Crazy Design Idea

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
winjim
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Crazy Design Idea

Post by winjim »

Hi folks,

I would ultimately like to see fusors developed as power
sources. However, in the literature, the phrase 'grid losses'
keeps occurring as why this won't happen.

So I've been thinking about ways to get rid of the inner grid,
ala Bussard's Polywell patent. Since I'm months away from
being able to test these ideas, I thought I'd post them so
someone else could pursue them if so inclined.

The basic design is a fusor chamber made of two stainless
steel hemispheres, welded to flanges and bolted together to
form a complete sphere. For reference, the flanges would be
around the equator, the High Voltage feed through at the
North Pole and the vacuum connections at the South Pole.
Small ports for D2 introduction and a viewport would be place
on the surface appropriately.

Permanent magnets would be arranged on the exterior surface
so that their magnetic field penetrates through the stainless
steel into the fusor chamber. The arrangement of those
magnets would follow the Halbach Rotation Theorem. You
can look at:

http://http://www.matchrockets.com/ether/halbach.html

and

http://www-sldnt.slac.stanford.edu/nlc/ ... -067_2.pdf

for more information on Halbach arrays. Basically, the
permanent magnets are arranged so that a strong magnetic
flux appears on one side and little or none appears on the
other. In a circular arrangement, the flux can be made to
appear on the inside.

In the second link above, there is a particular arrangement
called a Quadrupole. This has 4 cusps where the field lines
come together and strong flux everywhere else. Imagine a
series of these Quadrupole Halbach arrays of varying
diameter stacked on top of each other so that each ring circles
the fusor chamber at a particular latitude. Proceeding from the
largest at the flange around the equator to the smallest around
each pole. This would create a magnetic field that would
have 4 'line cusps', to use Bussard's terminology, at 0,
90, 180 and 270 degrees longitude. Electrons would be
mostly confined by the magnetic field to the center of the
chamber, but leakage would occur at the line cusps.

To prevent this leakage, imagine an outer grid made of two
wire circles that are just smaller than the diameter of the
chamber, intersecting at right angles at the North and South
pole. Such a grid would be oriented so that the wire circles lie
in the cusps at 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees longitude. If held
at a high negative voltage, these would set up an electric field
that would repel the electrons away from the magnetic cusps
and prevent leakage there. A third circle of wire could be
placed at the equator to cover the weakened field that would
occur there as a result of the flanges not allowing magnets to
be placed properly. The grid would also be the source of
emitted electrons.

If the free electrons were confined to the center of the
chamber, positive D2 ions would be attracted to them and
would collide in the center as in a standard fusor.

That's what I've been thinking about. Sorry for the length and
I had to write it hurridly since I'm losing my internet access for
a couple of weeks. I'd be glad to clear up anything that isn't
apparent and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the
feasibility of this.

Thanks,
Jim
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

Not too crazy an idea..... That's why we are here.

I studied all the fusion techniques including the Polywell I settled for Dr Miley's Pulsed fusion work
simply because it suited my background and my budget.
We have plenty of ground to cover here in the fusion area.
Lots of work in very interesting areas ...... plenty for twice a hundred to do.
Unless someone is a multimillionare one has to cull his interests somewhat.
Pick a spot you like and pitch a tent so to speak.

The Halbach arrangement is a very good arrangement for magnetic deployment. Now the easy part is done and the fun really begins.....building it.
Budget the beast.
Create a place for it to happen.
Do ALL the preliminary plasma work to make sure it will Do what you think it will.
Build small test setup with just a few magnets first to see what's what.
If that works like you would like then build a medium rig recycling the first test into a bigger test to make sure scaling is working.
Then build the humongo rig.
Hey I started on my one horse fusor design about a year and a half ago.
Good Luck!
Happy Funding!

Fusion is fun!

