First Powder Experiment - RF Voltage UPDATE #1: Sometimes Delays are Good
The day is finally here! Almost.
Next week we'll initiate the first of our many powder experiments planned, the RF Voltage experiment.
We'll be using reactor 3 from our previous powder investigation; this guy is unique in that we aren't using Ni NANOpowder but more like MICROpowder - it's filled with Ni 255 with averages ~2+ μm clusters. The Ni also has some company as we blended it with 10% by wt Barium Titanate (BaTiO3). This powder is piezoelectric, meaning it will flex and deform in the presence of an electric field. With these noise-makers surrounded by Ni particles, an AC voltage across the bulk may make for some exciting data.
I have a few puzzling questions and would like to sample your knowledge, if I may. We can better tailor the experiment and even save some time if we can sort out what's what in R3.
-When we originally assembled this reactor, it was baked out at high temperatures (~300°C) not knowing then that the BaTiO3 had a Curie Temp of 120°C. If we heated past the Curie point, will it permanently lose it's piezoelectric properties or just while the material is above that temperature? We did not bake out the cell when we vacuumed it this time around in order to avoid any potential for further damage to the barium powder.
-What frequencies should we try? Or what frequencies interest you the most? The RF generator we have on the cell can reach 2MHz. We realize this won't cause significant resonance in the Ni lattice, but will cause larger vibrations in the powder from the barium titanate, assuming it still works!
-How long should we apply these frequencies to the powder?
-Do you think the bulk vibrations will have any effect on loading? If so, we might apply the voltage during H2 loading to investigate any initial effects or faster loading rates that can be observed.
-Any other concerns or input?
We need to put LENR1 (the computer hosting the reef experimets) on our server, and will have this experiment hooked up and ready to begin H2 charging next week.
I also updated the Reef Doc with links to the experiment's protocol at the top as well as the experimental log for all powder experiments. I intend to have all the powder experiments centralized in this document when they begin.
Thanks for reading!
Update #1: Sometimes Delays are Good
Here's a thorough rundown of the past couple of days. . .
Since the last post we've gotten R3 installed in the H2 manifold on the powder reef and have encountered several problems. The first HUGnet board for the temp and pressure sensors malfunctioned, which had taken us all of the morning to conclude. It's a rare occasion that we find fault in the boards.
We then tested a new software release that had better-tuned output processes only to find there was a ground loop in the wiring. Even after we had fixed that issue, the levelholder process had a few bugs in it. This gave us some time to take a step back and look at our power wiring.
These are the old-school power shunts we'd been using for the powder reactors. The thick black and red wires connect the power supply and the band heater, which is bridged by the 4 cat5 wires in blue/white and green/white twist across 10 parallel 1 Ohm resistors. This old design used all these cat5 wires, which consumed half a HUGnet board with 4 pins needed for differential inputs. The 10 parallel resistors were also hand-soldered and quite bulky, visible beneath the black shrink wrap. It was time for a change, and we had the time to do it.
This new setup shares a common ground across 4 different power supplies. This allows us to free up the boards to use single-ended inputs for both the voltage (blue) and current (green) readings. We've upgraded the sense circuitry to consume 1 board for 4 power supplies instead of half a board for 1 power supply. And the new perforated board with power headers and single-resistor shunts is pretty sleek. This gave us several advantages.
First it saves us a lot of room with a far more condensed and centralized design. We can fit slim wires in the conduit and align four power supplies on the same DIN rail with the shunts and HUGnet board. No more bulky shunts muddling the reef!
It is also easy to visualize the organization of the power supplies to the reactor heaters as the power sits directly beneath their accompanying reactor. All around we've seen many inclusive advantages that better organize and simplify the reef's construction. The old dogs have adapted to some new tricks.
With that out of the way we can now focus on the specifics in applying the RF voltage. I'll be updating the protocol with some more details soon, taking into consideration the outstanding feedback this post is getting. 
Comments
Better off just wrapping the outside with a pipe testing transducer for pumping Hz Lamb Waves into the thing.
Just put these up over at the Lenr news site,
Can't see most of the plugin required stuff on your site.
Lamb Wave homework
Laser pulsed Lamb waves
dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/8296
einstein.drexel.edu/~bob/TermPapers/Moorman_.QMProject.pdf
sciencedaily.com/.../...
en.wikipedia.org/.../...
phys.org/.../...
Quenches and lattice simulators for particle creation
Arxiv 1212.1981v1
Yes, that report formed the basis for my hypothesis that the BaTiO3 might be reduced in H2. One key finding is that the reduction is suppressed in the presence of water vapor. It seems likely that the NiO will be reduced fairly quickly, resulting in substantial water vapor in the cell.
It's also pertinent that this study used solid (sintered) ceramic test samples. The micro-particles of BaTiO3 in powder cell #3 might reduce fast enough that the gradual increase of H2O from Nickel reduction isn't significant. When the cell is next opened, looking at the powder for the color changes mentioned will tell us what actually happened.
However if you have any basic sketches or designs we are always open to fabricating them!
