News | Princeton Fusion Systems

PFRC Video

We have released a new video about the PFRC which highlights terrestrial applications of a fusion microreactor! Enjoy!

PFRC-2 Posters at APS Division of Plasma Physics

We have been hard at work on our ARPA-E project and just submitted our second quarterly report! Our team, including our summer interns, presented several posters on the latest PFRC-2 experimental results at the APS Division of Plasma Physics meeting, held Oct. 21-25 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Plasma & Fusion Session

Neutral density measurements on the PFRC-2, Eugene S. Evans et al., UP10.101
Spectroscopic Line Ratio Determination of Electron Density, Electron Temperature, and H2 Dissociation Fraction in PFRC-2 Pulsed Hydrogen Plasmas, E. Palmerduca & S. Punjabi-Vinoth, et al, UP10.102
Recent X-ray results from the PFRC-2 experiment, C. Swanson et al, UP10.100
Visible light imagining of low frequency oscillations in the PFRC, P. Jandovitz et al, UP10.96

Undergraduate Research Session

Floating Potentials of End Plates in the PFRC-2 Divertor Regions, J. Cohen et al, JP10.33
Neutral gas inventory in the PFRC-2 during RMF plasma heating, K. R. Torrens et al, JP10.49
A study of RMF-plasma coupling on varying seed plasma parameters, G. Jusino et al, JP10.40

Fusion Progress by Way of Dilbert

We noticed this past Sunday that even Scott Adams has taken notice of fusion companies being in the news:

DILBERT © Scott Adams. Used By permission of ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION. All rights reserved.

This is very timely since our ARPA-E OPEN grant was just awarded this week! We are definitely working on it!

ARPA-E OPEN 2018 Selection

Princeton Fusion Systems has been awarded $1.25 Million from ARPA-E for Low-Radioactivity Compact Fusion Devices

Today ARPA-E announced announced that PFS has received a competitive $1.25 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), as part of the Energy cohort of OPEN 2018.

Princeton Fusion Systems seeks to develop technologies to enable future commercial fusion power. Our team’s 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) to drive electrical current and heat the plasma to fusion temperatures. Under this award, the team will pursue improved electron and ion temperatures through RMF, as well as identify the modeling needed to elucidate the key heating and loss mechanisms for the fusion reactor concept. The team’s ultimate power plant design seeks a very small footprint for a compact, potentially transportable, distributed energy resource that is fully dispatchable and emissions-free.

PFS received this competitive award from ARPA-E’s OPEN 2018 program, in which teams develop innovative technologies to transform the nation’s energy system. OPEN solicitations are an open call to scientists and engineers for technologies across the entire scope of ARPA-E’s energy mission.

Featuring the PFRC

Princeton Fusion Systems is developing a new class of small fusion reactors. The terrestrial reactor is the PFRC, or Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration; configured as a fusion rocket it is known as Direct Fusion Drive (DFD).