We are ready for some fun.  We shoved 50 meters of bare constantan into a 12CC cell, calibrated to 500C, and we're almost ready to start loading it.  The entire details are in this document: 50m Wire Test

And we just kicked off the pre-loading off gassing step in the protocol.  Give me your thoughts!

UPDATE 6-28 17:30

The cell was run last night under a passive vacuum at 500C. The valve was closed before the cell was heated and the gauge read 1 mBar.  Overnight a small amount of gas seemed to come out of the hot wire but the pressure sensor saw some 1 mBar oscillations of pressure with about a 20 to 30 minute period.  

This morning we opened the valve to expose the hot wire to active vacuum for a while.  Then we cooled the cell, loaded to 10 bar hydrogen and then started heating looking for where the wires would start to absorb hydrogen.  We scanned between 120 and 250C, roughly.  We didn't see any notable resistance drop or absorption, but we did see a very puzzling pressure oscillation ~ 40 mBar, 4 minute period.  It's so regular it is hard to imagine it as a wire related phenomenon, yet we don't have anything we know of making any sort of 4 minute signal, especially one so nicely sinusoidal.  Suggestions?

UPDATE 18:09 -- MYSTERY SOLVED - it is the PID control loop for the Active insulation causing a temperature to change in the pipe.  At low pressures it is not noticeable on the pressure gauge.  At this pressure it is much more noticeable.  It will average out over several minutes, though.  We are going to tweak the control loop to minimize the oscillations.

Since we didn't see any noticeable loading up to this point, though, we are going to continue raising the temperature to see if we can trigger any.

UPDATE#2 - STUNNING GRAPH

So the reactor is now at the 1st phonon resonance temp of Cu63 (the target element) as put forward by one of our followers in his freely published document you can review here

http://www.human-resonance.org/Qi.pdf

He suggested his research showed that if we hit the 489 degrees C in pressured hydrogen atmosphere, over time the Ni62 would become Cu63.

From the text:-

"Precision heating of nickel powder to 489°C or 859°C resonance with copper isotope Cu63 in the presence of pressurized H2 gas will target and maximize conversion of nickel into stable copper. The nuclear fusion reaction that produces excess heat can be specifically targeted by precision heating of the reaction to 620°C or 966°C resonance with meta-stable copper isomer Cu68m"

Now just look at what is going on in the cell!

You might note that the 2nd resonance temp is ballpark the December rossi temp where the cell melted down and the second is ballpark the 2nd COP 5.7 test... the 3rd test at a lower temp (in the range of our Celani experiments) but much lower COP.

Food for thought?

UPDATE#3 - Resistance dropping?

UPDATE 4 - Temperatures overshooting and other fun stuff

The last 24 hours have been extremely interesting as our bare constantan started demonstrating the same behavior that Ed Pell reported seeing with a very similar experiment in the last few days.  In addition to all the insanely useful analysis in the comments, I would like to add the following 24 chart and point out several of the features I found interesting.

Overshooting Temperature

This graph shows the pressure being refreshed to almost 10 bar while the cell was cold (note, the calorimeter runs warm, so "cold" is relative).  Then the power is turned on to 37W and the temperature in the cell rises to 511.4C, then proceeds to settle down to 499.1, or so, after a while.  This cell did not do that when operating near 400C a few days ago, and did not do that with the wires in place before hydrogen was added.  Each subsequent step since then has displayed the same behavior, though the size of the overshoot was decreasing.  The measured output power from the calorimeter showed the same basic shape, but only with an amplitude of about 60 mW, which is not beyond the confidence limits

Behavior of the Pressure

The drop in pressure is highly unlikely to be leakage, as far as we can tell, given that the pressure drop mostly stops when the cell is cooled down, and in the last few cycles, has actually increased.  If it is not leaking out, it is probably really absorbing, and our best guess at the moment is that it has absorbed ~40% by moles of Ni in the wire (spreadsheet) Figures are rough because of uncertainty about actual volume of cell after the wire and fiberglass sheathing is inserted.  The rate of absorption changes at 6:53, also.  It is after that change that the pressure starts rising while the cell is turned off.

Resistance

The resistance is starting to be interesting, also.  In the graph, the resistance value rises when the temperature overshoots, too, possibly indicating that the higher temperature is localized at one spot on the wire that is getting significantly hotter.  Then it develops little sudden jumps.  These values are small, but clearly above the noise levels.  In the latest data (so new it isn't on this screen capture, the resistance is rising after a rather larger little jump in the resistance.  

Another interesting thing is that the resistance of the wire does not come back very close to the level it was before the first heating cycle started.  And even before the first cycle pictures, the resistance rose slightly as the hydrogen was loaded.

The meaning of it all?  I have no idea.  BUT, the overshooting is extremely interesting.  A big thank you to all the people following and contributing to the analysis of these events.  Especially, we'd like to thank Ecco, who we suspect is really a whole team posting under the same name because of how much he contributes :)

Our plan is to just keep letting it cycle and load as we watch.  Should make for an interesting holiday weekend here in the US.

 One more graph to leave you with, tonight:

Note how the rate of pressure drop increased tremendously in the second set of cycling.  We also upped the current through the active wires to 1 amp in between the cycle sets.  When we were running at 500 at the 12:00 on the 29th we also saw the faster rate, though, so it appears temperature dependent.

UPDATE 5 - Pressure Bottomed Out at 0.23 Bar

It certainly appears that the wire is continuing to absorb the Hydrogen even below atmospheric pressure.  We allowed the cell to bottom out at roughly 0.23 bar.  After that, the resistance slowly increased and the wire seemed to be releasing gas slowly and then reabsorbing it quickly every so often.  Curious, huh?  Funky stuff going on in that wire as it interacts with Hydrogen. 

After observing the minimum pressure for a while, we decided to refresh the pressure and try to achieve higher loading ratios.  We are currently at approximately 62% H to Ni.  We do not know what the Cu in the wire will do regarding Hydrogen.