Eric Lerner Receives Energy Research Award The baby is born! After seven years of theoretical work and raising money, five months of design, five months of construction and assembly, and a week of testing, LPP now has a functioning dense plasma focus, Focus-Fusion-1. The first shot, using helium as the fill gas, was achieved at 5:29 PM, Oct.15, and the first pinch was achieved at 6:04 PM on the second shot. The fact that we achieved a pinch so soon was evidence of the soundness of our design. The shots were produced with a charging potential of 20 kV, a bit less than half the full bank charge of 45 kV. We will not know the exact current achieved until we reduce some instrumental noise in the next few days. It is probably around 0.9 MA and within 10% of our predictions. LPP is especially indebted to Dr. Thompson for the outstanding work he has done in the detailed design of FF-1 and in his unflappable leadership and very long hours of hard work in constructing the device over the past six weeks. LPP President Eric Lerner and Senior Research Scientists Murali Subramanian and Abdelmoula Haboub also actively participated in this work. We were also assisted by Joe Gorman of Frank Construction. Rezwan Razani, Executive Director of the Focus Fusion Society, also pitched in when needed, as well as recorded our effort in stills and video. Thanks to all! (Photos by Rezwan Razani.) LPP President Eric Lerner announced the successful assembly of FF-1 at the Conference on Future Energy in Washington DC on October 10. At the dinner following the conference, Lerner was presented with an Award for Excellence in Energy Research from the Integrity Research Institute, which organized the conference.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. is pleased to announce that Abdelmoula Haboub will be joining our scientific team as a Senior Research Scientist. He will be working with LPP President Eric Lerner and Senior Research Scientist Dr. K. Murali Subramanian to conduct experiments with the LPP’s new Focus-Fusion 1 Dense Plasma Focus. Mr. Haboub graduated from Cadi Ayyad, School of Science Semlalia, Marrakech, Morocco and holds Master of Science degrees in Physics, Mechanical Engineering and Atmospheric Science. He is completing his dissertation for a PhD in physics from the University of Nevada. His experience in working with the z-pinch machine, which, like the DPF, produces dense plasma and his knowledge of the instrumentation needed for such dense plasma will be particularly valuable on our project.

LPP was notified in early August that our ARPA-E concept paper was not selected to proceed to the next application phase. While disappointing, we understood there would only be about 75 grants given out, and there were approximately 3,500 applications sent in. However, this was the preliminary funding round, and future rounds are anticipated.

Due to personal reasons, XinPei Lu, LPP’s experimental plasma physicist, has returned to China and will not be able to work with LPP as planned.  This has created an immediate job opening for an experimental plasma physicist. (UPDATE: Position filled. See Sep. 26 entry.)

Our most exciting news is the planned first shots of our soon-to-be-completed DPF. If all goes according to plan, September 24th will be the day we make our initial "shots". These preliminary shots will test the setup and components, with the capacitors charged to just 25 kV. Eventually we will charge them to 45 kV where the subsequent experiments will take place.  

LPP’s design team has now completed the six-month design phase of the project, finishing design work on the device, the shielding wall and the vacuum chamber. We are now into the fabrication and construction phase, which will last three months.

LPP has submitted a concept paper to the new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. ARPA-E is a new agency, molded on DARPA, which is soliciting proposals for “transformational” energy technology. Based on the 8-page concepts papers, ARPA-E will ask selected proposers to submit a full 50-page application. We will know if we are selected for that step by late June.

On January 27, 2009, the US Patent office issued Patent 7,482,607, Method and apparatus for producing X-rays, ion beams and nuclear fusion energy, to Eric J. Lerner and Aaron Blake, with the assignment of the patent to Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc.
In February, Eric Lerner acquired office space in New Jersey and began setting up the laboratory facilities. The parts for our experimental device began arriving, and we anticipate assembly to begin in mid-May.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Initiates Two-Year Experiment to Test Hydrogen-Boron Fusion

$1.2 Million Project Funded by The Abell Foundation and Individual Investors

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc., a small research and development company based in West Orange, NJ, has announced the initiation of a two-year-long experimental project to test the scientific feasibility of Focus Fusion, controlled nuclear fusion using the dense plasma focus (DPF) device and hydrogen-boron fuel. Hydrogen-boron fuel produces almost no neutrons and allows the direct conversion of energy into electricity.  The goals of the experiment are first, to confirm the achievement the high temperatures first observed in previous experiments at Texas A&M University; second, to greatly increase the efficiency of energy transfer into the tiny plasmoid where the fusion reactions take place; third, to achieve the high magnetic fields needed for the quantum magnetic field effect which will reduce cooling of the plasma by X-ray emission; and finally, to use hydrogen-boron fuel to demonstrate greater fusion energy production than energy fed into the plasma (positive net energy production).

The experiment will be carried out in an experimental facility in New Jersey using a newly-built dense plasma focus 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 the 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.

A small team of three plasma physicists will perform the experiments: Eric Lerner, President of LPP; Dr. XinPei Lu and Dr. Krupakar Murali Subramanian. Mr. Lerner has been involved in the development of Focus Fusion for over 20 years. Dr. Lu is currently Professor of Physics at HuaZhong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., Wuhan, China, where he received his PhD in 2001. He has been working in the field of pulsed plasmas for over 14 years and is the inventor of an atmospheric-pressure cold plasma jet. Dr. Subramanian is currently Senior Research Scientist, AtmoPla Dept., and BTU International Inc., in N. Billerica, Massachusetts. He worked for five years on the advanced-fuel Inertial Electrostatic Confinement device at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he received his PhD in 2004 and where he invented new plasma diagnostic instruments.

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.

The $1.2 million for the project has been provided by a $500,000 investment from The Abell Foundation, Inc, of Baltimore, Maryland, and by additional investments from a small number of individuals.

The basic technology of LPP’s approach is covered by a patent application, which was allowed in full by the US Patent Office in November. LPP expects the patent to be issued shortly.

On Nov. 14, LPP initiated a two-year-long experimental project to test the scientific feasibility of Focus Fusion. The goals of the experiment are first, to confirm the achievement of the high X-ray energies first observed in previous experiments at Texas A&M; second, to greatly increase the efficiency of energy transfer into the plasmoid; third, to achieve the high magnetic fields needed for the quantum magnetic field effect; and finally, to use pB11 fuel to demonstrate greater fusion energy production than energy fed into the plasma (positive net energy production). After a 7-year hiatus in our experimental work, we will begin producing critical and exciting data in 2009. LPP is now hiring an experimental plasma physicist and a skilled research assistant to help us design and build the device.  (Note:  Positions have been filled as of Dec. 17, 2008)

The initiation of the project was made possible by LPP's receiving $620,000 in new investments. Additional investments are forthcoming which will assure continued operations. Contact us for more information.