how to electricity out?

[guest]

I am new to the fuser does it to produce neutrons and x-rays evenly 360 by 360 sphere
all the research I have seen so far only measures a small area.
Could there be a pattern to the neutrons the x-rays are being produced from a number of sources I think therefore it is less likely to have a pattern

And if we're able to get this thing to work how are we going to get electricity out

is it going to be the neutrons heating some sort of fluid shielding and turning a generator
or something else

Robert

[Adam Szendrey]

Hi Robert!

First of all it already works. There are a number of fusing fusors. And we will most likely never use the boiling teapot idea witha fusor to get electricity out efficiently. Anyway talking about efficiency is really futile right now. The fusor (and this was posted so many times on this forum) is a neutron/X-ray producer, a device to study fusion physics. Very interesting, really nice, but it is not "energy business ready". Infact it is very far away from that. I suggest you read the older posts on this forum to get an idea.
If by "getting it to work" you mean a fusion device that produces more power than it requires that is not on the horizon, or we just don't see it yet. Well maybe (hope not) the water boiling idea would be used....but that has a really poor efficiency. But there are a number of ideas on how to get electricity out of the fusor, and the goal is direct conversion. One is to collect the fusion produced multi MeV ions with an electrode , so it is charged to a high potential. High voltage can be divided into smaller potentials.

Adam

[Carl Willis]

Robert,

Because of the exothermic nature of the DD fusion reaction, the neutrons are emitted isotropically even if the distribution of incoming deuterons is not spherically uniform. Our fusors collide deuterons of low kinetic energy relative to the Q-value of the reaction, so there is almost no angular dependence on neutron or 3He emission. X-rays are produced by cathode electrons striking the fusor chamber wall at high velocity. For our low voltages, shielding can be effectively accomplished by the fusor vessel itself, perhaps in concert with some external lead sheet.

One of the ideas for extracting energy from such a system was to decelerate positively charged reaction products using a high voltage electrode, which would collect the slowed particles and cause a current to flow. Neutron-producing reactions are more of a problem because a large fraction of the fusion energy leaves the system via the hard-to-stop neutrons.

-Carl

[Richard Hull]

Robert,

A lot of axes are ground here and there is room in the workshop for everyone. In general here is a list of the types of folks here and why they are here and what their goals are.

1. Builders - These folks are makers of things neat and interesting. This includes model airplanes, radiio transmitters, steam engines, fast cars, Tesla coils, fusors, etc. You get the picture. They are not trying to "save the world or make power" ...An acronym...... "non-saviors"

2. Folks studying nuclear physics and who are truly interested in the fusion process in general whether they build or not. "non-saviors"

3. Folks looking to study the effects of neutrons on matter (making neutron generators) The fusor is an OK item for this. "non-saviors"

4. Theoretical arm chair warriors. Folks who have ideas that come so fast and furious that they just gotta share them with others. They will never build anything, but give other folks who do build good ideas and insights. "non-saviors"

5. Vacuum heads, welders, science fair hopefuls,etc. This is a catagory of folks who are extremely sharp in one area of fusor construction. They may or may not build a full blown fusor, but usually tackle a demo unit. "non-saviors"

6. Amateur scientists - These folks are from 10 to 70 years of age who are hopelessly interested in all things scientific. Most are high energy buffs in that they are not particlurly interested in microbiology, but something that is impressive, cutting edge and interesting in the world of hard nosed physics and engineering, specifically. "non-saviors" (for the most part)

7. Saviors! These are the folks who want to plug a flat iron or their TV into an outlet attached to a thermonuclear device. They want to do it right now with no delay and often can't understand the delays associated with getting fusion on line. This is understandable since, ostensibly, the best egg-heads on the planet have been farting with it and spending billions of our money for over 50 years now.
Most of these folks are intially interested in the Farnsworth fusor, but fade out once they see it will not allow a plug-in outlet to be installed. Their goal in life is to either save the world by supplying power so cheap it wouldn't pay to even meter it or attach themselves to a project that claims it will.

So, you see, there is room for every one here from the ever faithful in hope of a 'free energy' tomorrow to the garage grease monkey deciding he will "take a whack" at doing fusion on his kitchen table. In between are the dablers, dilettantes, crackpots, machinists, tinkerers, theoreticians, the mathematically adroit, politico-scientific fusion debaters, high voltage freaks, internet lurkers, propeller heads and new age wanna-bes.

The above catagorization appears narrow, but most folks are a mix of some or all of these catagories rather than being so narrowly foucused on one issue. Still, all of us probably tend towards one area more than the others.

The overall demeanor of the list is one of serious study of all the issues associated with the process of fusion and specifically the design, improvement and construction details of the Farnsworth/Hirsch-Meeks fusor.

This includes the study of of the fusor's relative efficiency and how to make it better either by improving the current output by slow degrees or to make it into a power source down the road.

Anything that orbits or attaches itself to the above study is fair game for discussion.

