F.I.C.S. Experiment 1 (05/06/2012)

[Steven Sesselmann]

Hi Guys,

I am pleased to announce the results of my first official experiment with F.I.C.S. As most of the fusioneers know, success takes time, costs money and requires a huge mental effort, but success is sweet and rewarding.

That said, this achievement could not have been done without the help of so many on this forum, the list of people that helped me get to this stage is too long to list, but most of them are active members of this forum, so I shall only mention one person, who is often ignored, because he usually maintains a back seat and that is of course Paul Schatzkin, alias "The Perfessor," without whom the forum wouldn't exist.

Now on to my experiment...

With the assistance of my Son (Year 12 student) we prepared the new improved reactor for two experiments. The first being a null experiment, to make sure our neutron detection system was functioning properly.

NULL EXPERIMENT
The reactor had been under vacuum for 24 hours and had never been charged with deuterium. We started up the pumping system and opened gate valve to its full open position, and allowed a 30 minute pump down.

The neutron detector (B10 with GS-1100A and PRA) was turned on and the background counts were measured to less than 0.5 cps.

The gate valve was then closed and the pressure in the top end of the reactor was allowed to rise above 10 microns. Considering the exclusive use of Viton gaskets, the vacuum system hold vacuum pretty well, and it took at least 5 minutes for the pressure to reach 10 microns.

At around 10 microns we turned on the high voltage and the plasma struck a light, we visually noted that the plasma color was light blue, indicating that we had an air plasma, and not a deuterium plasma. We made the assumption that the gas composition was substantially Nitrogen.

Once the plasma struck light, the pressure rose rapidly, and a bit of tweaking on the gate valve was necessary in order to hold it at 10 microns.

We successfully managed to hold the voltage at around 40 kV with a constant current of around 5 ma. for 30 seconds, and no neutrons were detected.

EXPERIMENT WITH DEUTERIUM
The following experiment was aimed at detecting neutrons, and once again, a thorough 30 minute pump down of the system including the fuel cylinder above the cathode, was done.

With the high voltage switched off, the deuterium gas filling line with Swagelok Quickfit fittings was connected to the cathode fuel holder, and the cylinder was filled to 100 psi. and disconnected.

Further, a small amount of deuterium was flushed through the whole system.

Once again, the gate valve was closed, and high voltage was set to around 10 kV., this time plasma did not strike light until the pressure had reached about 15 micron. The color of the plasma was inspected and it was glowing in a deep red/purple color, indicative of a deuterium plasma.

The pressure was adjusted by carefully changing the gate valve, thereby maintaining a constant current of around 5 ma.

We were able to maintain around 40 kV potential for a period of 30 seconds, which had an immediate effect on the neutron count.

The B10 detector with GS and PRA was logging the neutron cps in real time on the computer screen, so we had a pretty good idea what was happening.

During those first 30 seconds, the average cps was a steady 100, assuming that the B10 detector is correctly calibrated at 1 NVTH, this calculates out to a TIER of 1.1 x 10^6 n/s

We continued to make adjustments and achieved two or three more stable runs with around double the number of neutrons.

During the last run, we upped the voltage to 45 kV and achieved a neutron count of 278 counts over 1 second, which means we hit the 3 mega neut mark at 45 kV with 5ma current. (see picts below).

I am really pleased with the result of this experiment, and now it is necessary to reflect on these results and plan the next stage of attack.

Detecting neutrons was the first milestone that had to be passed, and it looks as if this has been achieved. the next milestone is to measure the neutron output at constant current over a range of voltages, so we can plot the neutrons vs voltage.

Once that is done, a careful experiment needs to be designed to prove that fusion induced charge separation is indeed happening. due to the minute currents, this experiment will need huge fusion numbers and sensitive equipment, so it will need some planning.

Last but not least, your feedback and comments are always appreciated....

