Freethinker's replication attempts

@Ecco

I think your effort organize your information is great. I do wish you best with that.

You have a point with your ball mill. And I have checked out the links you gave. Further it does not seem to be an overwhelming task to make one, apart from I need to swipe a motor from somewhere ....

But I am thinking. I don't want to play with more than 1 g mass at the time. It must be a miniature ball mill for to not have the small particle plastered all over the inner surface of the drum, and on the balls by static, and hard to extract. I suspect it should be under some inert atmosphere too. I would prefer to handle my powders inside the glove box (I have the bake oven outside, but I intend to not make any more concessions in that respects). I have a hard time seeing a ball mix be housed in my box, especially since it is already crowded in the volume where I have a fair reach.

BUT: One could imagine a solution with steel balls from a very small bearing, an SS cylinder which can be sealed airtight, in which the 1 g powder is placed, together with the bearing balls, inside the glove box. This SS cylinder is then brought outside into a small tumbler, perhaps a small DC motor, driving a coke can, low mass low inertia, that has been opened up in one end. The tumbler and the SS cylinder would look like a high-energy ball mill solution, although maybe not quite the same. Possibly.

I agree in general, but it is not for me. Not presently. But the thought has been seeded.

Thanks.

Quote from me356

Very nice video.

I want to ask you in regards of baking - Did you saw some evidence that baking Ni helps the fueled run?
I mean that with baked Ni you are observing excess radiation, while with unprepared Ni it is without excess radiation. Am I right?

I am asking because it can help replicators a lot so we know that this step is necessary and should be performed always.

It is so. I've only seen that kind of radiation response when using baked Ni.

Just to give an update:

I am basically waiting for my Li to be delivered. I have already gotten the argon gas kit in place, ready to use.

Meanwhile I have today continued with my radiating reactor, wanting to pursue some strange increases in power, that seemed correlated with the mildly raised baseline activities. My take is it is the impedance changing somehow, changing how the load is perceived relative the transformer, causing some more current to flow, and modifying the voltage the transformer then is capable to supply.

Well, I used the standard setup,minus the pyro IR gun, because it was employed to measure on my bake oven.

The game plan was the following temperature sequence: 500, 800, 900 and 1000C. At 800C (well about 830 C ) I got some elevated baseline followed by some spikes to about max 80 cpm. I then tried again to block betas with the aluminium and copper shields I used before, and so no more spikes. The baseline to went down after a little while (But I think it is not so much related to the shield due to timing). The baseline remain pretty much with an 40ish average although pushing for the 900C mark in the plan, yes, even when going for a the thousand. Still having an elevated baseline, even though small, I decided to test blocking with lead, which worked fine. If you look in my graphs that would be the low part at about 15:15. Then I decided to try to set the GMC on a permanent basis at the side of the tube, perpendicular from the usually used venue, overlooking the end of the tube. Now the GMC aimed ate the shell of the tube, through the little hole usually used by the pyro gun to measure the temperature.

I did not wait for long before a HUGE signal (well, all things relative...) of 125 cpm was detected. I monetarily left the lab and ventured outside, in case it would increase further or have a long duration. After that the baseline was at a high level and there were several instances of elevated levels at or above 100 cpm.

I saw strange behavior in power/resistance/temperature already at 830 and climbing towards 900 (without any explicit power increase from my side). Had it ended at 900C at that time it would have had constituted a detection event in my calibration graph. But it did not, it fell back. The same behavior was seen after the big peak of 125 cpm. the temperature continued to climb upwards, but with a very slow pace. But it is still so that it is not a free ride. also the poser is rising, due to the impedance of the system (or so I conjecture). At the end (not seen in the graph) I was worried about the temperature of the GMC, exceeding 55C), so I moved it back, resulting in that the otherwise very high baseline (about 80-90 on average) fell back to about 50 cpm.

So no excess heat confirmed today, but more radiation seen, and the suspicion that there is something lurking just under the surface of all this.

I have the following take aways from the experiment today:

1. I can not exclude betas. I can only conclude that covering the GMC with lead from the direction of the reactor, will kill off all elevated counts, hence the source is in the direction of the reactor.

2. It is likely that there are betas and that some of the extreme lonely peaks may be such events, while some of the elevated baseline could very well be due to soft gammas and X-rays. The rationale is that while applying the beta shield, there was still the baseline, but no peaks, and without the beta there was the peaks and the baseline. Now this is in a very narrow time span, so it is conjecture. But it is not exactly unlikely.

3. Radiation event and elevated baselines seem be triggering extraordinary behavior in the system power setup, and my conjecture is that the gammas and Xrays interact with the alumina and coil in a way that changes the impedance.

4. There are a very distinct oscillation overlay (small scale) on both the pressure and the temperature, which lead me to believe that it is physical and not instrument jitter. (not easily seen in the graph, I will be back on this subject I think later in a report).

5. No preferential direction. If anything the radiation is a bit higher from the side, 90 degrees angle from the previous point of measurement at the end of the tube.

6 and the some....

In graphs: blue is GMC. In pressure/power, green is pressure, red is power. In GMC/temp graph red is coil temperature, green is shell temperature (inside insulation)

Quote from me356

Very nice!

If CPM measurement is correct, then there is some nuclear process.
And if there is some nuclear process you are on a very good way!