Richard Hull

[guest]

I'm severely dyslexic and I think in three-dimensional images instead of words
so sometimes it is difficult to translate so forgive me if I do not have the proper terms for what I'm trying to say. I apologize

I am an amateur scientist that really wants to understand it all and if I can save humanity in the process I'm okay with that.

The fuser represents a device that is capable of fusing small amounts of material producing neutrons theory suggests in random corrections has there been any experiments to confirm this.

I was wondering what research had been done on turning high-energy neutrons into electricity

Is one can get electricity helped of a device even if it is a lot less than what is put in it is still a good demo.
And can test neutron into electricity devices for what ever wins the race.

Robert

[Richard Hull]

Neutrons are electrically neutral and cannot be directly turned into electricity. Just a fact of nature.

Richard Hull

[guest]

True
you cannot turn the files directly into electricity
but he could heat a median and make a steam engine
my question is is there a nether way of doing it
how do the neutron detectors work.

[Jon Rosenstiel]

Ok, I'll jump in here and rate myself on Richard's scale.

First, Richard inadvertently used #5 twice, so on a scale of one to seven here is where I think I fit in. (In order of significance).

Six, one, three, five, and two. Number four and seven do not apply.

Anyone else?

Jon Rosenstiel

[3l]

Hi Folks:

Rating myself on Richards scale .
All but like Jon not #7
But I still do a light #4
I like to chew on a problem for a while to check it out...before I build it. money is tight
Sometimes a year goes by before action occurs.
Does armchair warrioring include simulation & prototype testing?
I build paper and cardboard mockups to wrap my head around the spacial and location problems. ( I have cad stuff but you can't
really get the feel from them even in 3D. But on the other hand
I feel real comfortable doing Mathematica...if you set up the problems right ...math doesn't lie)

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hull]

Number system is fixed! Sorry 'bout that.

I would be inorder of interest.

6,3,2,1...... zero interest in 7 at all. Goal too lofty and effectively unattainable by someone of my means, age, and temperment.

[Richard Hester]

Neutron detectors don't really directly convert neutrons to energy, at least not in any way where you could produce significant power. Since neutrons are neutral, any means of detecting them must be indirect. There are two main methods: 1) proportional counter tubes filled with either 3He or 10BF3 (boron trifluoride enriched in 10B). Thermal neutrons react with the 3He or 10B, and the resulting reaction products cause ionization in the tube, causing a small current pulse that is detected by means of a charge sensitive amplifier. These detectors are sensitive mainly to thermal neutrons, so they must be surrounded by a moderator to detect fast neutrons with any degree of efficiency. There are loads of books that cover this subject, and a Google search for neutron detectors will yield loads of hits.
2) The second main class of detectors employ proton recoil to detect fast neutrons. When a fast neutron passes through a substance containing lots of hydrogen (like most plastics, for example), it has a very good chance of colliding with a hydrogen nucleus ( a proton). Depending on the angle of collision, the neutron can transfer anywhere from zero energy to very close to its full energy to the proton, as the neutron and proton are very nearly identical in mass. The protons with significant energy transferred interact very strongly with their surroundings via ionization, and this can be detected. Scintillation plastic backed with a photomultiplier tube is a very common fast neutron detector. No company sells a neutron detector based on scintillator plastic because it is so cheap and easy to construct. The fusion community uses this sort of detector extensively. This type of detector is also sensitive to gamma radiation, so it is used in situations where the gamma levels are low to non-existent (fusion experiments), or the detector can be shielded with lead, which will absorb gammas but let most neutrons through. A small subset of this type of detector uses sectoral rings of plastic loaded with phosphor interleaved with non-loaded zones in a "bulls eye" arrangement. This makes it less likely that gamma radiation will interact with the phosphor to produce a signal, while any proton recoils inside the phosphor loaded rings will excite the phosphor and generate a light pulse, which can be detected by a photomultiplier tube. The gamma pulses generated by this detector will be generally significantly smaller than the ones generated by proton recoil events, so that the gamma pulses can be ignored using a properly set pulse discriminator.

[tcoleman]

Savior…..never (don’t want the garbage). Entrepreneur ….. fer-sure. As for the rest of the numbers (stages of life) they keep shuffling their order. I am a Techno-Junkie. That is addicted to technology of all kinds. Big boy’s toys, some things made for a purpose (spot welder), some things made for pure pleasure (pyrotechnics). Enjoy the physics of life the universe and everything or it won’t enjoy you. If you try to save the world your life will be miserable. Plankton can’t stop a title wave. Learn to surf or get smashed into the sand. Just do it because you want to ….. Dang-it!!! If you tick-off a few PHD’s in a lab somewhere that’s just an added bonus.

Sorry…….Thanx

“odd” Todd Coleman

[Paul_Schatzkin]

Yes, neutrons are neutral... what often gets overlooked in a lot of this discussion, though, is that for every neutron released, there is also a proton and the last I checked protons are most certainly NOT "neutral."

--PS

[Richard Hester]

It is true that a proton is produced for every neutron, but you need a setup inside the vacuum chamber to detect protons (usually a silicon detector). There are issues with protecting the detector against plasma erosion and electron bombardment, as well as inner gid sputtering products. The protons are stopped 100% by the vacuum chamber walls, while the majority of the neutrons waltz right through, so you can have your neutron detector comfortably on the outside.

