We are just finishing a mini-experiment where we turned off the power to the cell, let it cool (almost to ambient) and then turned it back on again. Once again, as we turned the power back on, the impedance of the wire jumped almost instantly and then curved up to asymptotically approach a final level.
This time I realized we have a nice comparison for what the temperature of the wire was at that resistance and under nearly identical conditions. The impedance jumped from 15.145 up to 15.380, presumably from the wire heating up till it achieved an equilibrium over the temperature of the cell. During the cool down, the impedance dropped through 15.380, also, as the wire was approximately at the cell temperature. If we take T_mica as representative of the cell temperature during cool down, we can find out what temperature the wire was when it was at 15.380 ohms. I get T_mica was 120 C at that point. T_mica was down to 27.2 when the power was turned back on. If the wire jumped to 120 from 27.2, that means it equilibrated at roughly 93 C above the cell temp!
Does this make sense? Are there killer non-linearities that I have to contend with?
The impedance of the wire seems to change linearly with the T_mica as it fell with no current through it.
What else would throw this off? I'm open to criticism of using this 90C as an approximate idea of how much hotter the wire is than T_mica. Maybe at higher temperatures when the spread between the T_glass and T_mica is larger, we'd have to take an average of the two to use as a base temperature. Now that we are running both conductors for the present test, we should be able to do a higher temperature test by shutting off the Celani wire and then turning it back on again. Sounds like something easy and fast and useful.
Thoughts?
Comments
It is a legitimate question, we are not trying to show results people want to see, we are following the evidence and being thorough. By challenging claims impartially and being complete, open and transparent, when we do show something - the credibility will be extremely robust and the full history of how we got there available to would be detractors.
The donations have made a big difference to the project, particularly for the website element and the EU cell. By far and away the bulk of the progress has been made from the efforts of the facilitators in raw hours donated and leveraging the resources of their various companies and experience. This has required deep sacrifice in earnings and opportunity cost, but we are serious and committed, it is more important than any one of us.
You will note that from the outset the Celani cell was just one of several options put forward for achieving our primary aim. The decision to run with it first was based on the relative simplicity of the device and the extraordinary cooperation developed with Celani precisely because this is a non-profit, international community based and supported project concept.
We have discovered so much in less than 3 weeks of experimentation and you can expect a data tsunami of rich experimentation variation to come.
Until we reach our primary aim, be it with Celani or another technology, what is so exciting is the new things we are discovering, sharing and discussing with you, this for me is what science is about. As a bonus, we may be a potential motivational force for others working in this field. If we help others to accelerate their work, such that they achieve our primary aim, then that is good to.
Fair point though I stand by the rest. Would it not be awesome if we could get experimentation al, albeit black box, confirmation of excess energy from Celani's cell? At least then we can approach the rest of what the MFMP is trying to do with great confidence. I am sure the donations would be flooding in then.
The replicated cells seem close enough to Celani's (as for the EU one it appears it will be almost identical). If his excess heat is real, it shouldn't take a perfectly exact clone to pull out since it is claimed being significant.
It should probably be more of interest knowing the success rate of Celani's active wires, which are what is supposed to make the excess heat show.
Do new wires always work? Have there been tests with wires known to not work in parallel with working ones? Surely, if it's all just a matter of measurement error due to changing thermal conductivity as some are suggesting, shouldn't this show exactly the same results with plain constantan wires?
For something so revolutionary (New Fire!) would it not make more sense, and hence a priority, to get Celani to make the time to have his cell tested?
You guys are requesting donations to aid in your experimentation . People are donating based on blind faith. What if Celani is mistaken e.g. made some measurement errors. I'd feel rather cheated if I'd donated ...
Having said all that, please don't me wrong. I've been following LENR/CF for a long time now and I want this to work REALLY BADLY. Please try and persuade Celani to have his cell tested.
The leak is actually where the wires pass through the flange and enter the cell. We are currently working on the next generation of cells that will have improved wire pass throughs.
I think the problem with these leak is the combination of your materials used for construction. Borosilikate glass has a high thermal coefficient of abt. 3x10-6 and this will build up a high pressure to your copper seal. The seal is compressed and when you cycle the temperature of the reactor, the glass cylinder reduces his length and then the scratchmarks at the end of the cylinder will find another seat on the copper ring. This could be the source of the falling pressure.
I would recommend to use a cylinder made of quartz or zerodur and try to change the way, the cylinder is bolted together.
Add some springs under the nuts to get a constant pressure to the copper sealing.
Operate all three nuts with the same torque.
Polish the ends of your glass cylinder to get rid of the scratch marks.
Never reuse the copper sealing rings.
I think this would help you to get rid of the leak.
Our relationship with Celani is amazing, better than one could imagine. The challenge is that there are very many pressures on his time right now, so we are blessed that we get so much of it to be honest.
When someone has been doing something for nearly a quarter of a century, they just do things because they know they are the right thing to do through experience. They often don't even think about it, it is learning derived intuition. In Celani's case that is not just process but engineering.
We set out to build reactors to test wire that, following discussion around the structure, purpose, ethos and aims of the MFMP, he consented to provide. Our reactors were initially designed from what information was publicly available and our own resources/photo s/videos etc.
