Talk-Polywell.org

Article in this month's IET magazine (second article down):

http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/issues/0918/news-0918.cfm

... The resulting magnets range in strength from 2 tesla up to around 17 tesla. (A traditional MRI scanner uses a magnet of around 3T.) While a conventional 7T magnet would be around 1,000 x 1,500mm, one of the new magnets could reach this magnetic strength in an item only 10 x 28mm.... single-crystal yttrium barium copper oxide... chilled to 93K using liquid nitrogen...

The Flux Pumping article in Wikipedia now references the Polywell article.

Jeez, going to 17T on a unit the size of WB7 would make it near a 0.5Mw machine. Maybe truck borne or back-yard reactors are not beyond the realm of possibility after all.

(Would it burn itself up?

More details:

http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/article ... -heat.aspx

http://fluxpump.co.uk/default.aspx

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/10/magnif ... tesla.html

I linked in the three research papers, embedded two videos. etc...

Have a reference to the UK patent

nextbigfuture wrote: http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/10/magnif ... tesla.html

I linked in the three research papers, embedded two videos. etc...

Have a reference to the UK patent

It wasn't clear from the materials presented that I was able to peruse at work (with the sound turned off), but...

Can field-conformal solenoids be produced by this method, or are they like permanent magnets where the field lines penetrate the bulk material?

My understanding is that permanent magnets were tried for proof-of-concept in some of the early WB models, and were shown to be unsuitable because electrons following the field lines would crash into the magnets, hence the need in WB-6 for field-conformal magnet casings.

If the magnifye magnets can be made with the promised high powers and still fit in a field-conformal casing, then that would be wonderful for Polywell. If they can't, well...

I'm confused. I watched both videos. These are superconducting magnets at liquid nitrogen temperatures. I have seen similar demonstrations for many years (15-30?). What is new here- the strength and/or the magnatizing process?
Would superconducting magnets of this nature be superior to high temperature (liquid nitrogen) supeconducting wires in resisting neutron bombardment? Is the energy density (magnetic strength) much greater than what can be achived with superconducting wire? They suggest their magnets are stronger than 'older' superconducting perminate magnets.

If, once made and magnatized by their process, do the magnets retain their magnetic properties? In other words, can the magnetic assemblies be made (like a magrid), then when cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures, will the strong magnetic fields become active without current input?

In one video the presenter mentioned that (I assume) the small magnet he held could store 1 million amps of energy. Without knowing the volts- ie: the joules, how much energy is this? 1 million amps at 10 volts is alot of energy, 1 million amps at 10 microvolts is not.

What happens when the temperature goes above the critical temperature? In superconducting wires - the resistance goes way up and ohmic heating produces a lot of heat fast. If these perminate magnets just turn off without releasing their stored energy, I could see tremendous advantages with this approach.


Dan Tibbets

If the field lines pass through the material they will not help Polywell. And that looks like what is happening. Fine for motors, mag lev, and the other applications mentioned.

MRIs have been built where the patient is not in a bore but under the face of a SC magnet. This would work well for such a device.

Now it may be that such a technology could induce currents in the right direction such that it would help with Polywell. We shall see.

Papers page:

http://fluxpump.co.uk/papers.aspx

MgB is a candidate too. So neutron flux resistance is in the cards.

From what I can tell the currents mentioned are circulating currents i.e. local vortexes. No help.

I have sent an inquiry. I'll let you know if I get an answer.

Just looking over their papers, it seems that this could be adapted to be used with a electromagnet type solenoid configuration instead of a permanent magnet. The novel bit is using a material with temperature-controllable magnetic permeability to modulate the field of another magnet to induce a field in the superconductor, without actually driving current through the superconductor. The local vortexes may be a deal-breaker, but they may simply be a consequence of the way their device is constructed, and the uses they're targetting with this technology. A global current may be able to be induced in this fashion, which would have direct applications to Polywell, and could be a game-changer as far as scaling is concerned.

raelik wrote:Just looking over their papers, it seems that this could be adapted to be used with a electromagnet type solenoid configuration instead of a permanent magnet. The novel bit is using a material with temperature-controllable magnetic permeability to modulate the field of another magnet to induce a field in the superconductor, without actually driving current through the superconductor. The local vortexes may be a deal-breaker, but they may simply be a consequence of the way their device is constructed, and the uses they're targetting with this technology. A global current may be able to be induced in this fashion, which would have direct applications to Polywell, and could be a game-changer as far as scaling is concerned.

I have received one reply so far (further explorations required) and it does not look promising.

From what I gather this is a good way of doing solid magnets. If you have wires it may not be necessary.

Kudos to Magnifye for their excessive marketing campaign!

Firstly, this is not new technology by any stretch of the imagination - bulk high temperature superconductors have been around for a couple of decades. Only the proposed magnetisation technique is new - 17T was trapped in YBCO bulk a few years ago (in 2003 by Morita and Murakami) using conventional techniques.

If you look at Magnifye's website (http://fluxpump.co.uk), there are some papers explaining the principles behind their new idea. A paper was published more recently (in 2009, see http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0953-2048/22/10/105011), which shows the experimental results. You can see from those results that it has not been proven to work experimentally, and many other prominent professionals and academics in the field of superconductivity are extremely skeptical about many of the claims of Dr Coombs/Magnifye. No other groups in the world have been able to successfully replicate any of the results.

There is an amusing interview in a 'Computer Weekly' video (http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/ ... in-the.htm), where he avoids the question on how many units are in production (note a long-winded answer about 'many customers, working together to develop products ...') (perhaps, 'none' is a good answer to that one).

The demonstrations in the videos showing a permanent magnet 'floating' above the superconductor is merely a demonstration of the Meissner effect (expulsion of a magnetic field from the inside due to pinning of flux lines). To a novice, exciting stuff; to anyone who knows anything about superconductors, old news.

So, in short, this is an idea that is nice in theory (as is perpetual motion ... whether or not the theory about how this works is even correct is another topic for another day), but has no proof of actually working. I wouldn't get your hopes up about these "revolutionary magnets" just yet.

Still, two 17T magnets would make a hell of a mirror machine.

kcdodd wrote:Still, two 17T magnets would make a hell of a mirror machine.

And still no hope for net power, or?