post fusing these new particles obtain the necessary kinetic energy needed to escape the potential energy well.

2)

It has always been a belief, that fusion is a random event, and that particles are emitted isotropically, however I speculate that nature will once again do its thing, and that 50% of the fusion products, if they occur in FICS, will be directed so that the maximum energy escapes up the tube, for the same reason that toothpaste comes out the top when you squeeze the tube, it’s the direction of lowest resistance.

3)

FICS fusion stands for Fusion Induced Charge Separation, and one of the outcomes I am hoping for is that electrical energy can be harnessed by the process of allowing the fast fusion products to escape up the accelerator tube to ground, and directing the electrons via an electrical circuit to ground. While the proton escaping to ground only has a charge of +1, it has travelled upwards through a potential of say 100,000 volts, ergo for the electron to rejoin the proton, it must likewise traverse a potential of 100,000 volts. From this configuration we can see that kinetic energy of a +1 charge moving through a 100 kev potential can be turned into electron current. Converting high voltage to high current can be done by traditional means.

4)

As I obviously believe that FICS will work, I probably would be lying if I said I was not a little bit concerned, but only a little. It should be possible to prevent a catastrophe, by limiting the negative potential of the cathode. given the current construction of FICS, I very much doubt that the cathode could fall to a lower potential than around -60 to -70 Kev, without arching across somewhere, and if a plasma was sustained at that potential the fusion rate will probably be similar to a fusor at the same potential and pressure.

A simple safety measure that I am considering is a pre set spark gap to ground, which could be tested and adjusted prior to an experiment on any given day. If set to around 60 kev. I think the experiment would be safe(ish).

Were I to surround the cathode in a tank of dielectric oil, there could be a risk that the cathode would fall to much lower levels, and who knows what might happen.
(Hey, if you guys at the NIF read this, you might want to give it a try, it will be a heck of a lot cheaper than what you are constructing at the moment... )

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Richard Hull »

It is to be remembered that 100% of the fusion produced protons are at ~3mev. In a 100kev accelerator they are going to go pretty much where they damned well please at the moment of creation and not give a hoot in hell about a whimpy 100kev potential. (pardon the vernacular, used for emphasis only).

The protons will not effectively feel any anisotropic pressure or experience any herding effect due to any forces in your system. It is safe to assume pretty much isotropic scatter on those puppies along with the 3He, T and Neuts. This is provided 60 or so years of research work in the nuclear research field is any gauge.

Good luck with the cat herding. "movin', movin', movin', keep them kitties movin, though their disapprovin' ....." (adapted old TV show, "Rawhide", theme song.)

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by JamesC »

>Hi, James! Glad to see you are still keeping an eye on the forum

Hi Chris, yes I like to keep an eye out for some of the more exotic possibilities. I know the core of the forum is about construction and thats a worthy goal but I like following what you, steven and Doug are doing as you are seem to be doing the most exploritory work.

I am slowly forging my ideas into a design I am calling a Phase-Lock-Fusor with Scattering Energy recovery. I am not as far along as steven ( wow steven ) but my ideas dont require any exotic physics just really amazing enginneering well beyond my present budget - I keep waiting for my software business to take off to fund it all!

> In a 100kev accelerator they are going to go pretty much where they
>damned well please at the moment of creation and hot give a hoot in
>hell about a whimpy 100kev potential

Since this is speculative physics, speculating that it might be the potential gradient that triggers a directional fusion event is about the best we could hope for.

Steven:
I liked really liked your earlier thoughts and alternative view on spacetime. I admit to not fully grasping every aspect but I really hope your theory on mass = potential are right and hence unlock new possibilities for fusion. It would amazing to see.

