Deuterium-Deuterium Chain Control

[Miras Absar]

Hello all! I am new to the Fusor Forums, so I decided that I might share some ideas that I have come up with, and have tried to simulate. This particular idea has to do with the Deuterium-Deuterium reactions. When 2 Deuterium atoms fuse, they can either form Helium-3 and a neutron with ~3.27MeV, or Hydrogen-3 and a proton with ~4.03MeV. The particles that are spawned, are released in opposite directions. If a strong electrostatic polar force (+ and -) was applied to the fusion chamber, a Deuterium-Deuterium-->Helium3-Neutron reaction may be induced (all the protons will be attracted to the - pole, forming the Helium3, leaving the neutron to go to the + pole). I have attempted to simulate this, and it has come out as I predicted it to. So what do you guys think, is it feasible, or is it plain luck.

[Tyler Christensen]

I'm a little confused by what you are saying, are you proposing to put deuterium into a chamber with a high voltage + pole and a high voltage - pole, and watch magic happen? What is going to break the molecules apart? A nuclear event must happen in order to break up the nucleus.

[Miras Absar]

Thank you for your response Tyler, it is appreciated. This is similar to what I am proposing, but a bit off. I'm proposing, or theorizing, that if Deuterium atoms were put in a vacuum chamber, ionized, and pressurized to the point that fusion could occur, that it would occur. By applying an additional strong polar force (+ and -), the type of Deuterium-Deuterium reaction however, could be controlled. The amount of reactions could possibly be regulated by varying the strength of the polar force (ex. 1000v-20000v). Thank you again for your response!

P.S. I am aware that by simply applying a strong polar force, that the "magic" or fusion, will not occur.

[Tyler Christensen]

I'm really not seeing where this is going... you say " I'm proposing, or theorizing, that if Deuterium atoms were put in a vacuum chamber, ionized, and pressurized to the point that fusion could occur, that it would occur." which indicates you don't have an understanding of how fusion works. Ionized deuterium in a vacuum chamber will never fuse, regardless of pressure. You have to accelerate the ions in order to make them do something.

I would suggest you read some of the faq's and documentation on fusor.net on how fusors operate. There is no pressure where fusors just start to fuse with nothing. That would solve the energy crisis!

[Miras Absar]

I really appreciate your will to help Tyler. I think, perhaps a graphic will do a good job at depicting what I am saying. Although you are right, ions need to be accelerated towards each other to achieve fusion. I guess that's mis-wording on my part. I'll have an image uploaded within 24 hours. Thanks again!

[Miras Absar]

Ok, so I've made a small image depicting what it is that I am proposing... In the image, we have 2 Deuterium atoms (+n). The 2 atoms are ionized and are accelerated towards each other, so they fuse. At this point, 1 out of 2 reactions can occur. Either a Tritium atom and a proton can be formed, or a Helium3 atom and a neutron can be formed. In this image, it is the Helium3-neutron type reaction. This is so because there are walls (top and bottom) each with an electrical charge. Because of these charges (polar forces as I refer to them in earlier posts), the Helium3-neutron reaction occurs. This is so because all the protons are repelled from the positive side and attracted towards the negative side, leaving 1 neutron to the positive side. I have run this in a simulation and it has come out as the image depicts, but there is a difference between simulations and reality. So what do you guys think?

Oh yeah, thanks again Tyler!

[Carl Willis]

Your hypothesis is that an applied electric field increases the relative probability of the (d,n) branch of the DD reaction.

I can understand how this makes some sense on first blush if your nuclear model approximates simple clusters of unbound particles in which the charged particles' behavior is dominated by electrostatics.

However, the accepted modern theory of the nucleus postulates a very strong locally-acting force (aptly named the strong force) that is responsible for holding the constituents together within a few-femtometer radius and determining how they break apart. Nuclei can contain many protons in tight quarters and yet remain stable, bound entities against enormous electrical pressure to disintegrate, effectively oblivious to the influences of orbital electrons and other external electrical forces as well. To a good first approximation then, electrostatic forces are not influential inside the nucleus. Adjusting to incorporate the strong-force-based nuclear theory, I doubt your model would predict any discernible difference in reaction branching ratio with or without the electric field. (Of course, the reactants' locations, momenta, and the strength of the field may not allow the particles to fuse at all, depending on specifics.)

