jeff: Celani-Type Replication

@jeff: besides wire preparation from high temperature reduction of NiO, do you think the low pressure used (in the [mTorr - Torr] range) could have had a positive effect?

By the way, this experiment once verified with other methods and replications could be a much safer and cost-effective alternative than using Ni+LiAlH4+Li powder for demonstrating LENR.

Finally somebody replicated!

Few months ago I have conducted quite same experiment - http://www.quantumheat.org/ind…elani-rossi-mash-up-me356
And results were very interesting and confirmed for a lot of times. Today I am working on something much more interesting. Comming soon.

It is interesting to see these results.

I've some comments:

(1) The radiation meter decay does not look exponential (try measuring half-life at different times). Rather it looks linear with a soft tail.

(2) Although radiation levels are significantly higher than your initial background, the actual background level varies from this enormously (180mRem/year Canada up to 26000mSv/year northern Iran - admittedly a special case).

(3) Natural radiation is often found in mildly radioative dust. Also, if there have ever been radioactive materials used where you have run the experiment there could be some low-level contamination, but the levels you observe are consistent with dust.

(4) One mechanism for these results would therefore be radioactive dust distributed by convection currents from the heating and gradually settling afterwards (the timescale looks about right).

I'm not sure about the local radioactivity, I think it would need more information, but different materials do have different radioactivity at low levels, as well as the possibility of radioactive surface contamination from dust etc.

Obviously you are in a position to investigate such causes with controls etc.

Best wishes, Tom

PS - obviously this hypothesised mechanism is systematic, in the sense that it might be expected to affect a number of experiments.

@jeff: for disclosure, I personally think the low pressure might have been important, especially during the "loading" phase rather than the "reduction" phase. It will be interesting to find out if it's the case.

In the paper linked in your document the fast reduction process was performed at 6.67 kPa (0.0667 bar). The temperature range where NiO reduction occurs rapidly is indicated to be 1173−1593 K, with the lower bound of this (900°C) being slightly higher than the 800°C temperature you chose. This might or might not be important, it could be worth trying to check out the effects at higher temperatures and with a larger NiO layer.

You might also want to consider using constantan like Celani did: Ni-Cu alloys apparently are better at dissociating H2 than pure Ni or pure Cu. As Piantelli also apparently used surface-treated steel or nichrome ("Clunil") bars/rods in the past (see his 1995 patent), performing the same process with oxidized steel or nichrome wires should be interesting too.

Very interesting!

may I suggest you perform the same type of test, but using a steel wire, where LENR would not be expected to happen.

If we assume LENR would not occur in steel, you could, by using steel, confirm that artifacts (like The suggestion from Thomas of radioactive dust) is not the cause when using Nickel wire.....

@oystla: as I previously highlighted, in one of the examples in his 1995 patent Piantelli used AISI 316 steel as the active material. In his original patent nickel metal doesn't seem to be as important as often suggested by others or as implied in the papers Piantelli published in the '90s; the effect seems to depend more on the surface structure of the transition metal used rather than the metal itself. So, provided that the same high temperature oxide reduction method used by Jeff can work efficiently with metals other than Nickel, similar effects should be expected from steel too:

Quote from EP 0767962 B1

Example 3

On a 90 mm long bar with a diameter of 5 mm, made of AISI 316 steel which has been tempered at 400°C to eliminate internal stresses, natural hydrogen (D/H = about 1/6000) was made to adsorb with the method of immersion into acid solution and then both immersion in gaseous environment at the absolute pressure of 600 mbar and application of a magnetic field of 1 Tesla obtained by means of coil 9 wound around the core.

The chamber containing the bar was then brought to a temperature above Debye's constant and precisely at 314°C.

The startup was accomplished both with the thermo electric method and by the thermal stress method due to gaseous recombination.

During the reaction, a net total average heat of 2.64 MJ was removed per day, for a period of 34 days, after which the reaction was stopped with a slow shutdown obtained with cooling below the critical temperature.

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How are you measuring the radiation?

Is the wire magnetic?

Can you add a permanent magnet to increase the field?

Nice !
More evidence.
May be the VERY long length of wire you used was a factor in getting such a strong signal. MFMP is struggling with tiny wires, which may have caused some signal but undetectable.

Jeff,

Beautifully done. If it were me, I would try the following next.