Cheers,
James
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Dan Tibbets »

Several points I do not understand. You accelerate ions into the hollow cathode, but as the ions approach the cathode, they are accelerated even more and will exit the opposite side with the same energy as they had from the ion gun. Granted if there are collisions, the ions path may be randomized, but the angular momentum change does not have to mean KE change, if they bounce sideways their momentum will cause them to hit the internal wall of the hollow cathode. Only down scattered ions would spend more than ~ 1 pass inside the cathode before exiting the opposite side or hitting the wall. Essentially, I do not see how you decelerate most of the ions so that they stay inside the cathode. Also, the transparency of the cathode (even worse than a open grid) precludes reuse of ions. Unless you can keep the ions monoenergetic the ions will reach the cathode walls. And, this assumes the monoenergetic ions are contained by some means. How is this done. The Polywell claims to do this electrostatically, but it uses excess electrons contained by magnetic fields to create a central vertual cathode that will be the bottom of the ions potential well. You do not have this virtual cathode. If you are involking Gauss Law within the hollow cathode, the ions would not see the charge on the cathode walls, once it was inside the sphere, but it would still have the momentum it achieved from the ion gus and the attraction of the cathode as it approached it.

If you somehow cool the ions so that they are at very low KE, the ions will last longer inside the hollow cathode, but still they will only last ~ 1 pass. I don't know if this could result in increased densities- there is no containement, except perhaps a small amount for down scattered ions.

You mention that the electrons act as essentially anti protons. I do not see the justification for this. Certainly massive 'electrons'- Muons may greatly decrease the Coulomb barrier, and an 'electron' with the mass of a proton would work even better. I have read that 'heavy electrons' are part of some cold fusion theories, and there are strange things that happen in crystals and semiconductors, etc. If your device duplicates this effect, and it is real, there may be advantages over the same effect in a solid, but the densities involved would be tiny (if my claim of lack of containment is valid) and the fusion rates would be correspondingly lower, or the input ion current would need to be correspondingly higher.

Or, perhaps you are saying the low energy (?) ions are hitting the cathode interior walls and the fusion is occurring there. But, wouldn't this be the same as beam- target fusion at very low energies. Fusion would be extremely rare and the ions would only have one chance before giving up it's KE ( a gridded fusor may allow up to ~ 20 chances, and a Polywell perhaps a million chances. Granted, an anti- proton mass electron would probably more than make up for this shortfall, but how you derive this massive electron is a complete mystery to me.

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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Richard,

The odds are against me and 60 years of fusion research might still get the better of my idea, but let's give it a try and see.

Maybe the kittens will be better behaved if they are born in the bag, and come out in an orderly fashion when the bag is opened...

Be patient, I am suffering the frustrating wait for parts at the moment...

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

James,

Thanks for the encouraging words. To me it doesn't actually feel as if I am applying any new laws of physics, electrical potential is a relative concept, and transposing ones frame of reference is and always has been allowed. What I have done is simply taking it to the limit, and asked the questions "What if" and "Why not". For some reason these questions are almost discouraged in academic institutions, where the senior staff believe they know everything there is to understand.

So what if, the electron and the proton were at opposite ends of the electric potential scale?

... the next obvious question is

Why wouldn't they be at opposite ends of the electrical potential scale?

....the next question is..

Where are we (the observers) on the electrical potential scale?

...answer

Somewhere in between, the proton and the electrons potential, but how do we know where?

This is where I think the nuclear reactions give us a hint, because some nuclei decay up and some decay down, with Ni62 being the point of lowest potential. This looks to me as the potential closest to what we call ground potential.

Now take the mass of Ni62, and divide it by the number of nucleons, then multiply it with C^2 and that's what we call ground potential. Somewhere in the order of 900 Mev and falling.

I suspect time itself is the slippery path down the potential energy ladder, and that it is the unavoidable decay of the matter we stand on that governs the passage of time. Much like a giant clock spring unwinding.

Humanities greed for energy, only makes the spring unwind faster. What we are trying to do with fusion, is to make it unwind a bit faster, without completely loosing control of it.

We should probably not be doing it, and let nature unwind the spring at it's own pace.

Solar energy and geothermal energy are natural sources of energy that are beyond our control, and if given our full attention, could be exploited to sustain humanity, albeit in a different way than the current lifestyle demands.

Smart architecture and town planning could support a large population with a fraction of the energy we use now.

My five cents worth...

