Aerogel in a fusor

[HighVoltageFox]

I have found that is quite easy to make your own aerogel, the super material that nasa is using for insulation. It may be expensive to buy but its is easy to make. If a fusor was lined with it and tugsten was used to make the grids the heat from a fusor could be increased to many thousands of degerees with out the SS camber even becoming hot to the touch. If used the heat energy could help with fusion and there would be no risk of a melt down. Since aerogel is mostly clear cameras would have no problem veiwing the fusor interior. The only difficultly is that the aerogel may have some difficultlies in low pressure enviroments. I could crack.
Could this help fusor power output? I know at least it could help in high temp runs.
,AH

[Q]

i would suspect that it would out gas terribly at the presure of a running fusor. but i would certainly be interested in how to make it. home grown capacitors anyone?

Q

[DaveC]

You can't take an aerogel beyond its own melting or disassociation temperature.

The presence of the aerogel would also likely interfere with the ion motions, as it probably will charge up, assuming whatever it is made of is non-conducting.

Dave Cooper

[HighVoltageFox]

Well aerogel is just silica and is non-conductive, but it can be made out of carbon and iron. Making it electrically conductive and still non-heat conductive. And the silica aerogel can with stand heat of at least 3000F, and I am not sure of the iron/carbon composite.
I know of two sites that give a lot of info on this.
http://eande.lbl.gov/ECS/aerogels/satoc.htm
http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerogel/ ... rogel.html

,AH

[ebeuerle]

Neat idea but I think it would interfer with plasma creation that is needed in order to create fusion. I also don't see what it would buy us besides insulating the steel chamber which certainly isn't the main problem with attaining breakeven.
-Eddie B.

[3l]

Hi folks:

Dave is correct the temperature for fusion is in the millions of degrees Celcius! All materials except for neutridium will melt at those temperatures. Since I can't get neutridium into my 96 Metro to take it from a Ham Fest. Ebay won't ship any thing over 1 ton by Fedex! Danged Democrats! When it was raining one day and I was bored staring at Paris Hilton's Picture, I ran the numbers for a standard sized grid the number of neutrons required ..... weighed in the neighborhood os 50 ton! @$#$%%%#$. From now on I pull a Richard (Hull) simply state that no amount of material science can solve the grid problem. Period end of quote.

Happy Fusoring?
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[DaveC]

Jjust clarify Larry - what is the "grid" you are speaking about? the power grid, not the fusor grid? Sorry to be dense.

Dave Cooper

[3l]

Hi Dave:

I a particle geek too.
nothing tricky ...the fusor grid in a six inch fusor .
assuming a 3/8 tuibe as your model.
Simply take the surface area in meters the divide by the circumference of the neutron. That will give you the number of the neutrons needed . remember no hollow tubes!
Multiply the number needed by the mass of the neutron and voila
50 tons.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech