This is a very interesting time for the French lab. Two targets are in sight: a new mass-flow calorimeter and the completion of the gamma detector set up. But the financial constraints remain, let me explain in more detail.
Gamma detector work
For the gamma detector, much has been done and I am trying hard to get good calibrations. I have recently got some 2 nice spectral lines from a thorium doped welding rod.
In order to maximise chances of seeing proper and compelling results from the Celani cell and other future work, I am preparing and costing a method to build adequate shielding for the detector. This is absolutely critical because the size of the NaI(Tl) means it is very sensitive (which is good), so appropriate shielding is needed to reduce the large quantity of background noise (which we don't want). Without it, the noise would overwhelm the small signal we are expecting to observe.
This specific topic will be extensively discussed very soon in another blog post.
More deep collaborations
There are some very interesting and diverse participations, especially from my friends Jacques Ruer and Jean-Paul Biberian, we’ve been able to define together the material, the process, the dimension and method to make the shielding the proper and the cheapest way. It will consist of a cylinder of copper that will support a roll of lead roof flashing. By mounting the copper tube on a barring gear, we use rivets to maintain one end of the flashing and roll the 16.5 m of 2 mm thick lead onto the copper tube.
This is meant to produce a cylinder that will be 330 mm high with 5 mm of copper surrounded by 50 mm of lead.
In addition, the lead bricks showed above, will block behind the cell and the detector to shield radiations from the surroundings. With help of the furnace I finished integrating into the lab, I will cast some custom collimation shieldings with the remains of the flashing. Hopefully then, the 4 inch by 4 inch NaI detector will be able to catch the signal properly.
However, if that paticular detector does not deliver, Jean-Paul may be able to provide a “Probe B” for our beloved friends...
Celani cells
Rebuilding Cell A and B is ongoing in order to have a lower leak rate and confirm the different phenomenon seen previously. I recently received a new set of thermocouples that should measure cell surface temperature with more accuracy, replicability and precision. Technical details of those are available here. Because they are limited to 170°C, I will be limited to 40W power input though.
I will prepare a Cell C that is intended later to be fitted into the mass-flow calorimeter. The acquisition system is different from our HUGnetlab systems. Because of this, I will need help to integrate the Live Open Science platform into the kindly donated, top-specification, National Instruments equipment that will be used. Does anybody know NoSQL databases or LabVIEW? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Mass-flow calorimetry.... TADAMMMM!
This mass flow calorimeter you see below is an amazing christmas gift made by Jean-Paul. I recently found a cryostat that enables me to cool water and run calorimetry experiments in the lab. Back in the day when Jean-Paul decided to make his own mass-flow, the mechanical wizard decided to make not one but multiple copies of his design. These copies were sitting in his lab since then and as soon as I got a chiller, he decided to give me one of the copies. This is AWESOME, thank you Jean-Paul!!!
The problem I face is related to the investment necessary to equip and run it, the MFMP simply does not have the funds. But the good news is: its chamber is so large that I can fit a whole Celani cell into it! This would give a definitive answer about Celani’s technology!
In principle, this system consist in a “double envelope” vessel, where the water-flow surround the chamber where the Celani cell is located. There is no contact between the glass tube and the water. After calibration and careful analysis of the system, we are able to count the energy dissipated by the cell located inside this vessel. This technique is very powerful and you can find a lot of material talking about this type of approach within the CMNS community and especially on LENR-CANR.org.
In order to make it work successfully, I first need some equipment that I found | on ebay that cost $670. I listed that new equipment in a new tab within the awesome expenses spreadsheet. :)
I have listed some additional items below, gathering the quotes, even without tax or shipping, the total is close to 1000€.
This quote from omega lists the exact equipment I need. There is a flow metering turbine, the tubing to convey chilled water, surface thermocouples to better measure the tube temperature on the dual-cell experiment, stainless sheathed thermocouple for inside temperature measurement and water temperature measurements and finally some “high temperature cement on surface thermocouples”.
The metering turbine will allow me to control the FMI pump I bought for 80 buck on ebay... Oh boy, that’s a story, let me expand a little on this: the guy thought it was broken due to the tilted head... It’s not a bug actually, it’s a feature! 5 minutes on the FMI pump website and you get it, right?
It’s quite a good pump, BTW that worth a lot more, but more importantly it is able to go from 50 mL/minute up to almost 260 mL/minute. IT is DC powered which means I can make the rotation of the shaft variate as a function of the tension applied to it.
The polypropylene plastic is a tough choice I decided to make. The biggest advantage of this material is the ratio price/cleanness/temperature range that it provides. PFA is definitely too expensive and polyamide is not clean enough. Polyethylene is fine but it is not as permeable to oxygen and has a lower temperature threshold. If you have and suggestions, we can debate this together in the comments as normal. I would love to hear your opinions!
The pack of 5 thermocouples is intended for better assessment of glass tube temperature during “classic” Celani experiments and will be a much better approach.
The following are stainless sheathed thermocouples. Identical to what we use to measure the inside cell temperature.
The last item on the list is a pack of 5 cement-on-surface thermocouples. They are high temperature surface measurement capable. It means we will be able to measure the temperature of the surface of the tube within the intermediate chamber of the calorimeter. Let me add, I am planning on using a vacuum pump to pull between the cell and the steel envelope, hence opening true Stefan-Boltzmann black body calculation... Finally!
Now, if you are standing, please take a seat. The acquisition equipment I will use in this project is a big improvement for the lab. It is provided by National Instruments and is a DIRECT copy of the PXIe 1062Q system that was given to Francesco in 2012!
To be completely honest I was tempted to sell it. It could have provided some serious bucks to fund experiments, but not really ethical hey! When I looked on the internet for how much you can sell this amazing piece of equipment, I discovered just how great a piece of kit it was and so I just decided to make the best use I can for it: use it!
This gift will ensure we have a internationally respected scientific standard of acquisition on this new experiments, that will add significant weight to future results. It will also allow me to provide test equipment for the Live Open Science platform as soon as we can get contributions to develop it.
Ultimately, LabVIEW is portable software, so all National Instruments will be compatible afterwards with Live Open Science...
Again, If you have knowledge of NoSQL, web-design and/or interface UI integration, please contact me. To motivate you contributing in this project, I even have an artwork from my best pet-friend. ;)
The following quote is from Swagelok and lists the necessary tubing to make VCR-type exchangeable feedthroughs. They intend to be much cleaner, cheaper and well suited for all applications. It is interesting to know that temperature with vacuum or pressurised gas is for most providers not guaranteed! It is either vacuum or pressure, anyway. Only few super expensive equipments allow that, that leaves us with this cheaper solution. But please, if you have a suggestion, Let us know!
Here is a schematic of this assembly I will use for that propose
The quantity of 25 correspond to the quantity of ceramics I have and feed-throughs I will use for all the equipment. Each feedthrough is composed of 2. Because I use 3 per cell (gas, TCs and power) with 3 cells, 9 will be used to that purpose. Plus the necessary 3 for the calorimeter second chamber. I will make the connection with ceramic-type terminal connectors.
The two last items are connecting the water pipes of the calorimeter to the plastic tubing.
Then final quote:
Above is the last quote listing the vacuum equipment required. Some are already found from ebay ($130). But these are meant to be customised thereafter by my company and my mechanical wizard. For example, the CF DN16 rotatable flange and the NW16 neeple will be cut 45° angle and then welded together to allow pulling vacuum in inside the vessel but outside the inner Celani cell. Then there are the copper joints and the nuts and bolts. The two CF DN 150 flanges are not to be counted since it is for a further project I and planning on doing soon.
Final words
Unfortunately, the status of my personal finances do not allow me to make any more personal expenditures at the moment. So we rely completely on your donations to move this projects forward. If you can help out, decide which part of the project you want your donation to be allocated towards, the gamma detection or mass-flow calorimetry, Bob and I will be very respectful of your wishes and give credit where due.
If we are able to give a definitive answer of the excess heat effect using calorimetry and show that atomic processes take place via the gamma spectrometer, there is no more barriers preventing us from confirming that Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) EXISTS and potentially we may be able to describe HOW it works from A to Z!
The 25th anniversary of Pons and Fleischmann announcement of their discovery is on March 23rd 2014. The work we hope to undertake will present an excellent opportunity to gather enough evidence and publicly vindicate that seminal research.
Finally, I kept the best for the end. The constantan treatment that was developed here broke the 50% resistance drop bar. 57% to be exact, this is very exciting and opens a lot of perspectives. Wanna hear about it? ;)
UPDATE 1: Winter jacket!
I had the opportunity to get a custom-made insulating calorifuge for the mass-flow calorimeter. This is very usefull stuff because it makes the quality of the measurement greatly improved in terms of stability, independace to external thermal changes and replicability.
When I requested a quote for that, the boss called back few minutes later offering that for free! Thanks a lot to them.
I look forward to show that to Jean-Paul. I repeatedly told me how important the insulation of a mass-flow calorimeter is, but I think he will like it a lot.
With a 5 cm layer of mineral wool it won't get cold for this winter. ;)
Comments
skills relating to SOA module, web services, SOA
features, structure, applications, deployment, etc.
My web blog - UEFA Champions League: Www.jsoccer.co.kr/.../...
it then my friends will too.
my homepage; vodka casino: t.me/s/Vodka_kazino
is time consuming and boring. But did you know that there is a
tool that allows you to create new posts using existing content
(from article directories or other blogs from your niche)?
And it does it very well. The new articles are unique and
pass the copyscape test. Search in google and try: miftolo's tools
and time consuming. But did you know that there is a tool that allows you to create new articles using existing content
(from article directories or other blogs from
your niche)? And it does it very well. The new posts
are high quality and pass the copyscape test.
You should try miftolo's tools
I know that writing articles is time consuming and
boring. But did you know that there is a tool that
allows you to create new articles using existing content (from article
directories or other websites from your niche)?
And it does it very well. The new articles are high quality and pass the
copyscape test. You should try miftolo's tools
website's post to be updated on a regular basis. It
carries pleasant information.