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Chris Bradley »

I find your descriptions of the physical world intriguing, but the element of them that I find it difficult to work with is that you seem to define potentials on an 'absolute' scale, with respect to a ground potential.

Of course, we *can* describe 'ground' as the state of charge neutrality, but beyond that I do not see how your theory connects up fusion probability with 'absolute electrical potential'. Well, OK, I read the words, but it's not clear to me because I can only envisage fusion rates in relation to the 'relative kinetic energies' of the fusing particles.

If it was simply down to the 'electrical potential' alone, then you could go hang a lecture bottle of deuterium on the nearest 500kV transmission line, and call it a fusion reactor!
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dan,

Reading your first paragraph, it sounds as if you are referring to STAR instead of FICS.

FICS is what I am working on now, and it differs from STAR in two ways.

1) It is a single ended accelerator

2) I am attempting to ceate the ions in the cathode rather than externally in an ion gun.

(see attached diagram)

Plasma behavior inside hollow cathodes has been well documented, and sheaths form against the cold wall, this in turn creates a build up of charge in the center. The cold wall is permeable to electrons, but not to protons, so the hotter the plasma gets, the more electrons are pushed out of the plasma and through the cold wall, leaving a net positive charge.

The big IF, is weather or not I will be able to keep the plasma hot. If not, plan B might be to try something like Carls RF heating, but to do it at cathode potential.

From my experience with STAR, I suspect the FICS reactor will sustain a plasma at much higher pressures than a regular fusor, rather than 10 micron, I think it will sustain a plasma and burn at 80 to 100 micron pressure. Time will show...

Steven

Image: The diagram is shows the cathode with approximate electrostatic field lines. the tiny hole on top of the cathode is the gas inlet, coming from a gas cylinder which is floating at cathode potential. Floating the fuel is not itself important, what is important is to ionize, ie separate the electron from the proton at cathode potential. But how to get the gas into the cathode, you can't simply run a pipe through a 100 kev potential?
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Dan Tibbets »

Well, that would eliminate some of my confusion.

Concerning a polarized plasma where the electrons accumulate near the hollow cathode surface and ions are left in the center to forma net positive space charge, how are the ions contained. There is no central virtual cathode, only a repulsive central vertual anode. I suppose there would be a zone between where the ions might find a minimal point in the opposing potential wells, but it seems that between the central virtual anode and the periferal virtual(?) and real cathode, that the ions would quickly stream to the solid cathode. Any charge build up would be minimal and such things as the Brillion limit(?) would preclude any useful fusion density. How you would get densities (irregardless of the amount of energy pumped into the system) that could result in 10^14 fusions/ second in such a small volume seems incredable. Of course the Brillion limit is apparently not an absolute limit, there may be workarounds such as the Polywell claims, and other research.

I suppose you could get such fusion rates if you pump in enough energy to maintain a ion density against heavy losses. Breakeven may not be possible, but it might make an impressive neutron source.

And, of course "heavy electrons" changres things considerably IF they exist and are not just an abstraction to describe what happens in some circuits.

Also, the hollow sphere looks like it might obey Gauss's Law to a fair degree. I think that would preclude the trapping of the electrons before they reached the cathode wall. Using the Elmore Tuck Watson design, the open grid traps electrons by pulling them back inside the grid once they have reached radii outside of the grid. Gauss Law precludes any effect on the electrons (or ions) within the positive grid. Only when the charged particles pass to greater radii or hit the grid is there an effect (acceleration).

After saying all this I admit that there are strange layers and complex relationships and dynamics in Fusor like devices, so your insights may be more applicable than my ... um...understanding. As you say, the experiment will tell.

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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Chris,

Well I think we often forget to include ourselves in the equation. We like to calculate numbers around the event itself. We consider the two particles, their mass and their velocity, but pay little or no attention to number one, "the observer". You are the third element in the equation. Einstein paid attention to this and sorted out quite a few problems in his time.

Electrical potential and potential energy might turn out to be the same and it is not an absolute scale, rather it is a scale which is relative to you the observer.

