How do you want your ions?

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
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Steven Sesselmann
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How do you want your ions?

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Hi guys,

Long time no talk, I look in from time to time but have not been reading every post so forgive me if this has been discussed before.

It seems like the basic fusor design hasn't changed, most of you build spherical chambers with a grid and simply feed the deuterium into the chamber through a hole in the flange. My best guess is that a large part of the ionisation takes place along the inside of the shell at ground potential. The deuterium atom gives up an electron to the shell and allows the positive ion to be accelerated through the grid.

If you believe ion velocity is the key to fusion, keep doing it and pray that fusion numbers are going to increase, personally I no longer believe this model.

According to my understanding, fusion is a decay process (just like fission), ions fuse at negative KV because they want to get back to ground potential, so ionising the gas at ground potential is not optimal. Where the ion is created makes a difference to the ion velocity in a fusor. This has been demonstrated by experiments using a grounded grid and positive shell, it produces little or no fusion.

Contrary to popular belief, the probability of fusing is inversely proportional to the velocity, it is the relative velocity of the ions which prevent them from fusing, try to imagine two magnets passing each other at a million miles an hour, how are they going to stick together? Slow them down and ....bang!

Apart from my own efforts I haven't seen any posts describing low potential gas feeds. Sure it's a bit of an engineering challenge, but not beyond most of you. All one needs is a hollow feedthrough and a small floating gas cylinder, through which the gas is admitted, venting in or near the grid. I see no reason why the gas feed and electrical feedthrough can't be one and the same.

Watch out for x-rays, because all the electrons now travel the full potential, so if you let in 1cc of gas get a lot of electrons.

The ions created at the grid don't have much velocity, so the only way they can reach ground potential is by fusing, and they will.

Steven
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Richard Hull
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Richard Hull »

Ions are not magnets which have some natural attractive nature. Ions, (positive), can't fuse by going slower due to the electrostatic repulsion which is overwhelmingly dominent at slow speeds. Only quantum tunneling can have a probability of fusing and this is clearly seen to only happen at high ion velocities. There is no thought process that can have slow, near approaches or impacting of slow ions fuse other than the cold fusion argument.

Let someone build this slow ion idea in a 6 inch machine and do 2 million fusions a second. My older method that supposedly is not that good is doing this amount of fusion now.

New ideas and thoughts are great, but making them work via a definitive proof is another matter all together.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: How do you want your ions?

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Richard Hull wrote:Let someone build this slow ion idea in a 6 inch machine and do 2 million fusions a second. My older method that supposedly is not that good is doing this amount of fusion now.
New ideas and thoughts are great, but making them work via a definitive proof is another matter all together.

Richard Hull
Sure I don't expect anyone to just take my word for it, one must either make the effort to understand it or sit around and wait for someone else to review it and prove it. This is why scientists only trust peer reviewed papers, because it means you don't have to understand it or check the maths, someone else has already done it. Fusioneers work at the cutting edge, and we don't always know what the outcome of an experiment is going to be until we actually do it, and I do.

As it happens I am working on a new variant of the FICS double ended collider, it's still early days, but this one fixes some of the problems associated with earlier FICS reactors.

I am using the same successful construction method as I used for the single ended FICS-1 with laminated glass and aluminium discs. In line with my ideas above, this reactor will have a floating gas cylinder with a feed going directly into the cathode reaction chamber in the middle. To prevent the flood of electrons flying up the tube (as happened in FICS-1), the last dynode will be negatively biased with respect to the cathode, and a 50kV array of zener diodes will carry any excess current to ground.

The objective of this planned experiment is not to beat Richards fusion record, but to show that a small electrical current can be generated directly by separating protons and electrons using kinetic fusion energy.

Never ever give up...

Steven
FICS-IV é Bee Research Pty Ltd
FICS-IV é Bee Research Pty Ltd
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Half the reaction chamber é Bee Research Pty Ltd
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Class insulating discs é Bee Research Pty Ltd
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Richard Hull »

That is the spirit that gets things and tests of ideas done! All the very best from me.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Jason C Wells
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Jason C Wells »

S_Sesselmann wrote:
The objective of this planned experiment is not to beat Richards fusion record, but to show that a small electrical current can be generated directly by separating protons and electrons using kinetic fusion energy.