Steven

PS: Thanks Erik for helping me do this experiment today..

http://www.beeresearch.com.au

[Chris Bradley]

Well done, Steven. Nothing comes easy when you are pushing an experiment along with no direct precedent to see how others have overcome the problems. It's then a mix of trial-and-error and thinking-on-feet, as no-one else can have any answers for you.

Steven, I was a little confused by your update in the other thread. You say "I removed the ISO100 nipple below the accelerator tube" which I took to mean it was a point further down the accelerator tube, yet the picture you're showing here has new kit bolted on top of the accelerator tube. Did you mean the new graphite block is now in the extra tube extension we can see here, on top?

You experimental control is good. The second control I would encourage is removal of the tube from the moderator. Electrical conduction through different gases can be quite different, and the possibility of RFI when operating one gas but not another (especially at different pressures) is a variable to be removed from the experiment. Not that I doubt the outcome - you have deuterium, a target to soak up deuterium, and high voltage to accelerate it.

Your next challenge, to work out why the system is doing what it's doing, is a great big mountain! Is it just doing beam-target stuff, or something more? At our amateur level of diagnostic capability, this next phase is going to be as big a stride as you've already taken. I hope this next part is where the collective knowledge of the forum will be able to help you more directly.

[Steven Sesselmann]

Chris,

I attach a diagram showing the position of the graphite ion target.

You are quite right, the next challenge is going to be finding the equation that describes the experimental result. this is where I am hoping people like you will be able to give me some guidance.

How do we calculate the Lawson criterion for the conditions inside the F.I.C.S. cathode.

We can probably calculate the beam energy and the number of ions entering the cathode at any certain voltage/current, but once fusion reactions inside the cathode start influencing the outcome, the calculations tend to go pear shaped.

I did a back of an envelope calculation to work out how much energy is required to simply ionize deuterium entering the cathode at 1 ccm/min and it worked out to around 1 Watt, which is a fusion rate of around 10^12.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Steven

[Chris Bradley]

OK, so I'm guessing that the tube we can see on top is an acrylic tube you put on for the HV feed to come down through, to help reduce the corona arcing? Maybe I missed a description of that part in another thread.

In regards charge separation, it will not be a function of 'neutron power' that will be an indicator of what reverse-current may flow. Even at 1^12/s reaction rate (which would be hazardous to health, if such an optimistic scenario were to occur), this'd only just reach the 1uA range which is probably already beyond the limit of reliably accurate measurement to amateurs.

In regards deducing a form of Lawson criterion, I'd ordinarily repeat an argument I made a long time ago about what experiments to do for an electric-fusion machine aiming at 'net power', and that is that to run a machine at 2keV ion energies and you should be getting detectable neutrons by then if it were ever going to scale up to a net power machine: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7428#p53935 . You can worry about energy confinement times and densities when you get to that point. So rather than worry about trying to measure parameters for Lawson, I'd suggest you try to work out the voltage/output scaling first, then see if you can improve the setup to get the same neutron rates but at progressively lower voltages.

[Steven Sesselmann]

Chris,

Thanks for pointing out that stainless steel tea strainer on top of the cathode (that I forgot to mention), your assumptions are quite right, I picked that up at a kitchen supply store, and the purpose is simply to soften the corona discharge from the relatively sharp tip of the Swagelok quick connect fitting, which is probably why I didn't mention it.

You are of course correct, at 10^12 n/s the flow of charges from the cathode to ground would be in the order of 2 micro Coulomb, but keep in mind that fusion rates like that may only be achieved at hypothetical voltages like 200 kV, which means that the electrical current is climbing through that potential and would yield in the order of 0.2 watt.

Now imagine going an order or two magnitude higher and things might look different.

At this level of output, the heat would begin to count as well.

Voltage/output scaling is the next experiment on my list..

Steven

[Chris Bradley]

Steven Sesselmann wrote:
> 10^12 n/s .... may only be achieved at hypothetical voltages like 200 kV

How are you arriving at this interpolation?

