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Close Up Pictures of the Cell

Written by Ryan Hunt on .

Celani suggested to Mathieu that maybe our wire is damaged.  So I took pictures of the wires to send on to him.  We'll see what he thinks.  The pictures are taken at 8 megapixels which is enough to zoom in nicely on the wires and all the other details.

Click on the pictures below for the full resolution image.  The Celani wire is the lighter colored one.  Note the texture on it and the little flaky bits.

The slight brown smear is actually melted plastic on the outside of the glass from the laser thermometer.   :(

There is a good chance that the flaky appearance and the shiny spots are an indication that the wire is damaged.  If that is the case, Celani suggested there may be a way to reheat it in oxygen to try to "repair" it.  I'll keep ya posted on what I learn.  

 

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0 #14 Ecco 2012-11-20 09:52
@Ryan Hunt: here's a very simple 3d version:



(larger: i.imgur.com/NR17I.png )

In practice I think you might want the heater (blue) wire have one or two more turns on both mica ends in order to heat the active wire (red) more uniformly.
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0 #13 Eric Walker 2012-11-20 06:32
Regarding "repairing" the Celani wire by heating it in oxygen, see the article, "Are Oxide Interfaces Necessary in Fleischmann–Pon s-type Experiments?", here:

iscmns.org/.../JCMNS-Vol8.pdf
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0 #12 Ryan Hunt 2012-11-20 03:06
@ James - We have not re-wrapped it at all. We put a tiny snip of the wire under our SEM. The published pics were from a slightly better machine that Mathieu got to use.
I have been worried about unwrapping the wire at all for fear of breaking it. They aren't easy to come by.
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0 #11 Ryan Hunt 2012-11-20 03:04
Nice picture, Ecco. Maybe we can work that into the next gen cell.
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0 #10 Ecco 2012-11-20 02:56
About wire wounding style. Would this make sense to you?


(larger version: i.imgur.com/HOzte.png )

Red: active wire - above
Yellow: active wire - below

White: heater wire - above
Gray: heater wire - below

Wouldn't this arrangement allow heat to spread more uniformly along the reactor length?
It would also keep both wires always at a distance between each other. Little to no risk of short-circuitin g.
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0 #9 Ged 2012-11-20 02:29
Very nice pictures!

Dang... this is saddening if indeed the wire is damaged, and would confirm some suspicious.
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0 #8 James Bryant 2012-11-20 00:26
Thank you for such excellent pictures.

Please accept a question from the peanut gallery.

How many times have you rewound this same wire? There must be a limit..Especial ly considering the SEM pics you posted that revealed separation back then.

New wire time?
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0 #7 Ecco 2012-11-19 23:59
BTW, during the first loading you used an input power of 50W, this time it's a bit less.
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0 #6 Ryan Hunt 2012-11-19 23:39
Yes we had fun attempting the repair. I am preparing a video and blog post with some data.
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0 #5 Ecco 2012-11-19 23:38
@Lu: I'm not a MFMP team member, but if it got damaged, in my opinion either it was already so, or it got damaged during one of the first runs where almost 100W have been applied on it directly for an extended period of time.

Maybe high input power should be attempted using mainly the heater wire. From the photos it looks thick enough to be able to withstand a large power, and in case it might even be replaced with a thicker one.

By the way, as of now it looks like active wire impedance is starting to drop markedly, not sure if as much as during the first hydrogen loading though.
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0 #4 Lu 2012-11-19 23:26
Can we say anything about when and how the wire became damaged? Overheating perhaps? Heating the second wire?
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0 #3 Ecco 2012-11-19 23:12
It's interesting to see, if you did heat it in oxygen, that the impedance of the active wire appears to have almost reverted back to the starting (pre-loading) value.
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0 #2 wookie 2012-11-19 23:05
are you heating in O2 now , attempting to repair it?
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0 #1 Ecco 2012-11-19 23:01
The image link for the enlarged version of the second image is the same as the first one.

It should be: quantumheat.org/.../...
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