Zap Energy reaches 37 million degrees in a Z-pinch fusion device

A recent scientific publication, released in Physical Review Letters, provides specific measurements conducted on Zap Energy‘s Fusion Z-pinch Experiment (FuZE). The measurements focused on the electron temperatures of the plasma, which ranged from 1 to 3 keV, corresponding to around 11 to 37 million degrees Celsius (20 to 66 million degrees Fahrenheit).

The capacity of electrons to efficiently cool a plasma is a significant challenge for fusion systems. FuZE, being the simplest, smallest, and most cost-effective device, has successfully overcome this hurdle. Zap’s technology has the potential to create a commercial product that can generate copious, carbon-free energy on demand, offering a shorter and more realistic solution for global energy needs.

Over the past ninety years, only a few of fusion technologies have proven capable of generating a thermal fusion plasma with electron temperatures above 10 million degrees Celsius, which is about equivalent to the temperature at the center of the sun. Zap Energy has achieved a significant milestone by surpassing the plasma temperature of its competitors using their distinctive sheared-flow-stabilized Z pinch technique, despite its smaller size.

FuZE received its initial funding for research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) while being conducted at the University of Washington. In 2020, the device was relocated to Zap Energy’s specialized research and development facilities shortly after the company’s establishment. The data presented in this study were gathered in 2022 through a joint effort supported by ARPA-E, involving scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The researchers from LLNL and UCSD played a leading role in developing the measurement method utilized to get these findings.

04.18.2024

04.18.2024

04.18.2024

Zap Energy utilizes a straightforward plasma confinement technique called a Z pinch, in which substantial electric currents are directed via a slender plasma filament. The conducting plasma autonomously generates electromagnetic fields, resulting in both heating and compression. Although Z-pinch fusion has been under experimentation since the 1950s, its progress has been hindered by the short duration of its plasmas. However, Zap has successfully addressed this issue by implementing a technique known as sheared-flow stabilization, which involves applying a dynamic flow through the plasma.

Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio holds a Ph. D. in Physics and is a Telecommunications Engineer. He has worked on various international projects in the field of gravitational waves research, designing a thermal compensation system (TCS) and data acquisition and control systems, and on others about x-ray microbeams in collaboration with Columbia University, high voltage systems and space technologies for communications and motor control with ESA/INFN. TCS has been applied to the Virgo and LIGO experiments, which detected gravitational waves for the first time and earned the Nobel Prize in 2017. Since 2007, he has been a reviewer for scientific publications for academics such as Microelectronics Journal and IEEE journals. Moreover, he has collaborated with different electronic industry companies and several Italian and English blogs and magazines, such as Electronics World, Elektor, Mouser, Automazione Industriale, Electronic Design, All About Circuits, Fare Elettronica, Elettronica Oggi, and PCB Magazine, as a technical writer/editor, specializing in several topics of electronics and technology. From 2015 to 2018, he was the editor-in-chief of Firmware and Elettronica Open Source, which are technical blogs and magazines for the electronics industry. He participated in many conferences as a speaker of keynotes for different topics such as x-ray, space technologies, and power supplies. Maurizio enjoys writing and telling stories about Power Electronics, Wide Bandgap Semiconductors, Automotive, IoT, Embedded, Energy, and Quantum Computing. Maurizio has been an AspenCore content editor since 2019. He is currently editor-in-chief of Power Electronics News and EEWeb and a correspondent for EE Times. He is the host of PowerUP, a podcast about power electronics, and the promoter and organizer of the PowerUP Virtual Conference, a summit where each year great speakers talk about the power electronics design trends. Moreover, he has contributed to a number of technical and scientific articles as well as a couple of Springer books on energy harvesting and data acquisition and control systems.