I searched for the engine briefly, and found no mention of anyone thinking of this.
This post comes from this comment of mine.
In my original comment, I note that I immediately think the strain would blow the entire thing a part.
What are your reasons of why you think would not work, or why no one has tried, or maybe you know someone who did try?
Note, Not the size of a car. More like the size of a cargo ships diesel engine. (“Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C” as an example)
Imagined design. Original Post
There is one variant called Magnetized Target Fusion that kinda-sorta works like this, where the “cylinders” are made of liquid Lithium. On each “stroke” of the engine:
- A rotating chamber of liquid Lithium is spun to make a cylinder of liquid metal
- 500 pistons situated at the site of each spinning Li pool are precisely synchronized to push the liquid metal inward, turning it into a sphere
- Fusion fuel (H plasma) is injected into the middle
- The intense pressure forces the fuel to undergo fusion, pushing the pistons back out and distorting the Lithium back into a cylinder
Diesel engines don’t use spark plugs, they use pressure to ignite the fuel. What purpose would fusion serve here?
As for gas engines, why? Starting fusion reactions takes an insane amount of energy, we have yet to make one that produces more power than is put in. Spark plugs are much more efficient.
Updated post title to reflect your knowledge, thank you!
I think you are missing the point of fusion as we know it.
Pistons are pushed by small controlled explosions a thousand or so times a minute. Each explosion pushes the piston, which makes the crankshaft turn.
Fusion, however is a continuous source of heat to produce steam that turns a turbine to make electricity. It’s meant to be an alternative to nuclear power just with much less danger involved. Fusion can’t melt down like nuclear. Fusion also would require very little fuel to keep going.
Unless I am missing the point of your update, I just don’t think it’s possible to make a fusion piston. I believe the only way is to use fusion to make steam to power a turbine.
There are similar projects like this big fusion gun thing
It was kinda thought of in the '50s. Ford’s concept the Nucleon was to use a fission reaction to heat water, which was used in a steam turbine engine. One of the issues folks worried about was, what happens in a crash? No, no one with a clue worried about a nuclear explosion, but the release of radioactive material would have been a real concern.
Some of this might change with the use of fusion. But, it’s going to be a long time before a fusion reactor would be small/light enough to slap in a car. At the moment, we haven’t really demonstrated a reactor which can commercially produce a net output of power. There has been some small scale experiments which technically produce more power than is used to initiate the fusion; but, that also relied a bit on an accounting trick (they only counted the energy of the lasers themselves, not the total energy used).
Also, when you get down to it, this is the ultimate goal of electric vehicles. Maybe someday, most of our electricity will come from grid scale fusion reactors. Those will charge the batteries which drive EVs. Moving the reactor into the car itself could happen some day. On the other hand, considering how poorly some folks maintain their cars now, would your really trust them to maintain a reactor? Again, not worried about explosions or anything silly. But, the release of radioactive material might still be a concern. It’s probably safe to just use batteries and keep the reactors locked up in large facilities.
Get this if you put enough matter in one spot the mass of the matter acts as the piston compressing the material until it begins fusing enough to resist the inward pressure. This lasts as long as there are enough fuse-able materials in the mix, be aware they can get a little unstable when fuel gets low.
