Q1-2014: Current Research Status and Needs for the French Lab (UPDATE 1: Winter jacket!)

This is a very interesting time for the French lab. Two targets are in sight: a new mass-flow calorimeter and the completion of the gamma detector set up. But the financial constraints remain, let me explain in more detail.

Gamma detector work

For the gamma detector, much has been done and I am trying hard to get good calibrations. I have recently got some 2 nice spectral lines from a thorium doped welding rod.

In order to maximise chances of seeing proper and compelling results from the Celani cell and other future work, I am preparing and costing a method to build adequate shielding for the detector. This is absolutely critical because the size of the NaI(Tl) means it is very sensitive (which is good), so appropriate shielding is needed to reduce the large quantity of background noise (which we don't want). Without it, the noise would overwhelm the small signal we are expecting to observe.

This specific topic will be extensively discussed very soon in another blog post.

More deep collaborations

There are some very interesting and diverse participations, especially from my friends Jacques Ruer and Jean-Paul Biberian, we’ve been able to define together the material, the process, the dimension and method to make the shielding the proper and the cheapest way. It will consist of a cylinder of copper that will support a roll of lead roof flashing. By mounting the copper tube on a barring gear, we use rivets to maintain one end of the flashing and roll the 16.5 m of 2 mm thick lead onto the copper tube.

This is meant to produce a cylinder that will be 330 mm high with 5 mm of copper surrounded by 50 mm of lead.
In addition, the lead bricks showed above, will block behind the cell and the detector to shield radiations from the surroundings. With help of the furnace I finished integrating into the lab, I will cast some custom collimation shieldings with the remains of the flashing. Hopefully then, the 4 inch by 4 inch NaI detector will be able to catch the signal properly.

However, if that paticular detector does not deliver, Jean-Paul may be able to provide a “Probe B” for our beloved friends...

Celani cells

Rebuilding Cell A and B is ongoing in order to have a lower leak rate and confirm the different phenomenon seen previously. I recently received a new set of thermocouples that should measure cell surface temperature with more accuracy, replicability and precision. Technical details of those are available here. Because they are limited to 170°C, I will be limited to 40W power input though.

I will prepare a Cell C that is intended later to be fitted into the mass-flow calorimeter. The acquisition system is different from our HUGnetlab systems. Because of this, I will need help to integrate the Live Open Science platform into the kindly donated, top-specification, National Instruments equipment that will be used. Does anybody know NoSQL databases or LabVIEW? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mass-flow calorimetry.... TADAMMMM!

This mass flow calorimeter you see below is an amazing christmas gift made by Jean-Paul. I recently found a cryostat that enables me to cool water and run calorimetry experiments in the lab. Back in the day when Jean-Paul decided to make his own mass-flow, the mechanical wizard decided to make not one but multiple copies of his design. These copies were sitting in his lab since then and as soon as I got a chiller, he decided to give me one of the copies. This is AWESOME, thank you Jean-Paul!!!

The problem I face is related to the investment necessary to equip and run it, the MFMP simply does not have the funds. But the good news is: its chamber is so large that I can fit a whole Celani cell into it! This would give a definitive answer about Celani’s technology!

In principle, this system consist in a “double envelope” vessel, where the water-flow surround the chamber where the Celani cell is located. There is no contact between the glass tube and the water. After calibration and careful analysis of the system, we are able to count the energy dissipated by the cell located inside this vessel. This technique is very powerful and you can find a lot of material talking about this type of approach within the CMNS community and especially on LENR-CANR.org.

In order to make it work successfully, I first need some equipment that I found | on ebay that cost $670. I listed that new equipment in a new tab within the awesome expenses spreadsheet. :)
I have listed some additional items below, gathering the quotes, even without tax or shipping, the total is close to 1000€.

This quote from omega lists the exact equipment I need. There is a flow metering turbine, the tubing to convey chilled water, surface thermocouples to better measure the tube temperature on the dual-cell experiment, stainless sheathed thermocouple for inside temperature measurement and water temperature measurements and finally some “high temperature cement on surface thermocouples”.

The metering turbine will allow me to control the FMI pump I bought for 80 buck on ebay... Oh boy, that’s a story, let me expand a little on this: the guy thought it was broken due to the tilted head... It’s not a bug actually, it’s a feature! 5 minutes on the FMI pump website and you get it, right?

It’s quite a good pump, BTW that worth a lot more, but more importantly it is able to go from 50 mL/minute up to almost 260 mL/minute. IT is DC powered which means I can make the rotation of the shaft variate as a function of the tension applied to it.