It is very possible that with addition of pure Lithium it can release enormous energy as you can see "lot of" counts.
So probably gamma rays are unused at the moment.

I have max of 52 CPM in my last experiment, normally there is 28 CPM average.

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Yes.

"Unused" is something that hit home with me, thinking about it. I will used baked Ni when I run with pure Li and hopefully you are right about it. I would not "mind enormous amounts" Even if it breaks the reactor. As long as it is a clearly identifiable LENR event. I all too well recognize those 52 cpm peaks. There are a few, but the average baseline is steady at some 25-35 cpm. I wish I could point at something definitively to remedy, but the only idea right now is the baking, so that would be my suggestion. Are you planning to bake your Ni for the upcoming Li run?

Quote from me356

Yes, my next run will be with baked Ni.
But I have so many theories and thoughts that I dont know where to start.

At the moment I think that I can get excess heat for sure if the process is really so simple as Russian team demonstated in their last video.
If I am thinking about it just like we are doing more efficient heat transfer, then all things changes.

Then hopefully you will see some more radiation (not too much though, as it hopefully will be used to create heat)

Not saying that you are wrong, because I don't KNOW what makes it tick. But no, I do not think it is that easy. Effective heat transfer may be a good thing, because it helps create rapid variation in pressure/temp and I think that could be a good thing, one way of going. And there may be more than one way.

Wish u the best with your run.

Li and argon gas kit installed. Environment flushed and checks out. Have used it to work a granule using a spatula. Very pliable and clean granules. Used spatula to split it into pieces. Have graphite powder as Li fire extinguisher in place as per recommendation from safety for working with Li on glove box.

I intend to start tomorrow with baking Ni, then fuel up the reactor presently holding the radiative core, using baked Ni, Al2O3, LAH and pieces of Li.

Dead space will be increased by removing most of the filler rod in the long end. This to accommodate the hydrogen from the LAH so the working pressure at higher temps will not be too high, risking busting the reactor tube.

I will run for a few hours going through hydrogenation phase, and evaluate.

I will post a summary after, and if I see some exciting developments I will make an effort to post that, too, situation permitting.

Just a quick update and two take aways so far.

I have started the hydrogenation phase, coil temp 85C pressure 1.8 bar, 12V 719mA. The Ni used is not baked. The baked Ni I prepared this morning for 2.5 hrs, got lost for all meaning and purpose as I tried to grind it, and the other powders, with 188mg Li. That mass of Life is actually quite a big chunk....

Take aways are:

1 don't ever grind your granules.
2 buy 3mm wire and not granules.

When this run has been concluded I will redo with baked Ni. The rationale for continue without baked Ni is that pure Li is a new payload member, why don't get to know it a bit before getting too serious Well, everything has a silver lining if you are an incurable optimist.

Quote from Ecco

@FreethinkerLenr2: I'm not sure I understood what happened exactly. Did the Li react with nickel powder?
Anyway, I agree it's a good idea to test one thing at a time.

It got stuck on the surface of the Li, small balls formed from the grinding. No reaction. Many of the worked/grinded granules ended up as flakes, also having the powder stick on its surface. Spillage, and general mayhem, and inably to get this catastrophe of a fuel mix into the core tube.... I had to abort and take a new core tube where I took turn to put in Li granules, with great care and finesse,and parts of the powder.

Quote from me356

Lithium is extremely soft and most probably can glue other particles to it so you can just throw it to the core and then press it with some force together.

Yes. I did that in my second attempt. It worked out. Did not help me in the first one. But I 'll get around to a new try with baked Ni Monday, and I will do it differently. This is learning. I will never use mortar for Li granules again. It get messy.

Although the fueling was a minor disaster, I got around to start a run.These numbers are rough estimates, as there were spills and general mayhem even with the second load, even though that went much better: 465mg Ni, 180mg Li, 65mg LAH, 45mg Al2O3.

I have attached the graphs. I think the curves are self explanatory if you check the unit on the different axis. Red temp is Tcoil and green temp is Tshell inside the insulation.

It is clear that the hydrogenation gave some results. There was a clear decrease in pressure at constant temperature, revealing about 2 bar @ 190C in the core (estimated to be about 50C higher that Tcoil at these temperatures). Likely this is due Li and H forming LiH. There is also the part where there is a steep increase in temperature and the pressure seem totally ignorant of that fact, maintaining some 6.8 bars. I think there have been some significant activity that will be interesting to probe tomorrow. I will run for effect tomorrow, but I will revisit the temperature range around 190C an up to 250C to see if I can lower the pressure some more.

Status as of today:

I started up with the reactor from yesterday, having Ni,Li, LAH and Al2O3, Ni non-baked.

Went first for 190-250C to see if I could squeeze out some more H2 and continue the loading, or creation of LiH, it went well, not much H2, and pressure going down. Set the target for 500C, and then there was a real bombshell. The pressure dropped really fast, into under pressure. The pressure transceiver is only working for over pressure, so it went out of range. The true pressure is thus not known. Infact, the low pressure broke the transceiver. The only event out if the ordinary was a step like rise in the coil temperature of about 10-12 C, totally out of character. That event indicate a heat source from the inside of the reactor. Other than that the experiment was uneventful, with no indication of excess heat.

I attach plot from the real time tracking in the lab. Plots are fairly self explanatory, Remer that red temperature is from the end of the heater coil, the green is from the outer shell, inside the insulation bricks.