Can Plasma Be Scaled Up? Why "Just Make It Bigger" Doesn't Work
Chat with Greg Fridman by Gregory Fridman
Episode notes
Next in the "Can Plasma?" series: can plasma be scaled up? You built it in the lab, it works beautifully — now turn it into an industrial process. I wrote down 14 reasons that's harder than it sounds.
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 The question: can plasma be scaled up?
00:28 Why I wrote down 14 points for this one
00:36 #1 Preserving the plasma regime — from a 2mm jet to a whole strawberry
01:53 #2 Power supply scaling — from a few watts to 100 kilowatts
02:52 The hard x-ray problem (Bremsstrahlung above ~100 kV)
03:13 #3 Uniformity — keeping electrodes parallel across 8 meters within microns
05:07 #4 Gas flow and mixing — non-equilibrium plasmas don't scale linearly
05:12 #5 Heat management — invisible at lab scale, critical at industrial scale
05:55 #6 Electrode erosion, durability, and 24/7 opera ...