The vacuum system is put back together. There is now a valve between the forepump and the TM pump to prevent backflow. Right now I am testing just the vacuum system to determine how good a vacuum can be attained. The forepump can easily get down to a few milli Torr in a few minutes. The T/M pump gets down to < 1e-6 Torr after an hour. My suspicion is that the new Viton gaskets in the HV side need to be baked out to reach a lower value. The next step will be to add an RGA to identify which gas species are present and need to be removed. Does anybody have suggestions for a good brand of RGA?
MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY
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Some time ago, someone asked me: How hard is Mizuno's Pd. He sent me these numbers:
Pd
Mohs hardness 4.75
Vickers hardness 461 MPa
Brinell hardness 37.3 MPa
Ni
Mohs hardness 4.0
Vickers hardness 638 MPa
Brinell hardness 700 MPa
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Some time ago, someone asked me: How hard is Mizuno's Pd. He sent me these numbers:
Those appear to be numbers "by the book" . From the literature, Ni would typically be 300-800 MPa depending on the carbon content and heat treatment. The numbers for Pd also agree closely with what is given at
https://periodictable.com/Elements/046/data.html
However, the Brinell hardness for Pd quoted there is clearly in error by a factor of 10, with 320-610 being given by Wiki. So Mizuno probably got his data from the link above rather than assay or direct measurement.
This paper from Johnson Matthey gives somewhat lower numbers for Pd, though the units are not specified:
https://www.technology.matthey.com/pdf/202-213-pmr-jul13.pdf
The important question for Mizuno is still whether the Pd was annealed before it was rubbed on the mesh.
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Those appear to be numbers "by the book" . From the literature,
Could be.
The important question for Mizuno is still whether the Pd was annealed before it was rubbed on the mesh.
I do not think so. I think we discussed this, and he said no.
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We have had a previous detailed discussion on this.
Amongst various features which indicate a varied history for the rod, there is a 'droplet' which looks like a 'handle?' That would certainly make a difficult-to-grip rod much easier to handle. Said droplet bears all the hallmarks of possibly a join between two rods, as there is a slight but noticeable axial displacement. If it is a join, and certainly by the look of the spheroid handle, this would have involved localised intense heating. Pd is a high melting point metal and a good thermal conductor, so that would have annealed it whether or not that was the intention.
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I am using an Arduino Mega2560 with an Adafruit data logging shield.
Starting to get the hang of it. I was able to put zeros in front of the time single digits, and work out proper incremental time samples based on Unix ms timing (rather than just a delay). The most annoying part is that stuff copied from off IDE won’t paste into IDE.If you hate the IDE see if you can program using a conventional text editor like Emacs or VIM and then run the results in a separate console window. If you are running Linux or Mac, I find that most open source IDE tools can copy and paste, but sometimes I have to resort to guerrilla tactics.
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The vacuum system is put back together. There is now a valve between the forepump and the TM pump to prevent backflow. Right now I am testing just the vacuum system to determine how good a vacuum can be attained. The forepump can easily get down to a few milli Torr in a few minutes. The T/M pump gets down to < 1e-6 Torr after an hour. My suspicion is that the new Viton gaskets in the HV side need to be baked out to reach a lower value. The next step will be to add an RGA to identify which gas species are present and need to be removed. Does anybody have suggestions for a good brand of RGA?
System looks good. A few vacuum points to use:
1) you can have a great TM/backer pump setup, but if you have a long thin pipe going to the experiment's vacuum chamber, it will pump down slow. This is because the few molecules that are left have to bounce around to find the tiny hole, and then the vacuum pipe acts like a piece of resistive wire.
2) You can measure the rate of vacuum increase after closing off the valve to fit your rate of leakage/outgassing by fitting an exponential curve (you can use Excel if that is all you got). This tells you how many moles per second are getting into your closed off rig. You can then compute how much gas can be removed by your turbopump to figure out what the ultimate pressure obtainable should be. You can also estimate how much better vacuum you would get by waiting for the oil/water vapor to come off the inner materials by running the test at successive times and then fitting a curve.