Larry Leins
Fusion Tech
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

What exactly is burssards patent number, I couldn't find his patent using a database search, so i want to find it directly. I know the basic jist, ie. using magnets to confine electrons to create a negative potential well etc. but i want to reference it. Thanks.
winjim
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by winjim »

Patent #4826646
grrr6
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by grrr6 »

Thanks. It seems that you would need very powerful magnetic fields to confine the electrons with such energy(100 KeV - 1 MeV) also, how do you plan to insulate the grid from arcing to the housing? seems that it would have to be close to the edge of the housing, and at high voltage, so it would want to arc to the housing. Especially if you went with Bussards idea to use the housing for direct conversion of energy -> electricity. maybe if you coated the outside of the grid with a dialectric, leaving the inside to shoot electrons out, towards the center and the confining field. But it seems that even with this, the potential would still be high enough so that it would arc around from the inside to the housing. Although the electrons emitted would tend to limit the voltage on the grid right? Hehe, abuzz with ideas. All together sounds like a pretty darn good idea though.
Also, what happens to the magnetinc field in 3d? we know what happens at the equator, but when you move "north" does it have symmetry? could you make it have 6 cusps like sides of a cube or something?
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

The last patent tho good is not as good as
USPN # 5,160,695 dated 1992

What put me off this design was the fact that the
implementation included a superconducting shell to cart away the excess charges to make electricity.
My NASA buddies estimated this design to be in the nation enterprise catagory. ( over 5 million to test!! Yike!)

Larry Leins
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by Richard Hull »

Electrons, even 1mev jobs are easily moved about by magnetic fields of relatively little strength. Their mass is low and often, just a few hundred gauss in a small gap is all that is needed. I curly-Q 800kev betas in a 900 gauss field all the time as part of a beta steering demo.

Of course, such a field density is not easy to obtain in the middle of a large chamber with outside poles. This means a lot of magnetizing force or energy is needed to project a rather whimpy field. Magnetics is probably one of the worst forces in nature. Weak, and strictly the result of charges in motion, it has no inate existance of its own. A secondary, "also ran force", at best.

It's engineering implimentation is ultra expensive in structures of any size larger than 200 cubic inches (1/8th of a cubic foot). If control or variability of the field is required over 1000 gauss with gaps exceeding 10", you may be talking water cooled coils.

Magnetics engineering is virtually a black art.

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: Crazy Design Idea

Post by ChrisSmolinski »

Richard Hull wrote:
> It's engineering implimentation is ultra expensive in structures of any size larger than 200 cubic inches (1/8th of a cubic foot). If control or variability of the field is required over 1000 gauss with gaps exceeding 10", you may be talking water cooled coils.
>
> Magnetics engineering is virtually a black art.

Richard,

Do you know of any attempts to use magnetic fields to focus the isotropic radiation pattern of a beta source into something resembling a beam?

I've done some experiments using a rare earth magnet and a Pm147 (225 keV max) beta source, with a PIN diode detector, and was able to more than double the counting rate by careful placement of the magnet. Rotating the magnet 180 degrees (flipping poles) likewise dramatically decreased the counting rate. This wasn't a serious experiment, just some playing around to refute the ideas of a former colleage who said it couldn't be done ;-)
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by Richard Hull »

You can't steer all of the betas into a beam as you suggest.
The experiment you mention is exactly what I demo here. I have actually put this interesting demo on my video tape about radiation. "Radiation - What it is and how to measure it".

What is happening is that you are steering a larger fraction of variable energy betas into your detector. Many that were originally headed its way never hit it though. You will lose every single beta headed to your detector on a natural straight line path, but oddly you will force into the detector a large stream of widely variable energy particles over a much larger solid angle of emitted betas.

Seems odd, sounds odd, but it really happens. There is some critical position and orientation of a fixed energy PM where the range of beta energies will give the largest return to a fixed detector positioned nearby. (note* this only can be done with a true isotropic emitter in open air.) Place the source 2" back in a thick lead gun barrel of .5" bore and you now have the makings of a beta spectrometer.

