Study of Fuel Ratios on the Fusion Reactivity in an Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Device Using a Residual Gas Analyzer

Abstract

Gridded Inertial Electrostatic confinement (IEC) devices are of interest due to their flexibility in burning advanced fuels, their tuning ability of the applied voltage to the reaction cross-section. Although this device is not suitable for power production in its present form, it does have several near term applications. The number of applications of this device increases with increasing fusion reactivity. These devices are simple to operate but are inherently complicated to understand and an effort to incrementally understand the device to improve its operational efficiency is underway at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Of all the parameters under study we are focusing on the effects of flow rate and flow ratio on the fusion reactivity in the present paper. Experiments were conducted to understand the influence of fuel flow ratio on the fusion reactions. The residual gas analyzer (RGA) was used to study the impurity concentration as the flow ratio was changed. It was observed that the higher flow rate resulted in reduced impurity levels and hence an increase in fusion rate. Several different species of gases were detected, some of these molecules formed inside the RGA analyzer. The flow ratio scan revealed that the optimum mixture of D2 with 3He to be D2:3He::1:2 for maximum D–3He fusion rate.