MFMP: Automated experiment with Ni-LiAlH

@David Fojt

Yes, I have that paper. The biggest issue with SS is not the Li or the hydrogen permeation, it is oxidation at high temperature from the outside. SS may be OK if the outside of the tube is bathed in argon. However, I do not think the Kanthal for the heater coil would be happy bathed in argon - it needs oxygen to keep from eroding. The Kanthal loses oxygen when hot and needs to be soaked in oxygen continuously to replenish the oxide being lost.

Here is the plot of the data in the last day. You can see that the pressure is dead flat - it is atmospheric pressure.

This is due to the crack allowing all of the H₂ to be leaked out. Note - none of the Li or any of the fuel leaked out.

Here is a photo of the inside of the cracked reactor tube end. You can see the fuel molded into there.

I would guess that the white powder is largely LiO, LiH, or LiOH. It doesn't seem to be rapidly darkening like LAH would in the open air.

One thing struck me on viewing this that I have not considered before. Could the compaction of the fuel be detrimental to seeing LENR? If you recall the controversial Lugano report, The inner reactor tube was told to have an inner bore of 4mm, compared to this tube which has an inner bore of 3.68 mm. The Lugano tube was about 200mm long and into that volume was placed "about 1 g" of fuel. 1 g of fuel would be a sparse fill for a 200 mm long reactor tube. In my tube I have nearly that amount in 50 mm compacted into the end. Anyone have any opinions about the fuel compaction?

It doesn't look like the Li has attacked the alumina significantly. I suspect that a plug formed while H₂ was being released at the tube end, creating a transient internal high pressure that the tube could not sustain.

BobHiggins

Too bad you got the leak, could have been an interesting experiment, hope you will go for it again.

Hank Mills made a good summary of 'what we learned' - maybe reading it could verify/help for ideas going further. It is almost 2 years old now, so might be outdated on some issues but not much more have been revealed since:

http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…-rossis-e-cat-hank-mills/

Mats002

I am going to fabricate a new tube assembly. I haven't decided if I am going to expand the fuel space to 4" instead of 2" or just use less fuel. If I expand the fuel length I will have to run another calibration, but that is the only downside. The advantage of expanding the fuel space is that I can probably avoid any problems with forming a plug while still being able to put in the same or greater amount of fuel. More fuel should translate into more excess heat if LENR does occur.

I have asked Bob Greenyer to inquire with Alexander Parkhomov for his opinion regarding a loose fuel fill versus a compacted fuel fill.

BobHiggins

Regarding fuel packing I submitted the following post on ECW in a reply to Bob Greenyer a few weeks ago. I'm certainly no expert but iI seems to make sense to me if I thought it through correctly:

"I must admit I'm having trouble keeping up with everything at the moment. Things are moving so fast on so many fronts. That's a very good sign though I think.

I'm wondering if the fuel catalyst mixture is always tightly packed in the Nickel particle based LENR experiments such as the recent ones by Bob Higgins?

Could it be beneficial for the mixture to be much more loosely packed?

If the heat is initially being radiated from the Nickel particles as blackbody/grey body radiation in these set ups then perhaps the heat observed externally is only the radiated heat from the overall external surface. Perhaps in closely packed fuel it is difficult to see any Heat from particles caused by LENR as adjacent particles are also radiating and absorb heat from each other. Especially if there is additional heat coming from external sources and stimulation.

With loosely packed fuel perhaps more of the LENR stimulated heat would be radiated out of the system.

This could be particularly relevant maybe if the optimum stimulating temperature is lower than the temperature generated by LENR it self. And perhaps as a consequence if radiant thermal stimulation of adjacent particles is better served if they are slightly separated.

I find the configuration of the ECat interesting in this regard as the flat thin radiating surfaces seem to be designed to optimize the external surface of the Nickel powder layer to the thermal conducting layers and then ultimately to the surrounding medium. Which makes sense if what I speculated above is true. Also perhaps the physical size of the ECat reactor is defined by the size requirements of the radiating surface.

Just for clarification I should say the overall external radiating surface is different than the sum of surface area of the Nickel powder particles which it seems should perhaps be optimized to adsorbe as much hydrogen as possible. Possibly at as high a rate as possible. I suppose that could be important if the heat is being generated from either some kind of exothermic sorption process of the Hydrogen or from the LENR processing of the Hydrogen itself.

Even if there are additional sources of heat due to heating of lead shielding etc by x-rays or particles from LENR+ or Li7 + H to 2 alpha interactions perhaps the process above is part of the story.

(Note I suppose that other devices similar to QuarkX could be using a slightly different principle for the heat source may be not directly from the Nickel)"

Just a thought... But I thought as its relevant I might as well put it out there.

I'm very impressed by your testing approach by the way... It's robust and thorough and scientific. If something shows up either way it's good data. All the best with your future tests.

Edit: if the thermal energy is first generated in individual particles either directly as a consequence of LENR or indirectly through the thermodynamics and kinetics of sorbtion/ionization or other stimulating mechanism. Perhaps the size and surface area of the particles are relevant and constrained in some regards.

StephenC

Good observation. It deserves experimental evaluation.

I'm not sure if Its relevant here but ive been thinking about an interesting thought experiment:

The three bears of LENR particle heating

if we assume LENR occurs in a particle as a single LENR event.

1. If all the energy generated is converted to heat in that same particle how hot would it get? presumably this would be constrained by the specific heat and the mass of the particle. Too small it would maybe melt or vaporize? Too large it would maybe not heat enough compared to the stimulation required. In the middle the heat may be just enough.

2. If all the energy is used for collective ionization of all adsorbed Hydrogen on the surface perhaps through phonon stimulation, UV or soft X-ray stimulation or something else. What would be the limiting size of the surface in order to ionize all the hydrogen. Would a particle with too large a surface have insufficient energy to ionize the adsorbed Hydrogen but would the energy be sufficient to ionize hydrogen on a smaller particle surface?