Never ever give up...
The secret that I mostly keep to myself is that one day I hope to extract energy from the product alphas of proton-boron. Please note that I did not say that I hope to get more energy out than I put in. That would be double extra secret. People already think I'm crazy.

I'm excited to see that someone farther down the rabbit hole than me has a mind to do that same.

Regards,
Jason C. Wells
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Jason,

Well said..., my fusion journey has taken me so far down the rabbit hole you have no idea.

I believe I already know how to make fusion break even, it's not even a secret any more, I just have to physically do it one more time to convince Richard, yea he's a tough one :)

Once you understand how fusion is not about smashing ions together with more energy to overcome the Coulomb force, you are on a home run.

I want to see any one of the fusor guys achieve Q+1 before ITER, JET or NIF, I hope it will be me, but I would be just as happy to support you guys.

Realistically it will take me at least another year to get my lab fusion ready.

Steven
No it is not a Delorian :)
No it is not a Delorian :)
It's the current state of my lab.
It's the current state of my lab.
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Jason C Wells
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Jason C Wells »

A rack and a cart are on my list.

Good luck!
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by prestonbarrows »

Fusion cross sections in the center of mass frame
fig38_t.jpg
courtesy of the National Physical Laboratory.
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Preston,

Most of us are familiar with that chart showing cross sections vs energy, I just happen to think that it's a velocity problem, not a coulomb force problem.

Interesting things happen when you try to fuse ions of different mass.

Steven
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Like your "double" accelerator; really look forward to your results. As I warn everyone, error on the side of caution with radiation; trust but verify (lol.)

Relative to tunneling, not aware of any experiments relative to ion "speed/energy" affecting tunneling (as in lower ion energy = higher tunneling rate.) So, while quantum has no real say (except the uncertainty relation) relative to tunneling, why not do this? The basic "closest ion approach" calculations will show that tunneling will fall off rapidly with lower energy (of course, coulomb repulsion is lower for greater ion separation - i.e. lower ion energy) but unless tunneling gets better, the result will be significantly lower yield but since I know of no experiments that have tested this point (tunneling - unless one believes cold fusion) should be interesting and real science.
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dennis P Brown wrote:Like your "double" accelerator; really look forward to your results. As I warn everyone, error on the side of caution with radiation; trust but verify (lol.)
Thanks, and yes I am completely aware of the radiation risks, a device like the one I pictured above is made with laminated glass discs and is far more transparent to x-rays than your typical fusor, and as I explained in another post, it will pour out x-rays when gas is fed into the cathode, hence the elaborate zener arrangement for channeling electrons to ground via the cathode.
Dennis P Brown wrote:Relative to tunneling, not aware of any experiments relative to ion "speed/energy" affecting tunneling (as in lower ion energy = higher tunneling rate.) So, while quantum has no real say (except the uncertainty relation) relative to tunneling, why not do this? The basic "closest ion approach" calculations will show that tunneling will fall off rapidly with lower energy (of course, coulomb repulsion is lower for greater ion separation - i.e. lower ion energy) but unless tunneling gets better, the result will be significantly lower yield but since I know of no experiments that have tested this point (tunneling - unless one believes cold fusion) should be interesting and real science.
My best advise is to remove a few words from your vocabulary as if they never existed, I call them "fairies" just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, they are not real.

Force, invented by newton to explain gravity, it's a fairy, in fact you can group all the forces together here.

Tunneling, not sure who first used the term, but it's a fairy.

In fact when you start looking for fairies, the physics text books are full of them.

In general relativity there is a term called four velocity, all bodies including those at rest have four velocity, and what we generally call "force" is nothing more than the difference between the four velocity of one body and another. What I discovered from GPT (Ground Potential Theory) was a direct linear relation between a bodies four velocity and its surface potential. To use a simple example, and apple has a higher surface potential than the surface potential of the earth (due to it's elevation) hence ∆v is proportional to ∆ø, and the apple appears to fall.

As we live on the surface of the Earth, we can relate velocities to ground potential, so when we ionise an atom, we are messing up it's surface potential by removing one or more electrons, and as a result the ion takes on an instant velocity. In the case of hydrogen or deuterium, this velocity is huge, but not relativistic, it's in the order of 2500 km/s, and when you enclose some of these in a vacuum chamber they bounce around like angry bees in a jar. This shouldn't come as any surprise, we already know that molecules of gas do this, so why not ions?

