Alternating Electrostatic Confinement

Discuss the technical details of an "open source" community-driven design of a polywell reactor.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

Post Reply
VernonNemitz
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 3:18 pm

Alternating Electrostatic Confinement

Post by VernonNemitz »

This idea starts with a nice cube holding a vacuum. On the inside of each face of the cube is a flat metal plate, not quite as large as the face it contacts. The plates will be electrostatically charged. And now for a 2D ASCII sketch:

Code: Select all

    +
   ----
-|      | +
 |      |
   ----
     -
The ion guns inject positive ions from the + sides toward the - sides. They can collide in the middle; higher-than-normal velocities are required, so that their relative velocities can suffice for fusion to occur. Since we know how fast the ions are moving/accelerating, we know when they will reach the central area.

At the moment the ions reach the central area, we reverse the charges on the plates. The ions decellerate, reverse course, and again accelerate toward the center. Again reaching the center, we reverse the charges on the plates. And so on.

I have in mind the fact that "ordinary" power-plant "step-up" transformers are able to reverse 750KiloVolts 60 times a second, for high-tension power-transmission lines. I think that is plenty more voltage than needed here (the larger the cube the lower the voltage needed), and probably a higher operation frequency, too, which means this ought to be build-able. As to how well it might work...I imagine the ions might eventually curve toward the charged corners. There might be a solution to that (extra plates turned on at need?). Feel free to reply!

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

I always though you should rotate the electric field on the grids. With maybe 500 volts or less RF. That could really make the plasma dance.

BTW you ought to look up POPS by R. Nebel. Interesting stuff.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

VernonNemitz
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 3:18 pm

Post by VernonNemitz »

Maybe something like this would help:

Code: Select all

    +
   ------/
 |     /  |
-|        | +
 |  /     |
  /------
+     -
Add an angled plate, also positively charged (probably not sticking out quite as far as portrayed). Ions would be repelled from it in a way that should prevent curving toward the corner. On the next part of the cycle, this charged angled plate would be made neutral, and the other angled plate would be given a positive charge. I should note that for a cube, the angled plate should be more like a rod, extending from a corner of the cube. --or there should be three angled plates, one between each pair of corner plates
Last edited by VernonNemitz on Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

jlumartinez
Posts: 143
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:29 pm
Location: Spain

Post by jlumartinez »

I don´t understand it fully since I am not an expert in fusion but it seems to have somethings in common with the Noblefuse design. Maybe I am wrong. Have a look to this animation: http://noblefuse.com/video2.htm

VernonNemitz
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 3:18 pm

Post by VernonNemitz »

The Noblefuse design appears to be relying on a combination of the well known "pinch effect" in a plasma that carries an electric current (somehow being made to happen in a tank of heavy water!), plus an external squeezing magnet. The positive ions in the plasma are all basically moving the same direction; that's the main reason why the squeezing magnet is needed.

The idea I'm talking about here does not involve plasma or electrons; it only needs hydrogen/deuterium ions in a vacuum. And no magnetic field should be needed, either.

D Tibbets
Posts: 2775
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2008 6:52 am

Post by D Tibbets »

I'm not certain what you are proposing. Varing the potential some small percentage on a time basis (not reversing it) might creat some resonant waves or shock fronts, if carefully timed, similar to radio wave ossilations. This has been discussed some on various threads. Reversing the fields would easily push a single ion back and forth, but two or more ions will not be in the same place (radial distance from the center). They would be scattered all over, and they would thus resopnd differently to various electrical fields, ie you could not have a nice neat bunch of ions marching in lockstep back and forth. Photons can bonce back and forth in this maner in a laser (coherant beams(?)), I don't know if this can be approached with ions. Also, electrons would have to be present, As has been pointed out here repeatedly, only small excesses of positive or negative charged particals can be isolated befor the coulomb pressure builds up to rediculous levels. The Polywell is speciffically designed to run with an excess of electrons, but only by ~ 1 part per million.

After saying that, there are 'gang bahaviors' of charged particles that are created and utilized in varous electronic devices- like vacuum tubes.
Perhaps reading up on POPS, a project worked on by Dr Nebel befor he joined EMC2, will enlighten you on ideas about creating ossilations , bunching in IEC devices (hopefully I am not misrepresenting POPS as I have very little understanding about it).


Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.

VernonNemitz
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 3:18 pm

Post by VernonNemitz »

To D Tibbets, well, as long as some ions are oscillating back and forth along the X-axis, some on the Y-axis, and some on the Z-axis, inside a cube, we should be able to get some collisions/fusions. I wouldn't especially object to some electrons being included, EXCEPT for the fact that since they are vastly less massive than the positive ions, they will accelerate lots faster and waste energy impacting the charged plates, while we wait for the ions to move to the center of the chamber.

I'm fully aware that a major advantage of having a mixed-charge plasma is that it can be a lot denser than a collection of like-charged particles, and the denser the plasma, the more fusions are possible and the more energy could be generated.

If the electron-impact problem can be solved (a really really big chamber?), then, sure, let both electrons and ions oscillate. It occurs to me that one thing that might help the "scattering" you mention is to have only small-area charged plates at the centers of the large faces of the cube.

Post Reply