Direct Energy Conversion

Direct energy conversion is a scheme for extracting electricity from nuclear fusion reactions by turning the kinetic energy of the charged particles a fusion reaction produces directly into voltage, rather than using that energy to boil water and drive a conventional turbine and generator. Proposed approaches include electrostatic collectors, such as a Venetian-blind design of charged metal ribbons that capture ions of different energies, and periodic electrostatic focusing systems that slow particles down along a channel; magnetic and induction systems such as magnetohydrodynamic generators, which draw electricity from hot plasma moving through a magnetic field; a traveling-wave direct energy converter designed for the high-energy protons produced by deuterium-helium-3 fusion, which uses microwaves and rectennas; a compact inverse cyclotron converter that turns the straight-line motion of ions into circular motion so their kinetic energy can be extracted; and an X-ray photoelectric converter that recovers energy from the X-rays a fusion reaction gives off using the photoelectric and Auger effects. Because it targets the charged-particle output of a fusion reaction rather than a conventional heat cycle, direct energy conversion is studied alongside fusion reactor concepts as a way to raise the overall efficiency of a future fusion power plant. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/