I am wondering what types of capacitor banks would be used for a 100MW system?
1) Are we talking large banks of caps rated at tens of farads each and tens of kilovolts?
2) Will large cap banks not be used to much extent? (just fed through public utility after conditioned for transmission)
e
How many farads does it take to screw in a light blub?
No way to tell at this point.
It all depends on whether alphas are made in bursts (probably). Their frequency. The response time of the DC to AC system and probably other considerations. 100 MW @ 2MV = 50A. If you are converting it to 60 HZ AC you will want enough capacitance so that 50 A for 1/120th of a second gives a 1,000 V rise.
I leave the exercise up to the student.
CV=It
Simon
It all depends on whether alphas are made in bursts (probably). Their frequency. The response time of the DC to AC system and probably other considerations. 100 MW @ 2MV = 50A. If you are converting it to 60 HZ AC you will want enough capacitance so that 50 A for 1/120th of a second gives a 1,000 V rise.
I leave the exercise up to the student.
CV=It
Simon
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
When I left EMC2, they had just received a very scarry-looking pallet piled high with high voltage capacitors. I forget how many farads at how many volts that constituted, but it was for a relatively small experiment. They were an off-the-shelf model, but intended for very high discharge rates.
Compared to the capacitor banks used in some other physics experiments, that one was a toy.
Compared to the capacitor banks used in some other physics experiments, that one was a toy.
Use Marx Banks?Tom Ligon wrote:When I left EMC2, they had just received a very scarry-looking pallet piled high with high voltage capacitors. I forget how many farads at how many volts that constituted, but it was for a relatively small experiment. They were an off-the-shelf model, but intended for very high discharge rates.
Compared to the capacitor banks used in some other physics experiments, that one was a toy.
Duane
Vae Victis
Here's a neat toy: Museum Marx bank
When I was at Argonne they had trouble with cats shorting out capacitor banks. Not much left to clean up, but took a while to get rid of the smell.
When I was at Argonne they had trouble with cats shorting out capacitor banks. Not much left to clean up, but took a while to get rid of the smell.
to Tom et. al.
Working at EMC2 isn't quite as scary as it used to be. At least that's what Mike Wray thinks. When we first started looking at the WB-6 data, we concluded that part of the problem was that there was too much energy available. There also wasn't any way to shut off the current or discharge the capacitors other than through the plasma chamber. That's been fixed. One thing we have installed is a water resistor. This is a home made device consisting of a water column with a little table salt in it. There is a pneumatically operated shorting ball on one end and the base is grounded. The ball is lowered into the water to discharge the capacitor. Water can dissipate an enormous amount of energy. Cheap, simple and very effective.
By working with shorter discharges, we have also been able to reduce the size of capacitor bank. The first day I started working at LANL 30 years ago, Syllac (which was located right next to my office) blew up a capacitor. Syllac had three stories of capacitors. When this one went, it ignited the insulating oil and blew flames about 20 feet into the center of the experimental bay. The video was plenty cool, but I've had a healthy respect for capacitors ever since. You don't want to have them anywhere near the operators (and we don't).
Working at EMC2 isn't quite as scary as it used to be. At least that's what Mike Wray thinks. When we first started looking at the WB-6 data, we concluded that part of the problem was that there was too much energy available. There also wasn't any way to shut off the current or discharge the capacitors other than through the plasma chamber. That's been fixed. One thing we have installed is a water resistor. This is a home made device consisting of a water column with a little table salt in it. There is a pneumatically operated shorting ball on one end and the base is grounded. The ball is lowered into the water to discharge the capacitor. Water can dissipate an enormous amount of energy. Cheap, simple and very effective.
By working with shorter discharges, we have also been able to reduce the size of capacitor bank. The first day I started working at LANL 30 years ago, Syllac (which was located right next to my office) blew up a capacitor. Syllac had three stories of capacitors. When this one went, it ignited the insulating oil and blew flames about 20 feet into the center of the experimental bay. The video was plenty cool, but I've had a healthy respect for capacitors ever since. You don't want to have them anywhere near the operators (and we don't).
When I trained at the A1W prototype (USS Enterprise Nuke) in Idaho the 3 phase output from the generator tied to the turbine was dissipated in a water resistor with 3 electrodes. The electrodes were raised and lowered to match the water resistor to the generator output. (that was in '65 - 40+ years ago for me)
Sulfuric acid was used for conductivity and huge wooden cooling towers were used to dissipate the continuous output.
Something like that would be very useful when we start testing WB-100DG (100 MWf with decelerator grids).
Sulfuric acid was used for conductivity and huge wooden cooling towers were used to dissipate the continuous output.
Something like that would be very useful when we start testing WB-100DG (100 MWf with decelerator grids).
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
When high voltage cuts loose it really wakes you up. I used to live across from the "Substation Of Doom!!!!"(there were some lawsuits involving EM effects and a rather hilarious program on Court TV) and it cut loose one morning as I was eating breakfast. The funniest part was when I called NU to report it, the lady on the phone's question was; "Did it make any noise?"