MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Quote from StevieH

Mizuno recommends starting rough and working with successive finer grits, as is the norm with a flatting/smoothing process. Also, as I recall, Mizuno a) never uses anything a rough as 100 grit , and b) starts at around 400 and works to around 1500 grit. This would give a much smoother finish. I also suspect this will get rid of a lot of the rough edges which will alter the nature of the Pd deposition. I have a deal of experience of this process over the years, and when you start rough, it produces the rough edges you have. But as you go smoother, it produces an increasingly well defined, burrless, clean edge

In my initial test on the mesh sample, I followed Mizuno's sequence of increasingly finer sanding grit. Evidence from the subsequent burnishing showed that the sharp burrs did not disappear with 1500 grit. It looked like the finer grit only resulted in a sharper edge on the burr. I suspect that at micron scale the Ni is sufficiently ductile that the material displaced by the sanding is not entirely removed, and is partially smeared over the edge of the land resulting in the observed burr. A further look at the sanded but unburnished material is possible.

Quote from StevieH

This leads to the second point which is that you point out that the most Pd is deposited on the rough 100 grit mesh. Have you measured the actual weight gain of Pd on the mesh, and is it sufficiently well defined, area and consistency of treatment wise, to be able to calculate the equivalent weight that would be deposited on mesh of area Mizuno used. If so, does this match the ~ 50mg that TM recommends?

With the latest test I was not attempting to precisely quantify the deposition of Pd, but rather to explore the parameter space of burnishing on Ni foil or plate, as suggested by Ed. Whether the apparent increased deposition rate with coarser sanding would be beneficial to LENR activation of the material is unknown. At least it is now a somewhat controllable parameter. Further testing will certainly be done, but not until after ICCF.

Quote from StevieH

A question you could help me with here, I have looked at this due to SiC's thermal and optical properties, but haven't found a definitive statement as to whether the SiC in question is ordinary refractory SiC, or SiC ceramic. Are you able to answer this question ploease?

I'm not sure how it is classified. There is Si-beta and Si-alpha. You can find some Si-alpha on ebay, it goes by the brand name hexoloy. IIRC the spectral properties of Si-beta are a little better but I can't find any that's easy to buy.

Quote from Alan Smith

(In reply to THHuxley)

This work has been exposed to some serious Muon spectroscopy studies at a certain high energy laboratory in the UK. And passed the test - that is one of the things I meant by verified off-site.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I've not seen any such interpretation from outside Holmlid's group, so whether those experiments actually produce mesons...

Semantics excepted... For a proponent of Bayes theory, you seem remarkably resistant to accepting new data points.

Quote from Arun Luthra

You can find some Si-alpha on ebay, it goes by the brand name hexoloy. IIRC the spectral properties of Si-beta are a little better but I can't find any that's easy to buy.

Right, I have looked at that and it is the alpha that is the high temperature sintered ceramic. I am familiar with the Hexoloy brand name. So it is the beta material which is needed for this application. I have previously bought a fair amount of the beta material, which is used in refractory situations, like crucibles and tubes, or filter foam for molten metals. The only thing I could suggest for the beta, apart from Kanthal who use rod for their 'Globar' elements, is a firm called Vesusius. In the U.K. they have made objects for me. They have standard parts, and will also make patterns if you have a non standard requirement. Of course, this is not cheap, but it isn't ridiculously expensive, either. I don't know if they would have a tube as a standard part. Minimum invoice charge will apply, from memory around 100 GBP.

Also, I have seen your video now. That is definitely the refractory beta grade, as the alpha is absolutely untouchable, like black diamond.

Also, if you look on ebay and search for 'silicon carbide crucible' you can get the beta inexpensively, but only as crucible. They are probably too big. But if you are prepared to work with it, you could perhaps buy one with straight sides and cut an oblong strip out of it. Then saw/file/drill. It is easy to work with. But be warned, it is very messy, and there will, of course, be a dust hazard to cope with. It makes superfine dust that gets everywhere.

Quote from StevieH

TM has said that a) he used burnishing as the appliction method because the other method of electroless plating was expensive due to high cost of solutions over base cost of metal content.

