Coulomb Lever

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Scott Yannitell
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Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:21 pm
Real name: Scott Yannitell

Coulomb Lever

Post by Scott Yannitell »

Dear Fusor.net forum,

I would like to discuss the possibility of caloric deuterium fusion using electrostatic leverage. Since I have no reputation to lose or career to endanger I thought I’d have a little fun by suggesting some ideas that may or may not be of use.

Why fusion of deuterium? I’d start there first of all. I did some back of the envelope calculations that showed that locked in one milliliter of heavy water is the potential to run 1000 watts of heating power for over 200 days on average. You can see those crude calculations here on my YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHNSPTFUTIc

A consumer can purchase ten milliliters of heavy water from United Nuclear for only $25. Basically enough energy to run a furnace for a large house all winter long.

Let me see if I have some of the basics of fusion right and you can point out where I am getting it wrong. Is my estimation of the energy potential out of the ball park?

Assumptions are easy to make and dangerous when wrong. We all have to make assumptions. The next foot step is on solid ground, until it isn’t.

Assumption 1: I assume that when fuel ions are close enough they will fuse, no matter what temperature they are held at. But we really don’t know how close they need to be. I’ve read explanations that state that fuel ions have to be as close as 1e-15 meters. At this distance there are 230 newtons of force keeping them apart. On the other hand, a kind of cold fusion that many scientists say is possible can happen when an atom’s electron is replaced by a muon and this allows nuclei to be within 2.55e-12 meters to another of like form. At that distance the force between like charged nuclei is far less than a single newton.

Assumption 2: The reason such high temperatures are required for fusion of ordinary matter is because only individual particle head on collision momentum is considered for the force required to overcome the coulomb barrier. The sun’s core is estimated at 35 million kelvin however this is far below the temperature we’d expect for fusion of neutronless hydrogen. If the sun were to instantly lose all of it’s heat it would rapidly collapse, perhaps even driving heavy atomic fusion at some stage like a mini supernova. It is the force of gravity that makes stellar fusion possible.

Assumption 3: Force drives fusion. Either momentum, or gravity gets the job done. It takes a lot of energy to accelerate a mass of particles fast enough for some of them to plow through the coulomb barrier and it seems to take even more energy to keep them together long enough for interesting results. We can’t make gravity and we cannot indefinitely confine billion degree plasma with magnetic fields.

Assumption 4: Static electric force is a force we can use to drive fusion. The fusor uses static electric forces but it uses them indirectly. It is really a electrodynamic system where ions are accelerated. They pass through a void and on the return trip, there is a non zero chance they strike an incoming ion being accelerated in the same way. If they strike head on, they have a combined momentum force to fuse. Per unit mass, the electrostatic force is 39 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity. It is the force we fight to get fusion to work. So, to me, it seems that electrostatic force as a friend makes sense for the purpose of getting ions together. All we have to do is flip the sign.

Assumption 5: Time is the missing ingredient to all fusion schemes that could produce a net power reaction. The sun’s temperature is low and the rate of energy production in it’s core is less than human metabolism per unit mass. But there is so much mass, and so much time, we get sunlight long before us and long after too.

Faraday found in his experiments that charges occupy points on electrically conductive bodies. It is easy to accumulate a concentrated electric charge on the tip of a wire. Voltages of up to 60,000 volts were achieved hundreds of years ago with Leyden jars.

Materials called zeolites with nano sized voids and tubes have been used for centuries for water purification. They can be conditioned to hold hydrogen ions. Inside a conditioned zeolite, the void walls are negatively charged and ions are somewhat free to conduct. In the presence of a negatively charged electrostatic field they ought to concentrate (this is assumption #6). If we can cram a million deuterium ions in a single void they should be within the distance that quantum tunneling allows their pressure release and they can assume a new nuclear phase. In momentum driven collision systems the time ions are together is extremely short. But in this case, we can keep ions hopping on top of each other indefinitely.

