Generation

Form a diagnostic resource team to provide travelling diagnostics, calibrations, analysis techniques, and diagnostic consultants to fusion projects. The diagnostics that will be provided are a neutron time of flight detector, neutron activation detectors, and a time-resolved x-ray imaging system.

Assemble a portable diagnostic package to make measurements of key plasma parameters from a variety of fusion energy devices. The package will provide time-resolved, radial profiles of electron density and temperature and time-resolved, radial profiles of ion density, temperature, and flow velocity.

Pennsylvania State University is developing a novel manufacturing process that prints integrated sensors into complex systems such as gas turbine hot section parts for real time monitoring. Incorporating these durable, integrated sensors into the geometry would provide critical knowledge of key operating conditions such as temperature of key components and their thermal heat fluxes. These sensors enable the unique possibility to gain direct knowledge of critical parameters currently inferred with only varying degrees of success.

Zap Energy will advance the fusion performance of the sheared-flow stabilized (SFS) Z-pinch fusion concept. While the simplicity of the Z-pinch is attractive, it has been plagued by plasma instabilities. Like traditional Z-pinch approaches, the SFS Z-pinch drives electrical current through a plasma to create magnetic fields that compress and heat the plasma toward fusion conditions.

Princeton Fusion Systems seeks to develop technologies to enable future commercial fusion power. The team’s PFRC concept is a small, clean, and portable design based on a field-reversed-configuration plasma. The concept uses an innovative method called odd-parity rotating-magnetic-field (RMF) heating to drive electrical current and heat plasma to fusion temperatures. Odd-parity heating holds the potential to heat ions and electrons to fusion-relevant temperatures in a stable, sustained plasma, while maintaining good energy confinement.

Carnegie Mellon will combine its expertise in additive manufacturing (AM) with Westinghouse’s knowhow in nuclear reactor component fabrication to develop an innovative process for AM of nuclear components. The team chose to redesign nuclear reactor spacer grids as a test case because they are a particularly difficult component to manufacture. The role of spacer grids is to provide mechanical support to nuclear fuel rods within a reactor and reduce vibration as well as cause mixing of the cooling fluid.

LBNL will use advanced microfabrication technology to build and scale low-cost, compact, higher-power multi-beam ion accelerators. These accelerators will be able to increase the ion current up to 100 times, helping to enable a new learning curve for compact accelerator technology. MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems) technology enables massively parallel, low-cost batch fabrication of ion beam accelerators. The team proposes to scale ion accelerators based on MEMS to higher beam power and pack hundreds to thousands of ion beamlets on silicon wafers.

Brayton Energy is developing an efficient and low-cost distributed residential-scale combined heat and power system. This project seeks to advance and combine several complementary technologies—including metallic screw compressors, high temperature ceramic screw expanders, and a high-effectiveness recuperator. This combination will result in an integrated system with performance surpassing existing state-of-the-art systems.

Otherlab is developing a near-isothermal gas compressor that has the potential to use 40% less energy than state-of-the-art near-adiabatic devices. Their compressor will employ a high-surface-area heat exchanger to achieve a near-isothermal compression process. During this effort, Otherlab seeks to demonstrate the thermodynamic performance of its concept in a subscale prototype device. If successful, Otherlab’s concept has the potential to offer compelling energy efficiency benefits in many major industrial sectors.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory team will develop technologies and component devices enabling a high-rate drilling method using electric pulses to bore hot, deep geothermal wells. Compared to the softer, sedimentary rock typically found in oil and gas wells, geothermal rock is harder and less porous, and at significantly higher temperatures. These factors generate slow geothermal drilling rates averaging only 125 feet per day compared to greater than 40 times this achieved in sedimentary rock.