FICS II Planning and construction

For posts specifically relating to fusor design, construction, and operation.
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Richard Hull
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Richard Hull »

I would never laugh at any new experiment win or lose. A physical effort in experiment is the highest achievement anyone can attain. Sure, a win is nice, but we learn even in a loss.

I watched and paid close attention to the video...

I would not give up just yet. Your problem in the motorboating within the detector, (massive RF pulse into the detector), tells us you are operating a classic relaxation oscillator much as the now well known NE-2 bulb oscillator made with a NE-2 lamp and a capacitor and resistor which sets the rate of oscillation. The NE-2 gas filled bulb is non-linear and has considerable hysteresis in its on and off points. This is exactly what you are experiencing.

Two things. I assume your supply is really beefy and can easily supply a full 30 milliamps @ full voltage. If not, there is you relaxation oscillator and it will not go away until a really beefy supply is obtained. The next thing is if you are using a voltage multiplier, then that is equivalent to a weak supply unless you are running a very powerful high frequency oscillator into same.
Finally, if you do indeed have a super beefy supply, your ballast resistor may be too large.

The upshot is that assuming a sterling, ample supply at full applied voltage with good current delivery at same, there is always a point where you will and must have a stable plasma in a rarified gas. Finding that point is a matter good gear and practiced artifice by the operator. No two systems will ever function alike unless they are perfect replicas of one another.

99% of all oscillation issues involve a charged capacitor in the circuit where a large enough resistor or a weak supply, (high impedance supply= large resistor), will strike the arc plasma in the gas and imediately the supply will buckle under load. As the capacitor discharges, the voltage plunges, the plasma turns off at reduced voltage, (gas load disappears), the capacitor recharges or the weak supply recovers and the gas plasma fires again and the cycle goes on and on. Classic relaxation oscillator.

All the best in getting a stable plasma. Be it a common old fusor or and advanced FICS design, learning how to operate a plasma gas load system is an art within a hard science background.

Working on a knife's edge........

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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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Richard,
Your problem in the motorboating within the detector, (massive RF pulse into the detector), tells us you are operating a classic relaxation oscillator
Thanks for feedback and for your diagnosis, I think you are spot on.
Two things. I assume your supply is really beefy and can easily supply a full 30 milliamps @ full voltage.
Not quite a beefy 30 mA, but no chicken either, it's a Glassman 125kV 16 Ma supply, but for this experiment I am limiting it to 62 kV but still with the full 16 mA.
Finally, if you do indeed have a super beefy supply, your ballast resistor may be too large.
This is a valid point, I am using a big ceramic 5 M Ohm resistor as a ballast. The capacitance of the cathode is in the order of 10 pF so with 5 Mohm ballast this works out to a time constant of 50 µs. My calculations estimate the ions moving at 2500 km/s which means the ions travel around 125 m in 50 µs.(more than 200 times longer than the beam return path). A ballast resistor of 10K would cut the time constant down to 200 ns., in which the ions would travel around 0.5 meter. This works out to about a 5 MHz oscillator. What are your thoughts on this?

For the moment I'm just wearing my thinking cap and trying to avoid a complete rebuild.

Steven
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

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I am now concerned the Glassman is the issue here. 16 ma is nothing at even 30kv and above. At 62kv when the arc strikes you are in need of maybe 50-100ma. The supply auto cuts out or buckles. It doesn't matter which occurs, one or the other will, and apparently, from experiment, does occur!

The 4 meg resistor sounds way too high and 50-100k would be more like it. In the old days unquenched GM tubes used 10 and 100 meg reistors to quench the geiger tube when it fired. I think the 4 meg is doing just that... Still, the supply is also part of the problem.

Try this to check things out. 1. Put in a smaller resistor as noted above. 2. Put in some gas to about 4-6 microns. slowly bring up the supply. If it doesn't strike by 10-15kv, take it back down to zero volts and keep adding gas and keep bringing the voltage back up. Ideally, at some gas pressure you should get a stable gas plasma. Now it is a matter of delicately bringing up the voltage and lowering the gas pressure to keep the plasma lit. Again, it is an art.

Never ever just choose a voltage like 62kv and then bring the gas up. This is doomed to failure and an effective buckling of the supply. I would tend to think 16 ma is nothing in the size device you are working with.

