MacGyver (aka JohnyFive) LENR experiment

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Do the CD/DVDs work well with normal radiation/particles?

I have some nasty strong radioactive stuff available (nothing too outrageous, NORM stuff, but hot, like 2 billion year old pitchbende) to try them with, and a stack of DVD discs.

DVDs are not that great because made of polystyrene that should be blend with fluorescent compounds in order to better absorb radiation energy. See e.g.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23353088/

For an inexpensive plastic scintillator, you may try PET instead. PET has excellent scintillation properties though its detection threshold is high, higher than the usual CR-39 and LR-115. See e.g.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4890700

Meaning that at the end this will depend on what is your "nasty strong radioactive stuff".

Quote from JohnyFive

What I recommend is that when you will not get any interesting readings in 3 days, place the paper at the Pancake. Ideally so that Pancake is placed horizontally.

Yes, I will do that after 3 days. How thick was the Silver foil you used?

I see that the cell resistance increased slightly overnight. I have adjusted the voltage, to maintain ~50 mW.

Just testing optical character recognition; I realize that the raw data will be made available later on.

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oxaidZJBdI (the previously streamed one)

Tools used:

• youtube-dl
• ffmpeg
• ssocr
• a Bash script

WOW, very nice work CAN!

One thing I have noticed in hours of staring at the numbers: there seems to be a time-delayed correlation between short-term increase in the 6Li-I neutron count and short term increase in the GMC count. I think this might result from "cosmic-ray" spallation of the lead shielding mass. The neutrons so generated could cause activation of the surrounding materials, with short half-life unstable products generating detectable gammas after delay of seconds to minutes.

It would be interesting to see if this correlation could be plotted, time permitting of course.

Thanks again for your valuable contribution to this work

AlanG

Another curious event happened while I was a way sleeping: the cell current had dropped to ~zero. The electrolyte has turned milky-white, and the anode is covered with an amorphous white deposit.

The power supply will not current-regulate below 5 ma, so I have changed it to constant-voltage mode. The cell is now drawing ~7 mA at ~8 volts (~65 mW). The cell resistance has increased to around 800 ohms, and there seems to be a non-linear conduction barrier below ~ 6 volts. THis is a dynamic system, with the conduction behavior changing as I write.

Quote from magicsound

milky-white,

Sounds like 'hydrous TiO2' (Cotton and Wilkinson, Adv. Inor. Chem. 3rd ed., p.810-811.

magicsound

It's difficult to tell with simple plots, or at least it's not very apparent from a couple semi-randomly selected close-ups of the video data.

Quote from kirkshanahan

Sounds like 'hydrous TiO2' (Cotton and Wilkinson, Adv. Inor. Chem. 3rd ed., p.810-811.

Sadly, I have limited knowledge of electrochemistry. The deposit appearing at the anode (Ni wire) has now started to turn black. At the cathode, if there are free oxygen ions in the water, would the chemistry promote the oxidation of the bulk Ti at the low cell voltage used? Whatever the process would also have to promote migration of TiO₂ thus created into solution.

The electrolyte level has dropped about 1 mm, with white particle deposits up the cell wall around the cathode, and a witness line showing the level drop. I suspect the deposits there are solid LiOH.

"The precipitates obtained on adding base (LiOD) to Ti(IV) solutions are best regarded as hydrous TiO2. This substance dissolves in concentrated alkali hydroxide (lithium deuteroxide, although your electrolyte may not be concentrated this much), to give solutions from which hydrated "titanates" having formulas such as M(I,2)TiO3.nH2O and M(I,2)Ti2O5,nH2O (possibly like Li2Ti2O3 or Li2Ti2O5) but of unknown structure may be obtained." (C&W, p. 810, my specific suggestions as to identities of compounds in parentheses)

Pure TiO2 is white. Impurities like Fe can color it however, often making it black. (An alternative to the black color J5 saw could be nanoparticulate Ti or TiD2, as adding hydrogen to H-absorbing metals causes swelling which leads to decrepitation (small particulates flaking off) in brittle materials.)

Ti would dissolve as ionic Ti(IV) due to base leaching of the typical Cl- contaminant in typical 'Ti sponge' to maintain charge balance. I examined several 'Ti sponges' many years ago (which are manufactured electrolytically using MgCl2 IIRC) and found the Cl- concentration of all of them to be in the several hundred ppm range. That also suggests the possibilities of Cl precipitates. Also IIRC, AgCl precipitates readily and is white. Any Ag present in your system?

BTW, if you are precipitating a lot of your electrolyte out, the cell resistance should be changing dramatically. As well, gelled precipitates like 'hydrous TiO2' might well impede conductivity I would guess.

Quote from Bob

I do not remember if the cell is open to the atmosphere or not?

Thanks for the compliment Bob. The cell is covered with a folded piece of ordinary printer paper, but is not sealed. So any gasses released by electrolysis will escape, including possibly a small amount of water vapor. The white deposits on the cell wall above the cathode suggest some bubbling occurred, though none has been visible.

It's hard to observe the cell contents, due to the tight placement of the detectors and shields around it, and visual distortion by the glass container. I'll add a small video camera for the next run (with LiOD).

Quote from kirkshanahan

The precipitates obtained on adding base (LiOD) to Ti(IV) solutions are best regarded as hydrous TiO2. This substance dissolves in concentrated alkali hydroxide (lithium deuteroxide, although your electrolyte may not be concentrated this much

I calculated the electrolyte to be .04 molar concentration, and measured the pH as 11.6, reasonably close to the expected value.

Quote from kirkshanahan

Any Ag present in your system?

Only as impurities. The Ni wire is described as "Ni 200 alloy" which would typically be 99+% Ni, with traces of Mn and Fe, but no Ag. No assay was supplied.

The Ti is from a US source and was advertised as "99.99%" but again there was no assay included. The Li pellets were obtained from an Amazon seller in China, and came with an assay reference "Reinheit: 99,9% (Versand inkl. Reinheitszertifikat)"

These and other details are available in my on-line lab notes at https://goo.gl/4pW1T8

AlanG

Quote from Bob

(I am not sure J5's findings are LENR as he has been detecting radiation instead of heat.)

Well, the ‘N’ does stand for ‘nuclear’...

Quote from JohnyFive

Described behavior is likely same with mine observations. I also can confirm changes in resistance. So I am using constant voltage regulation always and change when needed.

Also I can confirm water will change to white and then rather suddenly to black. At this point I was always able to measure elevated radiation, but also sooner in some cases. I think that if the paper will be placed at the Pancake (as described earlier) you will get some interesting readings even now. But you can still wait until it is black.

The Anode should be black quite soon. And from that time it will be brittle too. But it will still work well.

Thank you. The Ni wire is now black, extending even above the electrolyte. The liquid is still milky white.

I expect to leave the cell running for another 12 hours, at least until the color changes. So the radiation test will occur at around 16:00 UTC on 9 October. For that part of the process, I do not have Ag foil available, but I do have metal foils of Nickel, Iron and Indium available, all about 0.1 mm thick. I will try them each in sequence.

It looks like the current live stream ended.

I tried to manually sample as time progressed cell voltage and current. It looks like cell resistance decreased over the past 12 hours or so. I noticed that sometimes there would be relatively quick swings in the reported values, so the graph below doesn't tell the entire story.