Fusor Forums

I ran across this patent by Brian E. Jurczyk et. al (6,922,455) assigned to Starfire Industries, a Chicago area gov't contractor. I was searching for saddle field devices and this fusion device popped up. I did a quick search on the forum but haven't seen any references. I uploaded a pdf of the patent to http://www.belljar.net/techpatents/jurczyk_6922455.pdf

Steve

It appears to be a cylindrical fusor, of the type George Miley was working on for some time at the University of Illinois. The description shares a number of interesting technical and construction details and I think the neutron source rate reported is quite in line with the higher-performing amateur fusors. I wonder if the suppressor grid is really worth the effort required to include it. The idea is certainly interesting.

Thanks for sharing.

-Carl

Well i'm surprised that this was granted a patent.
If you troll through Nuclear Instruments and Methods this idea has been around 30 years with plenty of papers extolling various improvements.
The use of a suppressor grid to suppress secondary electrons is also well known and I have put up on this site various ways of getting this to work, including self bias, rendering the ancillary supply redundant.

Secondary electrons tend to kill of the ions so suppressing them will give a higher fusion yield as the ions will hang around until naturally falling back to the un-energised state, or colliding with the containment walls, or fusing with another D atom

True enough, John, I didn't see anything that struck me as particularly novel. Whether or not it's useful and durable as a patent per se is a question for the businesspeople and their lawyers. But unlike a great many of these things, it's got detail and numbers about equipment that people actually put together, and as a technical reference I think it's quite interesting and relevant.

-Carl

John,

USPTO records indicate it was originally rejected for being anticipated by Hirsch (3,530,497), and also for matters related to the original application not disclosing a best mode and enabling detail.

There was some modification to the claims by the applicant following a post-non-final rejection request for reconsideration.

The subsequent allowance notice says "..no prior art or record provides for the method of producing neutrons in a high-pressure high-resistance gaseous discharge double cathode environment wherein electron flow is selectively limited."

The term 'high pressure' in the claims seems rather arbitrary and they usually don't let through 'inspecifics', but I'm not interpreting here, just reporting back what is said in the notes.

In any case, the patent expired in 2009 due to non-payment of renewal fees.

Jurczyk and Stubbers where students of Dr. Miley and they came up with some really cool concepts for the IEC work at UI. If memory serves me right Brian proposed a concept called REEDO which used RF energy super imposed on the grid to increase reaction rates.

These two and a few others like Blare Bromley where some of the best IEC innovators that Miley ever had at his lab. I remember Stubbers showing me all the different IEC grids that they had built and how they thought some could be sold as earrings for the girls on campus. This is all back when they were starving students.


Hector