Virginia Commonwealth University, here in town, had a 30kv, 20ma Spellman supply and while they did fusion they could not keep the plasma lit for more that a minute before a burp would auto-shut down the supply forcing them to inch-worm the voltage up again into the fusion region as the current approached the trip point. They have since purchased a much more beefy Spellman and are doing fine. They were working a stock 6" diameter spherical fusor.

You'll not know a thing about FICS success or failure until you get a stable plasma lit in the device and at a voltage where fusion is possible and detectable with your counter or BTI bubble detectors.

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: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Richard,

Thanks for advice, I have a big 10K ballast resistor in stock, so I will give that a go first, and go for the ignition first followed by pressure reduction method.

Hopefully get a chance to try this on the weekend, so I will let you know how it goes.

Steven
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by John Futter »

Steven
I do not see any potential resistors on your aluminium plates setting the voltage gradient.
Without them you will have little or no focusing ie beaming. see attached pic the resistors are 50meg HV types from Welwyn
DSCN0916.JPG
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

John,

Well observed, I actually had these on my last build, but decided to omit them this time because I didn't think they served much purpose.

My thoughts were that random ion collisions would charge the discs potentials gradually, but that might not be the case.

Relatively easy to fit some resistors all the way down the stack, I can drill small 1.5 mm holes into the edge of the 5 mm disks and push in a copper wire.

In the earlier FICS MK-1 build I used 68M resistors but they got quite hot.

Steven
FICS MK1
FICS MK1
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Hi All,

Time to post a FICS progress report again, and it's great to have some good news for a change. Since my last post I have implemented the following changes.

Voltage Divider Across the Potential Discs
Taking John Futter's advise, I drilled and tapped small 2.5 mm holes into the sides if the aluminium discs and installed 68 M ohm resistors all the way to ground, much the same way as a PMT voltage divider. The purpose of these resistors is to ensure equal potential between discs, which in turn helps to focus the beam.

Capacitors on last two stages
Richard was of the opinion that my 16 mA power supply might be a bit low on power, so I borrowed another trick from PMT dividers and added some high voltage 10n capacitors across the last 3 stages of the accelerator tubes. My thought here is that it might just store and release a little more energy at times of high current draw.

Large ring magnets top and bottom
To further help ionisation I bought a couple of giant ferrite ring magnets and mounted them top and bottom of the accelerator stack, hoping that the field will extend through the aluminium and into the top of the chamber. Maybe it helps, I don't know.

Invented new flux capacitor
After months of frustration with the floating gas cylinder and gas handling system, I came up with the idea for the flux capacitor, a plasma back flow prevention device that works like an airlock with diffusion pump oil. So I completely removed the old gas handling system and mounted the gas cylinder and the mass flow controller on the rig at ground potential and connected it via the flux capacitor to the cathode with Swagelok hose barbs and 6mm high vacuum hose.

Rewired NI-6008-USB-DAQ
To eliminate any chance of bad connections I rewired all sensors using a boxed telephone style punch down rack and cat5 cables going back to the DAQ, which now sits at the computer end, far away from the high voltage.

First Confirmed Neutrons
The above changes have improved matters and I can now reliably run the machine from my Labview virtual instrument panel without anything crashing, and yes we have neutrons, but I am not yet where I want to be. The flux capacitor breaks down at voltages over 30 kV, it usually starts with a bubble and then a channel opens up through the silicone oil with a beam of plasma shining through the oil. Although this looks incredibly cool it draws a lot of current and makes the oil go brown, so I have now ordered a new flux capacitor from my glass blower which is longer and should hold off the full 60 kV.

Using Labview to detect neutrons
I worked out a crude method of using Labview to detect neutrons by using the sound card as a data acquisition device, but it is not so easy to pick the pulses reliably based on a threshold only, so I use PRA in parallel, but the two counters don't agree. More work to do here.

Practice runs
Last weekend and today I did some practice runs to learn how to drive it, and the typical pattern I am seeing now is that the machine needs a but of warming up before the neutron counter starts popping. I still have a lot of voltage fluctuations as you can see on the attached chart, and this is due to little bursts of plasma through the flux capacitor every time it bubbles. After about 10 minutes tweaking the pressure etc, the neutron detector starts popping, at first sporadic and then more regular, and occasionally it goes crazy for a few seconds. There was a point where I had a real storm lasting around 10 seconds.

