Robert Clarke Blair
LinkedIn
Clarke has spent 25 years helping companies implement earned value and project management systems, with the last 14 years devoted to implementing Oracle/Primavera products, with emphasis on process improvement and enterprise-wide portfolio/resource management. He provides leadership and training to help organizations make the changes required (especially in human behavior) to implement enterprise-level project management software.
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
Devlin Baker
Devlin holds Bachelors of Science degrees in Physics and Mathematics, Western Washington University, 2008, with additional concentrations in Electrical Engineering, Astronomy, and Geology. He has been involved in experimental physics, software development and computer aided design for the last eight years. He has been working with small scale electrostatic (IEC) fusion reactors since fabricating his first prototype in 2001.
CHIEF TECHNICAL ADVISOR
Joel Rogers
Joel holds a Bachelor of Physics from MIT (1965) and a PhD in Nuclear Physics from UCLA (1969). He was a research scientist at Canada's "TRIUMF" in Vancouver, BC, from 1973 to 2004. He has published over 100 articles in refereed journals such as Physical Review, Nuclear Physics, and Nuclear Instruments and Methods. He is the holder of five U.S. patents, and the author of a currently pending patent, “Modular Apparatus for Confining a Plasma.”
At least the magnet cans are now round and there is spacing between the magnets. It looks like there is an e-gun or ion gun at each cusp and they are set back from the magrid so that cusp plugging with associated WB5 type problems is avoided (possibly). The structure standing off from the magnets suggest that each magnet is supported independently (no nubs). These supports may be bolted to the vacuum vessel wall, etc. The drawing actually shows very little detail. As for the name, they can call it anything they wish. Mentioning electrostatic processes like in a Fusor is true, but no mention of the important magnetic component, plasma concentrating, enhanced cusp confinement, etc is hinted at. Polywell may even be trademarked (?). The site is very bare bones. If they are trying to raise capital, obviously much more detailed information would be needed, perhaps presented only to interested parties.
A method and apparatus of electrical, mechanical and thermal isolation of superconductive magnet coils includes a superconductive magnet for environments wherein large differences of electrical potential between the interior superconductive winding and the exterior of the device, on the order of 103to 106 Volts may exist.
I'm wondering if running the coils at near the potential of the casing would be much easier.
On Patent us20130012393 the only stuff I can find on prior art is a google search, no reference to acknowledged prior art. Polywell in general, WB-6, and a few discussions here might be cited.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.
The patent applications seem to suggest that they are serious about addressing at least some of the engineering issues of the Polywell design.
As for maintaining superconductors a voltages close to the accelerating voltage on the magnet can surfaces, I suspect this is inappropriate if not impossible. First off consider copper windings. The power to the magnets is the current times the volts. If the current is 1,000 amps and the voltage is 10,000 volts, you are putting 10 million watts into the magnet. Conversely, I have guestimated that in WB6 the batteries provided 24 volts to the windings , which resulted in ~ 1,000 to 2,000 amps flow.This would have resulted in the electromagnets consuming ~ 48 to 96 thousands of watts, which was ~ 1/5th to 1/10 of the power to the can surface provided by the capacitors during the brief time the machine was operating in Beta = one mode.machine and before the Pashin arc breakdown shorted out the machine .
Another concern is the insulation between the windings. With a lot of windings the insulation between wires needs to be thin- typically a layer of varnish. This can resist a few dozen volts, but thousands of volts could result in insulation breakdown and shorting between windings. Not impossible, but would require careful arrangement of the wires just like in a high voltage transformer. If the wires are not the current limiting element (which they would not be with high voltage, then current limiting would have to be external.
With super conducting wires, how many windings would be necessary? How much insulation would be needed between super conductor windings? If only one winding much of the insulation concerns are probably eased. But the B field strength is dependent on the amps times the number of windings. With 1000 Amps through one superconductor winding, the B field would be 1 unit. With 1000 amps through 200 windings like WB6, the B field would be 200 units ( actually ~ 1000 Gauss). Superconductors are limited by the ampount of current they can carry per square cm of cross sectional area. Generally this is limited to around 3,000 to 8,000 amps currently. To overcome this limitation , multiple windings/ loops or maximally thick wires would be needed. An interesting choice. I do not think a single superconductor loop would work very well because the field would not be consistent where the single wire entered and left the magnet, there would be a gap or slight overlap. A few, if not many loops would be needed to minimize this irregularity.
Finally, how much voltage is there in a superconducting closed loop? Ohms law is that I= V/R. In superconductors the resistance is almost zero, which means that the voltage has to be almost zero, or the current I would approach infinity. I realize that the driving voltage is the difference across the conductor, so the basline/ floating voltage may be set to anything(?). So perhaps you could have the superconductor at a very high floating voltage. The insulation to the case could be minimal. But what if the voltage to the case drops due to voltage droop, turning on/ off, etc. There could be transient large voltage differences, so insulation would have to be adequate for this, I suspect much of the benefits of similar voltages between the windings and case would be lost.
I wonder what the (floating) voltage of the superconducting wires in an MRI machine is. I suspect it is very low for safety reasons.
