World: r3wp

With all the recent problems in Japan and the rapidly increasing 
cost of oil, something that is this close to being usable in production 
is being totally ignored.

interesting... I have never heard of this process.

Neither has 99.9% of the rest of the world - totally crazy

actually there should be a bunch more 9's after the decimal point

have you heard about Polywell?

no, is this something pretty recent?

oh - looks like this is conventional fusion

actually, it's close to 20 years old, but it was not revealed until 
around 2005. it has gone silent again a year ago.

what I wonder, if that any one of these projects will work, what 
happens to ITER. if they will keep funding ITER, that is perhaps 
the most crazy part.

I'm not too optimistic about hot fusion, based on what I've read.

polywell is kinetic fusion, not hot fusion, so it's a different process.

why did it go silent if results were promising?

because the US Navy is funding it.

well, the Navy has also had positive results with LENR - they're 
into whatever will give them cheap power

the nice thing about the Rossi process is that it is dirt cheap - 
can be done in your kitchen, basically

the technology needed is not much above what you'd see in a chemistry 
lab

They funded the early research too from 1992 to 2005, but funding 
ran out in 2005 and a lack of results could not get the research 
funding renewed. It's a near miracle that the research started again. 
this happened, because the main researcher, Robert Bussard was going 
through test data from their last burnt out prototype and discovered 
interesting numbers that suggested that the principle actually works. 
Still no funding, and Bussard went public to get funding, even setting 
up a paypal account. Bussard then died in 2007 and other researchers 
took over the funding issue. They got the US Navy to start funding 
it again, built another prototype to verify the results and they 
turned out good. After this a plan was posted for more prototypes 
and then they went silent.

What I find amusing is that Robert Bussard worked on ITER early on, 
saw that it wouldn't work and left and basically worked in a garage 
for 10 years with speaker magnets for pocket money, while ITER received 
billions for barely any progress.

Polywell is gigawatt class fusion and is not likely to be something 
you put in your car, so LENR might supplement it well, if it can 
be done small-scale.

The planned 1MW plant using the Rossi process will have about 300 
units that produce about 4 kW each. The units have about 50cc. With 
some shielding around them, that still doesn't amount to much space.

to be clear, though - the output is steam - if you want to convert 
to electricity, you're talking about 30% of that

Polywell is advantagous over ITER in that the design is much, much 
simpler. The output is electricity and helium, so no conversion is 
needed to put it on a grid. There are still arguments over whether 
neutron radiation will be produced, when used with the pb11 fuel, 
but if not, then none will be produced, as there will be with ITER.


The disadvantage is the requirement for size, which probably is going 
to be more than 3x3x3 meters for a small-scale system, but it's still 
small enough to put in a submarine or a ship. The other disadvantage 
is that you probably will need 1-10 MW plant in front of it to start 
it, but once the process starts, it runs on its own.


Another point is safety: If you add too much or too little fuel, 
the process simply stops.

Sounds pretty interesting, but when will we see commercial deployment? 
Rossi is planning for October, this year, for his process. A Greek 
company is investing 200 million euros in the plant.

We won't know, as the state of development is still in understanding 
the physics and there is no public device that has worked for longer 
than a few milliseconds. After that, there are still engineering 
issues to overcome to build a production device. The researchers 
last said that the first real device could be in operation within 
5-10 years, which still is 50 years before ITER.


As far as I can tell, LENR is further ahead. But from what I can 
see, they are not in direct competition with eachother and there 
is a need for real table-top fusion.

I'm not sure what the maximum output from the Rossi process can be, 
but from what I've been reading it can actually produce much higher 
output than what is planned for the initial plant. For now, it is 
being limited it in order to have it operate in a safe range. The 
demonstration done in January showed about 12-15kW. It seems it can 
be self sustaining, but that might come after the theory behind the 
process is understood. As it is, it is a controllable process that 
can generate a known amount of energy given a set of operating parameters.

to clarify, the Jan demo showed that output from one unit of about 
1 litre capacity

Now that I looked over the wikipedia article on Polywell, I remember 
coming across it a few years back - I watched the Google talk that 
Bussard gave - but it fell off my radar when not much seemed to happen 
around the process.

I like working experiments which look like this:


http://pesn.com/2011/02/22/9501770_Rossi_cold_fusion_reactor_achieves_15_kW_for_18_hours/


it means we'll be able to build time-travelling deLoreans   ourselves 
  :-)

the thing I like about this experiment, is that they seem to be doing 
all they can to avoid calling it a "cold fusion" device... probably 
to limit the media circus act.

I don't understand the need for patenting the device, but I may not 
have the whole story.

Rossi is an engineer - he's spent a good amount of his life on this 
and lots of his own finances - up until now, it's been out of his 
pocket. Why doesn't it seem reasonable to want to profit from something 
like this?

the best discussion on this subject is on the vortex list. If the 
subject is of interest, start around mid-January when the news broke 
and work forwards. You'll find lots of very qualified people discussing 
Rossi. My take from what I've read is that this isn't a scam - there's 
been lots of precedent over the last two decades. Rossi has finally 
gotten a repeatable, consistent process, that's all.

http://www.mail-archive.com/[vortex-l-:-eskimo-:-com]

I'm wondering why he isn't telling how it's working. If he want to 
protect it, he has to file a patent, which makes the thing public 
anyway.

Also, the many comments on Rossi's blog (look at the Jan conference 
post with 825 comments, in particular), The Journal of Nuclear Physics, 
are telling. There's lots there to read between the lines.

he has filed for a patent, but there's been issues as the patent 
application is way too vague

the main IP he's trying to protect is in the composition of the catayst 
he uses along with the main ingredients of the reaction, regular 
hydrogen and nickel

the post for the Jan conference is here. Start at page 1 and work 
forward and you'll get a very good sense for how this whole thing 
is being perceived

http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360#comments

He says, he's already heating one building using this method. If 
it were to be that he was to cover his investments, I would probably 
rather try to have it installed in dozens of buildings, by selling 
the device to select people. If he's trying to make millions beyond 
his investments by completely preventing other people from building 
it, I would not find that particularly noble.

Licensing

Henrik, in most cases that I know of patents do not allow you to 
"prevent" other people from benefiting from your inventions, it forces 
them to license the invention from you

and usually, the terms have to be "reasonable"

he has had a prototype unit (about 10kW if I recall) heating a building 
for about a year prior to the public announcement. The plant(s) (there 
will be one in Greece and one somewhere else, I think) coming this 
year, hopefully, will be the validation of the process everyone is 
demanding. If you read at the above links, you'll see that his intent 
isn't to stop the technology from being used by as many people as 
possible.

Any information about the costs?

yes, at the above links

by what I've seen, he wants this tech to be licenced as much as possible 
... I've read that he admits he must "give back to the americans 
who allowed him to do his research"


his own govt sent him to jail on previous "greener" energy attempts... 
which is downright imbecile.

the initial cost of the energy is supposed to be around one US cent/kWh

And no VCs jumped on the wagon yet? Can't believe it.

Robert, production is ~ 0.01/kwh   so very cheap...   and the minimal 
size is the actual device we see... 50x50x100 cm...  this is very 
cool... it means we could actually see "home-sized" units in time.

he's not looking for investment - other than for people looking to 
build plants

I would know a dozend companies that would use it immediatly.