The polypropylene plastic is a tough choice I decided to make. The biggest advantage of this material is the ratio price/cleanness/temperature range that it provides. PFA is definitely too expensive and polyamide is not clean enough. Polyethylene is fine but it is not as permeable to oxygen and has a lower temperature threshold. If you have and suggestions, we can debate this together in the comments as normal. I would love to hear your opinions!

The pack of 5 thermocouples is intended for better assessment of glass tube temperature during “classic” Celani experiments and will be a much better approach.
The following are stainless sheathed thermocouples. Identical to what we use to measure the inside cell temperature.
The last item on the list is a pack of 5 cement-on-surface thermocouples. They are high temperature surface measurement capable. It means we will be able to measure the temperature of the surface of the tube within the intermediate chamber of the calorimeter. Let me add, I am planning on using a vacuum pump to pull between the cell and the steel envelope, hence opening true Stefan-Boltzmann black body calculation... Finally!

Now, if you are standing, please take a seat. The acquisition equipment I will use in this project is a big improvement for the lab. It is provided by National Instruments and is a DIRECT copy of the PXIe 1062Q system that was given to Francesco in 2012!
To be completely honest I was tempted to sell it. It could have provided some serious bucks to fund experiments, but not really ethical hey! When I looked on the internet for how much you can sell this amazing piece of equipment, I discovered just how great a piece of kit it was and so I just decided to make the best use I can for it: use it!

This gift will ensure we have a internationally respected scientific standard of acquisition on this new experiments, that will add significant weight to future results. It will also allow me to provide test equipment for the Live Open Science platform as soon as we can get contributions to develop it.

Ultimately, LabVIEW is portable software, so all National Instruments will be compatible afterwards with Live Open Science...
Again, If you have knowledge of NoSQL, web-design and/or interface UI integration, please contact me. To motivate you contributing in this project, I even have an artwork from my best pet-friend. ;)

The following quote is from Swagelok and lists the necessary tubing to make VCR-type exchangeable feedthroughs. They intend to be much cleaner, cheaper and well suited for all applications. It is interesting to know that temperature with vacuum or pressurised gas is for most providers not guaranteed! It is either vacuum or pressure, anyway. Only few super expensive equipments allow that, that leaves us with this cheaper solution. But please, if you have a suggestion, Let us know!

Here is a schematic of this assembly I will use for that propose

The quantity of 25 correspond to the quantity of ceramics I have and feed-throughs I will use for all the equipment. Each feedthrough is composed of 2. Because I use 3 per cell (gas, TCs and power) with 3 cells, 9 will be used to that purpose. Plus the necessary 3 for the calorimeter second chamber. I will make the connection with ceramic-type terminal connectors.

The two last items are connecting the water pipes of the calorimeter to the plastic tubing.

Then final quote:

Above is the last quote listing the vacuum equipment required. Some are already found from ebay ($130). But these are meant to be customised thereafter by my company and my mechanical wizard. For example, the CF DN16 rotatable flange and the NW16 neeple will be cut 45° angle and then welded together to allow pulling vacuum in inside the vessel but outside the inner Celani cell. Then there are the copper joints and the nuts and bolts. The two CF DN 150 flanges are not to be counted since it is for a further project I and planning on doing soon.

Final words

Unfortunately, the status of my personal finances do not allow me to make any more personal expenditures at the moment. So we rely completely on your donations to move this projects forward. If you can help out, decide which part of the project you want your donation to be allocated towards, the gamma detection or mass-flow calorimetry, Bob and I will be very respectful of your wishes and give credit where due.
If we are able to give a definitive answer of the excess heat effect using calorimetry and show that atomic processes take place via the gamma spectrometer, there is no more barriers preventing us from confirming that Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) EXISTS and potentially we may be able to describe HOW it works from A to Z!

The 25th anniversary of Pons and Fleischmann announcement of their discovery is on March 23rd 2014. The work we hope to undertake will present an excellent opportunity to gather enough evidence and publicly vindicate that seminal research.

Finally, I kept the best for the end. The constantan treatment that was developed here broke the 50% resistance drop bar. 57% to be exact, this is very exciting and opens a lot of perspectives. Wanna hear about it?  ;)

UPDATE 1: Winter jacket!

I had the opportunity to get a custom-made insulating calorifuge for the mass-flow calorimeter. This is very usefull stuff because it makes the quality of the measurement greatly improved in terms of stability, independace to external thermal changes and replicability.

When I requested a quote for that, the boss called back few minutes later offering that for free! Thanks a lot to them.

I look forward to show that to Jean-Paul. I repeatedly told me how important the insulation of a mass-flow calorimeter is, but I think he will like it a lot.

With a 5 cm layer of mineral wool it won't get cold for this winter. ;)