LENR / Solid State Fusor

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Harald_Consul
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LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Harald_Consul »

Hello!

I am from Germany. I am intersted in nuclear fusion more or less since the Fleischmann-Pons-Experiment.

In April 2016 Holmlid and Olafsson (two researchers from Iceland and Sweden) have presented their theory of Rydberg phases of Hydrogen and low energy nuclear reactions at the American Physical Society Meeting in Salt Lake City.

In case you are not a scientists: No one gets an invitation to present at the American Physical Society, if his research is crap.

Thus, I am thinking about creating a LENR-fusor based on the Holmlid and Olafsson research.

Has anyone done an experiment like this before? Is it safe to do so? Where can I get the laws, that apply to fusion experiments in my country?

Thanks in advance for your support. As I do not have much practical experience yet, any advice will be helpful. Till now, my competence in this matter is mainly theoretical. My profession is Statistician. I did an extra course in Wigner distribution, which is most common distribution, that physcists use to model quantum effects.
John Futter
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by John Futter »

consuli or whatever yourname is
your first post should have been in the introduce yourself forum
and pleasew review the rules
real names only No handles both for your forum presence and your real name ---both should read the same
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Richard Hull
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Richard Hull »

While I don't push any fusion method as, thus far, 100% have failed consistently. I fear ITER is just the largest yet to probably fail as all the others. I do not have any more animosity to cold fusion or LENR-CANR than to any other glorious paths to fusion which are supported by the "anointed" on which billions are currently being spent.

Definition: LENR - Low energy nuclear reaction....CANR - Chemically assisted nuclear reaction

Cold fusion, LENR and CANR are laughed at by the anointed ones and what work is being done is to be heralded, if done well, for it is at least some path other that the enlargement of proven bad ideas. In addition billions of tax payer funds are not being spent on this alternate path.

Hoorah for all alternate paths provided they are charted and worked on by dedicated, and educated people who are serious and not self-deluded nit-wits who dropped out of high school.

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
Harald_Consul
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Harald_Consul »

John Futter wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:11 pm consuli or whatever yourname is
your first post should have been in the introduce yourself forum
Done.
John Futter wrote: Sat Oct 20, 2018 5:11 pm and pleasew review the rules
real names only No handles both for your forum presence and your real name ---both should read the same
Done. consuli has become Harald_Consul now.

Honestly remark: Maybe the forum netiquette could be shown during the registration already?
Harald_Consul
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Harald_Consul »

Out of the scope of my question:
Richard Hull wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 1:05 am I fear ITER is just the largest yet to probably fail as all the others.
Why should the big plasma based ITER reactor fail, when Lookheed-Martin can build a much smaller - thus much more difficult - plasma based fusion reactor?
Richard Hull wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 1:05 am I do not have any more animosity to cold fusion or LENR-CANR than to any other glorious paths to fusion (...)

Hoorah for all alternate paths provided they are charted and worked on by dedicated, and educated people who are serious and not self-deluded nit-wits who dropped out of high school.
Brilliant. So let's get straight into the matter, then.

Nuclear (deuterium) fusion only happens, when the electrons are removed from the nucleus. It has been proven a thousand times, that this happens when deuterium gas is in a plasma state. Plasma means, that the nucleus and the electron floate free from each other in the plasma. A gas plasma can be generated by
  1. a vacuum (which is applied in the Farnsworth-Hirsch-Fusor)
  2. a high temperatur/ high pressure condition by a large elektromagnetic field (Tokamak-Design, Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion_Reactor)
Both approaches have disadvantages in regards to power generation:
  1. A vacuum plasma is not dense enough, that it could ever generate a self sustaining nuclear reaction.
  2. Large elektromagnetic fields are very costly to generate.

LENR / Solid State Fusion is an alternative nuclear fusion approach to the ones mentioned above.

In general LENR / Solid State Fusion is based on the idea, that deuterium (like simple hydrogen) forms a ligand binding with palladium (and some other catalysator metals like platin). In a ligand binding, the electrons of the elements do not circulate round the nucleus of each element, but form orbitals around the whole molecule-structure (which is also the case in any electron-molecule-binding). However, a ligand-binding might be special in this way, that it allows the deterium-nuclei to come so close together, that they get fusioned sometimes.

