Fusor Forums

I have always felt the rays were electron beams which are more or less focused by the grid geometry and the light was due to recombination in this much more dense electron "ray" region. In my chamber discolored lozenges, each the shape of the grid opening, (triangular), are seen. This is most likely deposition of grid material and contaminants over time.

Your research project is a good one, but as both Frank and I have noted over the years, the fusor, by its very simplistic nature, allows for many possible regimes to do fusion. Pinning down precise modalities and their relative contributions can be tricky. Good luck.

Richard Hull

Thank you everyone for your responses and we will keep this page updated as our project progresses. Much research is planned to be done over the summer at our local university.
Jack Rosky

Frank,

I noticed that in an ealier post in this thread you stated that the depth of pentration of both the deuterium and the ions will need to be recorded. Do you have any recommendations as to how we can measure the concentration and depth of deuterium in our metal plates.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9711

In this thread I linked above John Futter discusses the use of RBS or RNRA to prove areas of increased concentration. I am not familiar with these types of analysis. Does anyone think they may be able to assist us in this portion of our research project?

Another idea that I have been thinking about is to line the entire chamber with a metal that does not absorb hydrogen, except for a 3" by 3" area. The 4 metal plates will rotate behind this lining so the only place in the fusor at which BoT fusion is occcuring is at this 3" by 3" open area. If this could work, this would allow us to only be detecting the neutrons from the fusions at the inner grid and the neutrons from the beam on target fusions occuring on the specific metal plate that is filling this 3" by 3" area. If we did not use this lining, then our detector will also be detecting neutrons from beam on target reactions occuring nearby, or on the other side of the chamber.

I think rotating between multiple plates is a good idea because it will allow us to see the point at which each plate will no longer do any additional fusion. In other words, if we graphed the counts from the probe as a function of time, eventually the neutron counts will plateau. The expectation is that a metal that absorbs less hydrogen will plateau in neutron counts before a metal that absorbs a large amount of hydrogen.

Scott Moroch

Hydrogen moves rather quickly within many metals including iron. Putting a thin layer of Pd on steel does not guarantee the hydrogen that is loaded into the Pd will stay there. It will not. There are two main ways around this. One is to load a piece of Pd foil to its max, keep it in the deuterium atmosphere until you are ready to use it. The other is to use the equilibrium route. Load it in the chamber with deuterium ions and run your test. The loading will come to an equilibrium of the in and out. For a long term test the later is better but for what you are doing the first route is probably better. Just don't let a piece of loaded Pd sit around too long as it will slowly lose D2.

The basic Fusor design is to use the grid to accumulate electrons in the center of the chamber, these in turn attract the positively charged ions. Therefore, if there are fusions taking place at or near the wall the cause might be an electrostatic charge on the wall which is attracting either electrons or ions or both. This is a loss mechanism rather than something to be duplicated, unless simply for pure research (specifically into loss mechanisms). A somewhat similar loss mechanism exists in the Polywell device where some 40% of the fusions take place in the gaps between the magnets. In both cases these are problems not solutions to achieving sustainable fusion because they are mechanisms of energy losses. Since the plasma at the wall should be low due to attraction of the ions toward the center there is a problem of the functioning of the device. If electrons are being attraction toward the wall the ions will follow them draining ions form the confinement area. If protons are attracted toward the wall there must be a large negative charge on the wall.

As mentioned many times, the fusor fuses, it can't really be improved to any marked degree....At least no one has spent the time of money to actually do a build that worked better. Lots of yapping and blowholing, theorizing and what-ifs but no real work done to improve.

It is really not important that the fusor be improved as it would take a 6-7 order of magnitude improvement to approach break-even. It was never about making energy or even doing more efficient fusion.....Just to do fusion and take the neutron benefit for further work.

Regardless of losses and bizarre multi-level operational regimes the fusor does enough fusion in amateur hads to be a decent neutron source for limited activation experiments. It functions to do fusion in spite of all the negatives.


Richard Hull

"As mentioned many times, the fusor fuses, it can't really be improved to an marked degree" I will consider that an opinion.

Thus far, after 16 years, no amateur has improved the fusor to any maked degree. Why? Too litle experience in the art. Too short an attention span or work at the effort. However, it is mostly lack of interest and funds to extend any effort yet undertaken. Remember, this is an amateur science site.

As noted, the blow-hole and wild theory factor about improvement abounds and is on a 10,000 to 1 ratio to honest construction or any real physical motion in a positive direction. A constant that we have lived with since day one.

Richard Hull