Nuclear Fusion Device Idea Utilizing Carbon Nano-Tubes: A Feasibility Analysis

[Aero Stud]

Hey people,

Had an idea about a device for nuclear fusion. Now I figure its too much mess and too many people will have to be envolved anyway to get a patent or something, even if it was a realistic idea - as remote as that chance may be, so if it works remember I thought about it so I could at least be famous if not rich. ;)

Anyway, jokes aside. First we take some Deutirium or Tritium, strip the electrons and put'em in a cyclic acceleretor, the form doesn't matter much, just that they cycle around inside with their KeV level energies that're anough for fusion, small voltages required to keep them at the same energy due to sychrotron radiation and powerful magnets focusing them. Now, we take carbon nano-tubes with each carbon having another connection with a Deutirium or Tritium atom (according to what we have cycling in the accelerator) on the inside of the tube. Now we let the ion beam go inside the tube and some of the atoms hit their counterparts and fuse. That's the idea basically.

Many things unknown here, to me at least. First, can such a carbon nano-tube be created, is it chemicaly feasible ? Second, how efficient can such a device be ? Normally the ion beam is directed at a target and here it is kept cycling. Now the energy of the beam is about 3-4 orders lower than the fusion energy, which we can extract with partial efficiency, and to keep it cycling requires like a few percent per cycle so can the fusion reaction rate in theory exceed the required energy for long anough sections of the accelerator containing the carbon-hydrogen isotope nano-tubes. (Several tens of angstroms tube diameter, several tens of fusable atoms per layer, but only about a 10^-5 ansgstrom distance required for fusion to occur.) And, if it could be energy effective then how much damage could the fusion reactions inflict upon the nano-tubes during reasonable operation time periods.

Well that's about it, thank you for your time - remember you're doing it for all of humanity's future ;).

 

[Astronuc]

Hey people,

Had an idea about a device for nuclear fusion. Now I figure its too much mess and too many people will have to be envolved anyway to get a patent or something, even if it was a realistic idea - as remote as that chance may be, so if it works remember I thought about it so I could at least be famous if not rich. ;)

Anyway, jokes aside. First we take some Deutirium or Tritium, strip the electrons and put'em in a cyclic acceleretor, the form doesn't matter much, just that they cycle around inside with their KeV level energies that're anough for fusion, small voltages required to keep them at the same energy due to sychrotron radiation and powerful magnets focusing them. Now, we take carbon nano-tubes with each carbon having another connection with a Deutirium or Tritium atom (according to what we have cycling in the accelerator) on the inside of the tube. Now we let the ion beam go inside the tube and some of the atoms hit their counterparts and fuse. That's the idea basically.

Many things unknown here, to me at least. First, can such a carbon nano-tube be created, is it chemicaly feasible ? Second, how efficient can such a device be ? Normally the ion beam is directed at a target and here it is kept cycling. Now the energy of the beam is about 3-4 orders lower than the fusion energy, which we can extract with partial efficiency, and to keep it cycling requires like a few percent per cycle so can the fusion reaction rate in theory exceed the required energy for long anough sections of the accelerator containing the carbon-hydrogen isotope nano-tubes. (Several tens of angstroms tube diameter, several tens of fusable atoms per layer, but only about a 10^-5 ansgstrom distance required for fusion to occur.) And, if it could be energy effective then how much damage could the fusion reactions inflict upon the nano-tubes during reasonable operation time periods.

Well that's about it, thank you for your time - remember you're doing it for all of humanity's future ;).

The method of accelerating and colliding deuterons and tritons would be greatly inefficient for producing fusion. One would get a fraction of the energy put into stripping electrons and accelerating the nuclei. There would be considerable energy loss due to scattering. Solid targets would be vaporized in the colliding beams. Consideration has been given in the past to using accelerators for fusion, as has using accelerators to inject beams of deuterons into plasmas. It is not practical.

 

[cmb]

The issue in trying to achieve net energy gain fusion isn't getting deuterons and tritons/other deuterons in collisions. It's that only one in a 100 million collisions (at fusion energies) results in a fusion event. Most of the time these ions just all scatter off each other. Your carbon (whatever) target would be ablated in the ensuing energy those energetic deuterons dump into your target.

Getting ions to collide is pretty easy and in fact routine. Not wasting energy in the >99 million collisions (per single fusing collision) is the difficult bit.

You didn't actually mention if your idea was to produce net energy gain fusion. If it's just 'to do some fusion' then sure, nothing wrong with your idea. Just build a 'fusor' and skip the carbon stuff. In the fusor case, deuterons embed themselves into the metal structures of the chamber and offer the random chance of a fusion when more fast deuterons come along.

There are a load of commercially available neutron generators that work of the beam-target approach to fusion. They make neutrons from nuclear fusion. They generate about 1 to 10nanoJoules of neutron energy for every 1Joule of electrical energy put in. They 'work', so to speak. You need to specify the hoped-for end objective for your device.

 

[russ_watters]

#necro

 

[Vanadium 50]

#necro

I assume Astro didn't start it. More likely someone necroed, Astro responded, and then the whole thing went down a rules-violating path.

 

[mfb]

I don't know who started it, but I know who ends it.