With out getting into the mechanism behind LENR or even the heat source I suppose 1 and 2 could also be relevant to other sources of stimulation or radiation constraints.

Quote from BobHiggins

Anyone have any opinions about the fuel compaction?

From my tests, it need about 1/3 - 1/2 free space in tube if use lithium + Ni, depends Li amount. It expand heavilly when attack alumina. Fill tube like D-letter.

Even with much of free space it may crack when cools down - keep it hot (300C or more) if run long tests.

Iron / SS steel fuel capsule inside tube may help, H2 shields it from oxidation so it can be thin. I have not tested capsule. I think it is posible to do vacuum without metal Li and use lithium carbonate as lithium source (it is alumina compatible 1000C+) (Metal Li works as vacuum pump)

Quote from David Fojt

Eros,

According to your setting, what was maximum pressure you reached ? How you drive it ?

I keep it moustly athmospheric (1atm) in hydrogen flow, some runs 3-4atm and some low vacuum (H2). Loading Ni is more rapid when use more pressure.

StephenC

I have discussed this issue before - at the core, you have to ask yourself what is the carrier of the LENR energy? If many LENR events occur in a small NAE, and the energy carrier is phonon, then the temperature of the NAE will be the hottest with temperature falling off quickly with radius due to the small wavelength of the phonons. This would make the NAE burn out before significant energy is transferred to a lattice. On the other hand, if the energy is being carried away by low energy photons, they will not be immediately absorbed at the NAE, but can be absorbed in the condensed matter volume around the NAE. This could make the environment hotter than the NAE, allowing it to continue generating LENR events. It is like your microwave oven heating a potato - the potato can get hot without the plate the potato is sitting on. In this case the NAE is the microwave oven and the potato is the surrounding condensed matter. The heated volume in this case will depend on the energy of the photons being generated.

Of course, this argument applies to LENR being generated at NAE's as Ed Storms prescribes in his theory. Peter Haglestein suggests that phonons are involved in carrying away the heat. How does he address the temperature issue with the phonons? He says there are no NAE, but instead LENR happens one event at a time distributed in the condensed matter lattice. For example, a pair of D's fuse at a vacancy in the lattice but the next LENR event will occur somewhere else in the lattice. Peter's distributed LENR theory doesn't really seem to address the volcanoes that were seen peppering the surface of an active electrode - those don't seem to be distributed events, but rather more like a super-active NAE.

@David Fojt

David, I am considering dead volume and compaction as two separate issues. In general, I control the pressure with a back pressure regulator. I am not closing it off and heating which could cause the pressures to be extreme. The only reason that it seems that this experiment's tube fractured was from a plug that prevented the gas from escaping quickly enough.

Separately, is there an issue for LENR itself where the fuel should be spread out more thinly in the reactor tube? This could be for getting the heat out. As I posted to StephenC above, if the LENR outputs low energy photons, and the fuel is too compacted, then the photons could go into heating the fuel, whereas if the fuel is more sparsely loaded, the photons could be absorbed in the reactor tube. This could prevent local over-heating of the fuel.

BobHiggins thanks those are good points. I had a feeling I might have been bringing up ideas that have already been considered. I think if individual isolated simple particles are implicated as I suggested they would need to be quite small maybe fractions of a micrometer if my calculations were correct.

In the case of larger objects such as large particles, wires or foils then I suppose they would need to have complex surfaces structures. These surface structures I suppose could serve several purposes. 1. To potentially limit or somehow control heat conduction or phonon transmission. 2. To increase the surface area compared to the volume. 3. To maybe have in some cases particular relatively thermally isolated structures of characteristics size to produce LENR effects with in a time scale before the heat or stimulation is wider distributed by conduction. But as you say allowing the LENR energy to be radiated with out destroying the source would be desirable as well. Maybe this is a difficult balance. To me I think Ed Storms NAE could well be this kind of structuring. But then I can understand there are also plenty of other possibilities to explain his NAE such as nano cracks etc. I agree there is increasingly good experimental evidence for these localized events on larger particles foils and wires.

eros

Did you see XH in your experiments?

@Bob, I have taken a short hiatus to complete a solar project. Even still, I am working with other researchers on their LENR projects. One of the other researchers asked for suggestion for next fuel to try and I suggested an additive that I have bought and plan to try: LiFePO₄. The elements of this compound were found in Rossi's ash during the Swedish analyses. He tried it with Ni and LiAlH₄. At high temperature it showed 26W of possible XH at about 1200°C. So, I may move this fuel additive up in my schedule. While he tested it at high temperature, it was believed to be a component of Rossi's low temperature eCat fuel, so experiments with cycling from 200°C to 450°C are also going to be tried.

My experiments will resume in August, in the same manner as before.

Quote from Bob

With that in mind, why would one continue down the path of Rossi's leading?

I have never met Rossi. From the proceedings we see, he certainly appears to be a scoundrel. Yet, on the other hand, his work with Focardi seems to this day to have been genuine. I trust Focardi to the extent that he could have known what Rossi was doing and for the measurements he made of Rossi's device. Focardi measured gamma and saw the excess heat. So there may have been something there in Rossi's eCat days when he was working with Focardi. The ash delivered to and analyzed by the Swedes are from this more probably true time period. Because of my faith in Focardi, I consider that there is a greater probability that there may be some value that can be extracted from the composition analysis of the ash of that period. It was Rossi's work with Focardi that got me re-interested in LENR.

I follow the work of Cravens, Piantelli, and other LENR researchers. I consider that these people are the "real deal". So, what I plan is tempered with what they are doing as well.