The Faraday generator is named for Michael Faraday's experiments on moving charged particles in the Thames River. 
A simple Faraday generator would consist of a wedge-shaped pipe or tube of some non-conductive material. When an electrically conductive fluid flows through the tube, in the presence of a significant perpendicular magnetic field, a voltage is induced in the fluid, which can be drawn off as electrical power by placing the electrodes on the sides at 90-degree angles to the magnetic field.
There are limitations on the density and type of field used. The amount of power that can be extracted is proportional to the cross-sectional area of the tube and the speed of the conductive flow. The conductive substance is also cooled and slowed by this process. MHD generators typically reduce the temperature of the conductive substance from plasma temperatures to just over 1000 °C.
The main practical problem of a Faraday generator is that differential voltages and currents in the fluid short through the electrodes on the sides of the duct. The most powerful waste is from the Hall effect current. This makes the Faraday duct very inefficient. Most further refinements of MHD generators have tried to solve this problem. The optimal magnetic field on duct-shaped MHD generators is a sort of saddle shape. To get this field, a large generator requires an extremely powerful magnet. Many research groups have tried to adapt superconducting magnets to this purpose, with varying success. (For references, please see the discussion of generator efficiency, below.)