One of the biggest challenges facing fusion energy right now is the walls. What should we make them out of? Lithium may be the answer... Hope you all enjoy!
deezynar it was just a joke on lithium being less dense than other metals. Siris has a station named lithium because they play lighter rock. They think they are so clever lol.
This guy is on a whole other level than all the other science you tubers I’ve seen. His videos are amazingly easy to follow given the complexity of what he’s explaining. You can tell it must be awesome to have him as your professor.
@@illinoisenergyprof6878 I am the author of the third method of achieving nuclear fusion, this is the repetition of physical conditions as in the solar corona. In 6 months there will be a small prototype of a commercial fusion reactor. A commercial fusion reactor in 1-2 years! Power 100 kW. For many years (almost 25 years) I have been convincing scientists that thermonuclear fusion in the Sun occurs not in the core of the Sun, but in the solar corona !!! But scientists are very stubborn, and do not want to believe the obvious. Why are scientists not accepting new breakthrough scientific ideas? There is an assumption, accepted by most scientists, that thermonuclear fusion in the Sun occurs in the Sun's core. But no one has ever actually confirmed this. This is just a guess, the fantasy of an authoritative physicist. Scientists are currently using two methods to achieve nuclear fusion: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. But there is also a third method of achieving nuclear fusion, this is the repetition of physical conditions as in the solar corona. Nobody is using this third method to achieve nuclear fusion? In 6 months there will be a small prototype of a commercial fusion reactor. A commercial fusion reactor in 1-2 years! I propose a technology transfer for a commercial fusion reactor under a contract. Thermonuclear fusion in the Sun - a new version. n-t.ru/tp/ie/ts.htm ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-izCALj848xU.html
7:52 "We have this complicated fusion device" shows some shiny high tech looking thing 8:11 "And also we have this complicated fusion device" shows some foil wrapped gizmo
Dr. Ruzic- Chemistry major here from Oregon State University. It’s been a few years, but I did take calculus-based physics and 5 terms of calculus. Solid A- average in all of those. This video was you at your best: you remind me of stories I’ve heard about Feynman, in that you are very very good at simplifying the science into something everyone can understand. I started the video by thinking “how the hell can you have molten Lithium flowing on the walls of the reactor??”. When you mentioned the voltage in the Lithium channels, for a second I thought you were going to say that the flowing Lithium would create its own magnetic field that would help the confinement of the plasma. When you talked about Force from B-cross-J, my jaw dropped just a bit and I thought “HOLY CRAP THAT’S AWESOME!”. When you started talking about your research and gave a mini-tour of your lab, I thought “....yeah, I won’t be surprised if he gets a Nobel Prize in the next 10 years...”. These were just some thoughts I wanted to share. This is possibly my favorite video you’ve posted, the contender being your Chernobyl video. I’d love to see more videos (as much as can/choose to share, of course) of the research that you do. It brings back a part of that Chemistry/Calculus/Physics chimera from my college days. Thank you very much, sir.
This video is exciting indeed, since the cost and size, of the most likely to succeed fusion reactors, is the biggest turn off to myself. I really want to hear more about the results from the testing of this idea, which is key to fusion actually bring down energy cost..... I really enjoy most of this channel's videos, above most other channels. Probably, due to the magnitude to the Future of every topic, as well as the clarity of the presentation.
What I love about this video is that as you were talking about the solution more and more, the more my train of thought about where you were going next became identical to the actual experiments. This is a really interesting way to flow the lithium across the reactor walls without adding much complexity to the reactor design. The fact that the temperature difference can turn the liquid metal into an electric motor that pumps the liquid metal across the surface of the reactor is just such an awesome way to solve the problem of being able to pull heat out of the chamber and circulate the lithium for fuel recovery.
I'm attending college and I hope to get a degree in applied physics/physics. People like you really inspired me, professor. I hope to be part of the effort to make fusion energy a reality.
Actually, ARC is already reducing the size factor compared to ITER by 70 using newer much much stronger and higher temperature super conductive magnets. Now more than ever, fusion energy's evolution looks so interesting and promising for the coming years and decades
@@illinoisenergyprof6878 This sounds awesome! Btw, your channel's videos are my most shared videos out of any channel to date. Please keep up the good work
This is my first comment on RU-vid ever. Seeing such content and that so many people are watching and discussing this in a civilized manner gives me hope that through technology our future will be bright. All will be well.
@@yanikkunitsin1466 Me or sarcasmo57? Yes. I'm not subscribed nor have I clicked the bell but they keep appearing in my feed because I keep watching them because they are always interesting and well explained.