Thus, from a very abstract view, the general principle beheind nuclear fusion is
  1. Removing the electrons from the deuterium atom, so that only the nucleus remains.
  2. Colliding the deuterium nuclei together, so that they get fusioned.
This general principle always remains the same, regardless if plasma-fusion or LENR / solid state fusion is used.

Follwoing, the interesting questions for LENR / solid state fusion are:
  1. How can electrons get further removed (by an ionizing beam for instance) ?
  2. What is the minimum collision-velocity for deuterium nuclei, so that they fusion, and how can this velocity be accomplished within a piece of palladium-deuterid ?
I am really interested in your thougths.
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Richard Hull
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Richard Hull »

I, personally, have no thoughts on solid state or even plasma fusion. I only have eyes and ears for experiment that leads to novel and positive acting solutions and processes that really do controlled fusion, either far below unity return, (power hogs like the fusor), or in net gain fusion far exceeding the input energy, (thus far an impossibility, based on experiment).

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
Harald_Consul
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Harald_Consul »

Richard Hull wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:43 pm I, personally, have no thoughts on solid state (fusion theory) or even plasma fusion (theory).
No, problem. So you come in the next step to make a (technical) contribution, when I am going to present my experimental LENR / Solid State Fusor design.

As I told in my introduction I am not a university researcher and I do not have a million dollar budget available, to make this experiments.

Thus, I have been thinking it over and over, how I could achieve
Harald_Consul wrote: Sun Oct 21, 2018 8:25 am
  1. How can electrons get further removed (by an ionizing beam for instance) ?
  2. What is the minimum collision-velocity for deuterium nuclei [which is at least 4 keV (kiloelectronvolts)], so that they fusion, and how can this velocity be accomplished within a piece of palladium-deuterid ?
with the lowest budget, ever.

Till now, I came to this experimental low budget solid state fusor design:
  • I take a television tube from a bigger old school TV / CRT Monitor
  • let the vacuum out
  • cut a round! "service whole" into the television tube using a glas cutter (cornered holes will make the glass crack under vacuum)
  • I am manufacturing an electrolytical cell, that will be filled with D2O, that has a prolonged palladium sheet electrode on that side, where the deuterium is generated
  • The whole electrolytical cell is placed into the television tube
  • The televisons tube's electron generation unit's polarization is reversed and the voltage is increased, so that it produces a ion beam instead of an electron beam, now, when there is plasma in the tube
  • The prolonged palladium sheet electrode is positioned at the Zero-beam position of the television tube
  • The tube's beam generation units and the electrolytical cell get powered; the electrolytical cell starts to produce deuterium, that gets stored as palladium-deuterium-ligand within in the electrode
  • The television tube is set under vaccuum. Due to the vaccum, some of the deuterium in the palladium electrode evaporades into the tube. A deuterium plasma is generated in the tube. From the deuterium plasma the tube's beam unit starts to produce a deuterium-ion beam.
  • Thus, the palladium-deuterid-ligand in the prolonged palladium sheet electrode gets bombarded with deuterium-ions and an (endotherm) fusion process is started (endotherm means, that the energy produced is lower than the total energy "invested" into to the process)

Richard, now you can come up and tell me, what technical problems will arise in this alternative fusor design. Don't hold back to tell me, why this all will not work. Any problem, that is referenced at this time already, will help me to avoid it in my real experiment, later.
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Harald_Consul »

Spoken otherwise: The only main difference between my LENR / Solid State Fusor approach and the A Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is that the accelerated deuterium-ion is not targeted against another plasma-deuterium ion but a palladium-deuterid-ligand, instead (which is hoped to require less accelerated deuterium ions). The general principle is still the same.

So, as it is nearly the same, you can make a lot of technical contributions to my approach, right?
Lukas Springer
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Lukas Springer »

Just look up "Beam on Target Fusion"
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Welcome and I hope your idea progresses to actual experimentation.