My best guess for neutron TIER is in the low 10E+5 range, which at least gives me something to work with.

Steven

Flux capacitor
Flux capacitor
Practice Run
Practice Run
Improved flux
Improved flux
Voltage Divider
Voltage Divider
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Hi Guys,

I received the longer flux capacitor last week, it performed better than the MK1 version, at least for the first 45 minutes.

After installing the new plasma backdraft arrestor, I did a long pump down and the chamber was still holding vacuum well, after valving off the chamber the leak was around than 1 micron per minute.

I started the run gently at around 15 micron pressure and gradually decreased the pressure as I increased the voltage. The machine is notably better behaved now that I have the pressure controller and gas cylinder at ground potential. The addition of two large ring magnets top and bottom may also help keep the plasma going.

After allowing the plasma to stabilise for around 10 - 15 minutes, I started seeing the neutron counter move upwards, but then I lost ignition for a moment and had to start again, and at one point the neutron TIER spiked somewhere around 400,000 n/s. At this point something went wrong, and when I went to check the apparatus, I noticed small bubbles coming from the side wall of the glass plasma backdraft arrestor, and on closer inspection there was a hole right through the glass.
Fix Run 19 April 2017
Fix Run 19 April 2017
I feel a lot more encouraged by this latest run and I think a new flux capacitor made from thicker glass should do the trick. Considering I had a steady 150,000 n/s at 30 kV, I have my sights on the mega neutron mark.

Here is my latest Labview VI (Virtual Instrument), from this control panel I control my experiments from a safe 10 meter distance behind a 24" sandstone wall.

Note the addition of a neutron rate meter. From labview I am grabbing the data from the PC Line In port coming from my neutron detector (GS-Neutron-150), counting the pulses and calculating the count rate in software.

Stay posted...
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Virtual Instrument
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

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Nice report and I am glad you got it woking, and makiing decent neutron numbers. Sorry about the hole spoiling you continued running of the system. Back to the repair shop for thicker glass. Keep us updated.

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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Dennis P Brown
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Glad your system is/was working and providing neutrons (none too shabby generating 400 k neutrons!); that is a great start but set backs do occur. Doing any real reserach oft (more than most realize) end up like that.

Like the names you use for the system ...I too used a movie name for some of the research work I did in the past; in my thesis I developed a new material (based on glass); while its formal name (laminated Cermet) was used by me in my thesis defense, I did jokingly called it transparent aluminum (in fact, it is 99% glass, but is as flexible and supports superior tensile and strength properties compared to 7070 aluminum alloy.) It is transparent - all of 100 microns ... the committee, however, was most definitely NOT amused at all by my reference ... bad mistake on my part. Not a good idea to make those types of jokes in such formal proceedings.
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

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True....When in Rome..... Serious science, in the presence of the properly annointed, must remain, on point, formal, and use SI units; even at formal wine and chesse parties. The talk of fusion has kind of wound down, however, as the shine is a bit off that apple. Political discussion is more in vogue currently.

Science plods along in its usual busy way, as always, once the formality fades. Folks do what they do in day-to-day science. Good science is above formalism, at its core. Formalism is for papers and proper recognition by one's peers when in the presence of other peers.

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: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dennis,

If you want to hide in the chambers of academia and get your papers published and patents granted without proven results you obscure the work with scientific jargon and a "flux capacitor" becomes "silica based plasma current restricting device" but what the heck, if it works no one will care what you called it.

That said, my FICS fusion machine isn't working too well, sure it makes some neutrons but at this stage I still can't compete with a well built fusor. The plasma in my FICS chamber seems unable to stay lit for any length of time. At some point I might swap out the double ended chamber with something more conventional. Other projects are taking priority at the moment.

Steven
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
First of all a Merry Christmas to all you crazy fusioneers out there, who like me find the festive season to be the perfect time for an antisocial introvert escape into the world of experimental science :)

LONG STRING OF FAILURES
For those of you who are new to the forum I have the most impressive history of fusion failures, mainly because I refuse to build a proven 6" spherical fusor, instead I have tried a whole bunch of crazy designs all well documented on fusor.net over the last 12 years or so. I shouldn't say total failures, because most of the stuff I built actually produced some neutrons but were not the success I was looking for, however I see it as the challenging path I need to navigate to get to the holy grail of fusion.