Very clever idea and good solid research. Good work. I loved your labs, I used to have several research labs under my guidance, missing them a bit now.
I watched all your videos in the last two weeks, I loved all of them and I was sad when there wasn't any more for me, so I rewatched many of them. You break down complex subjects so clearly and you will be the reason many join the field of energy. And to me this is the best science channel on youtube. Thank you Dr. Ruzik.
@@salerio61 that would have required changing cities. Never considered that. Maybe I should have. Most teachers are nut jobs cause they cant get a real one.
Now while the liquid lithium is outside getting cleaned can it be used for steam generation, or even pre-heating fuel being added like an economizer? Can some of that current generated in the thermoelectric effect be taken out for power generation, or is it all needed to push the lithium around? What kind of conditions does the lithium need to be exposed to in order for it to transmute into tritium and be used as the fuel?
Tritium Breeding is the answer but we need to confirm that H-mode device like iter it works and control plasma instability in magnetic confinement fusion
Every time I check in at the channel, the newest video looks more interesting than the last!! It is as if the channel was working hard to drive me away from the mindless entertainment.... loving it =)
Questions: 1. Do you envision a difference in performance between Li-6 and Li-7 in this setup? 2. I take it that the surface tension of the liquid lithium will keep it in the trenches at the top where gravity would otherwise pull it out? 3. Lithium boils at 1330 °C - you are confident that the heat transfer out of the device can maintain the lithium below this temp even when the fusion extends out to the walls? Other than these concerns, your idea seems excellent to me.
How is the lithium desaturated of Hydrogen? How do you make sure the liquid lithium does not drop from the ceiling of the torus, does it circulate so fast around the torus that its centrifugal force suffices to keep it pressed against the wall? Fine Video as always.
Surface tension is enough to keep it in place. Lithium's surface tension is four times that of water. We will take out the H basically by heating it up -- which is also something we get from the device!
I have to thank you Sir 🙂 you have shined light on what I never thought I'd be I don't know exactly how to describe it and I'll do my best to do what you do best and boil down cut the fat off and make simple what is complex (in this case it's my awkward live for another man LOL I'm married don't worry I just love you adore you and you've opened a whole new world for me with your videos please keep making them I swear on my mother's eyes I'll remember these lessons and will pay you cash money love dividends in due time Sir thanks for everything ❤️❤️❤️❤️
You should comment on the Safire project. They have witnessed profound effects from plasma and electricity, transmutation being one of the most interesting
@@dragoraan7247 Professors often have links to their personally published papers available at links that are either 1) not indexed because of a NOBOTS meta tag. 2) are on their personal websites and not heavily linked to, so they show up far down a google results list. 3) are behind a paywall (often the case). In general if an academic is referencing their own work you should ping them for a link. They will generally have something better than what can be easily obtained through Google. Not always, but often.
@@dragoraan7247 It can be. Results can be highly dependent on the wording of the search phrase. Those who already know the topic know how to word the search.
@@henrytjernlund Literally a 2 second google of his name+journals, its not hard iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0029-5515/51/10/102002 Also reading it, wow if this is true: "In summary, utilizing TEMHD, self-flowing molten lithium has been shown to be able to remove a peak heat flux of 3 MW m−2with the potential possibly to remove up to20 MW m−2with stainless trenches and this geometry, or more with Mo and different trench widths and heights under high magnetic field." Nuts... 20MWs per square meter??????
It sure sounds like the pieces are really coming together ... Amazing work !! The grad students in your lab are so lucky to be working on this and running these experiments and having access to all of that equipment ... But the big question is: how long until a small scale prototype is demonstrating this ?
Nice idea Dr. Ruzic. Does the lithium and the chamber wall eventually become neutron embrittled? What does the logistics look like for replacing/disposing of the radioactive parts?
The lithium is not adversely effected by lithium, but you are right that the structural material can be. There is a lot of work going on to find structural materials which will anneal their damage automatically, and there are some possible candidates.
@@illinoisenergyprof6878 Thanks for the reply. I'm impressed by what you've done with physical experimentation. Top notch lab! Keep the videos coming. One of the best channels on youtube hands down.
You can also use Cobalt or Nickel Oxyde Hydrate PFC walls to achieve a similar effect to lithium walls This will create an approximate 30 times efficiency
so whats the hold up on getting "product to market" if are there are functional experiments that have been run over 8 years ago? Is it simple lack of finances, does construction and testing the equipment simply take obscene amounts of time, regulatory restrictions on up-scaling?
essentially a lithium clutch in a vacuum, fuel lines feed in to the friction point to cause a reaction, clutch spins to provide throw out of heat and even out reaction, cooling lines turn into super heated steam.
