Bubble Power
In sono fusion a piezoelectric crystal attached to liquid filled Pyrex flask send pressure waves through the fluid, exciting the motion of tiny gas bubbles. The bubbles periodically grow and collapse, producing visible flashes of light. The researchers studying these light emitting bubbles speculated that their interiors might reach such high temperature and pressure they could trigger fusion reaction. Tiny bubbles imploded by sound waves can make hydrogen nuclei fuse- and may one day become a revolutionary new energy source. When a gas bubble in a liquid is excited by ultrasonic acoustic waves it can emit short flashes of light suggestive of extreme temperatures inside the bubble. These flashes of light known as sono luminescence, occur as the bubble implode or cavities. It shows that chemical reactions occur during cavitation’s of a single, isolated bubble and yield of photons, radicals and ions formed. That is gas bubbles in a liquid can convert sound energy in to light. Sono luminescence also called single-bubble sono luminescence involves a single gas bubble that is trapped inside the flask by a pressure field. For this loud speakers are used to create pressure waves and for bubbles naturally occurring gas bubbles are used. These bubbles cannot withstand the excitation pressures higher than about 170 kilo pascals. Pressures higher than about 170 kilo pascals would always dislodge the bubble from its stable position and disperse it in the liquid. A pressure at least ten times that pressure level to implode the bubbles is necessary to trigger thermonuclear fusion. The idea of sono fusion overcomes these limitations.
Introduction of Bubble Power: Sono fusion is technically known as acoustic inertial confinement fusion. In this we have a bubble cluster (rather than a single bubble) is significant since when the bubble cluster implodes the pressure within the bubble cluster may be greatly intensified. The centre of the gas bubble cluster shows a typical pressure distribution during the bubble cluster implosion process. It can be seen that, due to converging shock waves within the bubble cluster, there can be significant pressure intensification in the interior of the bubble cluster. This large local liquid pressure (P>1000 bar) will strongly compress the interior bubbles with in the cluster, leading to conditions suitable for thermonuclear fusion. More over during the expansion phase of the bubble cluster dynamics, coalescence of some of interior bubbles is expected, and this will lead to the implosion of fairly large interior bubbles which produce more energetic implosions.
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Emerging Technologies |