SlashDot There may soon be a run on coconut futures. Vintage 2002 Indonesian coconut-shell charcoal is being used to help build what may become the first commercially viable Tokamak fusion power electrical generating ITER facility that is a type of magnetic confinement device for producing controlled thermonuclear fusion power. The coconut charcoal is an environmental sponge that "adsorbs" the helium and hydrogen byproducts of the thermonuclear fusion reaction.
The fusion power produced by ITER will be at least 10 times greater than the external power delivered to heat the plasma. It's not quite a Starship warp drive, but it does harness the power of the sun.This is where the coconuts come into the picture. The coconuts will be used to generate a cooling vacuum essential to ITER's operation. In the central chamber, some of this vacuum separates the plasma from the surrounding solid walls and allows fusion to proceed unhindered by air molecules. The vacuum pumps suck air out of ITER and "adsorb" waste helium from the fusion reaction, along with other debris created when hot plasma smashes into the reactor wall."This can only be done with very large cryogenic pumps," says Christian Day of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. The cryogenic pumps capture loose helium and hydrogen through a process that involves atoms of the gases sticking loosely to a solid surface -- the greater the surface area, the better. "We wanted a material that behaves like a sponge, with lots of internal surfaces," Day adds. After 20 years searching for the ideal adsorber –- including sintered metals and porous minerals called zeolites –- Day's team decided on charcoal. And not just any charcoal.
"We found that coconut-shell charcoal is the best," Day says. "It is somehow strange that you need this very natural material to make a fusion device."