Simultaneous Test Runs EU/US! - UPDATE 4

The EU cells and the US cells have done a pretty good job dropping resistance.  We are about to try a simultaneous run at 30 W to see if we see any excess energy.  Our thinking is that on Mathieu's last test run, he saw a large resistance rise (dubbed an unloading), but the resistance dropped rapidly after re-exposure to Hydrogen.  So, given that it re-loads in a few minutes, we think we'll give it a shot and see if both see the same things.

We will be cooling the cells, reading the resistance, and then heating passively, like we calibrated.

Wish us luck and follow the data, updates here for both sets of cells, and, of course, the comments from eager followers.  You can follow the data in the comparison tests in the data viewer that compile the key measures from each pair of cells, now.  

 Update 18:15 UTC - 

Both the EU Cells and the US Cells were switched on and BOTH indicated excess energy as the cells came to equilibrium at higher temperatures than during the calibration tests.  The EU cell with the active wire was indicating up to 2.5W of excess power over the 30.4W input power (~6% excess).  That is well above the 95% confidence limits for that cell (~0.25W).  The US Cell was indicating approximately 1.4 watts excess, again, well above the ~0.5W confidence interval.   Very exciting to see something positive and especially simultaneous.

The indicated excess seems to be corroborated by several cell temperatures higher than calibration values.  The control cells in each location are performing at or below calibration values.  

The internal cell temperatures seem to be slowly degrading, but the external cell temperatures are holding steady.  

The resistance of the active wires is slowly rising as, presumably, the hydrogen is leaving into the vacuum.

The EU cell has been cycled already, leading to the the active wire "unloading" and rising up to a higher resistance than the wire had originally. 

Update 20:45 UTC

The cells contrinue to indicate excess energy, even as the resistance of the wires keep rising, seemingly indicating a loss of absorbed hydrogen.  In our blog post First Results from HUG Concentric Tube Calorimeter, we noted that the resistivity drop during loading seemed to occur after the majority of the hydrogen was absorbed when we tested that wire.  That may indicate that there is still a good amount of hydrogen still in the wire even after the resistivity increases all the way back to the original values.

Below is a google doc that clarifies the test set up and field names for each of the HUGnet Lab tests.  They are listed in Test Field Definitions  and embedded below.

UPDATE 3 - June 27 4:30 UTC

Well, despite having done a test showing very small deviation in performance over a range of vacuum levels, we do, in fact, seem to be seeing a significant correlation between the level of vacuum and the external temperatures/P_xs).  

I would like to thank our attentive blog watchers for raising that issue.  I do believe that the original experiment that we were replicating could have been susceptible to that problem, also.  

So, how much of what we are seeing is explained by this and how will it look next time we load and try it again?

 UPDATE 4 6-28 21:00 UTC

The EU Cell has been loaded and run a couple times  - not as good a results as the first run, interestingly enough.  Though the resistivity dropped below the previous values each time and the bulk of that change happened in just a few short minutes each time.  That seems to imply that once the path is made, the hydrogen goes in and out pretty quickly.

The US cell was left to run longer and see what happened.  There was a slow decay of indicated excess heat over about a day.  Then we cooled, added hydrogen, heated for the loading phase, and saw the rapid drop in resistance just like the EU cell had demonstrated.  It'll be interesting to see what happens on our second live run.  

Mathieu also decided to try out calculating excess heat from T_ext1 and T_ext2 and then averaging the both of them.  Malachi then implemented them in a couple of new tests for EU Cell A and B.  These are still unverified works in progress, so don't take them too seriously, yet.

Along the same lines, we figured out how to link the latest data live to a google doc spreadsheet.  Just put the following formula in a cell, change the "id" in the URL to the test number you want data for, and voila - live data for you to calculate with in a google doc.  

=importData("http://data.hugnetlab.com/HUGnetLib/HUGnetLibAPI.php?task=history&action=last&format=CSV&data[type]=1MIN&id=fc0201"&"&"&minute(now()))

Here is the read-only link to one we are working on for Live Data from the EU Cells.