MacGyver (aka JohnyFive) LENR experiment

@MS...Some thoughts...

“extending even above the electrolyte. “

Might be due to splashing up of electrolyte…

“The Ni wire is now black,”

Some possibilities (from C&W again, pps 890-3):

NiO is a green solid, but on a wire surface could look black. Forms when hydroxide (deuteroxide) is heated (the description might be for solution, but should apply to solid surface also I would guess). (Also recall that long time at low heat can often slowly do what happens faster at higher T.) Ni hydroxide would form on the surface by reaction with LiOH(D). NiO dissolves readily in acids, so you might try a quick dip in some acid and rinse to see if that removes the color once you are done.

NiS is a black solid. I would worry that perhaps you are extracting (leaching) some sulfide from the paper cover. That would take a little time to build up enough S(2-) in solution, so the timing of the black color’s appearance might negate this possibility (if it happened very early in the run (Sorry I don’t recall the details of your run). You can get S from the air but I don’t know if you could get enough to do what you see. Lots of acid rain where you are?

Notice that these are not electrochemical reactions I am talking about, just normal ‘solution’ chemistry. Doesn’t mean there aren’t electrochemical reactions too though…

Edit: Found an interesting paper on determining reducible sulfur in paper. Very low concentrations found usually. Note comments on 'tarnishing', which is blackening of course: http://www.tappi.org/content/tag/sarg/t406.pdf

Quote from can

It looks like the current live stream ended.

Yes, Utube finally quit after around 60 hours of streaming. Maybe that's a new record...

Restarted now. Here's the new link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irVifvYCTak

The cell seems to have stayed stable in the interval, now at 56 mW. The electrolyte has not changed color yet.

magicsound

That might have to do with the low frame rate of the video (6 fps, from one of those I previously downloaded--I haven't checked the latest one yet). Perhaps if you set it even lower (2 or 3 fps should be more than enough given that the values seem to be updated on-screen at 1 Hz) the stream could last longer. Alternatively, a lower framerate could allow a higher resolution for the same bandwidth, which would make the figures more readable (although this would be mostly useful for OCR purposes).

EDIT:

With the latest voltage-current data point it appears that cell resistance is still overall decreasing, so there is some ongoing change in cell conditions.

kirkshanahan

I agree with your surmises. The white deposits above the cathode are most likely due to dried residue of electrolyte carried out of the liquid by bubbles from the electrolysis. Though infrequent, these were occasionally visible during the brief high current episode just before 14:00 on 8 October.

The dark deposits on the Ni wire are almost certainly an oxide of Nickel, possibly Ni(III)O (Ni₂O₃) also known as Nickel Black.

I've seen no evidence of moistening of the paper covering the cell, so leaching of Sulfur from it can be discounted.

Quote from can

That might have to do with the low frame rate of the video (6 fps, from one of those I previously downloaded

Five FPS is the lowest frame rate available in the Manycam software used to format the stream. The most recent release (v.6.5.1) gives much more stable and better integrated streaming than the earlier versions used for the Glowstick runs.

Semi-realtime OCR test from the currently ongoing Youtube stream.

Pipe a cropped youtube stream from youtube-dl into ffmpeg for conversion into individual jpg files with the current timestamp as filename. Runs continuously as a separate process.

youtube-dl -f 95 -o - irVifvYCTak | ffmpeg -i - -f image2 -framerate 1 -qscale:v 1 -video_size 644x424 -filter:v "crop=644:424:623:128" -strftime 1 ~/Videos/capture/magiclive/%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.jpg

OCR data of interest into a comma-separated file with ssocr. It's slow; could be parallelized for better performance, in addition of being made nicer.

#!/bin/bash

SSOCR=~/bin/ssocr/install/bin/ssocr
BASEPATH=~/Videos/capture/magiclive/
OUTPUTFILE=~/Videos/capture/power.txt

rm $OUTPUTFILE

for FN in `ls -1 $BASEPATH`; do
    LND3717=`$SSOCR gray_stretch 210 245 crop 359 28 45 18 $BASEPATH$FN -d -1 -t 20 -c decimal`
    LI6=`$SSOCR gray_stretch 210 245 crop 129 315 45 18 $BASEPATH$FN -d -1 -t 20 -c decimal`
    
    echo $FN:: LND3717: ${LND3717} CPM, 6LI: ${LI6} CPM
    echo $FN,$VOLTS,$AMPS,$LND3717,$LI6 >> $OUTPUTFILE
done

Then the resulting file is used into a spreadsheet to produce the diagram above.

IN about 20 minutes, I'll do a radiation test as described by JohnyFive. I'll set the pancake detector on its back and put the paper cell cover on it, inverted. Then I'll cover the paper with Nickel foil, then 304 stainless steel, then an Indium foil. These will be placed one at a time (not layered), leaving each for about 10 minutes unless increased radiation is seen.

Now's the time to comment if you want to suggest a different procedure.

Aluminium foil and copper sheet might be worth testing as well, if available.

The optimal number of layers to place might vary:

Diagram from a presentation I linked in this comment in a different thread.

This is of course assuming that it's the same type of reaction.

Quote from can

Aluminium foil and copper sheet might be worth testing as well, if available.

I can't find copper sheet, though I had some about 10 years ago

I do have some 1.7 mm lead, and Al foil of course. I will add those to the test.

Quote from JohnyFive

regarding trying a foils you can rather change them faster. This is because there is likely Half Life around 20 minutes. So changing them in 2 minutes is better I think.

OK I will do two minutes each.

Ni foil is on. The GM count increased slightly, over maybe 15 seconds. After 1 minute it is up by around 60%.

Next I'll try the steel foil.

Count with steel foil seemed about the same as with Ni. Now the Indium foil is on it. Looks a bit lower than the previous two.

The lead sheet is now in place. Count dropped off to nominal background. Next is 5 layers of Al foil.

The Al foil showed just background level. The Ni is now back in place and the count went up a bit again, but not to the previous level, after 1 minute.