As things have progressed, Celani has realised how serious and capable we were and from our experiments to date has noticed where we are going wrong and pointed out important things that we may be missing.
Sometimes there was an assumption that a particular element in his design was not necessary and were excluded to simplify manufacture and lower cost. Now we are in a position to better understand important parameters and reasons for why Celani designed his apparatus the way he did. The purpose of the MFMP is to discover and document exactly what works and what doesn't so that we can facilitate multiple replications. What is happening is that we are learning why Celani did things that he probably doesn't even consider worth discussing - but for multiple replication it is critical there is a full understanding of the parameters.
On that basis, the EU cell is being configured to be much more faithful to the original, but even still, things like our passthrough configuration restricts high temp, high pressure experiments and we are now grasping why it is important that Celani made it the way he did.
If Celani did have the time (and we are not closed to the idea and can from our end) bring his cell to Switzerland, then we could hook it up to our data capture configuration. The reality is, the most we would learn is the capability of our data capture to record comparable results from his cell. We would not learn the bulk of the facts that we are by taking the long road.
I appreciate this is frustrating for all that want a quick fix, but we are confident that we are getting there.
Many things are in the works.
Hi, sorry for sounding negative again, but this doesn't make sense. It is strange for Celani to request things to "go further" when a baseline for reproducible excess energy has not been achieved. There are many who cast doubt at Celani's demonstration and it should first and foremost be proved that his cell is producing excess energy.
What is your relationship with Celani like? Would it be possible for you guys to get him to bring his cell in for testing? I'd be happy to contribute towards flying him over.
@Dieter - We are working on a new cell that will hopefully be much tighter. But, as often happens, the declining pressure, which is a feature of Celani's work, also, may have lead us to some new understanding.
It would be nice if this variable is removed and the experiment is repeated after a day or two.
Since outer glass temperature is being used for calculating P_Xs, it would seem that pressure drop will only affect T_Mica and the reduced conduction of heat will equalize the temperature on outer glass. But I'm guessing this reasoning is just a big assumption and should be tested.
If you check the Celani report, he deliberately reduced the pressure a few times to keep the temperature from rising very much, so lowering the pressure apparently reduces the excess energy production. I guess this is the reason we are seeing a very very slow rise. I hope I'm not totally wrong about this guess.
While the leak would normally not be a desirable thing, it allows testing for thermal anomalies over a wide range of pressures and a reasonably long time, without manual intervention. As long as different runs can be compared each other it's no big deal in my opinion.
@lcd:
The wire appears to be already as much loaded as it can, so expect little to no additional change from that. Excess heat will also drive the pressure, however.
What about hydrogen loading, that will drive the pressure. Am I missing something?
Eventually down the road, one important control test I think would be good to do with the cell, would be to take out the Celani wire, put the device into the identical conditions of now or the last run, and then heat it up to the same temperatures with only the heating wire. Then we can watch for any slow growth in heat/P_xs with the Celani wire no longer a factor at all. In fact, replicating the slow pressure drop we have now would also be important for this control run.
Basically, only want to change the variable of the presence or absence of the Celani wire. That would give us a very powerful reference for the data of this run and past (and the future).
Thanks for the info! I guess I like to play it safe around flammable things, but does sound like it's not too dangerous after all.
@Ron and Greenwin,
The EU cell will be much more like Celani's, using the right type of glass to hold the proper temperatures that this cell can't without much higher (dangerous for the wire) input powers. It should be able to do the "complete" replication. The EU cell will be very interesting to watch, and is an improvement over the US cell in basically every way due to learning from the US cell.
@Ecco,
Very cool graph, thanks for the graphs you post here, I enjoy the longer view they give. Strange there's an upwards inflection point there. Might give David's great calculations some meat to chew on. The cell is very "cool" relatively right now, so maybe the raising temperatures are having a slight effect. So much to tease apart.
i.imgur.com/ke8U5.png
With the EU cell presumably being completed or almost completed and possibly getting the spotlight for the time being, I think it might be a good idea to leave the US cell alone running as it is until next week. Interesting data might come earlier than expected.
I think the flash point of hydrogen at 101.325 kPa is over 500C so I'm not convinced of the danger but I'm with you in that taking chances is not a good idea if you don't have to.
If one did provide an ongoing infusion of hydrogen into the hot cell it might be a way around the leak problem. It seems that there must be a leak since the rate at which the pressure is dropping it related to the amount of pressure. There could be another effect in play but I think that's doubtful. The dropping pressure causing dynamic changes in the readings is causing confusion in my mind.
I wonder if it's not time to bail on this wire and use the other wire. This time really try to replicate the test that Celani did by using a reactor and procedure as close to his as one can.
That would be a very interesting experiment, I just wonder about safety?
Still, we could do the same if we rely on the previous effects we've seen, which is that it appears when P_xs climbes to a higher level at a certain input and temperature, it'll stay at that level when the reactor is stopped and restarted. So if we held all conditions the same, and just ramped up the pressure after a stop; then we can watch the restart and see if P_xs returns to where it was (or close enough to). We can do this first without raising pressure as a control. That might be a safer way to get at the data.
There should not be a falling pressure during the measurements.
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