me356: Reactor parameters [part 1]

Quote from me356

Triac is powered with 120V over transformer. There was around 80V on the coil when it failed.

Let me add my five cents in your discussion. The Kanthal do not like to work in contact with any covering, alumina ceramic too. It loves open air. I can guess that as a result, of local overheating and melting the heater wire in one place, the electric arc occurred and the ceramic coating was destroyed. In the following experiments it is necessary to provide air access to the heater and it will work good up to 1350 degrees.

Quote from me356

Tarun: actually there was fuel container exactly as Parkhomov described.
But there are more issues that can happen.

I am very curious what I will find in the reactor. I think that the fuel container disappeared.

Great ! I didn't know that. If there was a steel tube, it makes it even more anomalous. We may have something here.

When the wire fails, it opens a gap which begins to arc. Depending on the current and voltage limitations, the arc can do a lot of damage. Its temperature far exceeds that of the unbroken wire. The violet / white color of the arc shows at least momentary local temperatures of several thousand C. Temperatures that can easily melt alumina, stress fracture it and so on. Once the wire ends burn sufficiently back, the arc will typically self extinguish.

These problems are soluble. It requires some design, engineering and applied technology. Materials science, power supply current controls, a new approach to delivering heat to the reactor-- many other possibilities.

Think me356 has had a bout with The New Fire, but time will tell! I think his last test also showed presence of nuclear generated heat just by looking at process time constants during test & shutdowns. Will try to look at yesterdays shutdown shortly.
Jim

The thermocouple and its electronic monitor are very low voltage and low current devices. Electrical arcs are intense sources of broad-band electromagnetic noise. All those familiar with AM radio have seen the wide effects of such "noise". Think of the very first demonstration on EM propagation by Heinrich Hertz in 1887.... an arc. One very small yet strong enough to induce another tiny arc in a circuit nearby....

In other words, in that environment one cannot rely on the instrumental readings.

Quote from Longview

When the wire fails, it opens a gap which begins to arc

I would also expect a brief arc as the heater wire failed. There was 80V AC across the coil at the time. Electric arcs can reach extremely high temperatures. Arc welding is used to readily melt steel. That damage "spot" is probably due to the arc explosion as the heater wire parted, arced then vaporized. @me356, can you check the seal around the pressure gauge? If there was a leak in the beginning, it would most likely be at the sealed end points. The hole in the tube that you pointed out might have just been created at the end.

Quote from hendersonmj

The crowd in the chat kept goading me356 to push for 1200 degrees and to vary the current.

The image of the hot spot glowing blue through the metal shield made me wonder if this wasn't a runaway reaction.

Dude - If your heart is correct, you built a nuclear reactor. Be gentle and patient with it.

Try again, but this time tune out the crowd. Come up with a plan. Personally I would like to see it soak a few hours at 1050 degrees C to allow H time to infiltrate the Ni lattice. Watch for temperature excursions that might indicate a sputtering "flame". Then take it up in 50 degree steps an hour per step. If you need to reduce the current to stay at the target temperature, you'll know you have something.

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I don't think the crowd was inflammatory just trying to be helpful. A lot can be obtained from step responses down then recovered over areas of operation that have worked & for brief 10 or 20 minute periods. Too conservative with long thermal soaks, this process operates on a short time constant less than ten minutes as I see it. We should be to able ramp this "New Fire" up & down quite readily! I agree with me356 no need for the high temperatures that challenge equipment. Me356 showed perfect control of the process in manual & under automatic control, what we need now is an investigation of the isotope presence in the fuel to really put a nail in what happened yesterday. Could it be that the New Fire is present & we can't see it?

Quote from me356

Here is last shot from the working reactor.
I turned light off as there was no reason to observe it anymore (from my point of view).
It is quite far from my office so I decided to turn light off and close the door (and go to bed).
Pressure was still around 0.5 - 0.8bar. Or atmospheric if meter failed.

Nice blinking camera shot, you certainly don't miss much! Jim

Quote from me356

OK, reactor is in bad condition now.

It seems that it produced extremely high temperature. Maybe due to local overheating?
But maybe there was excess heat. I suspect that this temperature was far beyond 1400°C, thus heater failure must happen.
For me it seems that the fuel container or nickel was so hot that it melted ceramic tube from inside and then damaged whole reactor.
So this "bubble" on the bottom may be Nickel or melted kanthal or alumina sealing.

It was so hot that even stainless steel cover was partially melted.

This year ARPAe first put a hint in their solicitation that they would fund LENR with an example they gave for a hypothetical project that was classified as chemical-nuclear. Then a few weeks later Mod3 of the application rescinded that example. They did not say explicitly that it would not be funded either.

