After about 1000 hours of work and research, halon fire extinguisher in hand, donning my lead jacket...I flipped the variac's power switch, turned its knob, turned the ground fault protection off, and frankly, much to my surprise, a brilliant glow of blue plasma appeared. Yup, it works. The next step after this is to move on to fusion by upping the input voltage and building a deuterium injection system. To find out more about how this type of reactor works go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
Here are more pictures of the plasma:
Coolest thing for a very long time!
ReplyDeleteWell done! I started research on a fusor, but have no place currently to build one. This is quite beatiful. Do you have any heat problems with the clear enclosure?
ReplyDeleteEven if it doesn't react as it's supposed to be, it'll be one kick ass light bulb.
ReplyDeleteFreakin awesome!
ReplyDeleteI am very impressed, jeez I'd love to work on something like this! I hope you keep writing about your progress, good luck. :)
ReplyDelete@ Dkozel- No, I haven't had any problems with my *pyrex* bell jar, but once I step it up to neutron producing specs, I'll have metal shielding in the jar to protect it from ion and e-beams
ReplyDeleteFor the love of god man post a how to on this!
ReplyDeleteWhere will get the deuterium?
ReplyDeletethat is amazing! i'd love to see some video footage
ReplyDeleteYou have any idea how fast the neutrons are coming off of that?!?!?! You gotta be careful! Distilled tap water will provide you with protection and produce heavy water (D2O)
ReplyDeleteAnd how are you going to aquire deut for that reactor? I seem to remember it being very hard to manufacture, Hitler had a major problem with that, since the Brits blew up his heavy water facilities.
ReplyDeleteYou can buy heavy water these days, and then you just electrolyze it.
ReplyDeleteDid some reading on these things a while ago. Sone US NAvy guy put out a paper giving some danned good reasons, including mathamatical equations, if memory serves, why these things will never break even as fas as energy is concerned. I think its ultimatly to do with you actually needing wires somewhere to develop the virtual cathode.
ReplyDeleteI have been wondering if you could you a pasmid as a catalyst. Generate a plasma ball via the carbon fibre or similar in the microwave thecnique and then use the fusor to build up the feild strengths....
Probably would fizzle, but essentialy if you want to avoid the navy guys paper comming into play you somehow need to avoid the inner grid.
Veeery nice work!
ReplyDeleteHow much power from the electrical grid does it drain?
Interesting Wikipedia read. It seems that the off-heat for the internal electrode is a problem with regard to contamination of the plasm and a saping of the over-all energies of the system. This should be researched further though. The point of fusion is to be little more thean an over complicated steam engine to drive a generator. So, the final determination of how to extract heat energy of rather energy to heat your fluid to generate the power to move a turbine should be conisered at the earlier stages of developement. Just a though... make the innter electrode out of hollow pipes, TIG the turbs (metal = ???) so that you can run an electrically isolated fluid through them. This would be wicked difficult for the electrical isolation, but could possibly take a waknes and leverage towards the final goal. Power generation in a uable and integrate form. Just my non-education 2 cents.. good luck.
ReplyDeletehey, man, kudos! I'd like to ask you a few questions about your setup, if you don't mind. I want to build a fusor as an undergrad project, and I want to start where you have, with just plasma containment before I move on to fusing deuterium.
ReplyDeleteWhat level of vacuum are you creating inside your vacuum chamber?
what brand/model is the vacuum pump?
what transformer output levels are you working with? (kv&ma)
did you salvage the transformer from an existing piece of equipment, or did you buy a new one?
what was your total cost?
Thanks, and good luck with the D fusion!
@zack- there is no neutron radiation. there's no fusion taking place here, and he's not using deuterium. right now it's just plasma in IEC.
@daedalus- they draw a lot less power than you'd think. they're high voltage, but low amps. the higher-powered ones draws less watts than your microwave. they are, however, extremely high-voltage.
How are you going to obtain tritium? If I recall it's a ridiculously rare cointrolled substance. Unfortunately, unless I'm mis-understanding the physics (and I hope I am) deuterium-deuterium fusion requires far higher pressures and temperatures than I would think are attainable from your setup (awesome though it is :).
ReplyDeleteAlso what's the basis for your HV supply, a NST? Or scavenged microwaves?
That said great work man!
I am using a welch 1399 vacuum pump to get down to less than 1 millitorr of pressure. My HV supply is a 15kv 32ma NST (ebay ftw!)full wave rectified to 9500 volts. I plan to make my own deuterium from heavy water.
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ReplyDeleteContato com will o brian: Um amigo em comum me indicou esta tua página, o Tiago (Russu). Bem legal teus experimentos... Podemos trocar alguns emails sobre o assunto ?
ReplyDeleteO meu é (ttsoares @ orion PONTO ufrgs PONTO br)
The last comment i wrote in Portuguese because i was not aware that you are not from Brazil ;-)
ReplyDeleteCould we get in touch by email ?
Mine: ttsoares AT orion DOT ufrgs DOT br
Be careful, the last time I did this I opened a doorway into another dimension and almost killed us all!
ReplyDeletecan you post an tuturial how to build it?
ReplyDeleteI don't really have the time to make one, and people inexperienced with HV may hurt (read kill) themselves. It is a really complex mechanism that cannot be described in a tutorial. If you want to do your own research and learn how to build one, visit www.fusor.net it is a forum dedicated to IEC fusion.
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