Evaluation of the neutron production rate using D-D and D-T fuel in an inertial electrostatic confinement fusion device

The correlation between the neutron production rate and fuel species in a spherical inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IECF) device is investigated by solving the Poisson equation for various ion and electron distribution functions. The fuel ion energy distribution function is determined at each radial point. The fusion reaction rate is evaluated from the energy distribution function. The dependence of the neutron production rate (NPR) on some important parameters, like the ion convergence, the broadening of the distributions in the energy space, working pressure and fuel species, are also investigated. Compared with the IECF device with D-D, numerical calculations show that by increasing the percentage of tritium in the D-T mixture fuel the neutron production rate grows significantly.