Quote from Neil Farbstein

This year ARPAe first put a hint in their solicitation that they would fund LENR with an example they gave for a hypothetical project that was classified as chemical-nuclear. Then a few weeks later Mod3 of the application rescinded that example. They did not say explicitly that it would not be funded either.

Hope MFMP plans isotope analysis of me356 fuel for help on ascertaining if The New Fire was present in tests?

me356,

excellent work.

In my mind it is very likely that you experienced an event of significance, with a very high temperature, and that the setup you have will eventually be successful.

Looking forward to future runs with great anticipation.

Unfortunately, arcing and burning out one's coil is never going to succeed. We'll always be constrained to a maximum temperature, probably somewhat below the melting point of the coil alloy. Further, the basic design invites coil winding to winding shorts, although some have done a great job of winding theirs. The differential expansion and contraction of the coil alloy relative to the expansion and contraction of the ceramic tube and ceramic cememt are design weak points. The coil cement is being asked to do a lot in these systems. I mentioned the ZnO content of the Parkhomov cement--- its relatively volatile, as just one of many issues.

But, these are all soluble problems... but we need to identify them to correct them.

Although this might be old news for you guys, I'm just discovering the subject of LENR and I thought this would be worth asking. I found this in a Forbes article from 2013:
"… a cylinder having a silicon nitride ceramic outer shell, 33 cm in length, and 10 cm in diameter. A second cylinder made of a different ceramic material (corundum) was located within the shell, and housed three delta-connected spiral-wire resistor coils. Resistors were laid out horizontally, parallel to and equidistant from the cylinder axis, and were as long as the cylinder itself. They were fed by a TRIAC power regulator device which interrupted each phase periodically, in order to modulate power input with an industrial trade secret waveform. This procedure, needed to properly activate the E-Cat HT charge, had no bearing whatsoever on the power consumption of the device, which remained constant throughout the test. The most important element of the E-Cat HT was lodged inside the structure. It consisted of an AISI 310 steel cylinder, 3 mm thick and 33 mm in diameter, housing the powder charges. Two AISI 316 steel cone-shaped caps were hot-hammered in the cylinder, sealing it hermetically."

Do we know if Andrea Rossi still uses a similar configuration for his hot e-cat? Has anyone tried the spiral-wire resistor coils and/or AISI 316 steel tubes sealed with caps of the same material?

All the best,
Cedric

Quote from me356

OK, reactor is in bad condition now.

It seems that it produced extremely high temperature. Maybe due to local overheating?
But maybe there was excess heat. I suspect that this temperature was far beyond 1400°C, thus heater failure must happen.
For me it seems that the fuel container or nickel was so hot that it melted ceramic tube from inside and then damaged whole reactor.
So this "bubble" on the bottom may be Nickel or melted kanthal or alumina sealing.

You said "It was so hot that even stainless steel cover was partially melted".

What was the stainless steel cover covering up in the first place? Why haven't you replaced that with something more appropriate like zircon ceramic that wont obviate that possible meldown? I think your methodology is flawed. and its ruining your experiments.

Quote from Tarun

Alumina's melting point is 2000C. Surely the heater cannot provide that temperature before burning out itself, so the source must be inside.

you know how much nickel and how much LiAlH4 were put into the furnace and you know how much heat was added before the reaction went out of control. you can easily figure out the exothermic heat maximum possible from the known value. I'm looking forward to somebody figuring it out. There's a maximum amount of chemical heat that can be released if the hydrogen reacted with the nickel or the stainless steel tube too.

Arcing, always at least 3000 C if there is a violet colored arc the temperature is very high, possibly above 6000 C-- think of arc welding. While the temperature is likely very high, the BTUs / Joules may be constrained low by the peak power available--- approximate total energy being: current flow at the time of the arc X the voltage drop across the arc X the number of seconds the arc persisted... with the obvious uncertainty that arcing becomes higher resistance as it burns back the "electrodes" but in the case of a SS sleeve could enable many paths (across a coil open, winding to winding short(s), winding to SS and back etc, etc.... and in fact all of them in sequence as the arc seeks the lowest resistance path... the ionized gases in the arc can initiate other arcs nearby....

Anyway all kinds of heat and damage without ANY necessity to invoke LENR..... sorry.

Thanks for another stimulating educational experience, Me. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Hunting down solutions to the challenges presented will make addicts of many onlookers.

Truly can hardly wait for the next round. I hear a constant chipping against a stone wall. What will we see on the other side?