Hi to all fusion fans from Langfang, China, where we have just completed the 4th International Symposium on Proton Boron Fusion Sciences and Application. In this report, I’ll first describe my participation on behalf of LPPFusion and then the highlights of the Symposium generally.
I and the other seven non-Chinese participants in the conference received a very warm welcome from our hosts Dr. Martin Peng, (fig.1) the chair of the Scientific Committee and Dr. Catherine Chi, the key member of the local organizing committee. Dr. Peng, who had returned to his native China after a long career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, has been a frequent participant at pB11 conferences in Europe—which is how we first met.
Figure 1. Chatting with Dr. Martin Peng and posing with Dr. Catherine Chi, our hosts at the Symposium and key organizers or the event.
The Symposium was held in Langfang, a city of a million on the outskirts of Beijing, and was hosted by ENN Fusion Energy Science and Technology, a subsidiary of ENN Group. ENN is one of two private companies (along with five state-owned companies) supplying natural gas in China. It has grown into a conglomerate with investments in a number of fields—most notably proton-boron fusion. So far, ENN has put something over $ 1 billion in pB11 fusion research, one of the largest such investments in the world.
The Symposium took place in ENN’s own impressive hotel, built in the style of an Imperial-era palace (fig. 2). The cuisine the hotel supplied to conference participants was superb, with the fresh produce coming from ENN’s own local farms— (an example of vertical integration far tastier than Henry Ford’s!).
Fig. 2 Entrance to ENN’s hotel in Langfang, where the symposium was held.
Before the Symposium, Dr. Peng led a tour of ENN’s own fusion project, where he is the Chief Scientist. It’s a spherical tokamak, a more compact version of the basic tokomak design, which they hope to soon be running with hydrogen-boron fuel. (Fig.3)
Figure 3. ENN’s latest pB11 experiment, EXL-50U, whose vacuum vessel is inside the red magnetic coils. This is the center of a larger facility with beam accelerators for heating the plasma.
My presentation was one of the first to the Symposium’s hundred-odd participants. I first reviewed the advantages of the dense plasm focus device for pB11 fusion and described its operation, then reviewed the results of last summer’s experiments with decaborane fuel. I introduced new analysis of the final shot of that campaign, which produced our first pinch –or plasmoid formation—with pure decaborane fuel. The high intensity of the boron lines in the optical spectrum gave confirmation that boron was indeed in the pinch, even though it was a small, not very dense one. (fig,.4) In addition a new analysis of the current waveform proved, as we had thought, that the hydrogen and boron had separated into two different current sheaths, with the hydrogen running far faster than the boron.
Fig. 4 A new analysis of last year’s Aug.14 shot confirmed that it’s spectrum (red) had much stronger boron lines, especially the triply ionized B IV line, then a previous non-pinch boron shot. This demonstrates that the boron was present in the formation of a small plasmoid.
I then reported on the last two months’ effort–basically what we’ve done since our last report to all of you at the end of May. Despite our best efforts, we did not succeed in getting rid of the siloxane outgassing from our silicone gaskets in this assembly—we have ideas about what can be improved. As a result, the bake-out took a month and when we got back to firing on June 19th, the silicon and oxygen contamination in the spectra were still strong. Cleaning shots with nitrogen-deuterium mixes and argon did not seem to make much progress. The siloxane was converted to silicon dioxide, a tough ceramic, but it still coated the anode(fig.5) and persisted in the spectra (fig.6)
Figure 5. Despite various cleaning shots, we only succeeded in late June in converting the yellowish siloxane deposits to white silicon dioxide deposits(right) but could not remove them.
Figure 6. The spectrum at the start of the June shots (red) showed little improvement by the end of the series July 2 (blue).
Fortunately Research Assistant Sam Grund’s AI-assisted literature search came up with the suggestion to use vibration to shake the brittle silicon dioxide off the anode. We knew from Mechanical Engineer Rudy Fristch’s past simulations that the radiation from the pinch could create substantial vibrations in the anode, so we decided to try a combination of pure deuterium pinch shots with cleaning shots to sweep the disrupted particles away. With Research Scientist Dr. Syed Hassan starting a well-earned vacation and Sam unavailable, CIO and Director of Communication Ivy Karamitsos stepped up to pinch hit in the lab. Together, in three days of intensive work, we got 14 shots done, with great results. The oxygen line disappeared and the silicon line was reduced 20-fold, exceeding our goal of tenfold reduction. (Fig.7)
Figure. 7, After we fired alternating deuterium pinch shots and argon cleaning shots on July 10-12 the spectrum (green) showed the almost total disappearance on the impurity lines still visible in the July 7 spectrum (red).
During the same shots we were able to prefect a filter circuit to reduce the oscillations on our axial field coil (which controls the spin of the plasmoid) by 100-fold, achieving another goal in preparing for the next boron shots. But before we could actually fire with boron, we had to achieve a third important goal. To prevent separation of hydrogen and boron, we had to slow the current sheath down by adding more decaborane to the gas fill. This last step Sam was able to demonstrated in the lab with my remote collaboration only on July 17. So, we ran out of time to actually fire with boron—something we will do in August.
In addition to my scientific presentation, Dr. Peng asked me to give another brief talk at the discussion session on July 22. The discussion session, a unique feature of this Symposium, was an informal forum on how to get from scientific proof of pB11 fusion net energy in the lab to commercialized fusion—what are the engineering and social, political and economic challenges that must be overcome? I was asked to address the socio-economic aspects in the closing talk of the session. (Like the video of my scientific presentation, the audio of this second presentation will be available soon online.) I emphasized the importance of mass education about the benefits of boron fusion to overcome the resistance of those powerful few who profit from the trillions now poured into fossil fuels. With that mass education we can ensure, as we have often said at LPPFusion, that any “powers that be” that oppose fusion will become “The powers that were” and democratically-controlled boron fusion will become the power to be.