"Veteran" Fusioneer Chad Ramey came to Nashville last week to speak at a hacker's convention called "PhreakNic." It was a petty impressive demonstration, too... and probably not what any of the spectators expected. After all, it's not every day that a college student wheels a cart into a conference room and proceeds to produce an artificial star. In real time, too. I mean, he hooked it up, pumped it down, and within a few minutes had a star on the video screen.
Chad even makes his own deuterium! He described how it was going to cost more than $400 in shipping to get his deuterium bottle filled (hazardous material, you know?), so he created his own electrolysis system to distill the deuteirum in real time and feed it into the the reactor. Correct me if I'm wrong, butI think this is the first time anybody's gone straight from water to fusion.
One of these days... straight from water to electricity?
"A Star In A Jar," he called it... I wonder where he got that expression?
Deuterium is a time honored method of getting your D2, as per a search result will show.
Posted by: Robert Tubbs | November 07, 2011 at 11:29 PM
Electrolysis of Deuterium Oxide*
Posted by: Robert Tubbs | November 07, 2011 at 11:31 PM
Robert is correct. Electrolysis of heavy water was first done here over 4 years ago and has been used by a small number of folks to avoid the cost and hassle of deuterium gas purchasing.
It is not the best solution and can't compare with pure gas as there seems to always be some water vapor involved, fouling the results. I am unaware of any vastly stunning fusion numbers being obtained with the electrolysis process, but fusion is done using this process by our fusioneers.
Posted by: Richard Hull | November 08, 2011 at 08:26 AM
I recognize that fusor, he had it running at Dragon*Con last year too where I took photos and video of his star (technically video of his projected video...)
Posted by: Trotfox | August 24, 2012 at 04:43 PM