The proximity of the charged wire has to be very close to the saturated zeolite and there needs to be a very strong insulator in between. CVD diamond films are enormously strong dielectrics. Some reports online show it is about 10 times stronger than the best vacuums we can make at 30 million volts per centimeter. So a diamond film one millimeter thick can withstand over 100 k volts before breaking down.

The diamond becomes a fulcrum. The long end of the lever is the high voltage of the wire. The short end of the lever fuel saturated zeolite. If the force of electro static leverage is high enough, fusion can occur.

Thank you for reading.

-Scott
Frank Sanns
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Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Frank Sanns »

Before the curmudgeons on this site respond, I will chime in.

It seems that you have been thinking about this for quite some time. Back in 2014 it appears that you began your thought but did not finish until now. This shows that it was not just a passing brain fart and something more thought out. Kudos for sticking with it.

Your post is mostly accurate but I did not verify with a calculator. The concept is what is important. It is novel and goes with the spirit of brainstorming in problem solving.

For those not familiar with brainstorming, it is a process of putting out ideas no matter what their merit is (within reason). The within reason is important because a person cannot claim something absurd like getting cheese from the moon. Brainstorming has the advantage to allow people to think out of the box and to allow others to also use the suggestion as a seed to expand the concept or to lead to something else entirely. There are no wrong answers in brainstorming. For this you get an "A".

I will not be the curmudgeon on this post but I will say from my chemistry experience that zeolites can have pore sized that do indeed go down to atomic sizes of 3 angstroms for example. They can be adjusted to fit just one size molecule which is really handy when trying to tie up water or other small molecules including D2O. They do this but there are many atoms of the zeolite structure that wrap around the water/ions. Any force applied would also be applied to the substrate defusing throughout.

For the above force from a fulcrum, what material could be used as all atoms would no longer be atoms at the forces required to bring deuterium ions together? It is a little like trying to make diamonds under high pressure using piece of rubber as the lever. It is not going be able to transfer the forces without bending and being destroyed long before diamond formation pressures could be achieved.

Still, it is a novel idea and maybe others will chime in with their own thoughts on the matter.
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
Scott Yannitell
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:21 pm
Real name: Scott Yannitell

Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Scott Yannitell »

Dear Mr. Sanns,

Thank you for your generous reply. I'm deeply sorry for my outburst in 2014. I'm bipolar and still trying to keep a lid on my amygdala even today.
For the above force from a fulcrum, what material could be used as all atoms would no longer be atoms at the forces required to bring deuterium ions together? It is a little like trying to make diamonds under high pressure using piece of rubber as the lever. It is not going be able to transfer the forces without bending and being destroyed long before diamond formation pressures could be achieved.
I appreciate this skeptism. I was thinking about this also. With 1,000,000 or 10,000 or whatever atoms crammed into a single pore the expansion forces upon that pore would render it about as sturdy as warm butter. Especially if considered along a gradient of lesser concentrated pores.

I'm pretty facinated by so called superlative materials such as diamond or other allotropes of carbon. Some wizz kids are doing interesting things zapping buckyballs filled with fusion fuel atoms at the University of Colorado. [edit, I couldn't find the article so my apologies to the University of Colorado if I'm wrong] I've seen some reports of buckyballs being stuffed with upto 7% hydrogen per unit weight. perhaps a stream of these buckyballs can be conveyed upwards against the force of gravity and fired upon by [1]freqency doubled UV lasers on all sides to get a steady fusion fire stream.

As for my lever idea I think a better material that zeolite may indeed be required. The fulcrum is certainly strong enough, and so is the long end with the wire. However the short end is too soft and will break like you suggest.

My next stab at alchemy:

Stronger short end of the lever:

CVD diamond is grown upon an [2]Adamantane substrate. If we could introduce an array of frequency doubled UV lasers in a grid in exactly the center of the growing diamond fcc structure in the [4]methane microwave enviroment we might be able to make sparsely spaced channels. The channels aught to assume a negative charge and have a cumulative channel width of 3.08 angstroms. Hydrogen molecular bonds are 1.97 angstoms[5]. The so called grid could indeed be a single channel just to experiment with something.