You may find that simplified thick-target theoretical (see the link in my link) and practical (see below, NSD / Wisconsin performance) may not scale as you might expect.

(Note; the NSD is on a linear scale. If you inspect the numbers you can see the curve would be flattening on a log scale, like the Wisconsin graph.)

In any case, it is surely moot at this point (whether you could or would want to operate with such voltages anyway!), as we'll be interested to see how your own device scales with voltage as you hunt around the operating parameters. Good hunting!

...

[Steven Sesselmann]

Thanks Chris,

That's the kind of chart I intend to produce.

Speculation is moot indeed, but If F.I.C.S. does indeed separate charges, then there may be no flattening of the reaction rate curve at all.

Looking at those charts you posted, my peak neutron rate of 3 mega neuts at 45 keV/5ma looks pretty good

Steven

[Mike Beauford]

Hi Steven,

This is a great experiment, keep up the excellent work!

One question though, are you pretty certain about your measurement numbers? Do you have a known source that you could calibrate your measurement setup with? This is assuming like you said your measurement device is calibrated correctly.

Mike

[Carl Willis]

Congrats on first light with deuterium. Your apparatus is beautiful.

Along the lines of what Mike says, I'm curious about your detector's response. When you say it has a sensitivity of "1 NVTH", where did this number come from? From your math I think this means 1 cps / nvth. My experience with a similar geometry and a N. Wood G-10-2 tube suggests you should expect on the order of ~0.2 cps / nv(fusion). The quantity nv(fusion) is not the same as nv(thermal), since even the moderated spectrum in the tube is not the same as a truly thermal spectrum. Your source rate calculation should probably be much higher according to my estimate, but in any case I suspect the calculation isn't reliable.

0.5 cps is a waaay high background for any BF3 tube, a factor of a hundred or so higher than I'd expect...you might want to check for noise or sensitivity to gamma rays at your operating settings.

Can you do the moderator-removal experiment during a deuterium run? If you pull off the moderator and your count rate drops to near background, that's a pretty fool-proof affirmation that the counts are due to neutrons. If removing the moderator makes a small difference in count rate, it implicates x-rays or noise as contributors to the count.

Good progress, thanks for sharing.

-Carl

[Steven Sesselmann]

Carl/Mike,

Thanks for feedback and healthy skepticism. I am sure we have discussed this detector before. It belongs to a Victoreen 488A and it's a B10 (not BF3) detector. It has a relatively small moderator, and probably not great for fast neutrons.

I believe the sensitivity to thermal neutrons is 1 cps for a flux of 1 n/s/cm^2 as the dial on the meter has been labelled as such. Tests with a 1 Mega Neutron AmBe source at Sydney University confirms that this is at least in the ballpark.

Regarding the background counts, I checked this again, and the average was 20 cpm, which means I could have set the Threshold in PRA a little bit higher, thereby reducing the background count to less than 1 cpm. Looking at the histogram of pulse energies with PRA, there was a good spread of energies, so upping the threshold slightly would have reduced the total counts only by a little.

Of course I intend to verify the experiment with my He3 detector and probably with a bubble detector, so confidence can be increased.

Steven

[Richard Hull]

Again something that is easy. Remove the moderator. Read with the naked tube during a fusion run. Both Chris and then Carl suggested this. You should see almost nothing over background at all. First just pull the tube out of the moderator and keep it in mid air away from any hydrocarbons and report the numbers.

Regarding background: My 3He which is far more sensitive only reads about 4-8 CPM background. Use this as a guide for setting the discriminator level.