We already know where on that scale we are because mc^2 simply describes the total potential energy. by dividing the mass m by the number of nucleons in the mass, we get the energy for one elementary charge or the proton if you like.

And it turns out that proton has a mass of 0.938 Gev. but when bound inside a heavier atom, the mass of the nucleon is slightly less, this is because it has fallen to a lower potential, by fusing with other protons.

So what we call ground potential is a potential somewhat lower than that of the proton, but nowhere near as low as the electron.

The proton and the electron therefore represent the extreme asymptotes of the potential energy scale with respect to the observer, and when we now compare the mass of the electron to the mass of the proton, we see that the potential of our own body is much closer to that of the proton than that of the electron. This is a good thing, as it means we have some time to go before we hit rock bottom

As for your other question:

"If it was simply down to the 'electrical potential' alone, then you could go hang a lecture bottle of deuterium on the nearest 500kV transmission line, and call it a fusion reactor! "

Not so, because the laws of physics remain the same for any potential, the difference between your suggestion and the FICS reactor is that a) we are providing heat b) we are providing a route for the fusion product to escape.

Once again, there are three elements in your thought experiment, 1) the deuterium cylinder 2) the low voltage potential 3) the observer at ground potential

The coulomb barrier height is a function of relative potential, and were you to hang your deuterium bottle on a low voltage wire that was -0.938 Gev there would effectively be no coulomb barrier, but sadly there would also be no potential energy to extract from the fusing of nuclei.

Let me know if you feel I have suggested any inconsistencies when answering your question.

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dan,

You raise a few questions and I do not pretend to have all the answers.

The vision I have for FICS, differs from the classical fusor in many ways. We have a hollow cathode at the end of an accelerator tube, and deuterium gas bleeding slowly into the cathode.

At some point it is inevitable that the gas pressure will build up until a plasma forms, I have seen these kinds of plasma on many occasions, it is typically a thermal plasma and it tends to form inside the cathode.

Now we have a thermal plasma happening inside the cathode, into which more gas flows in and becomes ionized, those molecules that loose their electrons inside the cathode have low potential energy, and are therefore trapped in the cathode, inevitably the temperature/pressure of the thermal plasma will rise, and rise ....

Once pressure reaches fusion temperatures there will be a number of ways that feedback can take place.

a) fusion nuclei striking the inner cathode will sputter electrons back into the plasma
b) x rays will reflect in the holraum and heat the plasma in the center
c) fusion nuclei may directly collide with gas molecules.

Keep in mind that FICS will most likely operate at much higher pressures than a regular fusor. The gas density inside the cathode may be in the orders of 100's of microns, making the mean free path much shorter. Another consideration is the size of the cathode, my current design with a 70 mm cathode may be far from optimum, it may be that the cathode interior needs to be in the order of several meters. That would possibly be a outside the practical limits for an amateur, but no challenge at all from an engineering point of view.

Once a continuous fusion reaction is taking place inside the cathode, electrons will due to the heat, be forced out of the plasma, through the cathode, and back up through the electrical circuit.

At least one of the positively charged particles from every fusion reaction, will find it's way to ground via the accelerator tube, thereby completing the electrical circuit.

For each positive charge climbing through a potential of 100 kev., the electron must fall through the same potential to join it, and this is what I hope we can exploit.

If hypothetically the reactor was running at 10^17 fusions per second and each reaction sent one positive charge to ground via a 10^5 volt potential then we would have the equivalent of 10^22 electron volts per second of electrical energy, which is about 1600 watts, plus of course a whole lot of heat.

Please feel free to point out if you think I have drawn any wrong conclusions.

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by JamesC »

>For each positive charge climbing through a potential of 100 kev.,
> the electron must fall through the same potential to join it, and this
> is what I hope we can exploit

Right, so being a first principles kinda guy and without looking into the specific arrangement used a F.I.C.S this seems to be a nice idea as a building block for energy recovery from Fusion in general.

Right now you are assuming directionality but as an overall principle the idea of birthing ions in an energy well and using fusion to climb the potential well leaving their energy behind seems like a really efficient energy transfer mechanism from my naive point of view.

