New Test Cell, RGA data, and Platinum Catalysis
H2 Splitting Tests
The last week has been extremely interesting around HUG. Last Monday, we saw our first hint that Platinum is preferentially recombining something. We were finishing up our last couple calibration runs with a commercial oxide coated constantan wire in H2 when we saw that the first run looked way different than the second run. Note how the pressure (green line) drops during the first step up cycle, but not the second one. And then, the resistance drops at higher temperatures - more so in the first one than the second.
When I looked closely at the difference between the runs, I saw something very cool in the Platinum temperature and the Silver temperature. (Note: T_Cu is actually a silver wrapped thermocouple, now, because we are told that silver is less catalytic than the copper.)
While the Wire temps and the Silver temps were extremely similar between the runs, the Platinum temperature was different between the first and second runs. How different?
About this different! It's not many degrees, but the temperature where it varies the most is also the temperature at which the pressure in the cell was dropping!
So, what would cause the platinum to be hotter and the pressure to drop? Was this commercial constantan splitting H2? Was it making water that was interacting mildly, but preferentially with the platinum? (See lab notebook here for full details)
Well, it just so happens that our new RGA (on loan from Nikita Alexandrov), was just about ready to test, so we slowly vacuumed down the cell through the RGA.
Here is the compiled video made from the scan data (a 2 day effort to write scripts to process data files).
The basic conclusion that we can come to is that there was quite a bit of water. We are newbies, though, and would welcome second opinions and observations.
Our current hypothesis is that H2 was reducing the MgO coating on the wire and making water. Some of the H and O flew loose and combined on the platinum. There should be no pressure drop from H2 + O (in MgO coating) => H20, at least till the H20 started condensing on the cold part of the cell. We believe it is likely we saw this water coming out of the cell in the RGA scans.
(See lab notebook here for full details)
New Test Cell for Gamma Detection
We have a new cell optimized for getting test wires close to our NaI gamma detector.
In practice, it looks like this when mounted along with the gamma detector just above it.
Next Steps: Combine Gamma Detection with H2 Splitting test
Our immediate plan is to test the new cell with a control wire and then install our last remaining Celani wire. We will load it with Hydrogen while watching the pressure and watching for gamma rays. Then, we will transfer it to the other cell with the platinum and the silver wrapped thermocouples and test for H2 splitting. Stay tuned!
Comments
If you want to know chemically wjhat is inside of the reactiion chamber, be prepared ro discover a complex mixture of junk. Taking control of the experiment implies control and removal of the non-essential junk
jdk 22dec2013
We just received a newer version of our gamma software, we are currently trying to set that up. It should allow for new ways to analyze the data. We also had a broken usb port on the gamma detector, that was just fixed this morning. We are going to play with loading the cell from 1 bar to 3 bar once the gamma analyzer works fully again.
@ All
We will be doing some server maintenance all day today. Data will be slow or non existent for the day. We will work hard to get it back up asap.
Our network drives dropped off the network last night. We are working to fix this ASAP. Data should start catching up in about 30 min.
I was starting to wonder if experiments were still going on, but it was just the app's fault.
Oh, you should be able to see an image much like the one you describe for the RGA, but done for the gamma readings. I should be able to make one with the RGA data, now.
X: time
Y: weight/charge
color: partial pressure
They would make for very compact and data-rich graphs. They could also more or less easily converted to audio waveforms that way, which might turn out to be interesting not only for fun but also analysis purposes.
m/z 3 is H3+ and m/z 19 if H3O+
Some of these cluster ions depend on source pressure so a plot of say m/z 2 vs. m/z 3 will not be entirely linear
You may wish to look at m/z 17 which is water but could also be ammonia. Passing the gases though a drying agent before the RGA can help in this distinction.
Water is almost impossible to remove from vacuum systems without heating the system. Yours is not designed for this.
Ni and Cu have distinct isotopic patterns. Those are not evident in the spectra. Also, you are unlikely to see bare metallic ions unless you purposely make volatile derivatives such as M-(HFAcAc)2.
We use a BridgePort base and the program was developed for that application. Ortech is similar. Issues are that the program was developed for a single user, in-house and thus is not as friendly as commercial versions.
I have others for the Ortech base but they were written several years ago and not as informative. You should be able to get ns timestamps from your hardware. These are helpful to look for correlations in the noise - i.e. are peaks coming from periodic electrical discharges or are they random.
yes, the toolset and the pen is the great advantage of this gadget... The newest version (2014) comes with some Autodesk tools which are awesome if you need to handle CAD drawings and designs. Also with Evernote, a very profesional Office tool, Videosoftware and and and..
I wanted to have a tool for the next years, so I bought the LTE version.
The only drawback is the lack of USB connections.....
In the moment I use it to read your Evernote lab docs, but many more business is on the list
BR Dieter
Firstly Dieter, I am envious, I have had Note1 & 2, but too poor for an upgrade! You are right though, however, I understand the whole note family has the same toolset, the 8 and the 3 (Mathieu recently got the 3 and it is pretty awesome).
I bought the Samsung Note Tablet 10.1 some days ago.
It has all you need and works great with Evernote
An Ideal solution would be to use google docs for the notes and add a function to be able to drag and drop insert all types of documents that are stored in a google drive folder. That drag and drop and a simple to use phone app for editing and inserting photos and videos is a missing piece. Anybody know how to make that happen?
Today I tried adding again the notebooks I couldn't manage to add yesterday (after removing them from my account), and this time they worked. I can see a couple updates from HUGlab have already been posted today.
@Ecco: Just use the link in the blog entry to the Evernote page. "View Notebook" has always worked for me anyway...
EDIT: it's currently not accessible anymore. BTW, I noticed the "Misc experiments" too was getting updated even though the shared notebook in the Evernote app wasn't. I didn't get to see the latest "20131114 - New Stranded Wires" note.
EDIT2: I removed all notebooks from my account, then tried to add them again, and I found out that all /malachiheder ones don't seem to be working. On the other hand it appears that the Misc experiments one, after removing then adding it again, received the last update on stranded wires.
This is a really cumbersome system, though. I think very few people have the patience for it.
EDIT3: at the very least it would help having on quantumheat.org an updated page where one can quickly learn which are the shared public Evernote notebooks. And also an easily accessible section for newcomers so that they will know that you're posting updates on Evernote.
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