Richard Nebel's Tibbar Plasma Technologies

[Skipjack]

Looks like Richard Nebel is working on a new fusion reactor design. Looks interesting. I wish him the best of luck!
https://www.tibbartech.com/nsf-grant/

[quixote]

Thanks for the link, Skipjack.

Do you happen to know what became of their plasma-based transformer idea? I haven't seen anything about it, but I found the idea pretty interesting.

[Skipjack]

They have a section on their website devoted to it. Seems like they got a 3.5 million ARPA-E contract:
https://www.tibbartech.com/transformers/

[hanelyp]

To my eye it all reads like someone takes startrek too seriously.

[Nanos]

Someone had this to say about his DC to DC work:

---
Interestingly similar to the (old) CEGB''s magnetohydrodynamic generation
project on which I worked in the '60s. That failed because of the
difficulty in getting long-lived enough electrodes to extract anything
like a useful electrical current from the plasma (a flame, in their case.)

The patent cited is, I suspect (can't find the full article) based on a
small scale experiment using one of the rare gases as the plasma, and may
be difficult to scale up - like ours!
---

Related link:


DC to DC electrical transformer, Patent details:
https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch ... f/10334713

[Enginerd]

Tibbar Plasma Technologies Headquartered In Los Alamos Files Patent For New Type Of Fusion Device
https://ladailypost.com/tibbar-plasma-t ... on-device/

"Tibbar Plasma Technologies, Inc., (TPTI) headquartered in Los Alamos has filed a patent for a new type of fusion device. TPTI President/CEO Dr. Rick Nebel explained that this is a radical departure from conventional fusion devices in that it uses cold plasmas for fusion rather than hot plasmas. Confinement is also not size dependent, so the size can be small and the physics can be proven at small scale. Experimental results are consistent with the theoretical predictions, he said, adding that a journal article on the device is almost complete and will be submitted for publication shortly. A second publication showing the experimental results is in preparation."

“In the 47 years that I have worked on fusion, including 30 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), this is the most promising fusion concept that I have seen,” Dr. Nebel said. “Not only does it use cold plasmas, the theory predicts that it should work with aneutronic fuels (i.e. it doesn’t produce neutrons or radiation) which makes it suitable for space propulsion as well as terrestrial power production.”

If post polywell/EMC2 Nebel says so, his background has me paying attention.

[Giorgio]

Tibbar Plasma Technologies Headquartered In Los Alamos Files Patent For New Type Of Fusion Device
https://ladailypost.com/tibbar-plasma-t ... on-device/
If post polywell/EMC2 Nebel says so, his background has me paying attention.

Thank you for the link, here is another one with more explanations and pictures of the actual prototype and of the intended fusion process.
https://www.tibbartech.com/news/
Click on "Read more" to open the full article.

Regarding the idea, I am not really sure what to think. It looks like they are borrowing a lot of ideas from Helion design, but until I will be able to read their scientific paper with more detail I will refrain from developing any personal opinion.

.

[Skipjack]

Interesting! Would be cool if it works! Fingers crossed that it turns out the way they predict.

[Munchausen]

Recent article depicting the concept:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... =#abstract

Some slides:

https://www.tibbartech.com/wordpress/wp ... -11v44.pdf

[usesbiggerwords]

So, bang two spinning (counter-rotating? not clear from the paper) rings of plasma together at (presumably) high frequency to get fusion? Is that the gist of it?

[Enginerd]

Looks interesting. So Tibbar Plasma Technologies is using a FRC (Field Reversed Configuration), but they using a different system arrangement when compared with say Helion Energy or Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. They plan to aim for p-B11 aneutronic fusion. And they plan to directly convert the energy released as alpha particles into electricity by inducing currents in a bunch of coils. Which should be enormously more efficient (perhaps ~90% or more) than using steam turbines, or supercritical CO2 turbines, to convert heat to electricity. Traditional thermodynamic cycles suck, being limited by the maximum Carnot efficiency, and thereby squander most of the input energy as waste heat.

Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see estimates on size, cost, or schedule.

[jrvz]

So, bang two spinning (counter-rotating? not clear from the paper) rings of plasma together at (presumably) high frequency to get fusion? Is that the gist of it?

I believe it's a single FRC. Magnetic fields constrain it axially, so all the particles in the plasma are in a potential energy well. They will oscillate axially at a certain frequency. Now suppose the constraining field is briefly increased. The particles on the left end are accelerated toward the right end, and vice-versa. Briefly increase the field again when the particles reach the opposite end. Repeat (i.e. vary the confining field at twice the axial oscillation frequency), building up the amplitude of the oscillation, until the relative speed as the particles cross the center line is optimal for the chosen fusion reaction.

Recall that in a polywell, particles were confined in three dimensions, hopefully with enough symmetry that they would all pass close to the center and fuse with particles coming in the opposite direction. This device looks like a one dimensional version, with less sensitivity to symmetry.

The neat thing about Helion's approach is the direct conversion of fusion energy to electrical energy. However, they still heat the plasma in order to get fusion. The plasma ions have a Maxwellian velocity distribution in three dimensions, so most collisions will have relative velocities either above or below the one with the highest fusion probability. With this oscillating fusion reactor we have beam-target fusion, where the individual ion populations are cool, so their relative velocities are almost entirely axial, and can be tuned for best performance.

Looks very good to me.

[jrvz]

On further examination, maybe this doesn't look so good.

First, I should correct my nomenclature. I referred to this as "beam-target fusion", but it's actually closer to a colliding beam reactor.

There was a comparable proposal by Rostoker, Binderbauer and Monkhorst [1]. Lampe and Manheimer [2] pointed out that for the case they studied, "the collision frequency for p-B momentum exchange scattering, i.e. for 90° scattering of the protons, is... 37 times faster than the fusion rate [which] destroys its assumed beamlike velocity distribution". That colliding beam reactor and the proposed oscillating fusion reactor are substantially different, but both employ cold plasmas with high relative velocities. I suspect that p-B scattering would affect both similarly. Nebel et al. discuss ion-electron scattering but not p-B scattering.

[1] Norman Rostoker, Michl W. Binderbauer and Henrik J. Monkhorst,
"Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor", Science 278,1419 (1997),
10.1126/science.278.5342.1419).

[2] Martin Lampe and Wallace Manheimer, "Comments on the Colliding
Beam Fusion Reactor Proposed by Rostoker, Binderbauer and Monkhorst
for Use with the p - B11 Fusion Reaction", NRL/MR/6709--98-8305 (1998)
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA356110.pdf

[jrvz]

On further examination, maybe this doesn't look so good.

First, I should correct my nomenclature. I referred to this as "beam-target fusion", but it's actually closer to a colliding beam reactor.

There was a comparable proposal by Rostoker, Binderbauer and Monkhorst [1]. Lampe and Manheimer [2] pointed out that for the case they studied, "the collision frequency for p-B momentum exchange scattering, i.e. for 90° scattering of the protons, is... 37 times faster than the fusion rate [which] destroys its assumed beamlike velocity distribution". That colliding beam reactor and the proposed oscillating fusion reactor are substantially different, but both employ cold plasmas with high relative velocities. I suspect that p-B scattering would affect both similarly. Nebel et al. discuss ion-electron scattering but not p-B scattering.

[1] Norman Rostoker, Michl W. Binderbauer and Henrik J. Monkhorst,
"Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor", Science 278,1419 (1997),
10.1126/science.278.5342.1419).

[2] Martin Lampe and Wallace Manheimer, "Comments on the Colliding
Beam Fusion Reactor Proposed by Rostoker, Binderbauer and Monkhorst
for Use with the p - B11 Fusion Reaction", NRL/MR/6709--98-8305 (1998)
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA356110.pdf