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD AGAIN
The FICS versions described in this thread were disappointing, so I gave it a break for a few months while I tried to understand the problems (essentially a failure of the plasma to stay lit). I came up with an idea which involved replacing the 6" cathode with a much narrower 30mm disc with embedded neodymium ring magnet (see images).

Effectively this new cathode (D10) is designed to operate in conjunction with the adjoining dynodes (D9 andD11) as a low potential ion source. High voltage is connected to dynodes 9 and 11 either side of the cathode, while the cathode is connected to ground via a 50 kV zener diode. (Yes you read that correct 50 kV).

In operation the HV is set to around 55 kV thereby setting up a potential of around 5kV across (D9+D11) and D10, which is a gap of around 10 mm. At the right pressure of around 5 micron the plasma lights up and a 2 mA current of electrons ionise the deuterium gas at cathode potential, which is what I have been trying to achieve all this time. To understand why this is so important you have to read some of my old posts and try to understand my radical ideas about fusion.

F.I.C.S.  chamber cracked open
F.I.C.S. chamber cracked open
Fortunately the Latex glue I use for these chambers is easy to take apart without breaking the glass. Latex dries into a soft rubber compound and can easily be peeled off without any residue sticking to the glass.
New cathode with magnet set in
New cathode with magnet set in
This is the replacement cathode with embedded neodymium magnet. The magnet cost me around $100 online.
New cathode with magnet cover
New cathode with magnet cover
A perfectly machined lid covers the magnet and has a centering ring to help align the disc.
New cathode assembled with Latex glue
New cathode assembled with Latex glue
This is the whole stack put back together with the new cathode, the latex glue can be seen squeezing out. This method requires at least 1 week to dry and preferably with a bit of heat.

EARLY EXPERIMENTS
Early results look promising, and I am making neutrons at super low current consumption. I am measuring the current consumption in a slightly unorthodox way, due to the zener diode arrangement. I calculate the current used as;

(input current) - (output current) = Differential Current

Where input current is the current draw of the PSU and the output current is the current going to ground through the Zener diode. Since the latter can be fully recovered I only consider the differential current * voltage to be the energy consumed.

Before conducting the fusion experiment I calibrate the input vs output current by connecting the HV directly to the zener, i.e. bypassing the chamber, and setting the PSU to 55 kV then zeroizing the differential current.

The data below was acquired from my second run on Christmas eve, and looks promising. If you look at the first 300 seconds my neutron output was in the order of 300,000 to 400,000 n/s isotropic with current draw around 0.5 mA. This is a Q of at least an order of magnitude better than a standard fusor at the same voltage.

But as I said this is very early days and I am operating at the low end of efficiency. According to my calculations the optimal Zener value should be 62 kV which is an easy modification to do.

I see light at the end of the tunnel, is that Q1 I see on the horizon?

Steven
Data acquisition of voltage from Labview
Data acquisition of voltage from Labview
Data acquisition of pressure from Labview
Data acquisition of pressure from Labview
Data acquisition of current from Labview
Data acquisition of current from Labview
Data acquisition of neutrons from Labview
Data acquisition of neutrons from Labview
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Dennis P Brown »

As always, excellent presentation using data logging and design details using images of real devices.

When Richard say's to people about novel ideas, that they should build it - you certainly do! And very professional execution, as well.

I assume you feel this design, once optimized, will provide better neutron production by a few orders of magnitude greater still? While that will still fall far short of any goal for a Q = 1 (by still many more orders of magnitude), it would be impressive. So, best of luck and keep up the excellent work.

One thing you might want to look into to is how to create fusion at far higher working pressures in a fusor - some work recently by others here tend to indicate that this type of approach has potential.
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

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Interesting piece of work and reporting.

Now, if you could just convince the power company to bill you based on the FICS differential power figures...That would be a net gain for you. The 99%+++ of true wasted energy is not being recovered by you, of course. I assume you are talking about a 99%+++ waste thermal recovery system at the one mega-watt input power level.