That is what he said, but looking back at results from the last few years, I think burnishing has a distinctly better track record.

Quote from Storms

Because this is a chaotic process, the properties and thickness of the Pd layer and the NiO content of the layer will be highly variable.

At this stage in the experiments, I regard that as a good thing. You end up with a whole range of properties and thicknesses in a mesh. Somewhere in the mixture the right properties and thicknesses produce an NAE. Since you do not know what the right ones are, making many spots with many different properties ensures that there will be some NAE. If the material were uniform, it would probably be uniformly wrong.

Quote from Storms

This process is also chaotic and impossible to reproduce with reliability. Consequently, every attempt to replicate the LENR effect can be expected to produce different amounts of power at the same temperature because different numbers of NAE sites will be caused to form.

This is what Mizuno has reported. The previous mesh produced 250 W. A new mesh in a similar reactor is producing only 20 or 30 W.

Quote from Storms

In other words, this will never be a reliable method for commercial energy production.

That's a given! No one would suggest that a crude, hand-made prototype like this could be used for commercial applications. It resembles the first point-contact transistor from Bell Labs, which looked like this:

Quote from magicsound

I followed Mizuno's sequence of increasingly finer sanding grit

That is what I find confusing slightly. Image 3 in your link to your initial test, showing 1 elliptical site between 2 holes, scale bar 50 mu, is exactly what I would have expected to see, and what I was on about.

It seems that as you say, if the Ni has not work hardened in the mesh production, it is ductile enough to make finer burrs. But they must be very fine because the edges look quite sharp. It seems that at this level of importance of every detail, you daren't even rely on what you think is experience. It seems necessary to start with a clean sheet, and build the picture pixel by pixel.

What I find quite scary is that such a small feature makes such a big difference to the Pd application. It seems reasonable to think that the Pd would gall across the flat site, but due to the burr, it clearly gets scraped of in dendrites, almost. This is what seems to have happened in the Zhang photo, where the Pd looks like a birds nest, with fuzzy fibres sticking right out from the edge. Similar to the particles in your images of how the Pd sits on the mesh.

Quote from magicsound

With the latest test I was not attempting to precisely quantify the deposition of Pd, but rather to explore the parameter space of burnishing on Ni foil or plate, as suggested by Ed. Whether the apparent increased deposition rate with coarser sanding would be beneficial to LENR activation of the material is unknown. At least it is now a somewhat controllable parameter. Further testing will certainly be done, but not until after ICCF.

This is the kind of study we need. I hope that a detailed examination of the 250 W mesh will reveal much more about the material. That project is now in the works. It will be a while before it actually begins.

I think the geometry of the cell and other issues are important, but the key to cold fusion is the reactant material.

Quote from StevieH

It seems that as you say, if the Ni has not work hardened in the mesh production, it is ductile enough to make finer burrs. But they must be very fine because the edges look quite sharp. It seems that at this level of importance of every detail, you daren't even rely on what you think is experience. It seems necessary to start with a clean sheet, and build the picture pixel by pixel.

It could be that there is little or no actual burr, but rather just a very sharp edge defined by the boundary of the land and the round Ni wire substrate. As the size of the land increases, so will be the angle subtended by that transition. The effect of this edge on the Pd is clearly that of a scraper. I will have a closer look after ICCF with that in mind.

Why not try adding some ultra dense deuterium forming catalysts (KFeO2.TiO2-ZrO2, MnO2-ZrO2) into the reactors which might achieve higher sustained excess heat. Or make sure that the inside of the stainless steel reactor tube is well oxidized (providing MnO2, Cr2O3, Fe2O3, MoO3 as possible UDD or hydrino-forming catalysts) Such UDD formed would then release mesons on interacting with background neutrinos/antineutrinos - this release being potentiated by IR from the internal heating element. A Fraction of negative muons would be created from the mesons released which then would induce the well-characterized muon-induced cold fusion reactions to form He and release MeV energy. The Deneum and Zhang replications may have failed (or only transient) because their reactor tubes may have been too clean ie no/few oxides present to form ultra dense deuterium to act as neutrino/antineutrino energy trap for muon generation. Good control expts for Mizuno's R20 which produced 3 kW power output though!