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
winjim
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by winjim »

I am certainly no magnetics engineer, but I think it might be
possible to generate a high enough mag. field inside the
chamber using permanent magnets in a Halbach configuration.
I believe that you can increase the field strength by increasing
the size of the magnets. Whether this is practical remains to
be seen and is one direction I intend to investigate by
simulation before I build anything.

Greg, I had exactly the same thought process you did. At
higher grid voltages, I thought about coating the side of the
grid closest to the chamber wall with ceramic and baking it on.
Don't know if that's possible or not though. For electrons to
arc around from the inside surface to the chamber wall, they
would have to cut through the strongest part of the magnetic
field and they might not be able to make it. Again, I don't
know.

The 3D mag field would be pretty symmetrical. For an 8"
sphere, imagine a Halbach ring ,around the equator, 8" in
diameter and 1" thick. Stacked on top of that would be
another ring 1" thick but slightly smaller diameter. A still
smaller ring would be on top of that one and so on until you
reach the pole. The reverse would be done below the
equator. The rings would all be oriented the same and so the
resulting cusps would be line cusps that ran from pole to pole.
The elements of the outer grid would be placed in these
cusps. That's the idea anyway. Aside from the cusps, the
mag field would be 0 close at the center of the chamber grow
stronger as you moved toward the wall in any direction.

Thanks,
Jim
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by grrr6 »

Thats a good point, i never even thought about the fact that the electrons would have to deal with the magnetic field trying to arc. You could coat the entire grid with a dialectric, expect leave little nubs pointing inward to be the source of electrons aiming inward. Also, you're right the magnetic field would be weak in the center, as vacuum permiability is 1, not 200+ as in steel. Also, how would you implement the permanent magnets int he design so that they arer not only alligned right in the halbach arrangement, but eliminate gaps as that would lower performance, correct?

In the 1992 patent by Bussard, what the heck is he talking about? I can't understand a single thing. I presume he is trying to pulse the electric field or something. He refers to "ion acoustic waves" to help generate this ICC (inertial collisional compression effect). I cannot understand the methodology or the physics behind it. only that it supposedly generates ion densities 1000 fold more than previous designs (a good thing :D)
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

In his design the accoustic ion effect is used to increase the neutron yields due to the compression effect of ramming a large number of ions into a small area.
The repulsion of the moving ions would cause a standing wave just like a note struck on a piano.
It is a consequence of magnethydrodynamics.
The inward dirrected flow of ions would tend into a coherrent wave structure that is spherical in nature that gathers and pushes ions at rest or lower energies into the accelerating wavefront.

It would continue until the free path was mitagated by the opposing wave of ions striking in the opposite dirrection.
Compresion effects in the core raise the reactivity
from i^2 to i^3 or even I^4 neutron yields. An idea I'm trying to exploit in the pulsed regime.

Larry Leins
Fusion Tech
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

Richard Hull wrote:

>Magnetics is probably one of the worst forces in nature.

You mean to exploit from an engineering perspective? We use magnetic transformers rather than piezoelectric ones, we use magnetic motors rather than electrostatic ones, I read in one magnetics text that magnetic devices are some of the most prolific and efficient devices, often 90%. Magnetics are the begining and end of many applications of electrical engineering!

Now as far as fusing is concerned, it is a vector rather than a scalar, which limits its utility to accelerate and confine. We disagreed on the utility of using magnetic fields to accelerate before.

I saw an article about an H-mode waveguide MEV - class electron accelerator, and I like the idea of using waveguide accelerators to accelerate and confine electrons into an electrodynamicaly (microwave) trap to implement a 'gridless' fusor. An H-mode accelerator using an electron beam might have very desirable characteristics! I may figure a way to create kilo-volt potential well using a distant grid near only 100 volts!

> Weak, and strictly the result of charges in motion, it has no inate existance of its own. A secondary, "also ran force", at best.

If by charges in motion you mean charged particles, you've got it backwards because charges particles are a consequence of the magnetic properties of the vacuum!