Yes, you are right. We need to stream the data to our server then store these using a NoSQL database scheme. Then we need to display this data using a tool available online.
This project is quite large, because it will implement tools like a notebook (python-noteboo k is an option), presentation for the protocols etc...
You can find resources on this subject and register on www.liveopenscience.org
and the schematic here docs.google.com/.../...
Thanks for recent donations, they are helping!
You mentioned you search somebody with knowledge of NoSQL, web-design and/or interface UI integration. Can you give us more details on the requirements? Do you need a distribution system for your data-feed? I.e. a system which allows you to stream your experimental data into the internet?
Ed
This is their website: www.sa-elit.net/
NICE WORK, who should be thanked for giving us such a wonderful piece of equipment?
With the kind of heat they are talking about it shouldn't take much to prove it. I did read that they are going to be using calorimeters for the first test. Then they are going to build the magnetohydrodyn amic generator for the 10MW system and do another demonstration of electric power output.
We did follow his work as closely as possible, and got similar results in different locations, however we never had the same class of wire tested. We have shown that an error on the part of Celani and a system control parameter actually means his NI week and Korea ICCF17 results were MUCH closer to ours, some of this has been noted in his recent paper updates. So it turns out, our work was more repeatable, his was actually pretty much doing the same, but had had less time to discover the bugs that meant that on re-analysis his results were closer to ours. We and Celani did not know this as we worked, only more recently - so this makes our results more robust.
Actually, Celani only made the 'clear calorimeter' to screen wires - but it was good enough to show excess heat in his opinion.
He actually has far more accurate flow calorimeters. We are moving onto that as detailed above. This is the gold standard and addresses outstanding challenges - the Celani reactor will sit inside of one so as few variables are changed as possible. If we see more out than in, outside of error margin, then it retrospectively supports the more controversial findings from the simpler, more visual calorimeter.
As ever we welcome your ideas on how we can improve on iso thermal testing of the S&G cells and Mass Flow Calorimetry for the more standard Celani cells.
Sir, it is not your efforts that I have an issue with but your approach. To me it feels like you are trying to re-invent the wheel.
If Celani already has a working prototype then surely the best approach would be to 1) use this, or if this is not possible, 2) copy ALL parameters as closely as possible, particularly the measurement techniques used by Celani.
So far you have used a variety of different measurement methods and this is frustrating to see as the results are neither here nor there. IMHO all you have proven is how difficult it is to measure heat and this sides greatly with the skeptics that LENR is just measurement errors.
The key to success is not to give up. We are persisting despite running a severe deficit, every wild claim or unsubstantiated patent application presents a challenge and we are basically just a few volunteers with families to look out for. When we put out an effective call above for a few hundred Euro to support the lead shielding, we saw no response. That does not mean we will stop, it just means we need to wait until it can be afforded.
We have a good plan for the road ahead as funding allows.
- continue to carry out dissociation experiments (US) - ongoing
- properly test for gamma spectra (France) - awaiting lead/copper funding
- test for excess heat using mass flow calorimetry (France) - awaiting funding for items detailed above
- test for iso thermal differential bucket test of S&G (Switzerland) - funded, awaiting for time from Nicolas
We never had direct access to Celani's cell or designs, they were built by a third party as part of his industrial and government funded/supporte d research. This meant we were forced to design our own version.
We have an unprecedented hands-off collaboration with a key scientist in the field, this was very brave of Francesco Celani, despite asking pretty much every headlining player in this space to offer even a fraction of his openness, we have seen nothing.
I think it is unfair to say we have had no positive results, believe me, if we had seen nothing at all, we would not be pursuing this. We replicated observation of resistance change, multiple counts of apparent excess in aggregate in favour of the active cell. Lately - we have had some success in wire preparation.
The reality is - we set out to show incontrovertibl e results and that requires us to systematically address each defensible challenge, that is what we are doing. It is not glamorous or easy. There are other organisations that have been funded in the $Millions and even $Billions over decades that you could apply your observation to.
Paul has it about right.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but 18 months seems a fairly short time in this line of work. I also think the natural progression for a self-directed effort like is to start with great ethusiasm and go for a quick win - the tantalizing "low hanging fruit". If that works great, but it not then step back and start a more systematic and difficult approach. Perhaps that's what happened, on the other hand, by creating their own version of Celani the experimenters probably learned a lot more than if they'd simply copied the design. I'm going to be patient (easy for me since I'm just skulking the blogs;-) and wish the experimenters success! (I also have the prespective of having followed hot fusion since the 70's. I vividly recall an article around 1977 predicting break-even by the year 2000. Ugh.)
You started this endeavour 18 months ago and are no closer to obtaining any positive results. I know you mean well and are doing your best but I feel your approach is wrong. What you should have done was to first and foremost check Celani's test rig and CONFIRM the LENR effect. Only then should you have tried independent replication and the rest of the open source stuff.
Thanks for the comment, we are aware of Mills' work and BLPs recent announcement and we are reviewing new information.
We hope that their up and coming presentation is done in a manner that leaves no doubt about the COP regardless of underlying process.
RSS feed for comments to this post