Quote from magicsound

The effect of this edge on the Pd is clearly that of a scraper.

Yes, I was thinking like a cabinet maker's scraper as I read your post. Might that also explain the needle like appearance of some of the Pd particles, especially in the Zhang image. Whenever I have made scrapers, they produce shavings similar to the particles in your images of Pd mixed with calcite. Also, if the wood surface is greasy, they produce fine rolls, like needles. If the darker, fuzzy material is the deposited Pd, Zhang does seem to have achieved a fairly even distribution. Also, it looks possible that the rolls or needles of Pd may have been picked up by subsequent actions and galled together on the flat surface? It also seems he has over done the coarser grit as several of the wires are broken or displaced.

"Optical-phonon —assisted hydrogen diffusion in metal hydrides" - https://journals.aps.org/prb/a…/10.1103/PhysRevB.28.7294

Among other things, they compute the temperature-dependent diffusion rate of hydrogen and deuterium in palladium. My understanding is that optical phonons play a role in their calculations only through thermal coupling. (They aren't targeting the optical phonons with lasers or anything like that).

In Holmlid's theory, alkali metals like hydrogen can become Rydberg matter when they leave a metal.

- I assume the diffusion rate of hydrogen in the metal is equal or strongly linearly correlated to the rate of hydrogen influx and outflux at the metal surface.

- Let's consider that in Holmlid's theory, the excess heat should be proportional to the ultra-dense hydrogen production, which is due to outflux from the metal.

- Mizuno's data suggest that the flux matters, not the loading.

Extracting data from a printed copy of the above chart I get the curve below. I also plot Mizuno's R19 data table, without the room temperature outliers.

Zooming in:

The temperature coefficient is nearly the same!

coniungere omnia

Agreed - UDD is formed as D diffuses out of the Pd/Ni lattice and meets up with the metal oxide catalysts present in the stainless steel (Fe O2, Cr2O3, MoO3, MnO2) - not quite as good as KFeO2 which Holmlid uses but all are similar dehydrogenation catalysts, So-as I proposed before, the UDD has a spontaneous rate of meson release (probably due to either chiral anomalies or the presence of background radiation) which is enhanced on stimulation with IR from the internal heater in R20. The mesons decay to -muons which in turn catalyse D fusion at NAE sites on the Ni/Pd. Other reactions including positron/electron annihilation, neutrino/antineutrino interactions, transmutations etc also probably generate more energy.

The lower level of excess heat from the R19 reactor may be due to lower IR stimulation of UDD by the external heater arrangement - less UDD irradiation, lower heat levels = lower meson release = lower fusion rates = less excess heat. And the Deneum reactor may have failed to produce excess heat if insufficient oxides in an ultra-clean system failed to catalyse UDD. Nice control though! The test of all this is very simple - add in the KFeO2 catalyst and see if sustained R20 type excess heat returns.

A couple of people who are trying to replicate Mizuno have told me that they rubbed the Ni mesh with Pd, then looked at the mesh with SEMs and found little or no Pd attached. The Ni seems to be rubbing off more than Pd going on. I have asked Imam (NRL metallurgist), Mizuno and others how to make the Pd softer, probably with annealing.

Another person suggested that when you rub the mesh, you should place it on a hard surface, such as steel, rather than, say, a paper towel.

I am a relieved to learn why these particular replications are not working. Once you know what the problem is, you can look for a solution.

Is there an SEM image of one of the succesfull Mizuno meshes anywhere?

Pd is easy to anneal. Heat it gently in the oxygen rich tip of a small propane torch flame. When the metal reaches an even soft orange color let it cool completely in air.

My live doc previously posted describes the process in full detail. The deposition of the Pd depends on the sharp scraping edges created by the prior sanding of the mesh, and without that step the deposition will not succeed.

AlanG

Quote from StevieH

Is there an SEM image of one of the succesfull Mizuno meshes anywhere?

Nope. We hope to have one soon.