MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

    Here you can see prepared Meshes for active run.

    One is fully covered with Palladium, the other by Copper.

    Mesh parameters are exactly as per Mizuno recipe.


    Cu plated meshes are exactly 8 times less expensive. While according various researchers they should give roughly same performance in Protium compared to Pd in Deuterium.

    I've finished a substantial upgrade to my DAQ system and the MR6 reactor. Integration of the RTD device has yielded some insight into the effect of hydrogen pressure on the cell calibration, as shown on the chart below. You can see that at 50 Pa or less the temperatures are about 3°C below calibration (at 30 watts). There's a gradual increase up to ~150 Pa and little change above that pressure.


    I expect to start the MR6-2 run with me356 fuel on Wed. around 17:00 UTC. I'll post a link for live video feed when starting. For details of the setup, see https://tinyurl.com/ybcfb4bz



    Quote from Bruce__H

    What is the performance of your Pd-plated meshes in protium?

    Performance correspond with earlier Mizuno research, so approximately 60% as with Deuterium. However it is variable and depends on Protium source.

    We will focus on Protium testing during following days as tests with Copper plated meshes will start now. We plan first test for tomorrow.

    My findings from the run are following.

    1. Filling reactor with D was much better than previous time. Yet I would recommend around 100 times slower filing than now. The faster hydrogen gets inside more is trapped inside the mesh. Amount of D that is intended for filling the cell should be measured in a separated volume and then cell should be opened.
    2. To fix very fast filling I recommend to add extra volume to the cell, at least by connecting there extra empty cylinder with roughly 50x of the current reactor volume. This will help in at least 3 different ways. When volume is bigger than even with the current valve system it should be much easier to add exact amount of D.
    3. When filling is done directly to the cell from a hydrogen source one can't know how much hydrogen is immediately loaded by fuel. I think Alan made some checks here, but I did not understand how the hydrogen is dosed - I believe Alan will describe. But in case that one is trying to achieve a certain pressure level this will always result in almost saturated fuel.
    4. Problem that happened is that the pressure is rising very noticeably right from the beginning of starting the heater. There we dont know why this happened. I think almost identical issue happened in the previous run too. There are 3 different possibilities why this is happening:
      1. Mesh was saturated with Hydrogen in some way we dont know prior the run - for example from transportation - we have no idea what airplane shipping is doing to the meshes.
      2. There was outgasing of the reactor in some way
      3. Mesh loaded much more hydrogen during filing than was expected - if that happened then fixing could be quite easy by means of increasing volume and/or changing method of how hydrogen is filled.
    5. The present condition is that we are roughly 5 times above pressure we aimed for. This is still not problem as the reaction can work even with 5k Pa.
    6. To achieve excess heat tendency of the pressure must be declining. Excess heat - at least in this experiment - will not show up until fuel will "decide" to load the hydrogen back, at least in a limited way. If the gas inside the cell is really hydrogen then tendency is strongly rising. But it should rather continue in what we saw immediately after filing. If that trend would continue we would see excess heat.
    7. There I would want to show how reactor volume is important. Volume in respect to Fuel amount/composition is critical for ideal trend of developing excess heat. Excess heat evolution is directly controlled by pressure - but there I have to highlight not just pressure inside the cell - but condition of the fuel which allows flow of the hydrogen in one or another direction. Fortunately the trend can be externally changed but it can work only to a certain extent. When reactor volume is small then any change in temperature of the heater will cause big change of the pressure. Usually rising input power mean higher pressure - this will happen basically in any reactor. Any pressure increase will then usually slower development of the excess heat. It is just important that the increase of pressure is not that high that fuel will change decreasing tendency of the pressure (fuel will still load the hydrogen not release) - at least at the level of the lattice. On the other hand bigger volume will never allow so fast pressure changes. It is ideal to have pressure as constant as possible. When this problem of increasing tendency will happen and you do not have time to wait there are many ways how to fix it. Some scientists are able to trigger excess heat either by lowering input power temporarily - this can start correct pressure evolution. OR it is possible to add short but fast pressure increase - just like a shock - by adding more hydrogen to the fuel. But there is a risk of saturating the fuel which in turn will generate excess heat just for a seconds or minutes. In any case if this will not happen on its own, preferably within first hour it always mean something is wrong and that you can't expect high excess heat even after external attempts. The problem is that as soon as excess will show up the pressure will increase because of the increased temperature and small volume which in turn will stop further evolution of the excess or even will block it right from the beginning.
    8. At the present moment we are waiting until pressure will stop increasing which is still happening which mean there will be no excess heat until it will change. This can happen at any moment now but could also take days to months. I proposed to make a pressure shock because it is easy with Alan's setup now. I expect this will immediately render excess heat but almost surely it will last not more than a few hours. Other solution would be to pump the hydrogen when the cell is running. Then set input power to zero and start from the beginning. But changes for excess would be lower by at least 50% as we dont know what the condition of the fuel is. Third option is to set the temperature lower just by 50°C or close to a lower point which Alan has calibration for.


    In any case I have to express that Alan made very good work in terms of calibration, vacuum equipment and software. Calibration is matching really closely. Also I am grateful for changing the design from external heater to internal. I am sure that with this setup with a slight changes it can work reliably.

