Fusor Forums

Although I want to eventually build a fusion-capable device, I don't have the space or funding for a full sized fusor. I have come up with this idea for a relatively simple (if unoriginal) design and wanted to get some feedback on whether or not this would be capable of fusion.

The gist of it is to use palladium to store deuterium, which then acts as the deuterium gas source inside a vacuum chamber, allowing the final accelerator to be really simple and compact. Just a homemade x-ray tube with a solid state deuterium source. Of course palladium is to my understanding really expensive, so this might not save much money at all even if it did work.

Heavy water can be electrolyzed to create deuterium gas. Using a palladium electrode as the negative (-) terminal of the power supply, deuterium gas will build up around the metal. I expect that a good amount of deuterium can be absorbed by the palladium (in the form of palladium hydride PdH) in the process.

Once the palladium is saturated with deuterium, it can be transferred to one end of a homemade vacuum tube, with metal on each end. This is sealed and brought to as high a vacuum as possible with a pump. I assume even some sort of flexible pipe could be used for this tube as long as it didn't outgas too much.

For operation, a resistor (low voltage) heats up the palladium after the vacuum is drawn to increase the release rate of the deuterium, ruining the vacuum, before the pump is used to draw the vacuum back to a low enough pressure for ion acceleration (now consisting of mostly low pressure deuterium gas). Then, the non-palladium end of the tube is grounded and the palladium end of the tube is connected to negative-hot high voltage (of appropriate voltage for D-D fusion). I understand that some of the deuterium gas in the chamber should ionize, creating deuterons that can accelerate towards the negative electrode to impact other deuterium atoms, either atoms on the surface of the palladium or in the dilute deuterium that remains in the vacuum tube, hopefully fusing some atoms and outputting neutrons.

The main benefit of this would be the lack of needing some sort of deuterium feed system/storage system. It still doesn't eliminate the expensive neutron detection equipment, but that's not something that's avoidable.

Holding the gas in Pd while under a vacuum just makes a simple fusor system much more complex - releasing said gas in a controlled fashion would be difficult and add a very difficult method to a currently simple existing gas delivery system. That is, valves are relatively cheap (especially compared to Pd) or fairly easy to create, and allow extremely simple gas delivery control. Since the primary cost (for most people who attempt building a fusor) is the power supply, and since that appears as a given in your system (besides ignoring the vacuum system that, depending on abilities/knowledge/skill can be a major cost factor), you are overlooking the key costs/issues in any fusor.

Read the FAQ's and some posts on fusors by people here who have successfully built these devices and you can get a basic knowledge and feel for what is involved and what can be an issue for most people.

I have in the past wondered if the reservoir from a deuteron thyratron could be abused as a small deuterium source. In junction with a pyroelectric crystal a compact low flux source might be possible. Armchair musings. Also, one may not actually be able to drain meaningful deuterium from the reservoir in the experimenters timeframe.

As this is a hands-on site.. Try these less expensive ideas and report back.

Richard Hull