I will say a few points on the physics you mention. First off, ALL metals have that type of bonding - electrons are not bound but are shared within the material - that is the very definition of the metallic state (the Fermi surface) and how it differs from covalent bonding. The issue with hydrogen (or in this case, deuterium) is the molecule has only two electrons so any striping has a major effect unlike for most metals. However, do realize that the metal (Pd) host provides ample 'free' electrons as well. These will shield the 'proton/neutron' system and prevent any 'free' nucleus in the metallic state (the deuterium nucleus) and doesn't really offer much advantage for reducing separation between the deuterons. Fact is, no one has achieved increased fusion rates using cold deuterium "ions" within Palladium.

That said, using ion bombardment is classic and was one of the very first experiments done by low energy accelerators in the 30's.

Putting Pd in a fusor was recently discussed and a sheet of Pd was exposed to the deuterons and electrons in the fusor. The result was reduced fusion - so, not sure your method as you provide details is in any fundamental way, different.

As Lukas points out, there is a vast library of articles and books on ion beam work of which deuterium fusion is a small, extensively researched, part.

ITER is a money trap and really just welfare for European plasma scientist (mostly French.) The field is dying there, certainly due to that waste of money. In America, it died some time ago and the joke called NIF (while vastly lower in cost than ITER) has also damaged all other fields but that isn't a surprise. Most people that knew the physics realized that laser approach used by Lawrence Livermore was utterly wrong (as did they) but they wanted the money and facts were brushed aside to disaster. So, direct drive in the US (and its been mostly ignored in the rest of the world) is also dead and unproven.

These aren't the only problems in the field of real fusion, of course. Fusion is essentially impossible on Earth except for over powerful ion beams or using tunneling (a fusor.) There is a reason the universe exists in such a manner that life is possible - Fine Structure Constant (its precise magnitude) - and that makes fusion rather difficult.

Relative to ion beam fusion, no one has ever really tried very high current direct drive ion beam fusion for energy (ion beams can easily achieve 20% + conversion efficiencies (wall outlet energy in and tens of MeV deuterons out - called an accelerator)) I've been told my experts in the field. Could that achieve economic fusion? No one (in the open literature, at least) has ever scaled up such a machine up to test the idea in a real fashion. But like all untested ideas, dreamers know it will work as long as money is throw at it long enough.

Relative to existing programs, I have high regards for the German Stellarator (no secret there since my daughter worked on it for a summer) and it appears to be (slowly) proving itself. However, going from that to even a small proto-type reactor would be the difference between night and day. In any case, first, the W-7X must achieve its full potential and that will take a decade. Till then, it too is just a possible approach (but certainly the most expensive ever considered due to its complex (read hyper expensive) magnets. Building up a small scale real reactor using that design will make ITER look like a low cost experiment - again, if the W-7X succeeds.)

Basically, the field of fusion (either Magnetic, or direct drive (inertial); the in-direct drive is purely for weapons so I will not get into that one) is dead and until either AGW creates enough issues for the world or fossil fuels run low, the field of fusion energy will remain in that state.

Sorry for this long entry but this topic needed some overview to clarify some issues.
Harald_Consul
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Harald_Consul »

Thanks for your valuable contributions.

I really googled "beam on target fusion" and found these cross section graphs
cross_sections.jpg
(Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-beam-target-fusion)

My Questions to these cross-sections:
  1. What does a cross section of 4! in Deuterium-Tritium beam-target-fusion at 10^2keV effectively mean? 3 further chain reactions?
  2. How has the target been hold in place during the measurement of these cross-sections (which are pretty high, thus would seek design reproduction)
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Detailed answers require you study the field a bit - for instance: the definition of a "Barn" (that will answer your question of what the "4" is in the chart.) Doing this is necessary if you want to be taken seriously here. That said, you need to realize that these are 'solid' targets - do the math and you will see why and how the target cross-section occurs for the ion beam on target. That is a very simple calculation that just needs elementary math. You have a lot of reading and studying to do if you want to be more than a speculator (and spectator - like most people that post here and then are never heard from again.)
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Richard Hull
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Richard Hull »

I can't ad much to what Dennis has posted. We cannot and will not, as amateur fusioneers, ever do D-T fusion. Looking at the charts, outside of D-T fusion, D-D fusion is the very finest fusion and has a good and useful slope up to 100 kev which is the absolute voltage limit for the most aggressive amateur fusioneer. At 100kev X-radiation is very lethal.