-Carl

[Doug Coulter]

In a sense, you have an interesting idea here, and are not the first to have it. However, as some have pointed out, you might be sweating the wrong parameter, and be off by a good bit on the scale required to get what you are after. You might want to work out what the volts/meter field is between two D ions at the point they are close enough for the strong force to take over. It's a pretty daunting number, and you're not going to make a field that strong to impose on things - do the math.

I've been looking into this myself, actually, but not with something so simple (and so weak on the scale involved) as mere electrostatic field.

Let's look at some other well-accepted physics. How about the other conservation laws - spin, parity, and so on? No attention has been paid to this in the amateur fusion community, but unless someone is prepared to declare some well tested and accepted physics dead wrong, we should be looking at this, and other things. You're not going to cheat the well accepted conservation laws, or exclusion principles as far as I know. Yet, while claiming to be non-thermal, a fusor is trying to cheat those, and only succeeds to the extent some thermalization of the parameters happens by collisions and chance!

For example, the relative orientation of the reactants - in the presence of the fact that they are also spinning (in the more gross sense than the spin within a single nucleon), and that spin is to say the least, rather fast - getting them to "hit right" is not going to be accomplished by lining them up, then firing them at one another - it's more like throwing two spinning knives such that they hit point first after many revolutions. Now imagine that there are more than one axis of possible spin...

Some stuff to consider at any rate, and I'm now building a linac pair to look into this in what turns out to be a much simpler system than a fusor. While successful on the scale we have on fusor.net, I feel my fusor is more or less at the endpoint, as are all the good ones here - we've fallen into a local attractor and are all doing about as well re Q - you can plot Richard's, mine, JonR's on a line, based simply on input voltage (and the gas pressure you have to run to be at that voltage) and they all land on the line, and it all makes sense - and it's a dead end, no millions more scale of Q are in sight with this approach as currently implemented. It might be a nice cul-de-sac to live on, not much traffic and a nice neighborhood, but it's not going to build a civilization and create value going forward.

If the ideal relative orientation of the reactants is anything other than head to head (whichever side you decide is the head) - than a fusor is precisely the wrong thing to use to bash them together, as it treats them all the same, and any alignment that occurs is all towards that head to head encounter.
This of course assumes one grid, DC drive and all the other assumptions put into practice in all the fusors here...there might be other possibilities, but no one is exploring them (I have but only a little).

There's a reason for that - although a fusor looks simple from the outside, what's going on in there is very much not, and well beyond any current computer simulation ability - there's emergent behavior. I have strong clues that the "stable sweet spot" we all run at is actually the very worst for fusion Q - I've run a bunch of experiments where I deliberately perturb things on a pulsed basis - and on the way in and way out of the normal "stable spot" the Q is vastly increased here - as much as factor 1000.
Still that's no where near enough improvement to get to power, and it's transitory enough that even though I can get this high Q in pulses, the duty cycle over which I can get it is low enough that the net neutrons/second (used as a marker for how much fusion I have) stays about the same, or within about a factor of 2 best case.

I've written quite a lot more about this on my forums, all over the place...I came to this class of idea about a year ago...So of course, I think you're possibly onto a good way to think about this, but you might need more thinking to get there - (hints, Stern-Gerlach, Pauli, CPT conservation).

I've always maintained that no new science will be needed for this, just proper application of what we already know. The thing is, most amateur fusioneers skipped all physics past about 1945....time to crack the books and get with what we've learned since that time.

[Miras Absar]

Hey Carl and Doug, thanks for the explanation! It made some serious sense. I have to admit, never thought of it in that sense. So yeah, thanks again guys, saved me some trouble.

Lets consider this thread closed.