Cool lab. Would like to build a fusion reactor with you. Injection of lithium plasma would be a way to create tritium in situ, make the plasma more reactive to electrical snf magnetic fields, and lastly act as a mode converter to help turn magnet energy into heat. Just not too much at once.
I notice you did not mention that lithium is a nice solution to what to do with 14 MEV neutrons which are (to use a chemical term) corrosive to wall materials.
I have watched many informational videos on fusion technology, what I have never heard about yet is how they can extract the heat from the cylinder to convert into mechanical energy. The entire system seems designed to keep everything contained which seems would make transferring heat out a difficult process.
I really don't get this part either. Not that I actually understand the other parts but this one to me seems to be the most important for energy production.
The heat from the reaction is absorbed by the wall. A heat exchanger can pick it up there. Here you could even pump the liquid lithium through a heat exchanger to generate steam.
80% of the energy comes out in the neutrons, and they go right through the wall. They are stopped in a blanket surrounding the device, heating it up. That is cooled, by water which turns to steam and spins a turbine, which turns a generator.
With the hot lithium coming out of the reactor, wouldn't this mean the lithium has to be cooled? Could the cooling of this lithium, as part of it's cycle, be the extraction of the energy put in? In the process of cooling, convert water to steam, and create usable electricity? Or would the scavenging of energy from the lithium work counter productive to what's trying to be achieved?
That was my initial assumption. I think in the drawing to simplify it he just had "coolant" so to remove heat. There will likely be loops going out and a heat exchanger. It may well be two heat exchangers with a intermediate fluid to reduce the possibility of any of the lithium leaks coming in contact with water.
I might be wrong but I see 2 problems, 1 the amount of lithium flowing “through” the reactor I would imagine is very small. The capillary action holding it in place would fail if it were too thick 2 the specific heat of lithium is less than water (still very high for a metal) and Li is 1/2 as dense meaning you would need 2-3 X as much flow to accomplish the same cooling as water. Still very interesting because you are essential cooling from inside the chamber. You might be onto something.
@@georhodiumgeo9827 But the lithium isn't what's doing the cooling, it's just collecting hydrogen so cold hydrogen doesn't reenter the flux, right? The cooling is still inside the fins, if I heard correctly.
jagmarz from what I understood you are correct and I would extend that to say it would be difficult to impossible to use the lithium as a heat transfer mechanism in a meaningful way. This is the single most clever scavenger implementation I have ever heard of. The magnetic field keeps the plasma contained in the center of the chamber but you will have some stragglers hit the wall and cool down. When they return to the plasma they wreak havoc while they heat up again. These guys just absorb the gas with a flowing wall to remove it and replenish the wall later. Beyond me, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how much hydrogen will dissolve in liquid lithium. Next level stuff.
This is a small detail and probably well known but I see it for the first time and find it very smart and practical - he must we writing on a transparent material but he just writes normally and then the video is flipped. (unless my hypothesis is wrong)
Great video. There is huge BUT which was not told. It looks like it is better than what will be in ITER. The thing is, if it is so good, why do not we use it this way, that is the BUT which is missing in this video. We heard pros but what are cons?
I want some time alone in your lab, LOL. So many awesome devices. I'm making a fusor myself at the moment, saving some cash for a high quality vacuum pump. Have my stuff set up for electrolysis of heavy water. Working on my screen set up and 1 inch thick acrylic vacuum chamber. I'm a ham radio operator so I have some high voltage transformers up to 10 Kilovolts and a variac to control my input voltage to the DC transformer. Hoping I can do some electrostatic confinement fusion by next year. I'm a beekeeper also, and we have the big fall nectar flow going on, and I'm doing treatments for varrora mites to get my bees pest free for winter. So right now my other projects are on hold until after the honey harvest. Hoping I can get some good videos of the fusor in star mode when I have things all ready to go. Last year I made a diy railgun, but the rails really wore out fast. After about 200 shots the rails were toast, and the projectile would not travel down them. There was too much slag and debris from previous shots. It was hard to take videos of it, because the emp it gave off when fired messed with the cameras.
