Simple New 'Differential Calorimetric' Reactor Design.

Interesting photo; it's hard to believe that the tubing there would be capable of keeping the hydrogen sealed. (EDIT: I don't mean in a bad way)

I previously made that question because according to certain theories the formation of compact hydrogen species (for example Hydrino, DDL, UDH, etc. etc.) can be accompanied by short-lived exothermic effects in addition of possibly a decrease in hydrogen pressure (a consequence of the phase transition of the hydrogen atoms). These can be of course also be the result of standard chemical reactions or plain absorption of hydrogen into the Ni powder, but the latter (especially) is supposed to be slightly endothermic and not very deep at pressures near atmospheric.

Once these species are formed then a suitable impulse or some other sort of excitation would be needed to trigger nuclear reactions within it, but it's possible that (although not directly known if) very high temperatures may be capable of this too.

So my point is, with all possible caveats, that anomalous short-lived fluctuations in temperature and pressure decrease may be a sign that a more substantial reaction is ready to get triggered. If you're not seeing anything at all then the system is probably inert. In some systems the trigger is also what causes the hydrogen to transition to a more active form, but it's not the case of these tubes, at least if you're only increasing temperatures monotonically.

Quote from magicsound

For simple differential thermometry, consider wiring two thermocouples in series, with the polarity reversed. The output of the series string will then be proportional to the temperature difference between the two junctions. It is necessary to use a pair of thermocouples that are closely matched across the entire expected temperature range. as an alternative, the system can be calibrated with the two junctions at the same temperature, so the output vs temperature will give a calibration curve for post-correction of the data.

For details, see http://www.nutechengineers.com/dtmwt.html

There are at least two ways to get well-matched thermocouples. One is to pay the extra money to get matched pairs from the supplier, and the other is to make your own. Use from wire that came off the same roll, and preferably wire that came off immediately adjacent during unrolling.

Making your own thermocouples is easy. For wire bigger than about 24 gauge, bare about 1/4 inch of the wire from the insulation. Give the bare wires about 1.5 to 2 full twists. Get your oxy-acetylene torch to a neutral flame and weld the wires into a bead. For small gauge wires, it takes less than one second, so slowly pass the wire through the flame without stopping. It takes some practice, but practice only uses about 1 cm per try.

For wire smaller than about 20 gauge, I have had excellent success with a Variac (at least 5 amp rating). Run one of the Variac leads to a scratch pad. The scratch pad is a steel or copper or stainless steel plate about 5 cm X 5 cm X .3 cm thick with a hole drilled or tapped for the Variac lead. Bare and twist both ends of the thermocouple wires. Attach the other Variac lead to one end of the thermocouple (alligator clips work for this), and physically scratch the other end of the wires across the scratch pad. Try it several times and you will get a good feeling for the correct Variac setting for each size thermocouple wire. Attach a piece of tape as a pointer for each wire size. I have made good thermocouples with wire as small as 40 gauge with this technique. This might work with a voltage regulated power supply, but I have never tried it.

Now go pat yourself on the back for saving money compared to buying pre-made thermocouples, but of course you have to have the acetylene torch and/or Variac. I've only made type K thermocouples this way, so I can't speak for the ability to make other types.

Dan

Alan, unless you are using some kind of temporal-expansion probes, it looks like your switching frequency is actually 724 Hz, not 724 kHz.

In terms of B-field induction effects, the edge rate is what really matters, not the switching frequency.

Quote from Alan Smith

That's correct, thanks for pointing it out. A typo I will amend . As you see btw, nice clean waveform good dV/Dt.

Alan,

As I understand it you want to investigate whether varying magnetic fields have some affect on your reaction rate.

Two things:

You'd expect the magnitude of such an effect to be prorpotional to the switching frequency, on the grounds that edges are additive. You can always propose more complex mechanisms where some metastable active state is enabled by an edge, but that must be less likely.

Since this is hypothesised to be dB/dt related it must matter how fast is your edge, and you should characterise this to know what range of frequencies you are using. For that you probably need a scope trace some 100 X expanded...

Finally - you seem to have a nicely engineered system which can be very sensitive. I'm wondering about the use of iron (if I remember rightly) as your control once you start introducing magnetic fields. The iron will interact significantly with the field. A non-ferromagnetic material would be better - even better still would be an insulator.

Regards, THH

Not an expert: would the skin effect in induction heating occur on every particle individually or all of them as a whole? I would guess the latter, but I'm not sure.

I guess the challenge would be keeping all the particles electrically separated and preventing them from sintering, not an easy task. I asked because I tried searching some information about it and found that for the previously mentioned Fe-Ni material a frequency of about 1-2 kHz would have a skin depth in the range of the radius of the metal particles typically used in these experiments. Recalling that there have been suggestions in the past of frequencies along this range being used in more successful experiments I was wondering if there could be any benefit in matching the skin depth effect with particle size.

But it's just a simple thought I had and any correlation with that piece information is likely coincidental.

I remember about that; if I'm correct the idea was that the particles would start moving under the influence of the rotating magnetic field, as in an electric motor. I'm not sure if that would also work with a single coil/phase however. For what I proposed on the other hand the particles would preferably have to be embedded in a dielectric material, which is not what gets typically done in these replications. This idea isn't new: for example I believe that Brian Ahern in his rejected patent had something similar, but with nanoparticles embedded in zirconia. Water was also used in some embodiments.

EDIT: here's Brian Ahern's abandoned patent application, linked here mainly in reference to the dielectric matrix as in practice he did something different than these replications:

US 20110233061 A1 - Amplification of energetic reactions

Hi, I hope you don't mind me asking this but would you say it's comparable to the DSC PT1000? That's the differential calorimeter we've got in our lab and I'm never quite sure how exact its results are. Also, would you be interested in developing a software that digitizes all the data?

The evolution of reactors - First video showing the new design