Private | |
Industry | Nuclear fusion |
Founder | Dr. David Kirtley, CEO; Dr. John Slough, CSO; Chris Pihl, CTO; Dr. George Votroubek, PI |
Headquarters | Redmond, WA |
Website | Helion Energy home page |
Helion Energy, Inc. is an American company in Redmond, WA developing a magneto-inertial fusion power technology called The Fusion Engine. Their approach combines the stability of magnetic containment and once-per-second heating pulsed inertial fusion. They are working on the development of a 50 MW scale system that they hope to have working by 2019.
Helion Energy is a spin-off of Redmond company MSNW LLC that develops space propulsion and fusion energy related technologies. The CEO is David Kirtley, Chief Science Officer is John Slough and CTO is Chris Pihl. The primary fusion technology was developed by Slough, also a research professor at the University of Washington, with additional technologies generated by Pihl and Kirtley.
The management team won the 2013 National Cleantech Open Energy Generation competition and awards at the 2014 ARPA-E Future Energy Startup competition.
According to published documents, the Fusion Engine technology is based on the Inductive Plasmoid Accelerator (IPA) experiments performed at MSNW LLC from 2005 through 2012. This ‘Engine’ operates at 1 Hz, injecting plasma, compressing it to fusion conditions, expanding it and directly recovering the energy to provide electricity. The IPA experiments claimed 300 km/s velocities, deuterium neutron production, and 2 keV deuterium ion temperatures.
Helion intends to use helium-3/deuterium fuel. This fuel allows essentially aneutronic fusion, releasing only 5% of its energy in the form of neutrons. The helium is captured and reused, eliminating supply concerns.
Fusion reaction: 2D + 3He → 4He + 1p + 18.3 MeV
The IPA experiments used deuterium-deuterium fusion, which produces a 2.4 MeV neutron per reaction. Helion and MSNW published articles describing a deuterium-tritium implementation which is the easiest to achieve but generate 14 MeV neutrons.
This fusion approach uses the magnetic field of a Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) plasmoid (operated with solid state electronics derived from power switching electronics in wind turbines) to prevent plasma losses. An FRC is a magnetized plasma configuration notable for its closed field lines, high Beta and lack of internal penetrations.