Could the mayonnaise pave the way for researchers to one of the most sought after scientific feats – the realization of nuclear fusion?

To this question a group of researchers believe they have the answer, or at least that they are on the right track as they study it famous sauce to understand the behavior of plasma in fusion reactions and find future clean energy solutions, reports Oilprice.com.

As scientists have discovered, mayonnaise when compressed and heated exhibits certain characteristics similar to the various states of plasma in a hypothetical nuclear fusion reaction.

Thus, the common spice could become an ingredient to solve one of mankind’s longest-standing dreams – achieving nuclear fusion.

Fusion is the natural process that heats the Sun and all other stars, in which a huge amount of energy is produced by fusing light atoms, such as those of hydrogen, into heavier elements such as helium.

Nuclear fusion has long been considered the answer to energy production zero emission by-products. However, no one has yet cracked the nuclear fusion code because of the challenges associated with the environment in which the process could take place.

Inertial confinement fusion, the process that initiates a nuclear fusion reaction, has many challenges to overcome. One of them is the instability of the plasma state resulting from the rapid compression and heating of capsules filled with hydrogen isotopes.

The so-called Rayleigh-Taylor instability that occurs is the interpenetration of materials when fluids of different densities collide.

And here comes the mayonnaise, which has become a key ingredient for ongoing research on Rayleigh-Taylor instability phases, say researchers at Lehigh University.

“We are still working on the same problem, which is the structural integrity of fusion capsules used in inertial confinement fusion, and Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise continues to help us find solutions,” said Arindam Banerjee, the Paul B. Reinhold of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering at Lehigh University and Chair of the MEM department at the PC Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science.

“We use mayonnaise because it behaves like a solid, but when subjected to a pressure gradient, it starts to flow,” he says.

Banerjee and his team have been studying the properties of mayonnaise in relation to plasma characteristics for at least half a decade.

The first survey

In 2019, they published their first paper on “Rayleigh-Taylor instability experiments with an elastic-plastic material”, in the scientific journal Physical Review E.
The team continued the experiments on mayonnaise and published their latest paper, “Transition to a plastic regime for Rayleigh-Taylor instability in soft solids,” earlier this year.

In the latest work and experiments, scientists are “trying to enhance the predictability of what would happen with these molten, high-temperature, high-pressure plasma capsules with these analog experiments of using mayonnaise on a spinning wheel,” Banerjee said.

“We’re another cog in this giant wheel of researchers,” he said, commenting on the team of scientists working to make fusion a reality.

“And we’re all working to make inertial fusion cheaper and therefore feasible.”

In nuclear fusion efforts, recent discoveries in the US have encouraged more R&D efforts in America and elsewhere.

In late 2022, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory made history by demonstrating fusion ignition for the first time in a laboratory setting—an achievement six decades in the making. The fusion energy released was greater than the laser energy delivered to initiate the reaction, passing the ignition threshold.

LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) has so far achieved ignition four times by 2022, giving scientists hope that fusion for energy may not just be the pipe dream it has been for decades.

China is also closing in on the race for fusion technology.

It is building a Comprehensive Research Facility for Fusion Technology (CRAFT) in Hefei — a project where core components for fusion power reactors are developed and tested. The facility is expected to be completed in 2025.

The US has several large private fusion companies, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), which just signed a $15 million deal with the US Department of Energy to meet research and development goals leading to commercial fusion power.

Incentives in the US government’s Milestone program to support fusion power “can help us continue to move step by step towards our goal of building our first fusion power plant by the early 2030s,” he said. June CEO and co-founder of CFS, Bob Mumgaard.