I have reworded this post below to make it clearer, and change the dyslexic wording (power <-> energy) and account for the magnetic field, all based on original guesstimates of the Russians.
From: [email protected]
Very interesting. Can such a device convert
terahertz radiation into DC power?
No.
An oversimplification of Cuccia coupling is this: microwaves
couple to electrons at very high efficiency and UV couples to microwaves at
very high efficiency. UV does not couple to electrons directly at high
efficiency - therefore another wavelength geometry must act as the
intermediary, in order to transfer the mass-energy of photons of UV to
electrons. AFAIK terahertz doesn't couple.
If you have an intense source of UV in a plasma (as Mills
apparently does) then it is possible to use a photocell for conversion, but
the plasma will also have a lot of +ions which destroy the photocell. A
protective window is impossible since UV is absorbed by the window.
As a result, the best way to achieve this kind of direct
conversion when the excess power is UV in a range of 55 eV and up - is to
have a microwave powered plasma reactor with an e-beam component, and with
modest ion containment via a bucking magnetic field as in the Russian CWC
device. The electrons and positive ions are contained briefly and then
separated magnetically BUT in addition, the UV (excess energy of ground
state redundancy) effectively accelerates the electrons by Cuccia coupling
to the microwaves. It is a hybrid and it only works with UV as the main
gain.
Microwaves can be generated very efficiently in an external
device such as a microtron, so this helps. In the end, you could apply a
power input say 1.3 kW of electricity to generate 1 kW of microwaves, and
provide an electron beam of 300 watts - which combine to create a plasma
with protons and electrons being the prime charge carriers. The electrons
will be accelerated and come out of the plasma with perhaps 10 kW of output
power. The gyrotron configuration with reversed fields (bucking fields) is
efficient for charge separation- so in the end we can removed 6 kW of DC
high voltage electricity... at least that is "on paper".
In operation, at least 1.6 kW is recycled back to make the
microwaves and e-beam, and perhaps 200 watts for the magnetic field, so
there is a net energy of 4.2 kW electrical output DC...all of which
originally started out in the plasma as UV photons (55 eV and up) as the OU
component, with about 4 kW of waste heat.
It is beautiful on paper, but how does it work out in
practice?
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