I have often wondered how to handle energy capture from fusion, as it stands you have to capture the neutron in some sort of thermal jacket and extract hot fusion products in some sort of hot gas with all of the energy transfer losses this implies.

I guess the neutron capture doesnt change but at least the hot fusion products could be forced to efficiently impart a good chunk of their energy when exiting the energy well. I guess in the end you would want to ramp up the potential from 100KeV to something closer to the minimum fusor product - whats that - He at .82Mev for DD fusion? and maybe figure out some sort of staged system to handle other products.

Nice.. if thats true as an energy recovery mechanism I might just have to figure a way to incorporate it into my (theoretical) design.

Cheers,
James
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Dan Tibbets »

I don't know why a your ion and electron energy transfer to a third entity, would be equal unless the system was in isolation- mo walls, no radiation . If an electron is accelerated to 100 KeV, it need not transfer this energy to an ion going in the opposite direction. Energy may be discharged as Bremsstrulung radiation, or most importantly the KE would be transferred to a wall and discharged as heat. If you have a very tignly coupled plasma- cold and very dense, the ions and electrons may transfer the energy between them nearly equally. But fusion plasmas are hot and less dense, so they are at most weakly coupled (coupling means that the local attraction between oppositely charged particles dominates over space charge effects).

You mention that as much as 1/2 of the fusion ions will pass through the hole and climb up a potential well and give u[p its energy to the circuit. This direct conversion may work (probably does) though not at 100% efficiency. 90% may be doing good. The major problem though is that the fusion ions are created with KE in an isotropic manner- traveling in random directions from the point of fusion. Most would hit the wall- in proportion to the surface areas of the hollow cathode walls and hole. The Polywell might work with direct conversion, especially with P-B11 or D-He3 fusion where most of the fusion energy may be in the KE of charged particles. But, there are two important points. First the random directions in the Polywell is converted by the cusp magnetic fields into fairly direction flows through cusps (they bounce around inside by being turned by the magnetic fields till they hit a cusp) Thus most of the fusion ions achieve controlled paths that allows for possibly efficient direct conversion. Even if the fusion ions bounce around inside the Polywell for a claimed ~ 1000- 10,000 times, their MFP is so long that they will only rarely collide with a fuel ion and transfer KE to the feul ions. There is insignificant heating by the fusion ions.
In the DPF these flows are also focused by magnetic fields and is also pulsed, so they have the additional option of direct conversion through an inductive (?) effect.
The second issue is that multiple MeV fusion ions have relatively low Coulomb crossections. If the MFP = ~ 1 cm for a 10 KeV fuel ion, then a 3 MeV fusion ion may have a MFP of ~ 100,000 cm. They will exit the system or hit a wall long before they impart significant KE to the fuel ions . These minimally interacting ions cannot heat a plasma unless their residence time / distance traveled is comparable with the confinement times. In Tokamaks, these fusion ions can heat the plasma because they are contained for relatively huge amounts of time (hundreds of seconds). This can be done with cuspless magnetic fields like in Tokamaks (at least in theory) but the confinement of these hot ions are brief in cusp machines (like Polywells, DPF, etc) and is even shorter in Fusors (essentially one pass). That is why Fusors, Polywells are not suitable for ignition efforts like in a Tokamak.
The potential well designed to accelerate and contain a species of charged particle (either an electron or positive ion, but not both) is worthless for a fusion ion because it's KE is several orders of magnitude greater than the Potential well. I should mention that pushing potential wells into the region of fusion ion KE might at first glance solve this issue, but Bremsstrulung issues, other issues, and inefficiencies in energy recovery methods quickly lead to a losing situation from an energy balance perspective.

Again, after saying all of this I understand that Tri Alphas' FRC efforts may include some electrostatic effects to improve confinement (overcome some of the magnetic instabilities?). There are a lot of variations that may help. The problem is that anything that seems to help one aspect of the system, generally hurts another aspect almost as much or more. Clever workarounds and compromises is the only way forward.