Dennis put it in perspective. Even with a real total input power of X the net fusion energy is 10e-9(X). No matter how you slice it or try and work the new math into the system, thermal losses remain at 99.999999 % give or take a gain/loss of +/- 0.000009% massive orders of magnitude losses will forever remain.

All the King's horses and all the King's men can't change that in this type of fusion system.

Merry Christmas and keep on pluggin'

Richard Hull
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dennis and Richard,

Thanks for feedback, after all these years I have toughened up to Richards cynical outlook :)

I don't agree with Richards evaluation of the zener current, because it is useful electrical power and instead of bleeding it to ground through a resistor I could if I really wanted to, feed it back into the grid, no problem whatsoever.

I did another run this morning with similar results, the average current over 375 seconds was 0.65 mA and the average isotropic neutron emission was 230,000 n/s which puts the Q at 6.92E-9

Strangely I observed a downward trend in neutron output as the run went on, same as it did on the last run, neutron count starts off high and falls off over time. The only reason I can think of is that the zener diodes get hot, causing the zener voltage to increase, and from Labview I can't go higher than 60kV because the USB DAQ is limited to 5V output and my PSU input is 0-10 volts.

I won't post these results on the fusor Q list yet, as I wan't to do more runs and increase the confidence value.

Attaching screen shots of today's run.

Steven
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171226-Voltage.PNG
171226-Current.PNG
171226-Pressure.PNG
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Hi guys,

After letting the zener diode cool down, I gave it another short run and I observed an interesting event I thought I would share..

Look at what happens to the neutrons and the current at 136 seconds into the run.

Could this be Fusion Induced Charge Separation ?

Steven
171226(B) Neutrons
171226(B) Neutrons
171226(B) Current
171226(B) Current
171226(B) Voltage
171226(B) Voltage
171226(B) pressure
171226(B) pressure
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Steve, a short term spike may be real or could be an artifact; interesting but one needs to properly explain the spike through experimental methods and more critically, consistently reproduce that effect.

I look forward to your achieving this next step showing that you can obtain that spike in neutron production in a repeatable manner.

Again, your approach is both interesting and demonstrates that you are a serious scientific investigator. Best of luck!

Aside: Steve, when you say
because it is useful electrical power and instead of bleeding it to ground through a resistor I could if I really wanted to, feed it back into the grid, no problem whatsoever
then you need to really prove this or your claims are simply not valid at all.

So, add some device in place of your resistor that does useful work (an electric motor driving a known load) and consumes 99.99% of your zener diode output current (that you have claimed is available to do useful work.) If your neutron rate stays about the same I will start to accept your claim that your massive losses are not a serious issue for your system - remember, as the saying goes: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Otherwise, your method will need many, many orders of magnitude improvement in neutron production at no increase in power just to begin to make your idea about getting close to real power production even remotely believable.
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dennis P Brown wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:48 am Steve, a short term spike may be real or could be an artifact; interesting but one needs to properly explain the spike through experimental methods and more critically, consistently reproduce that effect.
Dennis, I have been in this game for long enough, and I agree it needs more investigating, but keep in mind I was there at the controls when it happened, the clicks from both neutron detectors went crazy and the event lasted for more than 10 seconds. There was no evidence of high voltage arcing, else we would have seen a voltage drop at the same time.
Dennis P Brown wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:48 amSo, add some device in place of your resistor that does useful work (an electric motor driving a known load) and consumes 99.99% of your zener diode output current (that you have claimed is available to do useful work.) If your neutron rate stays about the same I will start to accept your claim that your massive losses are not a serious issue for your system - remember, as the saying goes: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Otherwise, your method will need many, many orders of magnitude improvement in neutron production at no increase in power just to begin to make your idea about getting close to real power production even remotely believable.
Frankly this is not a kindergarten, I don't need more proof of current than ohms law, I have a 1k 1% wire wound resistor between the zener and ground and I log the voltage across this resistor as my output current.

Unlike a tea kettle fusor I don't have a glowing hot grid streaming electrons to ground, instead my plasma is generated between the dynodes 9 and 11 and a passive cathode in the centre, so no electrons are lost to ground.