I'd try 4 more things. Repeat what you have already done 5 more times (also put a lead shield in front of the detector while it is running to see the effect). Also try moving the lead shield to all different sides of the detector. Run again with Kanthal wire (there is no theoretical reason to expect you would see radiation with this). Then run one more time with fresh nickel wire in normal atmosphere (or vacuum). Then run that new nickel wire again under H2.

Congratulations Jeff! Very interesting results, looks very promising. I assume you protect yourself well against radiation? Although you mention you were using a calorie meter, I did not see details of excess heat. Did you measure any?
Good luck with your future tests, and be careful!

Quote from Jack Cole

there is no theoretical reason to expect you would see radiation with this

Why not?

EDIT: for example, Leif Holmlid uses porous K:Fe2O3 catalysts as the active material. Cr and Al (included in Kanthal, a FeCrAl alloy) are common secondary elements typically used in these catalysts.

EDIT2: while Kanthal wires develop a passive oxide (Al2O3) layer if heated in air for a prolonged period of time at mild temperatures, if they are heated very high temperatures right away, oxidation should reach the innermost layers, which can subsequently be reduced in hydrogen. The resulting porous Fe and Cr structures on Al2O3 (which cannot be reduced in hydrogen) would in a way be close to that of some ceramic-supported catalysts.

brian ahern
Ni is magnetic to its Curie temperature of 355 degrees C. Below the Curie temperature, electronic spins are aligned. Above the Curie temperature, spins are random and only align if an external field is applied. In this experiment, I would expect a magnetic field to be present because of the current passing though the coiled wire.

Rossi's work with flat, layered reactor cell designs suggests putting the reactor between charged plates achieving acceleration of electrons to 10s of KeV. That also provides a mechanism for direct production of electricity.

Thomas Clarke wrote:

Quote

(3) Natural radiation is often found in mildly radioative dust. Also, if there have ever been radioactive materials used where you have run the experiment there could be some low-level contamination, but the levels you observe are consistent with dust.(4) One mechanism for these results would therefore be radioactive dust distributed by convection currents from the heating and gradually settling afterwards (the timescale looks about right).

Interesting idea. I wouldn't fully discount it, but it seems unlikely that this dust would accumulate right around the cell in a more concentrated manner than it would be otherwise in the immediate environment. Should be easy enough to rule out with further testing.

Jack Cole
" but it seems unlikely that this dust would accumulate right around the cell"

If the cell has an electrostatic charge, it could attract dust.

OK, do another test with a nitrogen atmospehere and fresh Nickel wire. No LENR and therefore no radiation should be detected....

Quote from hendersonmj

brian ahern
Ni is magnetic to its Curie temperature of 355 degrees C. Below the Curie temperature, electronic spins are aligned. Above the Curie temperature, spins are random and only align if an external field is applied. In this experiment, I would expect a magnetic field to be present because of the current passing though the coiled wire.

Rossi's work with flat, layered reactor cell designs suggests putting the reactor between charged plates achieving acceleration of electrons to 10s of KeV. That also provides a mechanism for direct production of electricity.

http://www.nature.com/nnano/jo…tml?WT.ec_id=NNANO-201305

Above the curie temperature in magnetic material, the submicrometre magnetic domains form nanometer sized skyrmion-like nanometre domains that become synchronized.

Quote from jeff

It may have, but until I attempt to repeat the experiment at higher pressures, it remains uncertain. It only by a a fluke (power supply could not heat the wire sufficiently with 1 atm of H2) that I even considered using reduced pressure.

Jeff

Radiation seems to show up when the power is low... the pumping is below the threshold for the LENR reaction to fully establish itself. There is a sweet spot in the power applied that you might have hit where the LENR reaction is just about there but not quite there, MFMP sees this in their gamma burst recently during reaction initialization.

Suggest a control experiment in which wire is heated in a helium or nitrogen bath to prove that the effect noted is due to H2 loading in the Ni.

Suggest null hypothesis possibility that it may somehow be due to long time constant heating/temp increase within the GM tube gas, and that possibility needs to be eliminated, i.e. that the experiment increased the gas temperature within the GM tube by say 10C or 20C (a reasonable amount considering the positioning and the aluminum foil heat reflection) and that the time constant for the GM gas could be around your measured 63 minutes.

Also moving the GM tube to avoid neutron activated surroundings doesn't eliminate the possibility that the GM tube itself was neutron activated.

Other than that, my opinion is good work.

Note: a photo of the entire apparatus assembly when running would be helpful showing the outer quartz tube, conflat, and GM tube placement. A picture says 1000 words.