[Richard Hull]

Perfesser,

Collect all those charged protons and convert to electricity at 100% efficiency and you have only collected a bit over 1/3 the fusion energy avaialble in a D-D reaction. 2/3 of the rest is out there in the form of neutral neutrons and kinetic energy in fast moving and very radioactive tritons and He3 nuclei. This already bad scenario, again, assumes 100% perfect fusion (all input power going to pure fusion) with no electron or D-neutral or unproductive D-deuteron interactions or grid losses or waste wall heating.

As always, I am on the scene with a wet blanket.....and the practical mind of the engineer. You think I'm bad and negative!..... Hell! If I got the thing working perfectly and was getting a bit more out than in, there is that next layer in moving to the outside world........The dreaded and damnable BEAN COUNTERS! They think engineers are in dreamland. Finally there is the Legal dept. and Government licensing and approval.

In the real world, things happen in onion skin layers where at the core are the dreamers and theoreticians. Next the physicsits, then the engineers, then the bean counters, then legal then coporate and then government. Each layer has a cadre of folks seeking to find flaws in the layer immediately below and impress the hell out of the layer immediately above. Without this osmotic or should we say peristaltic action nothing sees the light of day in its journey towards the consuming public.

Richard Hull

[guest]

What is the range of wavelengths from a D - D reaction
I suspect the wavelength is probably connected to the kinetic energy of the reaction
and should be easier to measure than the energy of the neutron right.
Could this information be useful for turning

Robert

[Richard Hester]

There is no range of wavelength as such. The reaction products are charged and uncharged particles with relatively high energy. If you want to, you can consider these particles as being of extremely short wavelength, but it won't help you to detect them. Please look at past posts in the three forums for a lot of information on detection of neutrons and charged particles.

[guest]

sorry I'm severely dyslexic
I thought he said photon's not protons
big difference
can we determine the energys of the neutrons protons
I know look at the other forms

Robert

[DaveC]

I am going to sidestep (almost!!) the philosophical aspects here..interesting though they may be....think most of us are at one time or another... in all these categories...perhaps even the 7th.

The issue of the high energy proton is quite interesting.as an energy extraction problem. Given the 14 or so orders of magnitude that fusor energy output is lower than breakeven, extracting the kinetic energy of the protons will not tip the balance a whole lot... But consider the practical problem here.

In a device where potentials are less than 100 keV, energetic particles are produced with MeV energies. To extract that energy one needs some method capable of handling potentials roughly 25 times as high. Thus for those struggling with 100kV feedthrough problems, to extract the multi-MeV proton kinetic energy through a braking electrostatic field, requires building a huge electrostatic source and reverse biasing it through proton neutralization, OR... building a long series of lower potential reverse biased braking field electrodes to do it in stages. Say 50 50 keV brakers. ..We have a name for this device it's called the "2.5 MeV multiplier".

One might also consider some form of a very much higher voltage electron multiplier like those in Mass Spectrometers. The proton impacts the entry area causing large amounts of secondary electron emission, leaving a positively charged area to partially slow the proton. Subsequent impacts further extract energy, till some reasonable fraction were obtained. Obviously such a concept would be difficult to imagine as the energy converter in a kW to MW size device. Further the entry angle would be critical to avoid building a megavolt ION Implanter. In which almost the entire energy would be collected as Heat.

There are also magnetic schemes to produce high energy photons through radiative emission as the proton is curved, and etc.. ad tedium.

All in all, the energy extraction appears much more formidable than the fusor.

Dave Cooper.

[kbonin]

Except for the "direct conversion" case - deaccelerated betas into helium gas scavanged by the vacuum system, and current flow...

[3l]

Hi Dave & Kerry:

At the risk of being an Armchair warrior.
I thought this topic out 2 years ago.
The mass spectro approach is too hard to implement in a small facility same with beta scavanging.
It would be ok for a large power plant but lousy for mobile power apps.

The only thing I could come up with that was compact and cheap
was a large terminal as a large cap with a cap divider chain.
or the electrostatic motor converter to run a standard generator.
The but tho is that the fusor would have to be at least 1 meter
in radius to work well simply from an electrostatic point of view.
( think of the sphere as a Van de graff terminal)
These methods could be built by an amateur.
Magnetic levitation would be a way to go.
The concept could be tested easily with VG generators.
My 1 meter radius fusor is in the shop....so I stopped working on conversion. LOL :>)

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Carl Willis]

Hi Robert,

Spectroscopy, or determining the energy, of neutrons is very tricky beyond just knowing whether they are "fast" (at least several keV) or thermal (in thermal equilibrium with the surroundings and typically about 0.025 eV). Being able to differentiate between the fast and thermal energy groups is due to certain absorption cross sections (such as B-10) that are very high in the thermal and epithermal range but very low for fast neutrons.

The neutron / radiation detection forum has several very good experimental reports leading to the conclusion that only fast neutrons are produced in DD fusion in the fusor.

-Carl