With brilliant scientists such as this guy involved that have a passion to achieve viable fusion energy and are tackling every challenge that presents itself by looking for innovations to overcome those challenges, this is going to happen. They already know what's required. They already know that's it's possible to achieve this on Earth. They know that there are no "brick wall" limitations that would prevent this from happening regardless of innovative effort. It will come together as it evolves (that's already happening). As these kinds of things evolve, discoveries that weren't conceived prior emerge, and often times can exponentially accelerate the process related to the objective. Fusion is the holy grail objective here, but Fission in the interim is a very fine close second that we already have perfected. Fission reactors this very minute could sustain all of our energy needs if we just proceeded to build the plants. The stigma and misguided fear about nuclear energy is what's holding this back unfortunately.
1. Why lithium doesn't produce cold flux? Why it is unique in this respect? It seems, this questions were omitted in the video. 2. Btw, 3^3=27. And also 20 times smaller doesn't necessarily mean 20 times cheaper. The link between size and cost isn't obliged to be linear.
Since the H is absorbed when it hits the lithium wall, it does not return to the plasma. The lithium does not saturate because it is flowing. Yes, I used to say 27 times smaller, but it isn't exactly a sphere, so I thought 20 is more likely. You are right that size and cost are not directly a one- to one comparison, but it certainly gets us far in the right direction.
Lithium-7 was used in the Castle Bravo nuclear test. Originally, they were supposed to use Lithium-6, but it was in very short supply and was extremely expensive. Using Lithium-7 instead of Lithium-6 resulted in the yield being 15 megatons instead of the expected 8 megatons.
It won't matter. All the EV battery manufacturer will be hogging all of it for themselves. Tesla already has many exclusive contracts with mine owners around the world. We are going to run out of lithium.
Bryan Hensley TSX Venture companies are seeking massive raises for lithium exploration all over the world. It projects to be a strong performing sector in the near future.
I don't think it takes that much lithium to run fusion reactors compared to batteries. Also, a little bit of lithium makes an outhouse full of tritium.
This was really informative. I'm wondering if there are any plans in place to test such a solution with DEMO or similar devices once ITER will hopefully work as intended.
Hey prof! Recently our local newspaper in a well off suburb ran 2 stories about the dangers of 5G antennas. I was a bit shocked this was published, but now the town is enraged the federal and state government would allow their kids to get cancer. 🙄 We are one of the first ones supposedly slated to get the antennas... Would love a video regarding the topic! Thanks!!
Not the prof, but I am one of his students. This is a really common misconception with all sorts of radio technology. The kinds of radiation that can cause cancer (alpha, beta, gamma) are MUCH higher energy than radio waves, even 5G waves. In fact, even visible light which allows us to see is much higher energy than 5G radiation. 5G simply isn't energetic enough to cause the kinds of changes to your cells that are likely to result in cancer. This is really good for us, since if it could we'd also have to be worried about plain old visible light as well 😅
This video was great, very informative. I would like to know how you can extract energy from the reactor, because that does not seem like an easy task!
Isn't this like adding all the difficulties of an MSR to a fusion reactor? You need clean molten metal/salt in, then you fizz/fuse and create waste, then you need to separate out the waste products from the molten salt/metal and repeat the cycle all while maintaining a fusion reaction. It's very cool regardless.
Perhaps a Li-Al molten solution can expand the range of the concept if Li starts to boil off due to high temp. and low pressure. What is the order of magnitude for allowable LIH content? - LiH forms hard ceramic particles so the some upper limit of LiH concentration could impact flow. I've worked with large scale LiH production and I've seen the crystals grow into very large particles. Does LiH have any solubility in bulk Li liquid? Perhaps the temps stay above the LiH melting points. The Rankine cycle reference made me cringe.
14.07 Dumb question time. Is'nt the magnetic field being generated outside the lithium walls by the magnets? The magnetic field has to travel thru the lithium current, won't that strip the lithium off the wall?
It has to do with the direction of the magnetic field at the lithium wall. Expelling droplets is a worry, but there is surface tension as well. We did a whole experiment on the threshold for droplet emission and it was the basis for a student of mine's PhD. There is a publication on this on my CPMI website. Good question!
Not an expert, but I believe the magnets outside (and inside the center) produce a current in the contained hydrogen, that in turn produces its own magnetic field (from the hydrogen) as a result of that current in the hydrogen. This new field opposes the originally generated magnetic field. As a result of the field falling off by distance, whichever source you are closer to will be felt more by the lithium, so I think it has something to do with that
Wondering out loud here... Wouldn't there be SOME degree of bombardment of the Lithium itself that could potentially 'fission' some quantity of Lithium into some additional Tritium?