You notice that all reactions have a voltage peak beyond which, a process called "stripping" occurs. This means there is so much energy applied that the individual nucleons are sheared off the atom and fusion occurs less and less frequently, (cross section falls off). For D-D this is called the Oppenheimer- Philips reaction.

Thus, there is a point where fusion just stops and you are just breaking up atoms with the continuous input of wasted energy.

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: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Richard Hull »

Apparently this discussion may be taken up again and this moves it forward.

While most folks have long ago looked at this as a lost effort, I continue to listen intently when real science is expounded around it. The thing about lattice fusion that inspires me is that it approaches that portion of the classic Lawson criteria of confinement of massive amounts of hydrogen in the form of deuterium. Claims are made of tritium being produced which were debunked for the most part.

One experiment that I am unware of is the loading of palladium or better still Thorium which is also a lattice that accepts huge amounts of hydrogen, from a 50:50 solution of D2O and T2O. This has not nor will not be done on a suitable scale by any scientific body, amateur or professional, due to the radioactivity and unavailability of liquid T2O. Yet I would think that it might be an obvious choice in a LENR experiment. D-T fusion begins at extremely low energy inputs whether induced electrostatically or thermally. Why not load a lattice nearly 50:50.

Up until now we have to grant the real world physicists and ourselves, who do fusion, the observed fact that fusion, as we know it, has nuclear ash and a well known and measured energy output.
D-D fusion = P + n + 3He + T and the hyper rare 4He + intense gamma ray (second easiest fusion to do via IECF or thermal fusion) All the energy derived is kinetic energy, save for the rare gamma ray
D-T fusion = 4He + n (The easiest known fusion reaction and takes place at ~1000 times greater frequency at its peak over the D-D reaction at the same applied energy) 100% of the energy is kinetic energy

The CANR/LENR folks claim reactions that seem to release heat energy from the lattice in the case of D loadings. By normal fusion physics, heat of the nature observed, even a rise of 5 degrees Celsius would require a lethal blast of neutrons in our D-D reaction. They are not seen. Herein, lay the real world physicists argument. Some say it is all chemical in some form of triggered mass release of the loading of D, returning the stored energy from the long term electrolysis electrical lattice loading energy. The LENR people believe it might be a new form of fusion, as yet unimagined. The burden of proof is on them, of course. Here the sleeping dog lies and the ball is bouncing in their court.

Thus far, the real world accepted fusion is secure as the ruling physics. The real world fusion effort continues to fumble and bungle its way into seeing just how much of the public treasure it can burn through in a quest to get more usable energy out of their well studied and fully accepted reactions.

Is it all just a big joke? We do it too! However, we do it without the hope of a great breakthrough at our level of operation. We are amateurs, after all and just wish to "do" and "experiment" with our "real- world", "physics-accepted", fusion ash, what there is of it.

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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Dennis P Brown
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Interesting that you brought this old post up. For the last few months I have given this issue thought and see some possibilities that might be worthwhile exploring. While I have many larger goals to deal with this coming year, this aspect of fusion has intrigued me to no end. But in no case will I further deal with those 'possibilities' until I have a working fusor - and that must include a few properly working neutron detectors! I will only say that at some point, I want to visit this fascinating area of 'discredited' fusion and look deeper into it with experimental research; speculation is for the birds.
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Richard Hull
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Re: LENR / Solid State Fusor

Post by Richard Hull »

In the end, I... Do not... see CF, CANR, LENR even if real and working by some as yet unexpected process as a solution to our energy problems related to fusion. However, I will remain open minded, but look on any work with a jaundiced, critical, scientific eye.
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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