I’m another person trying to get a LENR device working, and this is my first post. I have a very good set-up with an H2 gas feed, a vacuum pump, and overall automated control for live reactor testing. I’ve done some Parkhomov-like runs, but I’ve seen no excess heat yet.
For cleaning and deoxidizing the Ni powder, some claim that it should be shiny when done. I’ve not seen this. I’ve had major sintering at high temperature, so for that reason I heat the Ni powder to just 200 C.
I was hoping to see “shiny” nickel as me356 had described seeing. (Or maybe he was referring to a Ni foil and thus higher temps could be used since sintering is not a concern.)
Anyhow, I tried this: 48 hours under a 60 micron vacuum with the Ni powder sample held at 200 C. When done the Ni powder looked just like it did before the vac-bake was done. So no luck.
Next I did this:
1) 1 hour under a 60 micron vacuum with the Ni powder sample held at 200 C.
2) Apply H2 gas at 7 psi (.5 bar) for 20 minutes with the Ni powder sample held at 200 C.
3) Pull vac to < 100 micron for 10 minutes with the Ni powder sample held at 200 C.
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 eight times to give 4 hours of total cycling.
After this, again the Ni powder looks just like it did before this testing was done.
Finally, I repeated the above 4 steps again, but now at 300 C. Again no luck (pic below), but there is some slight clumping of the powder when done.
Papers on reducing Ni all talk about a flow rate where H2 flows continuously. Thus the flushing method above means you can’t rely on the literature too much for guidance.
Questions are:
1) Should the Ni powder sample really turn shiny? (I have a feeling that it won’t even when fully deoxidized. Particles may be so small and irregular in shape that they always look a dull gray.)
2) Is there a reliable way to test or inspect the Ni powder to see if it’s really deoxidized?
3) Any ideas on how to improve my approach?