3) Try using a heat gun or running the internal heater to increase the rate of outgassing. You probably want to outgas at the highest temperature that the rig can safely stand, maybe 60 to 70C.
4) An RGA is a good idea for the experiment, but probably not necessary unless you have a leak. I am assuming you don't have the unit currently hooked up to H2 or D2, so that RGA is going to show either air components or water vapor or oil.
5) Mizuno doesn't run his experiments at that high a vacuum (1e-3 Torr is my recollection), so if you can pump down to 1e-4 Torr and keep it there that's probably good enough. You will be able to estimate the rate of air (O2 + N2) getting into the rig from the above test, and I believe you are going to fill the unit when you start with about 2e-3 Torr of H2 or D2 and then valve off. You will be able to calculate from the above how fast the maximum leakage of O2 is into the rig. That leaves a tiny fixed amount of H2 fuel for potential combustion with the atmospheric O2 or reduction of oxidation layers -- you can easily put an upper bound on that energy and prove it is insignificant (i.e. <0.1%) of the energy produced by the rig during your run.
6) The thermal characteristics of 2e-4 H2 or D2 are different than a pure vacuum, but as I believe Pandigmnonia noted, your airflow calorimeter is going to not be effected that much by the change in conduction or convection out your rig (I am guessing less than 2% with a spot guess of 0.5%) so that for a good excess energy run, it won't matter. You can prove that yourself by running a control gas run using an inert stainless steel mesh with H2, or alternatively, run with Helium and then with N2. That would prove the gas conduction/convection doesn't matter.
Good luck.
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If you hate the IDE see if you can program using a conventional text editor like Emacs or VIM and then run the results in a separate console window. If you are running Linux or Mac, I find that most open source IDE tools can copy and paste, but sometimes I have to resort to guerrilla tactics.
I don’t mind the IDE. For some strange reason it is like there is a separate clipboard for the IDE, so one can cut and paste within the IDE, but try and copy from another page and paste to the IDE and whatever was copied or cut from the IDE last time pastes instead.
Anyways everything was working smoothly until I tried to read the RS232 signal (2 wire only!) from my usual data logger, in order to incorporate that into the sketch data log. I have an RS232 to TTL level shifter, wired everything thing up, checked the Tx and Rx wires end to end, and nothing happens. There should be a 16 bits-long word but nothing comes out in either single bits or strings and with only two wires (Tx and ground), there is no way to poke the RS232 side into action. It is possible that the level shifter doesn’t like only one signal wire. So today’s diagnostics involves plugging in an RS232 to USB cable and seeing if the laptop can see it working...
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checked the Tx and Rx wires end to end, and nothing happens. There should be a 16 bits-long word but nothing comes out in either single bits or strings and with only two wires (Tx and ground), there is no way to poke the RS232 side into action. It is possible that the level shifter doesn’t like only one signal wire. So today’s diagnostics involves plugging in an RS232 to USB cable and seeing if the laptop can see it working...
The most common problem with RS232 is needing to switch Tx and Rx. Tx of the sender needs to go to Rx of the receiver. Some cables have Rx and Tx internally swapped, some do not. Murphy's law says you always have the wrong one.
Other possible problems are the handshake signals. RTS must be asserted, sometimes requiring an extra jumper on the interface even if you are using only a 2-wire cable.
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Some cables have Rx and Tx internally swapped
Those are called "null modem cables". All other cables are simple extension cables.
It's similar to the old cross over network cables necessary in unswitched networks with old network cards.
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The most common problem with RS232 is needing to switch Tx and Rx. Tx of the sender needs to go to Rx of the receiver. Some cables have Rx and Tx internally swapped, some do not. Murphy's law says you always have the wrong one.
Other possible problems are the handshake signals. RTS must be asserted, sometimes requiring an extra jumper on the interface even if you are using only a 2-wire cable.
