The last 24 hours have set a new record for experiment stability. I will post graphs of that shortly, with a few little insights highlighted.
We gave much consideration about where to go from here. As several insightful comments noted, we are not operating in the same range of currents and temperatures as Celani's cell was at ICCF. I pulled up my photos of that experiment while it was functioning and noted that his mica temperature was 220 and his current was 1.79 Amps. Since our cell requires more power to heat, we have been running higher currents. But, Celani has suggested that the newer wires trigger at higher temperatures - around 350C.
Our options as we saw them were:
- Turn the current up in the wire to get as close as we can to 350C. We have run more current through this Celani wire in the first runs in Helium, so I think the wire would handle it, and we have the good helium baseline as a reference, as well. The only downsides are that we are farther from the current level Celani's demonstration operated at and the slight risk of damaging the wire at that current.
- Turn on the NiChrome conductor as well so it can help heat the cell. After looking the resistances, it looks feasible. Our power supply puts out only one voltage, but it owuld work out to be close to the same current and temperature ranges. The downside is we don;t have any recent calibration runs with both wires heating. We did have some from earlier on that we could use to compare against, though.
- Turn down the power and operate closer to a T_mica of 220. The only downside is we might waste time.
I chose option 3 for tonight. I set up an 18 point stepped plan to sweep the band from roughly 180C to 250C. We will look for changes in resistivity of the wire and excess heat production. And then tomorrow, when I can pay more attention to it, we will try something more radical if, necessary.
Comments
@ Ecco - The T_well is inside a 6mm stainless tube running through the center of the apparatus. The metal tube helps average the temperature.
@ Alain - I'm not convinced, yet, that the reaction is purely thermally triggered. I wouldn't be surprised if current density in the wire plays an important part. In a few weeks we should be able to use the NiCr wire to maintain a set cell temp and vary the current through the Celani wire to see if we can tease those two factors apart.
@ Everyone else - Thanks for the suggestions, too.
Who knows maybe E-cat catalyst is NaCl which slightly reacts with H2 to produce HCl and Na.
Or maybe the glass contains potassium, some do and some don't. The reactions would be similar, vapour pressure somewhat higher.
Its a very good thing that the EU reactor will have a glass very similar to the original Celani one. Is it possible to get a wire that is also similar to the original one, which surely showed excess heat, and whose "turn-on" temperature, resistance, P-in are already well known ?
Just a suggestion because it will eliminate many variables and might save a lot of time.
in theory if the reaction is purely dependent on temperature this wont do much, but we are far from that.
another problem is that if the mica temp get very high, one should protect the wire quickly... however the glass temp is more representative of the average wire temperature...
control won't be easy if even possible... 2 observable, 2 actioners
another idea is that it seems that anomalous heat does not depend only of temperature, but of variations...
maybe one experiment could create cyclic variation of temp...
If system was linear i would advice sinusoidal, or square or symmetric ramp, but the system is non linear... should add expert of non linear system...
however maybe my ideas should be applied only after you successfully trigger the reaction... maybe with ramp however.
We are much happier with the stability following the improvements that have been made this week, thank you for picking up on this.
Agreed, I guess if it was easy, many people would be doing it - we hope we can make it easy - then many can. We are making great strides in both the experimental design, the science and tools for live data publishing and analysis. In part this is thanks to people donating money and time.
When the EU cell is running again there will be twice the data to work with and hopefully this will help us reach a successful conclusion of this phase more quickly. In the multiple replication phase it is very important that every aspect of the experiment, protocol, hardware, software and data reporting are very robust. When there are 5 - 10 experiments running the information flow will be very substantial.
The switching was something Ryan and I discussed at length last night - however, whilst we want to try it - the setup as it stands needs to be modified to allow for it. That is when the idea to split the power came and this is something to explore first.
We are already reconfiguring the EU cell with borosilicate custom blown glass which is due to arrive soon.
This way we will have our own comparison between the two glass types and have a cell closer to Celani's original.
Is it shure that the NiCr wire can NOT show LENR effects?
Do you have a remaining "scrap"-piece of the celani wire?
You could use this for some stress testing in Helium to find out where thermal breakdown of the wire occurs. This might help to build some confidence for the main experiment.
From my experience it is a good idea to take "a mental step back" from time to time during experiments (my experience from research/development).
As you wanted to replicate the Celani experiment as close as possible, it is worth to think about using the pyrex instead of quartz, in case you don´t get positive results. This would be painstaking, but is worth a thought.
The "mental step back" (reconsidering the facts that you take as "given"!) really helps!
Of course no anomalies also (till now). Hope to see something. If Celani himself has heated similar wires to 350`C and did not damage them, then you may also try it out. Better to confirm with him again, sometimes typos or errors do happen and 250 can become 350 !
I would not be too worried about wasting time -- I think most of the LENR experiments turn out to be nulls and only a subset show up evidence of anomalous heat. This is a game in which a great deal of patience and persistence will be required to tease out signal from noise, assuming this can be done.
Quote:
1) apply power to heater wire only
2) let temperatures stabilize
3) apply power to active wire only
4) let temperatures stabilize
5) increase input power level
6) repeat from step 1
In this way behavior between direct and indirect heating can be quickly and directly compared. This might also help heating the reactor chamber more uniformly.
Keep going guys, we're right here with you!
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