From: terry@asl.dl.nec.com
Subject: HICCUP Fusion
Originator: terry@aslws01
Organization: (Speaking only for myself)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 20:17:08 GMT

Hi folks,

HICCUP Fusion: Hot-In-Cold Cavitation Ultra Pressure Fusion

A humorous name, yes, but the suggestion you are about to read for totally
conventional Jones-level "hot-in-cold" fusion is entirely serious.  I hope
someone out there will actually give it a try.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, "cavitation" refers to the
creation -- often via ultrasound -- and subsequent collapse of very tiny
bubbles in a fluid.  Exceptionally high pressures are generated as the
bubbles collapse.


PROPOSED CRITERIA FOR INCREASING MAXIMUM CAVITATION PRESSURES

Key feature which I would assert are necessary for achieving unusually
high pressures with cavitation:

 1) USE OF LIQUIDS WITH VERY HIGH SURFACE TENSION

    This requirement is derived from the need for the caviation bubbles to
    have and maintain a high degree of spherical symmetry.  Also, the
    surface tension acts as a "rubber band" that helps force the collapse
    of the bubble.  The higher the surface tension, the better.

    Surprisingly, ordinary water is one of the best (and possibly the
    best) fluid available by this criterion.  Hydrogen floride has
    stronger hydrogen bonding, but lacks the important "branching" effect
    of H2O that allows large groups of molecules to cohere tightly.

    Another family of liquids that might meet this general criterion fairly
    well would be the glycerols (?), or compounds with the generic formula
    (CH20)nH2.

 2) USE OF LIQUIDS WITH LOW MOLECULAR SIZE

    This is a lesser criteria, but still important, I suspect.  If you
    use really big molecules the final compression stages of the bubble
    are going to get more complicated and will probably slow down due
    to the difficulty of "moving out" large molecules from the inner
    surface of the bubble.  Again, H20 rates about as high as any high
    surface tension compound could by this criterion.

 3) USE OF HARD-TO-BREAK-DOWN MOLECULES

    If the molecule is too fragile, it is likely to break down at the
    inner bubble surface as higher pressures are reached.  H20 is (yet
    again) a good choice in terms of resistance to breadown.

 4) USE OF VERY-LOW-VAPOR-PRESSURE MOLECULES

    Here's one for which H2O does not rate as well.  I suspect that one
    of the most important limiting factors in final cavitation pressure
    is the number of gases and vapor-phase molecules existing within the
    bubble.  The bubble is like a collapsing baloon whose final size (and
    thus pressure) is determined largely by the volume of gas contained
    in it when it began collapsing.  Very little gas means that the
    bubble can collapse to a much smaller size before gas pressure halts
    the collapse.

    A quite important source of such gases is vaporization of the fluid
    itself.  Thus the more resistant the fluid is to vaporizing in a
    vacuum, the less it will contribute to premature bubble slow-down.

    For this criterion compounds such as glycerin that (I believe; haven't
    looked it up) have lower vapor pressure than water would rate better
    than H20.  Using anti-freeze style mixtures of fluids might also be
    worth checking out.

    LOW temperatures -- as close as possible to the freezing point, or even
    below if you can manage to supercool in the presence of cavitation --
    would very likely help.  (That would be an interesting irony, would
    it not -- obtaining higher cavitation temperatures by using lower
    temperature in the fluids?)

 5) USE OF FLUIDS WITH VERY FEW DISSOLVED GASES

    This one is critical, I suspect.  If your fluid is chock full of, say,
    dissolved nitrogen and/or oxygen, those bubbles are going to receive
    signficant shots of those gases in their interiors, and the result
    will be a premature halt of the collapse process.  If that logic is
    valid, then you should try to obtain very, *very* low concentrations
    of dissolved gases to increase the final bubble collapse pressure.
    This might even prove to be the dominant factor in determining the
    final pressure produced by bubble collapse.
    
 6) USE OF LOW-PARTICULATE-COUNT FLUIDS

    Less critical, but still important, would be that the fluid be clean
    and not have a lot of microscopic junk floating around in it.  Very
    tiny debris will reduce the number of highly symmetrical bubbles that
    can form and then collapse.


HOW HIGH CAN YOU GO, JOE?

All of the above can be translated into an interesting and quite serious
proposal for attempting to produce Hot-In-Cold Cavitation Ultra Pressure
(HICCUP) Fusion, by which I mean some kind of real (but possibly very small)
increase in the average rate of nuclear fusion events in a cold fluid by
introducing very high pressures and temperatures into cavitaion
bubbles.

One version of the experiment might be as follows:

 1) Start with very pure (ordinary) water.  (You may of course wish to
    "bypass the middle man" and use heavy water instead, so that vapor
     pressure water molecules inside the cavitation bubbles will have a
     better chance of accomplishing something useful by donating D atoms.)

 2) Use vacuum distillation methods to create a container of water that
    is extremely low in all types of dissolved gases.

 3) Introduce an *extremely* small level of pure deuterium gas into the
    purified water (or tritium if you are equipped for that sort of thing
    and want the easiest possible fusion reactions).  Ideally, the quantity
    of fusion-fuel gas introduced should be so small that there should be
    only a few molecules per cavitation bubble interior.  Practically,
    however, the number of molecules will need to be at least of the same
    order as the number of remaining impurity gases and vapor-phase fluid
    molecules that will also be in the interior of the bubble, so that the
    introduced gas can reasonably "compete" with other gas molecules for
    the energy deposited by the collapse of the bubble.

 4) Cool the water to 4 degrees C or lower (4 degrees being the point of
    maximum density).

 5) Use ultrasound to induce cavitation.  High intensities obviously make
    sense to try, but might also interfere with bubble regularity and the
    collapse process.  Thus experimenting with a range of intensities and
    frequencies.

 6) Look for very-low-level signatures of classic D-D, D-T, or T-T fusion
    reactions, depending on what you loaded the fluid with.  (Steve Jones
    could probably give excellent advice in this area.)


Well, that about wraps up my proposal for HICCUP fusion.  If someone
actually tries it an gets interesting results, feel free to put in a
patent disclosure on it -- you will get no argument from me, provided
only that you have the courtesy of saying you got the idea here.

To be honest, however, I see no persuasive reason to think that HICCUP
would have any practical applications as an energy source, even if it
really did work.  A successful demonstration would be very interesting
from a scientific viewpoint, however.

My thanks to Dale Bass (crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU) for poking me
in a private email about how interesting the cavitation effect is.

				Cheers,
				Terry

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion