DPF Capacitor Bank and Diamond Switch

Posted by Admin on Jul 25, 2006 at 11:36 PM
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The most powerful DPF in North America

LPP has embarked on a two year experiment to test Focus Fusion. The experiment will be carried out in an experimental facility in New Jersey using a newly-built DPF device capable of reaching peak currents of more than 2 MA.

This will be the most powerful DPF in North America and the second most powerful in the world.

For the millionth of a second that the DPF will be operating during each pulse, its capacitor bank will be supplying about one third as much electricity as all electric generators in the United States.

In building our large-scale dense plasma focus, a machine capable of reaching breakeven, we required one piece of equipment with a 9-month lead time. That is the high-tech switch that turns on the current from the capacitors to the electrodes.  The switch has shipped!

Capacitor bank design

To help in the design of the capacitor bank, LPP has hired a leading expert in DPF design and experiment, Dr. John Thompson. Dr. Thompson has worked for over twenty years with Maxwell Laboratories and Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation to develop pulsed power devices, including DPFs and diamond switches.

Diamond Switch

The switch, a surface-effect device which spreads current over a surface, is capable of switching on four million amps current in less than 10 nanoseconds (billionths of a second).  The switch can handle a peak power of more than 120 GW about one sixth of the electric power capacity of the entire United States.

It is only supplied by a single company, which has a lead time of about nine months, much longer than any other equipment needed in the next set of experiments. So it was important to get this switch on order as soon as possible.

The alternative switches, called rail switches, are available with less delay, but are far more expensive and are not as fast.