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Pyro Tesla Coil - A magneto-sonic plasma detonation wave engine


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From:  Scott Stephens [SMTP:stephens-at-enteract-dot-com]
Sent:  Monday, June 08, 1998 4:25 AM
To:  tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject:  Pyro Tesla Coil - A magneto-sonic plasma detonation wave engine

The ubiquitous infernal combusion engine harneses the energy of burning fuel
and air with a  piston and cylinder. The engine I'm proposing similarly
harneses the power of burning fuel and air, but MHD - style by:

*    Blowing a fuel-air mix into a ball or donut-shaped plasma (plasmoid).
*    Imploding the plasmoid bubble current-loop with a pulsed magnetic field
*    Harness energy as the fuel-air detonation increases the area of the
plasmoid current-loop. 

A Tesla Coil comes to mind, because this basicaly is a plasma-ball in a
Tesla Coil. This system will generate larger current pulses at resonance,
than are applied. This may not be very effiecent, but for some applications,
such as high power Tesla Coils, lasers, jet propulsion, and nuclear
applications, it may not matter much :-)

So how do you blow a plasma bubble? 

Microwave excitation:
Perhaps you've put burning charcoal, toast, toothpick, et. in a microwave
oven and watched the pretty orange plasmoids go buzzing off. If you have,
you know it can take some effort to get the plasma started. Once a current
path is initiated, the power keeps it lit (ionized). You can trap the lit
plasmoid in an inverted glass (cup), but it will quickly melt through, and
cause the glass to melt and become conductive too :-)

The objective with an engine is to produce a viscous plasma bubble or other
geometry that will implode, compressing fuel-air in a magnetic bottle field.
Similar to a Diesel engine. And will expand like a rubber balloon when its
contents are detonated by the implosion.

This type of plasmoid may be created by quadrature 'extraordinary wave'
magneto-sonic resonant excitation. A cylindrical microwave resonant cavity
(Cavity) has ports seperated by 90 degrees. Microwave oven magnetrons, mode
- locked 90 degrees from each other, excite the plasmoid through these ports.

Take a glass of water, and move the glass forward - backwards, and right -
left. If the two orthogonal motions are phased 90 degrees, so the motion of
the glass traces a circle, the water will begin swirling and storing energy,
just like a magneto - sonic plasma at its resonant frequency. The magnetic
field diverts current into a circular or elliptical orbit. The magnetic
field acts like a dielectric across the radius. I've read of effective E
values up to 10,000!

Fuel and air are blown into the cool center of this plasma. The excited
current and ambient magnetic field must be strong enough to create a viscous
plasma, that will contain a fuel-air detonation burp or blast. The gas
doesn't have time to completely burn, because it is pulsed 100's to 10,000's
times per second, by micro-second range pulses, which detonate fresh gas as
it moves into the plasmoid's center.

The microwave Cavity is in a Tesla Coil like inductor. It could be a gap in
a ferrous torroid, and biased by permanent magnets. Or maybe without
permanent magnets, if I can figure out how to consistantly light a plasmoid
with pulsed magnetron microwaves.

The windings are wound more dense at the top and bottom, so as to create the
famous Magnetic Bottle.  When the Tesla windings are pulsed, such as from
the typical Tesla spark gap & pulse capacitor, the plasma implodes.

Magnetic bottles leak at the top & bottom. So a high - order plas-modes may
be usefull, such as a figure-8 shaped one, with a top and bottom current
loop. The top and bottom plasma torrus's implode, creating  a shock which
compresses and detonates fuel in-between.

When the plasma bubble explodes, the current-loop expands with it, inducing
current in the Tesla Coil. So you get more voltage across the Tesla Coil
than you put on it - no free lunch, because the fuel in the plasma blast did
the work. This system would be tuned to electronic resonance for the Tesla
Coil, and the (super)sonic resonance of the plasma bubble
implosion-detonation oscillation.

A spark gap, diode, or other switch could switch current into a storage
device, until the next cycle. The Q of the inductor/Tesla Coil would be too
low to store any energy, superconductor notwithstanding. These devices could
be staged, with progressivley larger plasmoid and fuel volumes.

I think the limiting factor would be the magnetic core saturation field
values and Tesla Coil ohmic loss. The good news is that like a Tesla Coil,
kilo-amp and kilo-gauss magnitudes are possible, but at a lower duty -
cycle, or firing rate. The bad news is that unless I find a way to
consistantly and repetitivly spawn or blow a magneto-plasma bubble, I'm
stuck keeping the magnetrons going CW with at static, permanent B-field.

