Zap Energy took the wraps off its latest fusion device Tuesday at a research meeting in Long Beach, California, the latest in a string of devices the company has built in its quest to bring fusion power to market.
The startup is in a race with several other startups that are all attempting to build fusion power plants capable of putting electricity on the grid in the early 2030s.
Zap’s Fuze-3 device has been firing pulses of plasma at the company’s headquarters near Seattle, and the results of those experiments will ultimately inform the design of the company’s future demonstration plants.
The Fuze-3 device was able to compress a soup of charged particles — also known as plasma — to more than 232,000 psi (1.6 gigapascals) and heat it to more than 21 million degrees F (11.7 million degrees C).
The pressure data marks a record for the type of fusion Zap is pursuing, known as a sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch. Zap’s reactor uses electrodes to send electricity through a plasma, which causes the plasma to generate a magnetic field. If the magnetic field is strong enough, it’ll heat and compress the plasma to the point where particles in the plasma fuse.
The figures are useful for Zap as it pursues its goal of commercial fusion power — although it’s worth noting they’re not directly comparable with other fusion startups’ results because other companies are using different approaches.
Achieving high-pressure plasmas is vital to any future fusion power plant. In order to generate more power than they consume, fusion reactions must deliver what’s known as the triple product, a figure that describes the temperature, pressure, and duration of a plasma inside a fusion reactor. In other words, get a plasma hot enough and dense enough for long enough, and you’ll be able to generate power.
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By Zap’s own calculations, the company still has to increase the pressure of its plasma by at least tenfold before it hits scientific breakeven, a milestone reached by only one other fusion experiment. The company said it is getting close to a key third milestone proposed by Bob Mumgaard, co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a Zap competitor.
Zap was able to break the record for plasma pressure by tweaking its reactor design to add a third electrode. In previous designs, two electrodes were able to heat the plasma sufficiently, but the company couldn’t hit the pressure numbers it wanted.
The company wouldn’t disclose details of the new design in response to TechCrunch’s questions. But spokesperson Andy Freeborn said it allows the company to use two power banks, giving it more control over how the plasma changes inside the reactor.
“The plasma chamber itself doesn’t look much different, but it’s operated very differently since there are two pulses of input power rather than one,” he said.
Zap said it is working on a new generation of Fuze device, which it says will come online this winter.