I need a reality check! The electric and magnetic fields are a consequence of the same property of the vacuum. Charge can be seen to be a compactified dimension in space. The displacement of this vacuum charge is the origin of fields, or if you like, the polarization of virtual electron-positron dipoles (the polarization of dipoles are transmitted by virtual photons). The motion of the vacuum charge dimension is the displacement current, the vector potential, (the curl) of which is the magnetic field in space.

Consider a mass oscillating on a spring. The energy in the system moves from stress in the spring to momentum of the mass. Similarly electromagnetic waves in space are the result of energy moving from electric stress to magnetic momentum. Just as mass opposes change of momentum, requiring an applied force, the magnetic field opposes change of current, requiring an applied voltage.

From a relativistic point of view, whether you see an electric or magnetic field depends on your velocity relative to it! It surely has an inate existance of its own!

Finaly, particles - bosons, photons, leptons all are tangles of the angular momentum of waves in charge and space. Particles are a consequence of the properties of the vacuum, and the magnetic field defines the contour of the particles sculpted out of the vacuum by energy.

Scott
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

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At the motional level of humans at the .01mm to .1m range magnets can move stuff around. In nature, galaxy size to .1 meter and .01mm to subatomic it is a pretty weak force. Again, it is a generated, after effect force and not a primary force in nature.

At the root of all our invention and wheel work is gravity forcing charged matter against its coulombic nature to fuse on the sun.

The sun sends out photons which only the most infintesimal amount of which is intercepted by earth. (most will never impart their energy to much of anyhting.)

The photons intercepted on earth heat the atmosphere and evaporate water. This falls as rain and we take power from it as it crashes over a dam seeking gravitionally lowered potential energy. (gravity driving matter again). In other scenarios, the photons cause photosynthesis to make fossil fuels in time and we burn them to create power as well.

Basically, we convert the fusion energy from the nearest star to rotational shaft energy, mostly by burning stuff to boil water or tossing water over a dam. This is our brutish source of energy.... our darling..... ROTATIONAL shaft energy. From here we rotate some copper wires warpped in multiton iron masses in a fixed magnetic field to force free charges in the wire down to the consumer where we reconvert it to rotating magnetic fields or heat energy to warm a home, drive a blender. All of our processes wind up at massive losses back in yet weaker photons. Magnetics is the intermediary we worms use in getting charges to do useful work for us. (Push stuff around, drill holes in stuff, get us from one place to another, etc. Magnetics is indeed useful in a narrow range of human existance but not a primary source of energy just a secondary form in a chain.

No! Our real power is derived solely by gravity working on charged matter billions of miles away. On earth, our sole source of real direct energy is the electron and the electron alone as we use it to make magnetic fields, give up a few ev per molecule in a dyanmite blast, or in a roaring fire under a boiler, etc.

Back to real world considerations of what is primary.....


No magnetic field ever created a charge or a particle. Charge in motion creates all magnetic fields. It is all that is observed readily.

Your reference to theoretical machinations about magnetic forces bringing about charge or being necessary for charge to exist is just that. It is physicists struggling to guess at matter. Bosons, Quarks and the super-sub-sub atomic zoo is quite possibly the greatest self-decption in the history of physics. We are just afraid of saying "we don't know"...."got no idea"... and so we dream up stuff that is 6 orders of magnitude below Hiesenberg. We then perform triple interaction super accelerator tests creating conditions hotter than the creation event that can't be seen in any detector to ultimately show a particle move in a bubble chamber amoung countless millions of others and let the computer pick two events somewhere in the tank that satisfies our criterion. Gimme a break.

All we know is that there is gravity interacting on bulk matter that at the base level is intrinsically charged. We see that charge in motion generates a magnetic field and never the other way around in the real world. This is regardless of what the physicists might dream up below Heisenberg. Changing magnetic fields can move already extant charges about nothing else. In the chicken and egg scenario we have no doubts. It is clear. Charged matter is the base, magnetism and all photons are the also rans and bear little import to the universe except as methods of destroying all of creation, being the ideal energy leaks from which there is no return for their energy that isn't well below unity.

