Fundamental Scaling of Adiabatic Compression of Field Reversed Configuration Thermonuclear Fusion Plasmas

Abstract

Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) plasmas are plasma devices that have demonstrated that through magnetic compression they can be heated to thermonuclear fusion conditions in the parameter space of an energy-producing generator Kirtley et al. (IEEE Symposium on Fusion Engineering, 2021). Of particular interest, FRCs are high-beta, in that the plasma particle kinetic energy is in balance with an externally applied magnetic field at all stages of operation. The following work will show that a cylindrical approximation for the energy and particle distribution within an FRC can, within 11%, match the fusion performance results of both full Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations as well as all robust, modern theoretical spatial and energy distribution models. Further, by using the simplified cylindrical model, detailed fusion reaction, radiation, and energy transport equations are now numerically-tractable and can be modelled over a wide parameter space. In the second section of this work, a detailed numerical model will be presented with the key theoretical performance of the compression of high-beta fusion plasmas in both deuterium–tritium (D–T) and deuterium–helium-3 (D–He-3) fuels. As will be shown, a high-beta D–He-3 plasma outperforms a low-beta D–T fuel and can theoretically yield a net-positive fusion generator.