To make two such ions fuse is therefore not a matter of accelerating the ion to fusion velocities, but rather to slow them down with respect to ground. I already showed in another post how the relative ion velocity of Deuterium becomes zero at around -65 kV.

A good analogy of this scenario would be a truck and two motor bikes heading down the freeway, and a pillion passenger on the outer bike wanting to get onto the truck, before the move can take place, the three vehicles need to align their velocities.

This new understanding is going to help us achieve break even fusion, and we are going to do it here before the big budget guys get their hands and patents on it.

Fusion technology should be open source, don't let anyone monopolise it.

Steven
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Dennis P Brown »

LOL-all good points; yes, force is just a construct as is tunneling to describe, in mathematical terms, a reality that has meaning but not a cause. Like when Einstein said gravity is the curvature of space/time due to 'mass' but if one falls off a building it really is pointless to the person going to impact if said person either calculates the 'force' the Earth pulled with or if one is just following the lowest energy path when it comes to splat ... lol (unless you are the one falling , then not so funny.) Still, referencing -65 kV as ground is one way to view the interaction between two ions but defining tunneling in your terms would be illuminating since there really isn't a very good quantum mechanical model that works on a macro-scale.

Again both like your setup and idea. Look forward to your results (but not x-ray exposure! So, glad you have that one thought out.)
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by John Futter »

Dennis
Steven has visited me a couple of times @ work and I am more than aware of what the is doing and his knowledge.
He is using some ideas while visiting me aka the glass discs etc and secondary electron emission
you are preaching to the converted.
If you suppress the secondary electrons the x-ray emission is much reduced
in the case of my recent setup @ work @ 120kv 10mA no suppression 270mSv/hr with suppression (-1000V) 50uSv/hr

go Steven
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

John Futter wrote:Dennis
Steven has visited me a couple of times @ work and I am more than aware of what the is doing and his knowledge.
He is using some ideas while visiting me aka the glass discs etc and secondary electron emission
you are preaching to the converted.
If you suppress the secondary electrons the x-ray emission is much reduced
in the case of my recent setup @ work @ 120kv 10mA no suppression 270mSv/hr with suppression (-1000V) 50uSv/hr

go Steven
John, we should have done this experiment before you disassembled the old VDG accelerator, all it required was a little bit of rewiring, it even had the negative ion source mounted on it.

Hindsight...if only.

Steven
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Dennis P Brown »

The radiation issue does look very non-issue.
A bit confused on your last post. Wouldn't an accelerator be the opposite of what you want? You want slow ions, correct? Or are you aiming for something else?
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dennis P Brown wrote:A bit confused on your last post. Wouldn't an accelerator be the opposite of what you want? You want slow ions, correct? Or are you aiming for something else?
It would be an accelerator if I intended creating ions at ground potential, dropping them into the tube as is normally the case, but realise I intend to flow the gas into the cathode, using the energy from stray ions passing through to ionise the gas at cathode potential, ions created in the cathode have no kinetic energy and are going nowhere.

Think of a ions moving in a fusor as a swinging pendulum, an ion is created at the shell swings through the cathode and back up the other side again to the shell, as there is no friction to speak of the ion swings back and forth indefinitely (until it eventually hits the grid). An ion created inside the grid is different, does not have the kinetic energy to go anywhere, it just sits there, we need more of these and less of those fast ones.

I am almost certain there is no such thing as a Coulomb force preventing these ions from fusing, it's just another "fairy", what prevents deuterons from fusing is high relative velocity.

Abolition of the Coulomb force is a bold claim, so don't take my word for it, think and figure it out for yourself.
Last edited by Steven Sesselmann on Tue Dec 15, 2015 5:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Minor improvements to my grammar.
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Re: How do you want your ions?

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Obviously, I have doubts on the issue of the Coulomb force having no significant effect in preventing fusion but frankly, not relevant to your primary point here. I agree 100% that more deuterium ions "trapped" inside the cathode potential well is absolutely important and would lead to greater fusion occurring for any fusor. That is a goal well worth pursuing regardless of the previous issue. I think that if you achieve that goal your results will follow and you will achieve greater fusion. Best of luck and look forward to your future posts. Some of us are still struggling just to get a "light show" started within a fusor without electrocuting or radiating one's self (lol.)
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