Rick Nebel Discussed DC Transformer Project in Los Alamos

[DeltaV]

http://www.ladailypost.com/content/rick ... ect-jan-24

What Nebel has invented is an inexpensive and simple way to transform (efficiently change the voltage up or down while maintaining the power available) DC voltages and currents.

Instead of using wires and iron cores like AC transformers do, his DC transformer uses a plasma, helical electrodes and an axial magnetic field.

The transformation of the DC voltages and currents relies on newly discovered physics that is based on MHD dynamo behavior.

Tibbar Technologies, Nebel's company, has signed an agreement with Exelon Corporation, a very large east coast power company, to pursue this technology.

They estimate that this is potentially a $10,000,000,000/year business. Nebel filed a provisional patent last November. He is presently building/operating a proof-of-principle experiment (in the back of Village Arts on DP Road) to test this concept.

At Thursday's brown-bag lunch meeting, Nebel will discuss the physics, the technology, and give an update on the present status of the project.

[DeltaV]

http://w3.pppl.gov/cemm/Madison2012/Nebel.pdf

page 43 -

DC – DC Transformers
∙ Dynamo Current Drive is Effectively a DC – DC Transformer.
∙ High Voltage/Low Current Perpendicular to the B Field Yields Low Voltage/High Current Along the B Field.
∙ A Linear Version of This Device May be Usable as a Transformer.
∙ This is the Key Enabling Technology for High Voltage DC Transmission.
∙ If Inexpensive DC-DC Existed in the Early 1900s We Would Have a DC Grid Rather Than an AC Grid.
∙ DC – DC Transformers Are Possible, but They are So Expensive That it Cannot Be Done Economically for Less Than 20 MW.

[Stubby]

Rabbit Technologies!

great name. didn't notice that before.

[quixote]

Thanks, and good find, DeltaV. This is encouraging to me as it suggests an answer to the question of why Nebel would leave EMC if PolyWell was really viable.

[Maui]

Thanks, and good find, DeltaV. This is encouraging to me as it suggests an answer to the question of why Nebel would leave EMC if PolyWell was really viable.

Well, I would guess it does suggest that he expects a significantly greater chance the transformer thing will be viable than Polywell. I would suspect a viable Polywell is worth a lot more than $10B/year.

[TDPerk]

If Polywell works well, the direct conversion technologies would benefit hugely from such DC-to-DC conversion.

[kcdodd]

Plus, he would own that patent.

[quixote]

Well, I would guess it does suggest that he expects a significantly greater chance the transformer thing will be viable than Polywell. I would suspect a viable Polywell is worth a lot more than $10B/year.

I agree with both of these statements. However, there's no reason to think that he won't get a share of that money anyway. He was CEO of EMC for quite a while and most likely has a good chunk of equity built up from his tenure.

[DeltaV]

This also makes me feel better about Nebel leaving (temporarily?) EMC2.

Nebel is the Polywell theorist. Park is the Polywell experimentalist. Nebel may simply have run out of things to do while Park collects data.

Nebel may already be thinking about merging his transformer idea with a Polywell. What a great synergy that would be, assuming good DC-DC conversion efficiency, shared vacuum chamber, etc.

It's not clear to me, however, how well this would integrate with Polywell's high-energy alpha particle stream outputs. Maybe direct-conversion (alphas-to-voltage) becomes simpler? But, if the DC-DC process requires a reasonably steady plasma, hitting that with GWs of alphas would be ill-advised. May need to stick with the baseline direct conversion grids feeding UHVDC to a separate DC-DC transformer in its own vacuum chamber.

Nebel's "Bismark" device (page 28) looks compact and is hopefully scalable.

[TallDave]

Well, Exelon is certainly a serious player. Hope this works out for Rick!

I wonder what the voltage limits are, and how noisy the output is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-to-DC_converter

[ladajo]

There is certainly a need.

[krenshala]

I can definitely see this applying to the direct conversion aspects of a p-B11 Polywell.

[MSimon]

Thanks, and good find, DeltaV. This is encouraging to me as it suggests an answer to the question of why Nebel would leave EMC if PolyWell was really viable.

Well, I would guess it does suggest that he expects a significantly greater chance the transformer thing will be viable than Polywell. I would suspect a viable Polywell is worth a lot more than $10B/year.

I'm with TDPerk - this would be a great adjunct to Polywell.

[DeltaV]

@MSimon or JoeStrout
Why did you change the link in post 1 to a quote? Did ladailypost complain about too many hits?

[MSimon]

@MSimon or JoeStrout
Why did you change the link in post 1 to a quote? Did ladailypost complain about too many hits?

Error on my part. I like to use the url function to make the full link visible. I must have hit quote by mistake.

Corrected. Thanks.