How do I make the torroidal pole piece?
*    A plain solenoidal Tesla Coil would not couple very well into the
plasmoid. Maybe a mutual-inductance coupling coefficient (M) of .1 at best.
With solenoidal ferrite top and bottom pole pieces, maybe .5. Efficiency
would suffer horribly. But with a ferrite torroid, maybe .9?
*    The gap in this torroid is a magnetic bottle, as the flux is dense at
the poles. The Tesla Coil may be wound on the torroid, or around the cavity
in the gap.
*    It should supply a significant steady magnetic field for a
magneto-plasma and magneto-sonic mode tuning in the magnetron oscillator's
range.
*    It must not suffer from eddy-current losses from Tesla Coil pulses. It
should be torroidal for maximum magnetic coupling to the plasma bubble. I'm
afraid to ask what 10 lb's of metglass will cost :-(
Maybe coils wrapped around ferrite, at Cavity top and bottom, could be
connected in a flux-cancelling mode. Of coarse this would reduce the
inductance of the Tesla Coil, and probably destroy the .9 M.
*    It must not eat the microwave Cavity excitation, and affect its tuning.
*    The ohmic losses of the Tesla Coil must not be excessive.

How do I make the Cavity?
*    It should take energy from two magnetrons, launch it into the plasmoid
at the appropriate angle and phase.
*    Broadband enough to accomodate the changing plasmoid magnetic field
during implosion and explosion.
*    It should not eat the Tesla Coil flux or current.
*    It should not heat the Tesla Coil, or torroid
*    It should not be affected by, or must adapt to, the ferrite in the
torroidal pole pieces.
*    It should not melt or explode.
*    Sometype of patch resonator or array of ceramic flux pins.

How do I:
*    How do you design a diesel engine?
*    Determine what pressure-volume change rates will DETONATE common fuels?
What books have these curves? Will this only work with hydrogen and pure
oxygen with luck?
*    What will be the detonation velocity at various pressure-volumes?
*    The best performance would be had by not significantly shrinking the
plasmoid volume, which would result in significant electronic tuning and
magnetic coupling problems; but by inducing a small, mm-range change in
volume of the range of .5 - 10 microseconds. Roughly an implosion shock
velocity of 100 - 10,000 meters/second.

Applications:
*    If possible, it would make one hell of a Tesla Coil. Giant sparks, from
a little propane torch.
*    RF power for exciting lasers and plasma cutters.
*    Set up an asymetric detonation, such that momentum is leaked out for
jet propulsion. Detonation waves allow > mach 2 jet velocity. Phase -
shifted oscillating plasmoids could provide MHD catapillar-style propulsion.

*    Plasma fission/fusion cycle
It occured to me that if a few of these were staged, eventualy nuclear
density and power levels would be reached. If I had a magic black box that
could implode particle clouds, how much force is required to compress
hydrogen till it fuses? 10 atoms? 10^3 atoms? 10^6 atoms? A nuclear engine
as a device that will focus or lever managable energies into previously
un-managably small volumes.

*    Fission fuse
Use a non-thermal neutron, high energy fissionable isotope as a primer to
get a fusion pop. U-238, Th-232, et.

*    Sono-luminescent bubble imploding
A plasma gun fires Deuterium-Tritium puff into a Lithium, Thorium or Uranium
plasma ball. (Lithium breeds Tritium, Deuterium-Tritium burns well).
Appropriate EM-trapping fields keep the D-T plasma bubble in a heavy ion
plasma. As in sono-luminescence, the bubble is magneticaly imploded,
focusing the energy many orders of magnitude. I've read that the
sono-luminescent effect is a result of viscosity, I'm proposing an analagous
situation with plasma bubble viscosities.

*    Temporal Staged Implosion
A magnetic impulse creates the first implosion shock in the microsecond time
scale, then a nanosecond magnetron chirp compresses further, finaly a
concentric holographic laser flash causes the outer blanket plasma to lase
and radialy compresses the tiny, hot plasmoid. As the size of the plasmoid
shrinks, magnetic coupling decreases, and high-order radio-frequency modes
accellerate the implosion shock. The final laser discharge in the excited
heavy-ion bubble-blanket is the final shove.

*    Liquid metal MHD flywheel
Magnetic pulses are directly coupled to an induction motor flywheel rotor,
or liquid NaK homopolar generator, for kilo-joule impulse power storage
between pulses. Most nuclear power would probably show up as radiation, for
thermal recovery.

Such a plasma fission or fusion engine would have incredible specific
impulse. It would make > 1G interplanetary travel a reality. We're in the
Viking long-boat era of space exploration, using chemical fuels. It would
destroy the petroleum industry, and since the world's armies are fueled by
petroleum, their primary logistic priority, it would radicaly change
warfare. Would the government permit such technology?

Some would flee the earth, pollution, tyrany, oppression and political
correctness, and set up colonies on Mars, and Titan, and mine the asteroids
for uranium, and form strange cults, and destroy their implants, and declare
their independance from the evil NWO, and clone giant insect mutant invasion
armies, and return to liberate the Earth, and chase the naked imperial
interns around dimly lit space stations, and... No, the Men in Black would
never permit!

I talk too much, but occasionaly do little when I feel like it. If I'm
encouraged by appropriate ridicule, sarcasm, and derision, I'll set up a
"DIY Microwave Oven Nuclear Reactor web page".




'They laughed at the Wright Brothers, they laughed at Einstien. But they
also laughed at Bozo the Clown'
 - Carl Sagan