Getting higher potential difference with Van De Graaff machines

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
2 replies · 2K views
stevecheang
Messages
17
Reaction score
0
Using a Van De Graaff (VDG) machine, we can easily generate million-volt high voltage. The high potential difference can be generated effectively with minimum energy supplied to the machine. The larger the volume of the machine would be, the higher the voltage could get. However, stability would be a problem when the voltage gets to over 10 million-volts. This issue could be resolved with ‘magnified’ machine design. For example,

VDG1, VDG2, VDG3 è VDGA
VDG4, VDG5, VDG6 è VDGB
VDG7, VDG8, VDG9 è VDGC

VDGA, VDGB, VDGC è VDGX

In that case, VDGA works like a magnifier which aggregates the positive charge (or negative charge conducted from smaller VDGs) and collectively ‘magnifies’ the voltage to higher voltage. Of course, a portion of the positive charge could be lost in the process. However, it could theoretically be possible to keep majority of it until the voltage gets elevated to 100 million volts or higher. With such high voltage working on the deuterium or tritium, gas mixture which could be mixed from a source of gaseous catalyst, selected from the group consisting of beryllium, carbonates, hydroxides, halides, sulfates, phosphates, and sulfides. The reaction produces natural lightning, or occasional fusion reaction if you like.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Someone I know was arguing and claimed natural lightning would not produce fusion. First of all, the design described here is not about real natural lightning. You don't get to manipulate real natural lightning with the addition of deuterium or tritium in the picture. Second, real natural lightning has voltage in the range of a few million to at most 10 million volts. You don't get as high voltage as the design theoretically could (if it works).
 
Someone asked, "Have you tried the theory to magnify the voltage?" I actually tried building a simple VDG and direct the charges to another larger hollow metal ball (not a VDG) successfully. However, I have never tried more than that. Hence, it would be difficult for me to say for sure whether it definitely would work.