When a fusion reaction takes place, the electron goes to ground through the zener and the proton goes to ground against the electrical potential of the accelerator, it can do this because of its high kinetic energy, once it is stopped at ground potential it regains it's electron, thereby completing the circuit.

Most people probably have to think for a moment to understand how my design actually generates electric current, because it's the inverse of a battery, instead of having a current of electrons I have a small current of protons carrying the charge in my device.

Circuit diagram here;
download/file.php?id=10111&mode=view

Steven
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Zener diode filled with oil
Zener diode filled with oil
Wiring of the reactor
Wiring of the reactor
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Load resistor
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Steve, neither your experience nor experimental accuracy are being question by me - you have proven yourself time again in your excellent experiments. Further, your current work IS impressive but does not necessarily demonstrate significant progress compared to the average fusor operating at 60 kV (i.e. what neutron count can a 55 or 60 kV, 0.65 ma device normally produce? Getting those numbers and comparing would provide context for your experiment. I do think believe that what you have done is a very nice improvement - getting over 200+ K neutrons using just 35 watts (or less) but I know zero on what people have done using those voltages, currents and neutron yields.)

As for Ohm's law and useful work (talk of kindergarten level knowledge is rather strange unless you think that is appropriate for this forum; I consider it rather unprofessional), completely different topics and frankly, Ohm's law alone has really nothing to do with extractable work relative to usable heat where temperature/heat and exhaust temperature are controlling factors; further, unless one knows the work the Zeners are doing (you say they are getting hot) then statements on the available energy is not straight forward. So, what is the voltage drop across your 1 K-ohm resistor? That and your current will give a rough idea of the power available in that circuit (but not necessarily the exactable work), would it not? Those should be a rather easy set of parameters to measure. Your differential current plot isn't clear to me nor that methodology - your plot indicates both positive and negative currents measured so you might want to explain what you are doing to get those values and method. Also, in the last plot, I assume it is still milli-amp?

Again, extraordinary claims do require serious and definitive proof.

Of course, even if your neutron rate is 200+ K/sec and your power is just 0.3 watts, your still not producing significant power at all compared to the input power. However, your current progress is still very impressive results and well worth reporting; still, bottom-line: that is only a few magnitudes improvement over a typical fusor - so, still rather insignificant to getting any real power from the device.
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dennis,

I am not in any way suggesting that this version of FICS is or will be or will be producing useful energy, it is just a proof of concept. In reality the reactor is consuming around 125 watt of power (2.5 mA at 50 kV), most of which seems to be deposited as heat in the zener diodes. The actual reactor feels cold after a 15-20 minute of running. This in itself is an improvement on the fusor, as the heat energy from the zener can be localised and used for something.

The main objective behind the differential current measurement is to measure any reverse current caused by kinetic fusion energy (if it exists), reverse current would appear exactly as the kind of current drop we saw in that last experiment with the 10 second spike albeit not statistically significant.

Even the tiniest reverse current in the µA region would facilitate a self sustaining reaction, it's just a matter of throttling back on the ground leak.

So I guess the honest way to report the energy consumption at this stage is to declare 0.5 mA as lost to ground inside the reactor and 2 mA lost to ground in the zener, the latter current being necessary for ion production.

Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Again, your approach is showing very good results - 125 watts and over 200k neutrons continuous is impressive, none-the-less. As I mentioned, your spike needs to be investigated further so you can understand its cause(s) and maybe, that phenomenon has merit to pursue.

As for waste heat - that rarely can be converted to any type of useful work due to the fact it is generally created through an energy usage process (Zener avalanche, possibly) where most the useful work has been converted to said heat (generally that is why it is waste heat ... .) But a detailed discussion on that topic of thermodynamic efficiency is currently not necessary nor appropriate for this forum (for those interested, see Carnot Cycle) ...at least, for now.
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

I did another three runs today, and collected the data in the usual manner. Not entirely sure what the data is telling me as there is still some variances between runs. The first run was on a cold start and immediately output a lot of neutrons, then slowly tapered off, the third run was more steady. My data is consistent from run to run, but I can't bee sure that the pressure I record is 100% accurate, but in the ballpark for sure. Same with the neutron counters, they are not certifiably calibrated, so once again the numbers are in the ballpark only. Unfortunately my BTI detectors have long expired.

