me356: Reactor parameters [part 1]

Are the lenr-forum chat logs from replication trials available?

So yesterday I jumped down the rabbit hole and followed the amazing trail of information posted by @me356 since Feb 2015. He is clearly a polymath, with a remarkable ability to pull from skills in many areas including electronics and programming. He has built his own PID, signal generator, data recording tools, and calorimeter. I have reason to believe he may not be working alone, but only because he occasionally used the pronoun "we". He began with a Parkhomov-style replication and used lenr-forum as an ersatz lab diary and sounding board. Some of the questions he poses show depth. For example, if you have an inefficient heater and make it better, how would you tell the difference between improved efficiency and high COP? He has an incredible work ethic, his apparatuses show refined workmanship, he is cautious about both safety and privacy, and is both patient and goal driven.

In his initial work, he made discoveries about absorption of hydrogen and the role of pressure (and vacuum) and temperature, but no anomalous heat. Around this time (summer 2015) @me356 dove into the papers of Cellani, Piantelli and other older works. @me356 notes the similarity of LENR devices and commercial off-the-shelf neutron generators. He believes that LENR has been around for a century. I suspect he is referring to works by Irving Langmuir at General Electric from 1909 to 1927. Langmuir saw anomalous energy in his experiments on atomic hydrogen plasmas generated from tungsten electrodes. Neils Bohr convinced him this would be contrary to the laws of thermodynamics and Langmuir should not ruin his career by publishing.

@me356 ran experiments that improved his control of hydrogen generation from Li / LiAlH4. He grew to see Parkhomov cells as limited, and switched approach from external to internal heating by inductive heating and also from nickel powder to nickel wire. He developed a relationship with MFMP that appears to have been mutually beneficial, but parallel, not fully intertwined. In mid-October 2015, @me356 ran an experiment with an iron-foil lined reactor and reported "Excess heat is visible even at 200°C, but there is just 1W difference. At 300°C it is around 3W and at 400°C it is more than 5W."

The tone and style of @me356's communications changed significantly soon after this. Was there something about witnessing over-unity COP that changed him, or perhaps once he entered unexplored territory he had less need for the discussion? Over the four months from November 2015 through February 2016, I found relatively fewer posts. His posts were less of a lab notebook and he expressed frustration with the skeptics. And yet this was an important period for his work.

In the winter of 2016, excitement around LENR began to grow exponentially after Andrea Rossi's announcement that his 1 year 1MW test in a customer's plant was finished and the report by the Expert Responsible for Validation (ERV) was imminent. The world of LENR has taken on a carnival atmosphere. And yet @me356's quiet progress may overshadow all of the Rossi circus in the long run.

In March, @me356 reported "For last few months I have made many of these (wire, not powder) reactors, all with the similar design, different size, ... And each one generated excess heat. Calibrations and post-calibrations and all kinds of measurement were done with expensive equipments so there is not a big room for an errors." He reactivated the "ME356: Reactor Parameters" thread as he dusted off his early nickel / LiAlH4 powder reactor, but applied what he'd learned in his later work. He declared "Now I am able to turn the excess heat on and off on will. This is something that allows me perfect verification and comparison. Achieved COP was only around 1.5, yet I didn't expected to be high as with my other reactors."

LENR researcher Francesco Celani joined the lenr-forum.com discussions in March 2015. Celani soon took note of @me356's efforts, offered suggestions for catalysing hydrogen dissociation, and invited @me356 to correspond by email "to increase the overall efficiency in the comunication, and to avoid that other people will spend (a lot) of time in too-much technical details." The discussion community objected and both Celani and @me356 appear to have opened up on the lenr-forum board about their work.

Most recently, @me356 built and tested two new reactors. The first reactor, a 5kW prototype, "melted, excess heat was present, fuel chamber boiled, hydrogen catched fire." The second reactor was a complete change of direction "utilizing plasma discharge in a non-arcing mode with very high H1 production" inside a transparent quartz tube and "not loaded with any Lithium, only trace of Nickel and mainly Tungsten." He reported "I have found that there was high energetic neutron burst ... excess heat was triggered at 350°C ... reactor glowed enormously (purple to white color)."

@me356 seems open, discussing the effect of pressure and temperature profiles. He refers to a stimulus that can be enabled/disabled. "Because temperature increased so high (just in 1 second) I have immediately turned off the stimulation as I was afraid." But it is not clear to me what form that takes. In early work, he mentioned he had designed a circuit for producting waveforms and other signals. The stimulus is the card he holds closest to the vest

@me356 is working to increase COP to 3. His vision is a simple, safe reactor that is accessible to everyone. He says full details of his work will be revealed, he will conduct unambiguous calorimetry to prove COP, and he will invite skeptics to perform any tests they wish.