I have seen some examples where several of the DB9 pins are linked in the cable end, (6 to 1 and 4, etc.). Which I think fakes out the handshakes. I may try that. It seems like there is no buffer on the RS232 data logger end. It just spits out 16 characters every 2 seconds, and whatever reads them on the receiving end has to be ready for them. Serial2.available() doesn’t work at all. It is never available. Something shows up on the Arduino end, since the RS232 to TTL level shifter lights up the Tx out LED. I think maybe the data logger feeds out End Word characters nonstop until a New Word begins(?). I will see if the manufacturer of the data logger has some better documentation. The manual has the bare minimum of information.
See page 15 if interested: http://www.reedinstruments.com…/manual/sd-947-manual.pdf -
Looking at the Reed Instruments manual, it talks about "An USB RS232 lead." There is no such thing and the reference to RS232 might be wrong. It looks like it might really a USB connection with the two wires being the D+ and D- of USB 2 or USB 3.
It looks like they sell an expensive cable to connect to USB. It is not clear if this has any electronics or is just a phono plug to D+ D- cable. You could make one by splicing old USB cable to an old phono plug cable.
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Looking at the Reed Instruments manual, it talks about "An USB RS232 lead." There is no such thing and the reference to RS232 might be wrong. It looks like it might really a USB connection with the two wires being the D+ and D- of USB 2 or USB 3.
It looks like they sell an expensive cable to connect to USB. It is not clear if this has any electronics or is just a phono plug to D+ D- cable. You could make one by splicing old USB cable to an old phono plug cable.
The older versions were only RS232, and later a RSB to USB adapter became necessary with the disappearance of RS232 ports in new computers.
Pure USB communication is totally different, as it uses differential voltage between the two signal lines. The RS232 cable has only two wires in it: Ground and Tx
Plugging in the RS232 cable to a RS232 to USB adapter (simulated RS232 port), I can receive a data stream on my laptop, through a serial monitor.
Data from the laptop serial monitor, through the USB adapter looks like this: (a new line appears every two or three seconds)
Edit: There are available RS232 to USB adapter cables with electronics built in, but that leads to decoding RS232 to USB then USB into TTL, instead of RS232 direct to TTL at the Arduino, adding another signal processing event, which slows down the entire device.
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I'd like to make a suggestion.
When one of these Mizuno systems starts showing any excess heat, try and insert a radio frequency generator to "feed" the EVOs that are forming. According to the book Alan posted, these plasma balls act like resonance chambers and can absorb a broad range of frequencies. If my hypothesis is correct, they would grow more intensity and self organization and as a byproduct produce more LENR reactions.
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When one of these Mizuno systems starts showing any excess heat, try and insert a radio frequency generator to "feed" the EVOs that are forming.
Scotty beam me up!
@Director : To much noise for as simple idea that works macroscopically but not on the D-D fusion level.
Please remember the must crucial thing about LENR fusion. You must remove energy not add it !!
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Scotty beam me up!
Perhaps StarTrek uses a transporter with resonant Evos rather than radio frequency to penetrate 10mm 316ss..
Such a hypothesis may deserve a non replication thread..
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re Ni and Pd -
Has anyone tried any of the commercially available NiPd alloys, in any form? If not, why not (other than the eye-watering cost)?
They are available in several forms, including a gauze.
I suppose the Pd content may be too high?
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re Ni and Pd -
Has anyone tried any of the commercially available NiPd alloys, in any form? If not, why not (other than the eye-watering cost)?
They are available in several forms, including a gauze.
I suppose the Pd content may be too high?
Doesn't hurt trying. Someone could learn something from results.
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NiPd gauze is not cheap -150x150 mm (6x6") $1500 https://m.chemicalbook.com/Che…Property_EN_CB3661000.htm
If anyone knows where to get this stuff in sheet form I would be interested...
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NiPd gauze is not cheap -150x150 mm (6x6") $1500 https://m.chemicalbook.com/Che…Property_EN_CB3661000.htm
If anyone knows where to get this stuff in sheet form I would be interested...
If what you want is "Palladium Sterling" (3% Pd), it's available in sheet form here:
