- #1
luetm
- 1
- 0
Hi
I have a really weird idea that is robbing me of my sleep.
One of the many problems with fusion seems to be how to harvest the energy released by the reaction efficiently. So as I was slowly drifting into sleep I was wondering, how we usually harvest energy from reactions, and the piston engine came to mind... so:
If my thermodynamics don't fail me, we could inject a pre-heated DT gas-mixture into the cylinders, then the isentropic process would increase the temperature and pressure by about one order of magnitude. Ideally one would make this process symmetric (one piston from each side) so the impulse forces the nuclei into each other rather than into the cylinder bottom. The isochoric process would then increase temperature by the heat released from the fusion, as well as increase pressure from the higher heat capacity ratio of helium. This would result in quite some kinetic energy being created, more than just from the temperature increase itself.
I had some thoughts about having the piston be positively charged to increase the force on the nuclei towards the center and maybe even make them bounce back and forth a little, which would help increasing the reactivity by optimizing the angles. It might even speed up the transition from gas into plasma, but to be honest this is wild speculation.
I'm sure there are quite some reasons why this won't work (for instance I can think of the mixture cooling down in the piston) - but I thought it might be quite a cool thought experiment I might share.
But anyway. What do you think? And thank you for indulging me :)
luetm
I have a really weird idea that is robbing me of my sleep.
One of the many problems with fusion seems to be how to harvest the energy released by the reaction efficiently. So as I was slowly drifting into sleep I was wondering, how we usually harvest energy from reactions, and the piston engine came to mind... so:
If my thermodynamics don't fail me, we could inject a pre-heated DT gas-mixture into the cylinders, then the isentropic process would increase the temperature and pressure by about one order of magnitude. Ideally one would make this process symmetric (one piston from each side) so the impulse forces the nuclei into each other rather than into the cylinder bottom. The isochoric process would then increase temperature by the heat released from the fusion, as well as increase pressure from the higher heat capacity ratio of helium. This would result in quite some kinetic energy being created, more than just from the temperature increase itself.
I had some thoughts about having the piston be positively charged to increase the force on the nuclei towards the center and maybe even make them bounce back and forth a little, which would help increasing the reactivity by optimizing the angles. It might even speed up the transition from gas into plasma, but to be honest this is wild speculation.
I'm sure there are quite some reasons why this won't work (for instance I can think of the mixture cooling down in the piston) - but I thought it might be quite a cool thought experiment I might share.
But anyway. What do you think? And thank you for indulging me :)
luetm