Finally, is your tube a BF3 tube or one of those Boron lined tubes. The latter are very very tricky and finicky of adjustment to read neutrons. They will act like the GM tube in a quick new york minute if the bias is set too high or the discriminator level too low. Yes, they work, but I hate 'em......Way too tricky to adjust for my liking. 3He and BF3 are much more compliant

Richard Hull

[Steven Sesselmann]

Richard and others,

With all due respect, I don't need to do back flips through hoops in order to satisfy every member on this forum that I am detecting neutrons, I am simply reporting my experiment as I see it, and all that counts is what I believe. I'm not exactly a rookie at this, I built over 300 radiation detectors and I think this is my fifth or sixth fusion reactor,

Unlike Rossi and Focardi, there is no blanket over my experiment, everything has been published, every minute detail of it, so if anyone has doubts, they can go right ahead, get their hands dirty and build one.

For the last time, the neutron detector used in this experiment was a Victoreen B10 lined detector, biased at 1050V, and read with a 16 bit MCA.

Sooner or later the members of this forum will have to accept the Blue Cow.

Steven

[Carl Willis]

>all that counts is what I believe

That depends on your goal. If the goal is to convince people expressing "healthy skepticism" (your words), then I think there is much room for improved confidence. Two posts upthread you seemingly were agreeable to try a moderator removal experiment--which is hardly onerous--and you even gratuitously offered to use a He-3 tube and a bubble detector. Richard isn't really adding any expectation on top of that, merely another voice of "healthy skepticism."

Thank you for the clarification on the B-lined tube. I remember seeing it before in your posts, but I didn't recall any details.

To the extent that your project is a "blue cow," something quite a novel departure from the established approach in this community, you can expect heightened scrutiny. Your claim of 3 meganeut/s for 225W in is also extraordinary since if accurate it would represent almost an order of magnitude better efficiency that seems to be typical in cookie-cutter fusors. (Although to be honest, I think you would probably see the same suggestions on the detector aspect even if your project were de rigueur.)

-Carl

[Steven Sesselmann]

Carl,

As I am already in the neutron club, I will just continue to report my progress accurately to the best of my ability, and leave the degree of skepticism up to the individual.

Incremental improvements and more experiments are planned, so I am not in a great hurry to congregate believers. My main objective at the moment is to gather enough experimental data, before January 6. next year, which is when the patent application enters the national stage.

Experiment 1. should be seen as proof of fusion and no more, I make no claim about the actual neutron numbers. The measurements were taken with an uncalibrated detector, pulse height threshold was set slightly low, so numbers may be out, but neutrons were there for sure.

Steven

[JamesC]

You certainly have to be tough skinned around here.

If you theorise then you get hammered for not getting on with it and building something

If you go ahead and build something then you get hammered for not measuring any real results you might get accurately enough to the satisfaction of those now theorising about how the measurements may or may not be real enough. Sure give suggestions on improving future experiments accuracy but dont expect a tools down moment to re-run the experiment with your own prefered settings. Plus to be a good sport throw in some positive energy to balance the so called 'healthy sceptism'.

I for one think Steven is doing an amazing job - one of the few pushing out the boundaries of existing knowledge with genuine frontier experimentation. As we all know its "easy" enough to build a fusor ( a 12 year old .. albiet talented one.. can do it right ) but to theorise a new mechanism and put money where your mouth is to seek out answers to your theories.. Well thats just awesome in my book.

Steven - Thanks for sharing as you go along.

James

[Frank Sanns]

I agree James, Congrats Steven for putting the thought into your latest iteration (no pun intended) and the build. Many people talk about but never actually build anything. You know well how much can be learned by operating an actual IECF or one of yours or other peoples designs.

Congrats to Richard and Carl, not for hamming skepticism, but for demanding good scientific methods. It is not personal and it is not because of doubt when you hear any of us ask for details. It is and only is so that we may also have confidence is what is being reported. Without rigorous scientific method, then what is the value in what we do. This is peer review baby! Be happy for it and get used to it. Many of us are far too familiar with lore and stories that tell some but not the complete picture. Powder somebodies behind or get good scientific data for all to use and to move fusor forward. I take exception for those that say we are not open minded and do welcome new ideas. I think it is quite the contrary. Bring it on. Theorize it, build it, report it, discuss it, rebuild it, report new data and progress. That is what got this group to where it is now. Go back and look at the archives and you might have a far greater appreciation with the strict and appropriate standard by which fusion research is done here.