Let us not deal with nuclear physics that can't be shown in simple experiment or take mere theroies based on several other theories as representing reality. Reality you can touch and readily experiment with.

I have mentioned this before. The hard nosed facts as I interpret them.

1. Forces (Real - primary)

gravity
coulombic

2. Forces (real but merely secondary universal "leaks")

magnetism
light - photons - photonic interactions with matter

3. Particles (real-primary)

electron
proton
also the anti-particles which have yet to exist more than microseconds in our observed universe around bulk matter.

4. Particles (secondary but important)

neutron

5. Particles observed in microsecond and sub microsecond time windows, but non-extant outside of multibillion degree environments. (debris) Perhaps common and normal particles way back when the creation event bang was microseconds old, but not constiuents of normal matter at all.

All mesons

6. The ultimate dream particle

Neutrino (fills an unknown void in our understanding but makes us feel great especially when highly codified amoungst the quarks)

7. La-La land

Quarks, Bosons, Gravitons, gluons and most future stuff not yet dreamed up while sitting on th' throne.

So when the discussion of physics come to virtual photons, messenger particles, Quarks and other dial-a-dream ideas, I stop listening and let the tops spin on in there own orbits determined by the idea du jour. My head aches and my alarm bells go off talking one order of magnitude ABOVE Hiesenberg!


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: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

Richard Hull wrote:

>In nature, galaxy size to .1 meter and .01mm to subatomic it is a pretty weak force. Again, it is a generated, after effect force and not a primary force in nature.

You can not separate the electric and magnetic fields, the scalar and vector potential, they are different sides of the same coin. Besides, it is a changing vector potential (whos curl is the magnetic field) that is most prime to electromagnetic momentum, lest we observe electric fields bending radio waves, and we dont!

>the electron alone as we use it to make magnetic fields

I think the vector potential is the source of magnetic fields and makes electrons rather than electrons making magnetic fields.

> No magnetic field ever created a charge or a particle. Charge in motion creates all magnetic fields. It is all that is observed readily.

Ever try to imagine lines of flux going of charged particles and having it get all tangled up with the flux from other charges? If by charge you mean the charge of virtual (vacuum) electron/positrons and virtual photons, the accepted explanation for the quantum vacuum or Dirac energy sea, I can agree. But radio waves are direct evidence that charge exists in the vacuum independant of the coherent quantum state electrons that give rise to them.

> Your reference to theoretical machinations about magnetic forces bringing about charge or being necessary for charge to exist is just that. It is physicists struggling to guess at matter. Bosons, Quarks and the super-sub-sub atomic zoo is quite possibly the greatest self-decption in the history of physics.

I have come to understand how we got here. We discovered millions of substances, thousands of molecules, hundreds of elements and atoms and a few particles. But then when we started banging them together, we started creating hundreds of new particles. We were discovering that the 'aether' we was simplified away as unecessary was a hyper-geometric medium, that supports solitons or confined vibrational modes. Charge is a dimension as space is a dimension. The dynamics of cellular automata are an interesting illustration of soliton/particle dynamics in complex space. You can produce quite a zoo of particles and spooky quantum phenomena.

>We see that charge in motion generates a magnetic field and never the other way around in the real world.

What about pair production when an MEV photon splits into an electron and positron? Particles and photons are wave-orbits in the geometric 'vacuum'. And charge is a distance, a compactified dimension of the vacuum, and the magnetic field can be seen as a velocity distribution (current) of the moving charge dimension. If I'm wrong hopefully someone will correct me.

Scott
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

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I can see we are on two different wavelengths here.

You hold with the modern standard model for the most part, plus a bit of matter out of the vacuum added in. You assume maxwell to be correct in wholeform.

I question all that seems out of place and accept nothing that can't be photographed or captured by the artifice of man. I feel maxwell did a great job for engineering (sort of...I guess), but did a grave dis-service to physics which actually abetted his actions by making him king of the electrodynmic hill.

