Sorlox - FRC nautilus compressor

[Skipjack]

That video is interesting, but does not add a whole lot of new information. They make it sound like they have already achieved everything they are selling. If so that would be a scientific sensation. But... noone is talking about it. So why isnt there a paper in nature yet?

[crowberry]

That video is interesting, but does not add a whole lot of new information. They make it sound like they have already achieved everything they are selling. If so that would be a scientific sensation. But... noone is talking about it. So why isnt there a paper in nature yet?

The history of fusion research is full of examples where the last step was supposed to be easy and straightforward, but it turned out to be a show stopper because of some unforeseen difficulties. So it is better to claim success only after it has been accomplished. The Sorlox press release sounds very bold indeed to claim that they could reach break even in 18 months after they have gotten a new power supply.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 83735.html

The plasma is probably contained within the spiral device by image currents. This will introduce some losses, but if the initial plasma is large and fast enough that probably does not matter. I think the plasma in the LPP DFP is given a slight rotation to stabilize it. A similar thing could be going on with the nautilus compressor as well. If you have a pulsed device with a smallish plasma volume, then you are limited in the power that you can produce, but if you can make the apparatus small, then there can be many applications. In this sense the spiral geometry makes the device more useful because the size is smaller.
The interesting thing to know is of course what drives the evolution of the plasma to fusion in the center of the device, assuming it works at all?

[KitemanSA]

Really Kite? Because if you scroll up like 4 posts you'll see that both Skip and Paper both state they don't feel it is right. I'm with them on this and if you agree on that part, great.

Sorry, had a flashback to the LENR/Rossi thread.

[crowberry]

I read through the patent application. I think that the nautilus compressor looks like a rather promising device.
First they make a hot and dense enough compact toroid (CT) plasma that is injected into the nautilus compressor with a high speed (about c/10 in the video). As the CT moves down the spiral it is compressed because the spiral has a decreasing radius. As the CT is compressed it is also heated from its initial temperature. At the centre of the device the CT has been compressed and heated so much that it reaches a high enough temperature and density for fusion to occur. To get as much as possible fusion reactions to occur the CT is allowed to circle around the burn chamber many times for some ms until neutral gas is injected and the device is emptied with a vacuum pump for the next pulse.
So the spiral device does several things:
1) It increases the density of the CT
2) It increases the temperature of the CT
3) The rotational movement around the burn chamber allows for a long enough reaction time to maximize the amount of fusion reactions
4) This geometry keeps the overall dimensions of the device small
The energy released per injection and the repetition rate will determine the power output of the device.
In the patent document it is said:
"It is to be understood that a variety of gasses, including but not limited to: hydrogen, deuterium, deuterium-tritium mixtures, pure tritium, helium-3, diborane and mixtures thereof can be used with the compression apparatus of the invention."
So they are even considering to run the nautilus compressor using the pB11 reaction.
On the video they are suggesting that the nautilus compressor could scale up for use on ships...
But to really judge the potential of this device one would need solid data on its performance.

[Torulf2]

I think this will have to much friction, erosion and contamination of the plasma.

[crowberry]

There are some more details on the Sorlox webpage at http://www.sorlox.com/products.html:

Sorlox Deuterium Cell (SDC)

Model: PB-SDC 100 Power Production

The PB-SDC 100 delivers thermal energy to generate electricity using current boiler/steam interface technology. It does so by using Deuterium as a fuel source versus coal or natural gas used in conventional power plants.

The Deuterium is buried within a plasma structure that has been compressed to facilitate ignition. Heat generated from this reaction is delivered to the customer’s specific heat exchange process for electrical power generation.

The operational design specifications for each SDC ranges from 2kW up to 1MW of output electrical power. The desired power level is achieved by controlling the pulse repetition rate of the cell.

Due to the expandable nature of the technology, increasing power is accomplished by combining multiple cells into a “Sorlox Power Block" (PB), operating in the +1MW range. Initial test results will establish specifications for a PB in the 1 to 10 MW power range and above.

Again it sounds as if they have almost solved the problem?
The power range quoted is obviously smaller than for other concepts, but if the device is cheap enough and reliable, then one can as they say combine multiple units. Producing net power with fusion even with 2 kW would of course be a breakthrough. Let's see what they are up to.

[Skipjack]

Is there any 3rd party review to back up the claims these guys are making?

[crowberry]

Is there any 3rd party review to back up the claims these guys are making?

Unfortunately not. But if you look on the other projects that are using colliding compact toroids (CT), like General Fusion they basically are trying to do the same thing as Sorllox, that is to create a CT and shoot it into a conical tube to compress and heat the CT.