Frank Sanns

[Richard Hull]

James, D-D fusion generates neutrons. Neutron measurement is very tricky and never easy. One can be very smart and adroit and still mis-interpret or mis-apply a neutron counter. Claims of neutrons far beyond that found in the well established fusioneer norms/watt expended are open for a full critique of methods used. This is the norm.

As Frank notes, we are just asking for another simple test that is not difficult at all.

As noted, Steven is already in the neutron club, but that makes no one proof against further examination by their fellows here. We were never complaining, just asking for a suitable test against possible noise or other radiations as a source for the high counts.

If fusion is being done and all counts are real then the bulk of all counts would simply cease if a properly biased and discriminated neutron detection tube is gently slid out from the moderator and the moderator moved from the vacinity of the tube. What's the big deal here?

With this much sudden resistance to so simple a test, questions are bound to arise among those who know neutron measurement and all the tests normally performed by the good metrologist to assure that neutrons are, indeed being measured.

Carl's excellent you-tube videos show this test in all its vivid detail. Running a known neutron source or fusor near a naked tube is a good simple way to set a discriminator level in a boron lined tube scenario. (set it so that no counts register). Put the tube back in the moderator and all future counts are warranted neutron counts. Every so often, the discriminator level must be re-checked and re-adjusted if necessary.

Never just accept a neutron counter counts as indicative of neutron presence or as an accurate indicator of actual neutron numbers. It is not important whether it is your own counter or someone elses, there could be issues, unknown and unseen.

I have had dirty pots on amps and discriminators, loose connections and intermittent component noise show as neutrons, but I never reported numbers on them, because I knew how to ferret out what seemed like amazing neutron numbers and turn them into a worthless pile of spikes due to minor and subtle issues so common to electronic assemblages used in neutron counting.

Richard Hull

[Chris Bradley]

May I suggest we stay objective to what we know has been done so far, and recognise a great effort by Steven that he's getting a new experimental configuration operating in a stable manner, and that there is data coming that will need collecting and verifying as to its full implication.

I'm confident Steven sought to report the numbers his tube was giving as the primary piece of 'data'. All will be revealed as to what that data really means as he progresses the work.

Diagnostics will always be a sticking point for amateur work, I reckon, and will tend to be edged into second place behind that initial pulse of enthusiasm from completing a successful and stable run on new kit.

Here on this forum, we seem to see the data always taking care of itself, all in good time, as the operator gathers further experience and further data with their kit.

[David Geer]

Bottom line: Can you run the test again with other detectors or show pics/video of the detector against a moderator source, etc.

This is only out of everyone's intrigue as to why the neutron counts are so high. If valid, your experiment is a wild success and further development down that path should ensue, otherwise if it is found invalidated by faulty measurements, then, back to the ol' drawing board.

[Steven Sesselmann]

David and others,

Of course the experiment will be run again, and chances are that Richard and Carl are right, and that the electronic detector was picking up something more than neutrons.

Some minor improvements are required before I run another test.

I will report my findings either way.

Steven

[Richard Hull]

Good man! That's th' spirit.

Richard Hull

[Steven Sesselmann]

Hi Guys,

For those of you who were enthusiastically following my F.I.C.S experiment, I just want to put a closure to this thread.

I carried out a total of about 4 experiments with this rig, and regrettably it did not behave the way I expected it to.

The last two experiments were done with bubble detectors in place, and bubbles were counted, but current and voltage considered, yer old tea kettle fusor would have done much better.

Why were the neutron numbers so low, was the theory wrong or was it the design of the apparatus?

I simply don't know, and now it is unlikely that I will revisit this experiment or any similar experiment any time in the near future, so I shall have to leave it up to your speculations.

Steven

[Richard Hull]

Steven, bold effort on your part and thanks for the update. Sorry about the disappointing results.

Richard Hull