What is the drive capability of the sig. gen.? If the cell impedance is 1 ohm, 20 volts RMS = 400 watts of input! Maybe a wideband audio power amp could be be used to really shake up the powder. Since physical agitation is the desired effect, I think 10 watts at 20 KHz would be more effective than 10 mW at 2 MHz. You can monitor the input power with a small series resistor, a bridge rectifier and a spare A/D channel.
One way to get surface plasmon resonance in nanoparticles is to simply laser them with a wavelength which is larger than the skin depth, so that the fields can propagate inside the material and 'build up' with internal reflections prior to attenuating. You want a nanoparticle with a resonance frequency which is the same as the lattice (phonon and other?) frequency(ies).
"When we originally assembled this reactor, it was baked out at high temperatures (~300°C) not knowing then that the BaTiO3 had a Curie Temp of 120°C. If we heated past the Curie point, will it permanently lose it's piezoelectric properties or just while the material is above that temperature?"
There's an IEEE article on making piezoelectric components by ceramic injection molding of BaTiO3 powder. This process includes sintering at high temps, and still yields working parts.
Defkalion uses sparks generated by means of one or two spark plugs.
If I'm not wrong in a car system the time of sparks is order of ms with an high peak one-twentieth of this time.
DGT complain a fast depletion so the repetition rate could be faster compared with a common rate of the spark plugs of an engine. Pulse width defines the spectrum extention, repetition rate changes the frequency separation between harmonics.
Regards
That is essentially just what we are discussing when I speak of "wideband-orien ted impulse" stimulus, as pulses of finite duration are essentially, for the purposes we're interested in, an approximation of an impulse (the theoretical mathematical construct of an instantaneous spike of infinite energy) split in two and spread out in time. The strength of harmonics generated are proportional to the edge rates and amplitude of the square-ish pulses that are realized in practical circuits delivering these pulses. Repetition of pulse/impulse stimulus is presumed, but at what sort of rate? Defkalion has one notion, Brillouin another, and for our system? TBD...
considering that you don't know which is the right frequency to be set in your experiment and you are in trouble, why you don't generate a Pulse train stimulus that contain a lot of frequency (harmonics) from low to high frequencies?
Obviously the level of each single frequency could be too low but just to start simply the exploration of the RF bandwidth could be the case to attemp.
Regards
Piezo -sourced ultrasonic stimulation of lenr has been reported by several researchers in electrolysis cells. It's thought to involve cavitation and nano-bubbles as the triggering mechanism. I don't see how this would apply to a dry powder cell, but one never knows for sure...
Ok, I'll read up on acoustic phonon generation and propagation, thanks. My initial search yielded semiconductor-o riented research that starts off well over my head, but that'll change.
I think you may be right in suggesting a wideband-orient ed impulse or even spark-gap generator, as a simple experimental starting point at least. However, as you mention, most of the energy will be wasted, and if we fail to deliver sufficient energy at the required frequencies, the experiments could essentially yield a false negative result. This would only matter in so much as we choose to interpret the result. If a better-focused concentration of energy at the relevant "active" stimulus frequencies may yield positive results, as Brillouin seems to have found, then a more closely-directe d search would seem to be indicated. Hence, regardless of the outcome of the broad-spectrum stimulus experiments, it seems to me that further, targeted searching will be warranted.
I think the idea is acoustic stimulus of the nickel nano particles, to make compression waves in the lattice. At 10 mHz the acoustic wavelength in Nickel is 0.4 - 0.6 mm, depending on the propagation mode. So the effect will be more diffuse, generally shaking things up and adding non-linear energy to the system. Most of it will turn to heat, possibly localized if there are standing waves from the cell dimensions.
The half-wave acoustic resonance in a 2 um Nickel particle is around 1 gHz, not possible for piezo generation. But a nanosecond electric pulse would do it. At this short wavelength acoustic waves start to act like energetic particles, called phonons. This technique is being pursued by several researchers, Brillouin foremost. I like the idea of a triggered spark gap for generating pulses. Other proposed sources include a salvaged microwave oven circuit.
What sort of effect you are hoping to achieve with the stimulus? Perhaps you'll need to characterize the piezo response time in order to tune the circuit. Absent predictive response information, I'd suggest sweeping across as wide a range of frequencies as you can muster (maybe scrounge up another RF generator or network analyzer?) and then observe the piezo response as directly as possible, in order to characterize the time-domain response of your grain sizes.
The chemistry of this stuff seems to be very complex. Since it's used in semiconductor thin films it's also well-documented . One reference I found showed the use of annealed BaTiO3 as an infrared detector. Some of the reduction products are semiconductors (depending on trace impurities) so lots of interesting, complicated stuff could happen...
Can you generate a pulse train from the RF generator. That way you could look at the other parameters and maybe even the electrode impedance in between the pulses. Something as simple as a 555 and a couple of fets could be used to do this. Start with a 1 kHz pulse rate of 1 mHz stimulus. You might be able to hear the cell sing!
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