Today, the world is continually struggling over which energy sources to use. As oil becomes more costly and less available, the United States has quickly turned to alternative energy sources. Yet these energy sources only make up about 20 to 30 percent of our total energy use.

University of Missouri researchers and MU engineer Randy Curry might have sparked a solution to the energy crunch with the construction of a plasma device that can create and control plasma. The team developed a way to sustain the plasma without requiring large vacuum vessels or external magnetic fields.

“It’s the holy grail of plasma because investigators have been trying to create plasma like this without magnets for 50 years,” says Curry, MU professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Although most people think of matter in three stages — solid, liquid and gas — there is actually a fourth state called plasma. Curry’s plasma has its own magnetic field and is important because it has different properties than other plasmas, which would enable it to work in fusion energy and other areas including rocket propulsion.

“With the self-magnetic field, you can get really high particle entities, and you can generate the plasma and sustain it for long lifetimes,” Curry says.

Pushing for fusion

As of now, the plasma already has a lifetime of 10 times the normal plasma, and Curry says he believes the researchers can even push it to 100 times that. This length of lifetime will open up the possibility of fusion energy.

Curry says the field of fusion is a type of energy that will generate the future. Not only is it a clean energy source, but it’s also cheap compared to other alternative energies such as wind, solar and thermal.

“I believe it’s the alternative energy of the future,” Curry says. “If you look at other alternatives, they’re just not viable to generate energy in the future. We will not be able to sustain the energy in the U.S. unless we start looking at these alternative energies.”

Curry’s device can launch a ring of plasma as far as 2 feet. Although the plasma reaches temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, it is completely safe around humans because it doesn’t emit radiation. The next step for Curry and the MU research team is to make the device on a bigger scale. If that happens, the lab prototype can demonstrate the fusion energy principles needed for an alternative source.

Funding the research

Although the Office of Naval Research originally funded the research program, continued research has been funded by MU. Curry says he is concerned that if the government stops federal funding, there could be a huge negative impact on both the university’s and mid-Missouri’s progress in the fusion field.

“I think it’s important to recognize that science of this type is essential to the future of the U.S.,” Curry says. “In order for us to sustain our competitiveness and compete in national and international markets, we need to have energy and identify cheap new sources of energy.”

According to Curry, the plasma device could be enlarged to handle larger amounts of energy, eventually to the point necessary for alternative energy sources. Energy of this scale could be attained by storing energy in the plasma or generating it from the plasma as a fusion reaction.

“If one can achieve fusion on that kind of scale, you could generate almost 100 percent of the energy for the world and sustain it for 5,000 to 10,000 years,” Curry says.