Lawaranceville E-Newsletter

[mvanwink5]

Yes, to both points, there is context to his presentations and I should have taken that into account. Perhaps Joe and Jane Q. Public is viewed in one dimension by the funding advisors to EL. In contrast to that view, though, the questions to him were decent ones. However, this was a crowdsource presentation, so maybe the perception is the majority of the viewers with money were a couple clues short of a board game, and made emotional decisions. Meow again?

[rcain]

Looking forward to the arrival & testing of LLP's new 'solid' anode. (seem to recall i suggested thay might want to look at something like that way back - be interesting to see how their final design comes out of the machine shop).

Whilst waiting for further news, i took the time to watch Eric Lerner's video on 'why i'm not suprised Steven Hawking now says black holes don't exist' ( - at the end of the day, a neat & rather clever plug for his book 'The Big Bang Never Happened' - anyone read it?) - the video was thought provoking/salutary - well worth a watch.

http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/i ... &Itemid=90

[crowberry]

LPP has published their new redesigned website http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/. The new website contains more material compared to the old one. The news section http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/news/ now has links to news items not directly related to LPP.

[Ivy Matt]

LPP recently posted two news articles. Although the FF-1 device is currently not in operation, awaiting the installation of the new tungsten electrodes later this month, work has continued on processing the data acquired last year.

The first article is about measurements of x-rays from the plasmoid. These measurements indicate that the electron energy is mostly random, and therefore the ion energy is likely also mostly random. LPP regards this as a good condition for fusion gain. Also, the electron energy has been measured at 90-160 keV, which compares well with earlier measurements of ion energy. In addition, the electron energy correlates well with total neutron yield.

The second article is about LPP's efforts to prevent runaway electrons created by the electric pulse from eroding the anode. A team from the Plasma Physics Research Center in Tehran, Iran, conducted experiments with a 2 kJ plasma focus device. They found that increasing the nitrogen fill gas pressure from 0.2 torr to 1 torr almost completely eliminated the anode erosion by slowing down the electrons with more frequent collisions. LPP also plans to prevent runaway electrons using a small pulse to pre-ionize the gas, followed by a much larger pulse to create the plasmoid.

The tungsten electrodes should be ready to install by the end of this month. I'm looking forward to seeing what results LPP will be able to obtain with the upgraded FF-1 this summer, and then with the beryllium electrodes, hopefully later this year or early next year.

[Ivy Matt]

Here's the newsletter for July, for those who haven't read it yet:

Crowdfunding raises $182,000, coverage in Fortune, Extremetech

With a boost from a 20-day extension, the crowdfunding campaign of LPPFusion, Inc. and the Focus Fusion Society was a great success, raising $182,000, or 91% of our original goal of $200,000. (This includes $2,000 in Bitcoins not counted in the number on the Indiegogo website.) We received contributions from 1,923 individuals, many of whom gave more than once.

Carbon nanotubes may protect electrodes

Neil Farbstein of Vulvox Nanobiotechnology Corporation suggested to LPPFusion joint development of a coating of CNT to protect the future beryllium electrodes in the Focus Fusion generator. While more research is needed, the extraordinary qualities of CNTs may help to reduce two sources of erosion.

Cathode gets more machining

Unfortunately, the company that was machining the electrode, and had promised it by June 23, ran into difficulties. They realized that they had greatly underestimated the time needed to machine the interior surface by electro discharge marching, a process in which electric current melts away the material to be removed.
...
These delays are expected to push back the start of our new set of experiments into September, approximately. They also serve to highlight that a monolithic tungsten cathode of this size reaches the limits of the technical capabilities of the global tungsten industry.

LPPFusion gains a new simulation expert

Dr. Robert E. Terry joins us as Computational Physics Consultant, and has started working with Dr. Warwick Dumas to develop our ongoing simulation of the early phases of the plasma focus process. This simulation will help us to understand how the current filaments form and what conditions favor or imperil their survival. The filaments in turn are the vital first steps in compressing the plasma to high density. Dr. Terry has had over 35 years experience in simulation of plasma phenomena, having strong expertise both in computational techniques and in plasma physics. He worked for over 20 years at the US Naval Research Laboratory, developing innovative techniques for modeling the Z-pinch, a plasma device closely related to the dense plasma focus device.

[Carl White]

In a July 23 editorial, Nature magazine has joined the calls to redirect fusion funding to aneutronic fusion—fusion that produces no radioactive waste.