Like Feynman, I feel that parts of maxwell's electrodynamics just doesn't agree with experience in all cases.

Oh, as regards pair production.... No one on this planet knows exactly what mechanism is in play here and don't let 'em tell you they do.

What we know is what we see......What we see doesn't tell us beans about what causes what we see.

What is the final net result we and the universe observe?

A weakened photon.........

Think about it....... Nature has a hot photon trying to plow through matter and doesn't appreciate that at all.

The photon seems to disappear and an electron and a positiron appear. In a twinkling, the positron and an old electron annihilate giving off a weaker photon.

Old man universe had x electrons and y positrons and z photons at t0. At t1, there was x+1 electrons and Y+1 positrons and z-1 photons. At t2 there are x electrons, y positrons, z photons.

It's just nature's silly way to cool off photons with out creating extra matter. One of her little secrets about which we know zip.

But hey, We think we know exactly the mechanism in play here due to inference, self consistent equations and zero close up, time ordered observation. At least we are talkin' like we know what is goin' on and that's all that counts. Right?

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: Crazy Design Idea

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Richard Hull wrote:

> I question all that seems out of place and accept nothing that can't be photographed or captured by the artifice of man.

I don't need to see GR and QED unified, just a pretty simulation of deuterons fusing. QED seems to have served the bomb-designers well (if not the Tokamak designers), and I don't care what is going on in black-holes, today anyways.

Anyone know why it is easier to design and predict the performance of H-bombs than Tokamaks? Something to do with figuring the self-forces on point particles? Or is it just new and frustrating plasma instabilities, that don't happen with a single intense pulse?

> Like Feynman, I feel that parts of maxwell's electrodynamics just doesn't agree with experience in all cases.

Such as? That charge must originate from an electron, rather than the origin of electrons being the geometric vacuum? Do you believe in virtual electron-positron pairs? A polarizeable vacuum?

I don't see much difference between a polarizable vacuum and a Dirac 'sea' of zero-point energy creating and anihilating virtual electron-positron pairs with virtual photons. It is a discription of a hypergeometric gas or foam like aether.

> But hey, We think we know exactly the mechanism in play here due to inference...At least we are talkin' like we know what is goin' on and that's all that counts. Right?

Even if its incomplete and lacking, modeling particles as waves in hypergeometry or CA lattice, and testing experiments is better than believing they are point particles with infinities and incalculable self-forces.

Scott
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by grrr6 »

OK, so what about this idea.......
One of the problems with fusors is that the ions hit the grid, heating it limiting time for runs, and causing electrical inefficiencies. So, what if you crossed the normal fusor with the polywell type device? You align the field lines to a point int he middle, and you align them to go towards the open spaces in the middle grid. So when the ions rush towards the inner grid, instead of many of them hitting the grid(since they arer attracted to it) they are aligned to pass through the grid by the magnetic field. Its like a hybrid of ideas. Some may hit the grid, after all the magnetic field cant be perfect and you certainly wont be able to get super powerful magnets, but it seems to me that it would reduce the number of ions hitting the grid. The grid design could be like what was suggested at the beginning of the thread - in reference to the earth, a ring at the equator, one at 0 and 180 long. and one at 90 and 270. this would give 8 openings in the grid. Aligning the magnetic field could work like this - http://www.angelfire.com/fl5/grrr6/images/fusor.jpg its a very crude drawing but i think you get the idea. How big of a magnetic field could you use on it? How big is 1 Tesla? In another thread someone said they had 1 tesla permanent magnets, but i thought 1 tesla was like a magnet on the order of tons, explain this to me.
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

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The H bomb works because of the small A device creates high temperatures and the casing confinement for a few microseconds allows SOME of the tritium to fuse. Efficiencies are rather low, but about trillion times better than the sun on a volumetric basis. There is no prediction for the H bomb it just satisfies, with a vengenance, the rather simple equation for fusion, in which density of the high cross section, low Z reactant.... time of confinement... and temperature are all that matter.

