Abstract: The manufacturing of high temperature superconducting crystals and high quality crystals in general requires a furnace design with very precise process control to minimize the crystal defects. A furnace design of this type can be realized by growing crystals in the cavity of the evaporator section of a specially designed heat pipe, since the temperature of the working fluid in the heat pipe, and thus in the cavity and crystal, can be maintained very accurately by the control of the evaporating pressure of the heat pipe's working fluid. The crystals are grown from the melt from the bottom of a cooled and rotating crucible which is placed into the heat pipe evaporator cavity. The growth of high temperature superconducting crystals requires high furnace temperatures and an oxygen atmosphere. The high temperature furnace condition is achieved with sodium and potasium heat pipes.

Abstract: A lithium-sulfur hexafluoride magnetohydrodynamic power system may be operated with different arrangements of the system components. The internal combustion process between lithium and sulfur-hexafluoride may be achieved in the MHD generator or externally, and the lithium transporting fluid may be a gas or a vaporizable liquid which vaporizes from the heat released in combustion. The lithium, sulfur-hexafluoride and transporting fluids may be mixed at the generator inlet where the heat released in combustion is used by the expanding gas in the generator to transport the lithium through the channel for the production of the electrical power. This system configuration produces the most compact and also the most complex design.

Abstract: The liquid lithium may be used in a magnetohydrodynamic generator to produce the electrical power. The lithium expansion in the generator is accomplished by a gas whose expansion process is kept nearly isothermal from the high rate of heat transfer from lithium to the gas. The near-constant temperature of lithium in the generator is produced by a chemical reaction with the oxidizer gas sulfur hexafluoride which is also used to expand lithium at a high velocity. Since the oxidizer gas is depleted as it reacts with the fuel lithium, another gas such as helium is introduced at the generator inlet to accelerate the liquid metal across the magnetic field which is applied perpendicularly to the main flow direction. The liquid metal lithium combustion with the sulfur hexafluoride yields a high rate of energy release and the products of combustion are liquids above 1065 degrees Kelvin.