...

Nature specifcally urged that one of the projects that should be considered for government funding is “Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in Middlesex, New Jersey, which is trying to exploit a configuration known as a dense plasma focus to build an extremely compact reactor that does not emit neutrons.”

http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/n ... ic-fusion/

There's a link to Nature's editorial at the beginning of the article.

[crowberry]

LPP has posted two news items on their website:

Re-Assembly Begins of FF-1 with Tungsten Electrodes

LPP has been working hard on avoiding arcing by improving the electrical contacts with the new tungsten electrode. The assembly work is expected to be finished in October.
http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/r ... lectrodes/

LPPFusion Names Dr. Hamid R. Yousefi as Chief Research Officer

http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/l ... h-officer/

LPP will also attend the 56th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics Monday–Friday, October 27–31, 2014; New Orleans, Louisiana.

Performance of the Plasma Focus with Monolithic Tungsten Electrodes

Hopefully the tungsten assembly progresses well, so that they have time to get new results for the conference.
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP14/Session/GO4.13

[GIThruster]

What was the reason to not go with the earlier plan of Beryllium electrodes?

[swamijake]

No idea, but Beryllium is very expensive, hard to machine and toxic. Pretty great material for the application though as it is transparent to x-rays, but not sure how it would deal with the arcs re pitting.

http://americanmachinist.com/machining- ... -beryllium

I'm sure if they can get away with anything but Be they will try that first.

[RERT]

For some months at least the plan has been to try a tungsten electrode before Beryllium. This doesn't seem to me to be a change of plan. I guess the question is why do tungsten at all. Maybe they hope for better data which will attract more funds.

[zapkitty]

I guess the question is why do tungsten at all...

The plan remains to first test with tungsten and then switch over to beryllium.

The current delay is from the company that originally contracted to machine the tungsten cathode... apparently the piece proved to be beyond their capabilities and other firms had to be scouted.

Why tungsten at all? The LPP team intends to use this time with the tungsten to, among other things, learn the best techniques for reducing the runaway electrons that do so much to erode the electrodes. Tungsten's properties of hardness and heat resistance will be very helpful in these intermediate stages of research which will look into reducing erosion and impurities while simultaneously increasing density.

But that same tungsten will become worse than useless as the x-ray flux approaches breakeven conditions. The x-rays will take out the tungsten.

So the plan is that when LPP finally has to switch to beryllium that what they'll have learned from working with the tungsten will help them keep the Be erosion to manageable levels.

[GIThruster]

Implicit in this is obviously they're planning to vaporize Be, which is highly toxic. I can see why they'd put that off a bit.

[birchoff]

Implicit in this is obviously they're planning to vaporize Be, which is highly toxic. I can see why they'd put that off a bit.

umm why is this a valid implicit assumption??

from everything they have published. One of their goal is to drastically reduce the amount of vaporization of the electrodes, as they reduce the rate of fusions taking place. Their stated solution is to move to Tungsten. If that actually does work as they theorized then it would seem a more valid implicit assumption would be that the planned move to Be electrodes would either improve on or maintain the reduction in electrode atoms created by vaporization. Otherwise Be's X-Ray benefits would be for naught.

[D Tibbets]

Beryllium, being a tough but small atomic weight element, is much more transparent to x-rays compared to copper or tungsten. It has been suggested that such an electrode will be nessisary for a production reactor with very many repeated firings frequently. For a research reactor the requirement is much relaxed. Beryllium is not necessary and machining and use is probably much more expensive than even tungsten. As mentioned any vaporized beryllium is also a major headache as it is very toxic and handling of post firing plasma, chamber gasses and exhaust have to be carefully addressed. Issues with vapor deposition of the beryllium has to also be addressed.
Copper proved to be too vulnerable to plasma erosion, thus the tungsten. Hopefully it will stand up to the repeated research tests as the conditions are pushed.

Dan Tibbets

[RERT]

Duh! Why do these pennies take so long to drop these days?

Be vapour in the reactor looks like it might be a supplement to the Boron fuel. The natural isotopes are Be7, 9, and 10. If the most prominent reaction is proton capture, Be7->B8->2He, ie more aneutronic fusion. Be9 and 10 just produce stable isotopes B10 and B11 under proton capture.

Anybody any insight into other reaction/decay paths in this case?