In tokomaks we are looking at controlling the fusion reaction and use gas at confinement densities about 10 orders of magnitude lower than that of the H bomb and temperatures about 2 orders of magnitude lower than an H bomb core at time of detonation. That is the only reason Tokomaks don't work. They don't come close to satisfying the basics of fusion power generational output.

I do not believe in virtual photons, virtual electron-positron pairs, messenger particles, or any other pipe dream theoretical mish-mash designed to allow us to act as if we know what is going on below heisenberg.

Regarding where Maxwell breaks down, check out The Moon- Spencer Article in Infinite energy Jan/Feb 2000. It is a reprint from the Journal of the Franklin Institute in 1955.

In the article Professors Moon and Spencer of MIT give several stunning examples of where a couple of maxwell's equations give wrong answers regarding magnetic induction. They supply a newer, more all inclusive induction equation which handily solves all the problems. It is a modification of Weber and Ampere's work. Oddly and stunningly B is no where to be found in the equations. All that is needed in the two major terms are the velocity of charge and the acceleration of charge. It was brilliant work. Many others have smelled a rat in maxwell's supposedly all encompassing work. Some additional refs are given in this superb update article of modern investigations into where maxwell either fails or one must chose the the correct equation of three by maxwell to get the right answer where all three should solve and no one solves all cases. This is just unfinished electrodynamics glaringly exposed.

Maxwell, himself, went to his grave worrying about his two interim entities, the vector potential and the displacement current. These things are results, but not realities from his equations. He had to dream them up to close the equations. They seem logical, but have not been measured to this day. A recent attempt by Bartlett using squids in capacitors failed to turnup the demanded displacement current. Nonetheless we just have to have it, or capacitors can't charge!! What is the reality involved? Lot's of people guess at it. No one really knows. Equations don't predict the displacement current, rather it is the concept of the displacment current that closes the equations. A concept does not a reality make, but more importantly, does not give a clue as to what is the reality involved. We can engineer with equations, but we can't have any idea as to what is really going on based on those equations.

Whether modeling particles as waves in hypergeometries or working on a premise of point particles with infinities in abundance, all is guess work and all can, with the correct and adroit mathematical hand, be woven into a consistent mathematical framework. Having done this in today's world is assumed by many as having the truth of reality when actually you really only have self-consistent equations design by minds determined to make the stuff fit an imagined reality.

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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Richard Hull
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by Richard Hull »

Magnetic design is based on a weak force trying to span a high reluctance path. Usually air. A one Tesla magnetic field is an incredibly powerful one (10,000 gauss). It is virtually impossible to have a 1 tesla field within the span of a small fusor. A one Tesla magnet speaks of the flux at the pole face. Many modern rare earth magnets can easily have a full Tesla on the surface of the pole face. One inch from the surface, the field is many times weaker. At 4 inches, it is 16 times weaker than at one inch, etc.

Understanding the basic engineering of magnetics is no more difficult than understanding electrical circuitry. As a matter of fact, magnetic circuits have an "Ohms law" of sorts with many familiar electrical analogs.

Really large multi-Tesla fields in gaps exceeding 5" are to be found only in multi-ton, large superconducting magnet structures.

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: Crazy Design Idea

Post by grrr6 »

I see, thanks. But with a small magnetic field, my idea would work a little bit, right? Its not necessary for a field of the strength in Bussards polywell, only enough to cut down slightly on ion/grid collisions, or probably more trouble than its worth.
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by Richard Hull »

I don't think magnetic fields will impact ion/grid collisions. The effort is way more trouble than it is worth. If we could eliminate 100% of the grid losses tomorrow it would not impact the net output of the device by much at all.

Again, to improve the simple fusor to a power position where energy might be derived over that put in we would need to increase the production of the device 100 million fold not just 10 or 15 percent which would represent the irradication of grid losses.

