Our USA team has spent a great deal of our time last week supporting Mathieu's tests with the Euro Cell last week. In between configuring, graphing, and writing, we have managed to make progress in other areas.
We have a new borosilicate cell assembled. This is Pyrex brand borosilicate, which is still different from the Duran-Schott tubing used by Celani and by Mathieu in the Euro Cell. This new cell is using Macor ceramic for the wire supports. Both wires are NiCr.
We did a pressure sweep with hydrogen from 8 bar to 1 bar and graphed the indicating temperatures again. This is to continue to exploring the apparent change of temperature we observed in our first cell.
For the next test, we added some mineral wool insulation on each end of the cell to cut off most of the heat path to the flanges. We expect this will make the T_GlassOut more constant over pressure.
The insulation is held in place by a wrap of copper wire. We did a run over the weekend, but we are re-running it today because the power ended up at 47 W instead of 48 W. Keep watching.
This has a new electrical pass through design. We detected a leak with one of them and then fortified it again. It is testing now and appears to be our tightest cell, yet. It was losing 0.003 Bar per hour at 4 Bar (absolute) internal pressure. Here you can see the long pass-throughs. The length should keep the seal from seeing high temperatures and allows for several sealing layers within it.
The Air Flow Calorimeter has been wired, instrumented and is just starting to be characterized for thermal stability. Here are a few pictures.
After we get comfortable that we are measuring and controlling correctly, the next step with that calorimeter is to test it with a control load and see what we measure. We will definitely share that data as soon as we have it.
Anybody wanna volunteer to come play in the shop and help build other calorimeters and apparatus? We have the inclination, but we need more man power. Qualified volunteers will get free lodging, lunches, and a really cool prototyping shop to help manifest their ideas into reality. To qualify, you need really strong shop skills, mechanical design and CAD skills, and an ability to tolerate Minnesota in the winter.
Update: The Euro Team was on the Smart Scarecrow Alternative Energy Hour show. Here is the video (link to youtube)
Comments
We are currently deloading the wire with 1A of current and vacuuming the cell at the same time. It is recovering the original resistance slowly, very very slowly in fact...
I don't think that we will recover the original resistance for multiple reason, if there is some hydrogen left inside and if cracks have been made during the process, this might have influenced this parameter forever.
Hydrogen is very hard to extract completely from metal because the hydride form is more stable at low loading ratio.
I then used this new function to run within my time domain model and obtained the following preliminary values:
Device Time Constant =454 Seconds
Energy Stored = 22.5 kilo joules @ Power input of 51.65 watts and 121.8 Degrees C at T_GlassOut.
These figures were for the latest stepped power input run for the US cell.
The performance of this new arrangement is not far removed from the earlier device.
Yes - it is new research and its consequences are very far reaching. We are looking to do a Live Open Science with the researchers to show the LENR live from Quantumheat.org.
You can see it here.
theatomunexplored.com/.../...
I have my fingers crossed that it does not result in a small continuous drain of heat energy that makes it look like excess heat is leaving the cell for an extended period of time. The heat drain will eventually become a minimum once the end caps reach their steady state value.
This design may add another complication to the measurement accuracy and time domain response. Keep your eyes open and watch for this effect.
I just watched the show. You were referring to an experiment with crushed rocks. Do you have a link for the results of that experiment?
My appetite is whetted for some experiments with this improved beast.
It's important to make clear at the beginning of a conversation, what they did 23 Jears ago and what has changed and we know it today better. You don't need to write the history out of your brain, you can copy this part from others, maybe not word by word^^ A very good source is the presentation from the US Navy (SPAWAR)
at 2009. Strip down, and you have a perfect introduction
www.youtube.com/.../
congratulations from my side, i think this was excess heat, but sure it's not 100% without fail, you need to make the results "waterproof", i know you have planed this future steps.
My info for you is not physic or technical nature, i have only a "marketing" tip. I saw your conferencing video, i found it not bad, but i think you can do it better! I know it is not easy to give a press conference, but i must write this, because i think this can help you.
Many people don't know what cold fusion or LENR is, older peoples know the history about Fleischmann&Pon s but they are not "up to date" and believe it was a mistake and failed in every aspect! (not a repetable experiment), they are sceptic at from the beginning your presentation and you must try to break this.
So looking forward to that air calorimeter. That should be an important upgrade over the Celani cell designs. Science is fun!
These liquids are used in solar panel applications to heat the water in an isolated tank.
You could use the celani tube instead of the solar panel and keep the rest of the system intact. Check then if the water in the tank reaches a higher temperature than expected ...
The proof of the air calorimetry will be in the commissioning tests and calibrations. I do like the idea of making of smaller cells with more density of active wire for a better signal to noise ratio.
@ David - The US cell now is a significantly altered device from the previous version. It will be interesting to look at the time constants for each pressure step.
reading Ed Storm tutorial on isoperibolic calorimetry, your proposal of flow calorimetry seems rational.
However air calorimeter might be criticized too.
On of the problem, seen with Defkalion/Nelso n test, is that straight water cooling is so cold that it kills the reaction.
Why not use air/gaz (argon because insulating) as just a buffer, a thermal resistor, between the reactor and a flow calorimeter below 100C...
maybe you could adjust the thermal resistor with gaz composition and pressure, then you cool down the gaz chamber with a fluid flow calorimeter... problem will be to insulate all, since it will be huge...
some mixing might be organized (but mixing energy should be accounted for)
do you think my idea is rational, or naive?
I was performing a simulation of the time domain response when I got results that did not match the current chart. A quick look at the data and it is apparent that the curve you use needs to be modified.
The time constant of the US cell when the latest power reset was applied measures 454 seconds. I suspect this is an indirect way to measure the extra gas at the higher bars.
The time constant is noticeably longer at this pressure.
It will be interesting to see the results obtained when you put your new calorimeter to work.
But a glance at YouTube turns up a couple of people who have made their own vacuum tubes--a far more ambitious undertanking, glass-wise.
I'm certain that some of the lab glassblowers at Standard Oil who were old men when I was still shaving peachfuzz off my cheeks would have been able to do this blindfolded.
We will post the video of the presentation in the next few days , however it will be in italian so will need translation by some kind person - I am awaiting the presentation slides from the organisers.
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