Dan Tibbets
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

James,

Looks like you've got it!

Nice to have you on my side, now let's see if we can make it work

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Chris Bradley »

Hi Steven,

Might I ask a 'test' question about your theory?

What does your theory say about why the fusion cross-section curve is as it is - i.e. why do we see fusion generally fitting a function predicted by quantum tunnelling theory down to quite low kinetic energies (much lower than you might expect if particles were trying to get back to some ground level)? Or put it another way, why will you need 100keV when fusion can be detected in plasmas of just a keV or two?

Also, at the other end, why do deuterons smash each other up at >~2MeV rather than simply have yet more opportunity to take the 'path' back to lowest potential?

I hope thinking about how these are represented in your theory will help evolve it.

best regards,

Chris MB.
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

[Chris MB said....What does your theory say about why the fusion cross-section curve is as it is - i.e. why do we see fusion generally fitting a function predicted by quantum tunnelling theory down to quite low kinetic energies (much lower than you might expect if particles were trying to get back to some ground level)?

Or put it another way, why will you need 100keV when fusion can be detected in plasmas of just a keV or two?

Also, at the other end, why do deuterons smash each other up at >~2MeV rather than simply have yet more opportunity to take the 'path' back to lowest potential?]

Chris,

Yesterday my son, who is in year 12 at high school came to me with a homework question. the question was "Why is the gravitational potential energy "Up" written as a negative number?"

I knew immediately that my answer would probably get him into trouble, so I convinced him to find the answer in the text book, and apparently the end point, or zero potential energy was conveniently put at infinity, the argument for this was that it was difficult to establish the zero point for potential energy in the other direction. In classical Newtonian physics, one might have chosen the center of the Earth, but then that point would have potential energy above the center of the sun, and if the center of the Sun was chosen then why not the center of the galaxy, and so on.. where does it end?

So it was decided to call infinity for zero gravitational potential.

Now, if I had done my sons homework, he could have expected a big "F", because I would have turned potential energy on it's head.

Energy is a simple scalar number E and E/c^2 is an objects mass, it matters little what kind of energy it is, potential, kinetic, thermal etc.. just energy does nicely.

So let's break it down even further, let's talk about energy per nucleon. All material objects can after all be broken down into nucleons.

For arguments sake, lets use the following approximations.

Nucleon mass (proton)......... 938Mev/c^2
Nucleon mass (Deuterium)... 936Mev/c^2
Nucleon mass (Helium 3)...... 934Mev/c^2
Nucleon mass (Nickel 62)......930Mev/c^2

Now to find the electrical potential energy of these nucleons, all we need to do is divide them by c^2, so the picture we get is that helium has a higher potential than Nickel and Deuterium has a higher potential than helium etc..

Now conventional physics places the proton on a pedestal and refers to mass defect, and binding energy, to explain the other nuclei, but in my theory there is no such thing.

The energy of an object is it's potential, and there isn't anything complicated about that, the only interesting observation is that we as observers are not at the top of the potential energy scale, we are made from relatively massive nuclei, and we happen to reside in a potential energy well, so where are we?

Well if we could count the number of nucleons in our body and work out the mass per nucleon we could establish our own potential, however i think we already know the answer.

We know that protons have a higher potential than us, because if we let go of a proton it actually falls up, yes...nothing to do with Archimedes, it falls up, because it's potential energy is higher than ours and it doesn't belong here, neither does deuterium, helium and the other light elements. The only way we can keep them here at ground potential is to bottle them up and watch them fly around like crazy hitting the inside of the cylinder walls (we call this pressure, but it's actually potential energy).

There is reason to believe that ground potential and the potential of Ni62 (930Mev) is one and the same thing. this is because the elements either side of this have higher electrical potential per nucleon.

Before answering Chris's question specifically, we might ask, Why do nuclei fuse?

Nuclei fuse in an effort to get back to their natural electrical potential equilibrium. Take for instance free floating Deterium molecules, they will not fuse, because they happily exist in their natural potential (this actually means falling up unless we confine them), but when we confine the molecules and heat them up, we are removing them away from their natural potential, remember heating them increases their potential even more, and we are not letting them go there.