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
grrr6
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by grrr6 »

True, however if there was no such thing as grid losses, you wouldn't need 100 million fold increase, because you would spend 10 times less energy(dunno how much actually, your guess is as good as mine) the main problem with getting fusion rates up is core density. To increase, use higher voltage=more energy=higher density, also higher losses. higher voltage=need for a larger grid=larger size of the total device=less practical for amateur= back to the beginning since we are all amateurs, and the laws of green and cashflow apply to us, correct logic right? Perfecting the device will not be by using the same setup though, thats why news ideas are always a plus.
guest

Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

That is why I'm taking an overall approach to the fusion issue that is broad in nature. The Hirsh Meeks fusor achieves a grid transparency of more than 89% by aligning the grids. I am using the power averaging trick to try and trick maw nature into letting go some power, By getting the pulse time down to 1 microsecond and raising the voltage to 120 kev you can get pretty close to 10^9 degrees. Then the problem
is density.... density..... density. My model is the H-bomb style fusion, The trick I think is to lower the required energy by limiting the duration of the input
and create short bursts of high production. Over time if I done my homework in a 1000 bursts the input energy
will be less than the output average over time. In other words over unity.
You can see my reasoning / dellusions in this post.

In the Fusor Construction & Operation forum under
Pulsed Fusor #3: Case Study of a 1HP Fusor (3L) [Latest: 2002-01-02 11:39] (5)

I have scaled down my original power supply from 100 kv @ 2 amps to an easier on the pocket book 120 kv @
18 ma.
I have two operating modes the relaxation mode and the dirrect drive mode.
In the relaxation model my main supply simply charges a capacitor through the output tranformer.

An RC network with the fusor in parrallel with the capacitor.
The dirrect drive is simply discharging the cap into a transformer that outputs across the fusor.

Larry Leins
Fusion Tech
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Re: Crazy Design Idea

Post by guest »

Richard Hull wrote:

> I do not believe in virtual photons, virtual electron-positron pairs, messenger particles, or any other pipe dream theoretical mish-mash designed to allow us to act as if we know what is going on below heisenberg.

I notice you have used the term "below heisenberg" several times. What do you mean? I know the uncertainty is proportional to the momentum / location. I would know what you mean if you said you believed in electrons and protons but not quarks, or any particle smaller than a few MEV.

As far as not believing in virtual particles, what do you believe in? Lines of flux? Fields? I have learned it is easy to criticize and a bit harder to explain. And if you can't explain, you can kick around concepts. Arguing that matter is waves OR particles is better than arguing it is neither. You might at least see half the coin anyways.

> Regarding where Maxwell breaks down, check out The Moon- Spencer Article in Infinite energy Jan/Feb 2000. It is a reprint from the Journal of the Franklin Institute in 1955.

I would like to read it.

>All that is needed in the two major terms are the velocity of charge and the acceleration of charge. It was brilliant work.

When you say 'charge' I don't know whether you mean electrons, or the latent charge that can be polarized out of a vacuum. Electrons have spin, a magnetic moment, and their future electric field seems to always know how to bend to account for their velocity. And protons are even more complex. 'Virtual electrons' or whatever it is in the vacuum that allows it to be polarized is not so complicated. I am never sure what you mean when you say 'charge'. How does accelerating charge 'here' affect stuff over 'there'?

> Maxwell, himself, went to his grave worrying about his two interim entities, the vector potential and the displacement current. These things are results, but not realities from his equations. He had to dream them up to close the equations. They seem logical, but have not been measured to this day.
...
>A concept does not a reality make, but more importantly, does not give a clue as to what is the reality involved. We can engineer with equations, but we can't have any idea as to what is really going on based on those equations.

You can observe a phenomena such as radio waves, create a theory involving magnetic fields, and then find circumstances where the theory fails, such as Aharonov-Bohm Effect. I like the Faraday tensor with the Lorentz force equation, but its not too usefull for transformer design.

> Whether modeling particles as waves in hypergeometries or working on a premise of point particles with infinities in abundance, all is guess work...design by minds determined to make the stuff fit an imagined reality.

Guess work that seems to work well for designing free electron lasers, bombs and astrophysics predictions?

Scott
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