My data acquisition is currently recording at 1 Hz which does not allow me to see the finer details of what is happening, so I might try and push it to a higher sample rate for future runs.

It looks like I am probably hitting the mega neutron mark, this run went a little over, but the first run today exceeded 2.5 mega neutrons within the first 10 seconds.



Steven

Run #3 Friday 29 December 2017 (325 seconds)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Run 3 Neutrons
Run 3 Neutrons
Run 3 Pressure
Run 3 Pressure
Run 3 Voltage
Run 3 Voltage
Run 3 Differential current
Run 3 Differential current
Run 3 Current Input
Run 3 Current Input
Run 3 Current output
Run 3 Current output
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Dennis P Brown »

The noise level on your system is rather high, appears on the order of most your signals, and while that is understandable for a poorly shield detector it is surprising for a vacuum reading or voltage value. Current measurements just should not exhibit noise of that level at all since you are measuring milli-amps so that is a concern relative to the recording sensor/equipment or is it the measurement methodology or DAQ card? What do you think is the cause for all noise in all these systems or are your data acquisition systems that open to emf?

Still curious about the differential current reverse sign in the data; no fusion device will return current (a given) but certainly if your data logger is suffering from high noise levels one might see this as a false signal (hopefully not) or are there some capacitance in your system? Or is this just a remnant of the processing or measurement methodology?

Your neutron count is certainly high. Relative to that data is it possible that there electrode's are degrading after reaching a peak level? A slow rise could be a sign of that, as well. That is, the electrodes are self cleaning at the start, reach a high value after removing a level of contaminates and then continue to erode creating issues for the plasma. Speculation but maybe a possible cause.
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Re: FICS II Planning and construction

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Dennis P Brown wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:06 am The noise level on your system is rather high, appears on the order of most your signals, and while that is understandable for a poorly shield detector it is surprising for a vacuum reading or voltage value. Current measurements just should not exhibit noise of that level at all since you are measuring milli-amps so that is a concern relative to the recording sensor/equipment or is it the measurement methodology or DAQ card? What do you think is the cause for all noise in all these systems or are your data acquisition systems that open to emf?
I agree, the nose level is a problem, so I should make this a priority to fix before wasting more time. One of the problems at the moment is that I am running the analogue signals through two 10 meter ethernet cables (four twisted pairs) to the DAQ which sits next to my computer. The main reason for this is because 10 meter USB cables don't generally work. That said I do have a 10 meter optical USB cable, but the darn cable is USB3 and the DAQ is USB2 and the two aren't compatible.

Putting the DAQ closer would improve the signal, but I don't think it will totally fix the problem, I will still have plasma flash overs. As I don't have a viewport on this reactor I can't see the plasma, but I suspect it is not a well behaved poissor as in a fusor, instead it seems more like a runaway reaction where the current rises and falls, might try again with a higher ohm load resistor, Currently using around 400K but have another one with 5 M Ohm.
Dennis P Brown wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:06 amStill curious about the differential current reverse sign in the data; no fusion device will return current (a given) but certainly if your data logger is suffering from high noise levels one might see this as a false signal (hopefully not) or are there some capacitance in your system? Or is this just a remnant of the processing or measurement methodology?
You wrote no fusion device will ever return a current, FICS is designed to do just that albeit small?

With every fusion reaction that takes place in FICS 1.5 positive charges are carried to ground (He3 and T3), so if the reactor is doing 1,000,000 fusions per second, 1.5 million charges go to ground via the zener which is a reverse current on the order of picoamps (in principle).

Dennis P Brown wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:06 amYour neutron count is certainly high. Relative to that data is it possible that there electrode's are degrading after reaching a peak level? A slow rise could be a sign of that, as well. That is, the electrodes are self cleaning at the start, reach a high value after removing a level of contaminates and then continue to erode creating issues for the plasma. Speculation but maybe a possible cause.
At this stage I have not considered electrode material. The HV is connected to aluminium electrodes and the zener ground path is via the magnet which looks like it is nickel plated. Nickel would be my metal of choice for the electrodes. certainly want to try a few other improvements before cracking it open again.

I am confident about generating neutrons, but the magnitude is subject to solid proof, which is why I am not posting any runs on the Q list yet.

Going away next week, so I won't get a chance to work on it for a while.

Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
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