This is where it is obvious that classical physics has got it wrong, smashing particles together faster and faster is not was causes the fusion, rather it is the brief moment when the particles stop moving, that actually causes the fusion event.

Increasing the velocity of a deuteron actually increases it's potential, and at some point you will be making it harder and harder to fuse, which I think answers Chris's third question.

In F.I.C.S. fusion, the objective is to take the molecule as far as possible below ground potential before ionizing it, thereby confining the ions to a potential energy well, before heating them and inviting them to fuse. The ions confined and heated below ground potential, have a lot more to gain by fusing, than ions heated above ground potential, and therefore ought to fuse more readily.

To answer Chris's first question...
As I have explained above, the Deuterons are not fusing in order to get back to ground potential (630Mev), they are fusing because they want to get back to Deuteron potential (936Mev), but to escape confinement and do this they have to trade off some energy (~2Mev) and settle for Helium or Tritium (934Mev).

To answer Chris's second question...
Providing two or more molecules of fusion reactive fuel are confined at a potential other than their natural potential, there is a probability of fusion. This probability as Lawson proposed is a function of temperature * number density * time

The only modification I would make to the Lawson factor is that temperature be defined as the difference in potential between the ion and the confinement.

Once again, by lowering the confinement chamber below ground potential, it should no longer be necessary to heat the plasma as much to achieve the same level of fusion. I need to look up how to convert voltage to temperature for deuterons.

If this post raises more questions than answers, I will as always try my best to answer...

PS: For you guys still at high school and Uni, stick to your text books, but never forget to ask What if? and Why not?

Steven

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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by JamesC »

>We know that protons have a higher potential than us, because if we
>let go of a proton it actually falls up, yes...nothing to do with Archimedes, it falls up

When you say it goes 'up' do you mean this in a gravitational sense? Do you propose to link gravity to potential in your theory. This is a demonstratable thing though right, I am pretty sure people would have noticed if protons fall up?

Beam me up scotty, just contain a bunch a protons to create an anti-gravity drive?

Since current theories are demonstrably false, ie qantum and gravity dont mesh, if we all just accepted the current theories as absolutes rather than mathematical constructs that just happen to fit our current experimental knowledge we could never move forward. What I like about your efforts steven is you are putting your money and efforts where your theories take you. Right or Wrong we will all learn something from the results.

Cheers,
James
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

James,

Some things do indeed fall up...

A single proton is the stable particle with the highest voltage potential, and if it was allowed to thermalize with our world at ground potential, it does indeed fall up.

ie. obtain sufficient kinetic energy to escape the earths gravitational field.

A change to our way of thinking, not to our laws of physics.

Steven
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by JamesC »

Right so you mean two objects are equipotential when they have the same total energy, mass+kinetic+electrical. So obviously for the earth to be equipotential to a proton in this view the proton would be traveling at light speed but incredible mass energy. Not so much 'up' as in anti-gravity but as in not bound by earths gravity, actually earth would not like to collide with such a proton..would look like a light speed mini black hole?
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Re: F.I.C.S. Fusion a new concept in fusion

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

James,

Not exactly..., two objects are equipotential when the nucleons are at the same energy potential.
A satellite in orbit around a planet is equipotential with the potential of the radius it is orbiting.

The nucleons in the water molecules of a cloud, hanging at 1000 meters are equipotential with the electrical potential at that height, however when they condense into water droplets, they fall to a lower potential and consequently appear as rain.

Gravitational potential and electrical potential actually comes together as one and the same thing, when you measure it from the zero point.

Electrical potential increases with height, which is why we have to add energy to elevate matter.

Take for example our Sun, it is at a much lower potential than the Earth, and I suspect that it has an electrical charge in the order of -1 Mev with respect to us the observers. Not surprising that it resembles a grid less fusor.

It should be possible to calculate the exact conversion between gravitational acceleration g and electrical potential.

Steven
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