In this space, visitors are invited to post any comments, questions, or skeptical observations about Philo T. Farnsworth's contributions to the field of Nuclear Fusion research.Subject: Plasma Focus (another pulsed fusion source)
Date: Feb 08, 11:17 am
Poster: Jim LuxOn Feb 08, 11:17 am, Jim Lux wrote:
Yet another fairly simple fusion source is a plasma focus device that uses a very high current, very fast rise time pulse to heat and squash a D plasma sufficiently. Moderate bank energies (30-40 kJ) produce fairly high neutron counts (1E10 n/shot). (they show a plot that Y (neutrons) = about 1E7 * (bank energy in kJ).
They are running at the same pressures as an IEC (a few mTorr)
This device is several orders of magnitude more complex than a simple IEC fusor though, but still within the realm of garage construction. Steve Hansen's "the Bell Jar" has had some articles about the plasma focus setup he did. I suspect that instrumentation would be the tricky part (how ya gonna measure 1E10 neutrons that come in a burst about 20 nSec long)
BTW the di/dt is around 5-10 kA/nSec with a rise time of some 400 nSec. This is no easy feat in terms of equipment construction, because it requires HV pulse transmission lines, etc.
Anyway, more info on this to be had at: (URL is split across lines)
http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/WWW/MathNat/Fokus/fokus.html