Fill a Fusor with N2 and H2 or ammonia or BH3!

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
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Sven Andersson
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Fill a Fusor with N2 and H2 or ammonia or BH3!

Post by Sven Andersson »

I suggest the following experiments: Fill a Fusor with a 50/50 mixture of N2 and H2. The Fusor must have metal walls, so that soft x-rays are generated. Then try running it at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 kV. Leave the room (and stand behind a concrete wall) during the run! Put a Geiger counter next to the machine. Watch the process remotely.

Or use as "fuel" a 50/50 mixture of air and H2. This one is a particurarly simple experiment!

Other "fuels" to use are ammonia; NH3. Simple and cheap! Ammonia is a bit noxious, and I don't know what it would do chemically to pumps and other stuff in the Fusor.

And yet another fuel could be BH3 (Borane). Or a mixture of carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

If you are interested in this and want to help realize any of the experiments above, contact me at:

pairwise
relations
(at)
hotmail
com

Or respond by posting here on the forum!
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Richard Hull
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Re: Fill a Fusor with N2 and H2 or ammonia or BH3!

Post by Richard Hull »

A geiger counter would not herald fusion, only the production of X-rays. X-rays are not the sole part of any fusion process.

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
John Futter
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Re: Fill a Fusor with N2 and H2 or ammonia or BH3!

Post by John Futter »

Sven

I do this sort of thing for a day job
I just checked, and the laws of physics haven't changed this week so i'll continue on the good old rules.

I see nothing like you suggest up to 120kV in any of our equipments

I do see what we expect as to ion nitriding, TiN, hydrogen sp2, sp3 bonds etc etc
And what is more if I suppress secondary electron production the resulting x-ray flux is almost immeasurable.

and yes there are neutron monitors and gamma / x-ray monitors running all the time along with my personal dosimeter badge which usually reads nil month after month

point me in a direction of peer reviewed papers on this subject
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Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Fill a Fusor with N2 and H2 or ammonia or BH3!

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Sven,

What are you hoping to achieve with this experiment, what do you propose will happen?

Generally the guys in this forum, carry out their own experiments, and report the results, and if the results are interesting, others might give it a go.

It is unlikely that anyone is going to invest time and money on someone elses great IDEA, even the most brilliant idea is likely to get buried in the archives.

Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Sesselmann - Various papers and patents on RG
Dan Tibbets
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Re: Fill a Fusor with N2 and H2 or ammonia or BH3!

Post by Dan Tibbets »

I'm not sure what you are thinking...

X-ray production can come from electron ion interactions- Bremsstruhlung radiation, and higher Z ions like nitrogen (Z=7) may magnify the Bremsstruhlung radiation by a factor of ~ 49. But, my understanding is that the vast majority of X-rays in a fusor comes from electrons hitting the metal walls of the vacuum vessel - just like an X-ray tube where the high energy electrons hits a metal target). So, the effect would be trivial and perhaps unmeasured, unless you had very sensitive detectors. The exposure risk to anyone outside would be essentially unchanged.

A lead wall, though much thinner, is better than a concrete wall for stopping x-rays. That is why the walls, doors, etc. of a medical x-ray room has lead inserts perhaps several mm thick.

The high Z ions would increase the Bremsstruhlung intensity, but not the energy per X-ray photon. That is determined by the speed / KE of the electron. Crank up the voltage to increase the X-ray energy and penetration. That is why voltages up to a little over 10,000 volts are considered safe here. It will not penetrate the metal walls of the vacuum chamber, and even glass view ports will stop most of it. Increasing the voltage much above this and you need to start considering exposure and necessary shielding. It has nothing to do with fusion. It is all high voltage physics, not fusion physics (at least in these feeble fusion producing Fusors).

[EDIT] I may be inaccurate about the photon energy. A high Z- target may decelerate an electron more- braking radiation(Bremsstruhlung), and this change may be more profound and thus more energy in the collection one or more photons, but I believe the effect is still trivial compared to the the wall impacts. Consider the amount of deceleration of the electron, a tiny fraction for the Bremsstruhlung interaction between electrons and ions in the plasma which is at very low density compared to the metal walls. Also, consider the number of collisions necessary to drain the energy of the electron (each collision harvesting less energy than the previous collision . Perhaps a million for the plasma ions, but only a few for the solid walls. 99.99...%? of the energy of the electron is deposited in the walls as opposed to the multiple plasma collisions. Bremsstruhlung losses are a concern in plasmas in fusion reactors as it cools the plasma. For this Bremsstruhlung radiation to add up to significant levels though, the containment time has to be long. This is not the case in the Fusor. The containment time in a Tokamak may be 100's of seconds, in a Polywell (at higher density) a few milliseconds. In a Fusor it is more like ~ fractions of a microsecond. Mean Free Path is just to great relative to the lifetime distance traveled by the electron for many Bremsstruhlung producing collisions to build up before the electron smacks into the wall at almost all of it's initial energy.

Dan Tibbets
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