Fusion electricity generator that works!
- Thread starter extrasense
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extrasense
Registered Senior Member
Those electron move through the load circuits, where electric energy is consumed, and arrive at the enveloping electrode , at which place they join some arriving alpha particle, producing Helium atom.
As to the possible complications and details, they must and can be worked out.
The good thing is, that you do not need huge apparatus to work the details out in a realistic fashion, - unlike situation with termonucler plasma fusion.
eS
extrasense
Registered Senior Member
You can figure out that it is not much, considering that the cost of Boron-11 will be less than 0.18 cents/kWh - including all the mining, extraction, and purification.
Which represents tenfold reduction compared to the cost of cheapest electric energy now 1.82 cents/kWh .
es
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extrasense
Registered Senior Member
This is the beauty of it
Heat and pressure are substituted for by the proton acceleration, so you do not have problem of pasma contaiment and instability!
es
That's not my understanding of what would happen. Your alpha particles would collide with the Boron electrode, picking up a pair of electrons and zooming off with kinetic energy to be dispersed as heat. Those two electrons will promptly be replaced by the electrons which were generated at the Boron electrode by the fusion reaction, which don't have to cross any load to reach the destination.
I also still don't see how you could avoid breakdown voltage in your Boron electrode. You're claiming you can attract protons across a near vacuum towards the Boron electrode, yet somehow the electrons on the Boron electrode pumped from your starting battery will be held in place to maintain the necessary gradient.
extrasense
Registered Senior Member
If this where the case, ANY alpha decay would be impossible to observe. I do not think you want to assert that.
The protons are being ejected from positive electrode, by a way of heating it or alike.
They are not being extracted by electric field, they just are accelerated by the field toward Boron electrode.
The field strength depens on distance between electrodes, which must be choosen so that the field is not strong enough to extract electrons from boron electrode.
Moreover, in case it is needed - to keep electrons from spoiling the picture - a negative shielding electrode can be added near the Boron, like it is being done in the vacuum triode.
Even if you were right and most energy were produced as heat, the device still would be producing energy
es
If this where the case, ANY alpha decay would be impossible to observe. I do not think you want to assert that.
I don't see how this assertion is true. You haven't specified what you plan to do with the two free electrons that are generated by the reaction. What stops them from combining with the alpha particles so that no voltage is generated with respect to ground? If the alpha particles instead knock electrons off the Boron electrode, what stops the free electrons generated by the fusion reaction from replacing them? In either case, I don't see how you could generate a reliable voltage with respect to ground.
Ok but they still travel across a near vacuum, so that there's basically nothing holding the electric charge on your Boron electrode, so it would quickly reach breakdown voltage and discharge, meaning you couldn't get it up to the required 0.6MV. If you have something between the electrodes so as to prevent the Boron electrode from discharging, I don't see how it wouldn't also interfere with the proton beam. I think you'd have a better design if the starting mechanism is located outside your vacuum chamber, then that could probably circumvent the breakdown voltage problem. The work function on your Boron electrode would have to be at least 0.6MeV though, that seems pretty darn high.
That might work too, but I don't know anything about vacuum triodes so I couldn't say.
Even if you were right and most energy were produced as heat, the device still would be producing energy
But how much? How frequent would these fusion reactions be, compared to the myriad number of other ways to dispose of that energy? One or two atoms undergoing fusion reactions aren't going to generate very much energy. You'd need to guarantee a certain amount of fusion reactions occuring at any time to make it viable, and then you'd still need to channel most of that fusion energy into electric power, which I'm not sure is very feasible given what I said above.
I think you'd have major problems controlling the heat just from the initial proton beam. I'm using a classical calculation here for heuristic purposes, but I doubt the relativistic corrections would make a big difference. A classical gas of non-interacting protons each having 0.6MeV of energy would have a temperature given by $$T=\frac{2E_{proton}}{3k_B}\approx 4.6\times10^9K$$. That's HUGE! And that's just your startup reaction. Even if it was occuring on a microscopic scale, I don't see how that wouldn't wreck your apparatus awfully quickly. I think unless I screwed up big time in my numbers, you're going to have enough technical difficulties that there's no way this device could be made to work for less than many, many billions of dollars.
At least you've put a lot of thought into this and I think you have some interesting ideas, now that I look at it more closely. I'm not an expert in electrical engineering or nuclear physics, so I can't rule out your ideas, but I think there are enough reasons both in physics and in practical knowledge to be highly skeptical of your optimism. Well, good luck and I guess I hope your idea actually sees fruition one day, because if you could make it work then certainly it would bring considerable improvements to many facets of our lives.
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extrasense
Registered Senior Member
Your critique has helped me see and correct some weaknesses of my suggestion, and my presentation of it.
The most mportent one so far was your point about reaction cross section. It can be shown, that in oder to make sure that practically every arriving proton will react with boron, the depth of boron must be 2.5m.
Very importent thing to keep in mind!
This can be achieved using a boron in a shape of 2.5m rod.
So, even smallest installation will be several meters long
eS
extrasense
Registered Senior Member
extrasense
Registered Senior Member
This brings in the issue of proton energy loss, when moving inside boron.
I do not have data on that, and it might be unacceptably high.
I think anyway that this reactor design idea is promising even if experiments will prove, that slowing of protons is a show stopper.
There might be ways to mitigate slowing, by additional acceleration for example.
es
p+B11 was orginially developed by Robert Bussard.
It's called Inertial Electrostatic Fusion, and all orignial fusors (ie: not tokomak) were of an IEC Design.
Problems aren't in the theory they are in the engineering.
google IEC Fusion and Robert Bussard to find out more.
It's called Inertial Electrostatic Fusion, and all orignial fusors (ie: not tokomak) were of an IEC Design.
Problems aren't in the theory they are in the engineering.
google IEC Fusion and Robert Bussard to find out more.
extrasense
Registered Senior Member
Hi,
the question is, how much energy proton loses, before it hits the nucleus of boron. I can not calculate it, it probably must be measured in experiment.
What is your take on this?
es
If you haven't built one, you don't know if it works.
extrasense
Registered Senior Member