The end of the cap is simply grown with the laser energy turned off upto a milimeter in thickness beyond the end of the channels.

In the complete machine, The air is removed through the cell and Deuterium gas is introduced under pressure. Due to carbon's stronger electron affinity it will draw away the electron of a deuteron. Deuterons in these channels can be pushed around with frequency doubled UV lasers or drawn together with strong electrostatic fields.


[1]https://opg.optica.org/viewmedia.cfm?r= ... &html=true

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamantane

[3]https://web.iit.edu/sites/web/files/dep ... ctures.pdf

[4]https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pn ... 201.6%20kW.

[5]https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves ... 20molecule.
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Richard Hull
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Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Richard Hull »

Nice out of box thinking. For those who feel this has merit I suggest they get to work on gathering the materials needed to try these ideas. The hands-on experience is wide open to test these thoughts.....Do I hear crickets?

No telling how many bold out of box thoughts were never even turned into kit that would have succeeded in doing fusion right out of the chute.
Inertia and costs stop all of the best efforts to turn out of box thinking into testable real world implementation.

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
Scott Yannitell
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:21 pm
Real name: Scott Yannitell

Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Scott Yannitell »

Dear Mr. Hull,

Thank you for your kind words. I'd like to seduce Battelle on this idea but its a hard sell from a grocery store clerk.
Scott Yannitell
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:21 pm
Real name: Scott Yannitell

Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Scott Yannitell »

I have some credentials. I can pack boxes. My store lowers our plastic waste by boxing our items in the boxes our products are shipped with. So above zero! We also all believe we are servents to you the beautiful public!
Scott Yannitell
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:21 pm
Real name: Scott Yannitell

Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Scott Yannitell »

I think a single channel atom knock out isn't really going to work because carbon's bonds to hydrogen are considerably strong. When diamond has a hydrogen surface it becomes [1]hydrophobic and when oxygen is on it's surface it becomes hydrophilic.

If a hole that was coated with deuterium atoms is large enough it might provide a less resistive channel for dueterium atoms to migrate through in seeking after a high negative potential. The channel opening could be layered with a positivly charged perforated conductor to help start the ionization process. As high pressure hydrgen come in contact with the grid ions can be drawn into the channel with the negative field on the other end. If some kind of waste fuel debris gets lodged in there somehow, it might be possible to blow it out by flipping the signs of the machine. Perhaps something like a tesla coil, since they are inexpensive and can reach high voltages, could be a viable driver. It could also help to have a resonance aspect to the channel so that not only do we have electrostatic force to help us, we also have momentum force also.

And since the channel is much larger, less advanced lasers can be used to build it during the growth process of the CVD diamond crystal. BTW, CVD diamond growth is pretty fast. One paper I mentioned said it can grow 16 micrometers per hour. Over 365 days that is nearly 14 centimeters thick.

A single occilating channel that can accomodate atomic dueterium ions is very small indeed per number of atoms it can hold. I will do some calculations to see what kind of output power could ideally be obtained with such a small number of atoms.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_ ... %20radical.
Frank Sanns
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Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Frank Sanns »

Re-read your own post on atomic forces vs nuclear. Atomic forces are on the order of 10^-23 joules. How are they going to stay together to affect nuclear forces that are on the order of 10^-10 joules. What of those 13 orders of magnitude?
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Richard Hull
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Re: Coulomb Lever

Post by Richard Hull »

Now! Who is the wet blanket? I decided to just let 'em muse on and on. No one is gonna' move on this idea, anyway. Certain facts in physics are overlooked quite often by those with ideas in armchairs and no money.

I say let them build this idea in hardware and find out about the 13 order of magnitude differential the hard way. I will never stand in the way of a true build. I may poo-poo it, but I will never get out in front of it being done. Doers are too rare to stop from doing.

Doing with conviction is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Saying is always a "for free" wind blowing over the decks.

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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