[Skipjack]

Unfortunately not. But if you look on the other projects that are using colliding compact toroids (CT), like General Fusion they basically are trying to do the same thing as Sorllox, that is to create a CT and shoot it into a conical tube to compress and heat the CT.

Uhm, I think you are confused. General Fusion does not do colliding beam. That would be MSNW and Tri Alpha. These use magnetic fields to do the compression. Besides Sorlox only has one plasmoid, not two.
It may be comparable to an imploding liner compression of an FRC, like MSNW does for their fusion driven rocket. But I believe that the Sorlox plasmoid would dissipate before it gets compressed in the tube. An imploding liner would be much quicker and it would be omnidirectional. Besides, it is the magnetic field created by the liner that does the compression...

[crowberry]

Uhm, I think you are confused. General Fusion does not do colliding beam. That would be MSNW and Tri Alpha. These use magnetic fields to do the compression. Besides Sorlox only has one plasmoid, not two.

If you take a look on the General Fusions FPA presentation from last year on page 4 of this link http://fire.pppl.gov/FPA12_Richardson_GF.pdf, then you can see that their device has one plasma injector above the sphere and one below the sphere. The idea is to create and compress the two spheromaks before they collide in the center of the vortex. Once the spheromaks have collided the pistons need to be fired to create the acoustic shock wave that finally is supposed to heat the plasma to fusion conditions.

The interesting thing with the Sorlox device is actually the geometry that might allow them to create a working device using only one plasmoid. If it works or not still remains to be seen.

[crowberry]

Sorlox has a product for isotope production called the IP-SDC 100:

The IP-SDC 100 is designed for isotope production, producing neutron-rich and neutron-depleted isotopes using a single machine, enabling your facility to meet the needs for clinical studies, research, and regional distribution. The innovative approach to production benefits current and future planning for PET, TAT, in VIVO, and other procedures.

The PET isotopes than can be produced by the IP-SDC 100 include: Fluorine-18, Nitrogen-13, and Copper-64, as well as a number of other isotopes.

The production of Helium-3 is another by-product of our process.

They also have technical details about the IP-SDC 100 posted on their webpage at http://www.sorlox.com/images/IP-SDC_100_Data_Sheet_.pdf.

Beam Properties
Based on (6) pulses per second
Neutrons 2.4 MeV and 14 MeV
Protons 3 MeV and 14.6 MeV
Protons 74 keV using Hydrogen
X-rays up to 119 keV
Photons 4 THz in broadband synchrotron light
Neutron-Flux per pulse 1.0 x 10E15 cm-2
Pulse Duration 9.5 milliseconds

Selling isotopes for medical use is something that others have proposed too, like for IEC reactors as was presented in the 2013 IEC conference in Kyoto. http://www.iae.kyoto-u.ac.jp/beam/iec20 ... on/7-1.pdf
This is of course a very good development that fusion reactors can be used for other things even if they have not reached break even.

On the Sorlox page they list an office in Seoul, Korea, so they seem to be expanding.

[mvanwink5]

For the Sorlox nautilus compressor, I don't understand what keeps the plasma from interacting with the metal wall. Other FRC's and GF use magnetic fields for actual compression of the plasma so wall interaction should not be an issue. At least that is my thinking.

[crowberry]

For the Sorlox nautilus compressor, I don't understand what keeps the plasma from interacting with the metal wall. Other FRC's and GF use magnetic fields for actual compression of the plasma so wall interaction should not be an issue. At least that is my thinking.

If you watch carefully the animation of the plasma injection, then you can see that a circulating current is induced in the plasma. This is why they are talking about Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF). I assume that they are using a fast current in the plasma generator to kick the plasma with a high speed into the compressor. Once the plasmoid is inside the compressor there will be a rapidly changing magnetic field due to the circulating plasma current which will induce currents in the metal walls of the compressor. These induced currents will be in the opposite direction and create a magnetic field. This is called Lenz's law, see this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz_law. This induced magnetic field is what keeps the plasma from hitting the spiral walls. The interesting question is whether they can inject the plasma fast enough so that the kinetic energy is enough to heat and compress the plasma to net energy fusion conditions. It is also of course interesting to see if the plasma can be contained and compressed in this way in the spiral compressor or if some instabilities or other problems will occur. Helion Energy says in their paper that they have reached 300 km/s as the maximum FRC injection speed, but Sorlox says in their video they want to reach v/c=0.01, so they need to go one order of magnitude higher.

[Skipjack]

For the Sorlox nautilus compressor, I don't understand what keeps the plasma from interacting with the metal wall.

That is what I don't understand either. They seem to have been able to build a device for isotope production with it already (market ready as it seems). So it does seem like this is working, even though I do not understand how. Would be cool if they could give some details about this.

[mvanwink5]

Crowberry, thanks, that certainly makes sense. Why the nautilus shape though?