    Quote from me356

    [...] To achieve excess heat tendency of the pressure must be declining. Excess heat - at least in this experiment - will not show up until fuel will "decide" to load the hydrogen back, at least in a limited way. If the gas inside the cell is really hydrogen then tendency is strongly rising. But it should rather continue in what we saw immediately after filing. If that trend would continue we would see excess heat.

    Does this imply that the copper-coated meshes will be more reliable in showing excess heat? It feels like there is a competing negative effect due to palladium forming a hydride/deuteride.

    Quote from can

    Does this imply that the copper-coated meshes will be more reliable in showing excess heat? It feels like there is a competing negative effect due to palladium forming a hydride/deuteride.

    No, it does not mean it will be more reliable. I think there is identical reliability. Actually if the process of filling is correct and pressure requirements are met there is 100% reliability with provided meshes. All meshes that we can prepare now are almost identical with basically no difference regarding performacne.


    Palladium is not an issue because it can release Hydrogen freely. The problem is Nickel where you have to be careful. So even that one can think fuel preparation is the only problem all things around (reactor) matter too.

    So as I mentioned earlier whole reactor design is really important. For example there is no way how you can have pressure development identical to reactor of Mizuno when yours is few times smaller yet your fuel is even more active as it is coated with thicker layer of Pd.

    These seemingly small differences can change everything.

    Quote from me356

    ... I would recommend around 100 times slower filing than now. The faster hydrogen gets inside more is trapped inside the mesh.

    Why do you think that the speed of filling would make a difference to how much deuterium ends up inside the mesh? I can see how the amount inside the mesh would depend on the D2 pressure, but why do you think that the speed would be a factor?

    Quote from Bruce__H

    Why do you think that the speed of filling would make a difference to how much deuterium ends up inside the mesh? I can see how the amount inside the mesh would depend on the D2 pressure, but why do you think that the speed would be a factor?

    I have years of experience with various transition metals. So I know their behavior.

    Speed of filling is one of the most important factor. Higher speed = more will load.

    Transition metals are like a baby. You have to be careful to do what it wants. It will not tell you anything you simply must learn.

    They are so interesting and specific that one can write entire book about each transition metal. Each is behaving differently yet there are similarities. If you understand what is happening at lattice level you will find many things.


    Pressure is like a hammer and you can make a holes through a wall which is lattice. You can entirely destroy a bulk of metal with hydrogen and pressure at will. Interesting thing is that you can push it so hard there is almost no limit. At macro level almost nothing is happening but at micro level big things are changing. Just few Pascal change is multiplied by many orders of magniture just by adusting rate of pressure change.

    My replies to me356 are inline below, with further comments to follow

    Quote from me356

    To fix very fast filling I recommend to add extra volume to the cell, at least by connecting there extra empty cylinder with roughly 50x of the current reactor volume. This will help in at least 3 different ways. When volume is bigger than even with the current valve system it should be much easier to add exact amount of D.

    The filling of the cell was done carefully, using three calibrated steps of isolated volumes between the gas cylinder and the cell. The amount of gas is therefore well controlled. In this case it was the amount of D2 that produced 250 Pa of pressure in the cell with no mesh during repeated calibration of this process.

    Quote from me356

    possibilities why this is happening:
    1 Mesh was saturated with Hydrogen in some way we dont know prior the run - for example from transportation - we have no idea what airplane shipping is doing to the meshes.

    This seems to be the most likely explanation. One thought: he meshes were packed in individual zip-lock bags, where they remained for weeks or months prior to my use. The references below suggest that under some conditions Palladium might strip hydrogen directly from polyethylene. Perhaps Alan Smith will comment on this.


    2 There was outgasing of the reactor in some way


    There is always some outgasing from this reactor at 250C. Past analysis by mass spec. showed this to be substantially nitrogen, which is present in stainless steels from the foundry process. Typically this is 3-5 Pa/hr after settling, in line with what is currently shown in the chart below.


    References:

    From https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11244-021-01452-x


    Ali et al. showed that dehydrogenation beyond equilibrium was possible using a catalytic reactor with a palladium-silver tubular membrane to separate the produced hydrogen in-situ.


    From

    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add1088


    Conk et al. developed a preliminary method to produce propylene from a sequence of reactions between waste polyethylene and fresh ethylene. Specifically, the process involves a small extent of desaturation of each polyethylene chain by a dehydrogenation catalyst,


    Thank you for your explanation.

    We are shipping always very fresh batch of the meshes that were produced just 1-2 day ago prior the shipping.

    We are using very same meshes, sometimes longer after this period when compared to yours. We received another new batch 2 days ago actually. In any case it was never outgasing like this, there was just few Pa. We are storing fuels like this in Argon.

    So maybe for next time it would be better to ship in a sealed container with argon.

Subscribe to our newsletter

It's sent once a month, you can unsubscribe at anytime!

View archive of previous newsletters

* indicates required

Your email address will be used to send you email newsletters only. See our Privacy Policy for more information.

Our Partners

Supporting researchers for over 20 years
Want to Advertise or Sponsor LENR Forum?
CLICK HERE to contact us.