Frank Gordon's "Lattice Energy Converter (LEC)"...replicators workshop

Quote from Mark U

A recently completed masterpiece I'll title

Turmoil at Sea

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It is indeed a masterpiece, frame it and spray it with lacquer!

Quote from Mark U

A recently completed masterpiece I'll title

Turmoil at Sea

? Battle of the River Plate?

Quote from Alan Smith

? Battle of the River Plate?

A movie I have yet to watch! Interesting that my first choice of title was going to start with the word Battle as well.

Battle on the Muriatic Sea

A programmable rig that monitors and controls plating regimes flashed into a recent dream of mine.

Quote from nickec

A programmable rig that monitors and controls plating regimes flashed into a recent dream of mine.

We share the same dream...

However, I'm realizing that this will not be sufficient: it seems that there are many other parameters outside the plating voltage and current (electrolytic solutions composition, electrodes material, electrodes and tank geometry, etc).

Quote from Stevenson

there are many other parameters outside the plating voltage and current (electrolytic solutions composition, electrodes material, electrodes and tank geometry, etc).

You are quite correct. Plating (like much of electrochemistry) is pretty much an art, not just a science. But good equipment helps in unexpected ways. I was in the North a couple of weeks ago at a plating factory specializing in plating small parts by the thousands. The guy there has a state-of-the-art XRF, which he uses for quality control. He showed me, how they pick something out of a plating tank, stand it on the surface of the machine and it instantly tells you the plating thickness and also the composition of the plating mix -he is using Zinc-Nickel (85-15) and if you are not careful with the plating environment one or the other of these metals can predominate.

I finally managed to get a coating using HCI. It took almost 2 days before the coating started to form. I used a tray with 800 mL solution and twisted wire anodes that had to be replaced 3 times. The coating looked very smooth, well adhered but very thin compared to what the Ferrous Sulphate recipe produced. I dried it and tried in on the brass CE but no Voltage, 000.0 mV. After 1\2 hour I put it back in the tray for a few hours but the coating did not seem to increase. I then added 100 mL Ferrous Chloride and ran it overnight. It was covered with black (magnetite?) which I removed with a scotch brite. The iron coating underneath looked no thicker than the day before. Still no voltage was produced.

I have found a couple of other recipes for iron plating on Brass that I will try.

Quote from nickec

A programmable rig that monitors and controls plating regimes flashed into a recent dream of mine.

Designing an Arduino to control a TO3 package regulator chip that would allow programming current, voltage and time would not be particularly hard or expensive. At the moment though I need to find a reliable and fast coating protocol and I need to see voltage from a working LEC before looking at making a programmable power supply.

Hi Ken

Are you running at above the voltage required to split water? Anything under 2V and you are unlikely to be doing co-deposition.

Quote from Alan Smith

Hi Ken

Are you running at above the voltage required to split water? Anything under 2V and you are unlikely to be doing co-deposition.

Max voltage was 600mV or so. Current would increase to over 2 Amps above ~ 700mV. Plating only seemed to start occurring when the Voltage dropped on its own to about 400 mV.

Quote from Ken

Max voltage was 600mV or so. Current would increase to over 2 Amps above ~ 700mV. Plating only seemed to start occurring when the Voltage dropped on its own to about 400 mV.

Well, I think Alan Smith provided a very important advice as the LEC doesn’t require a good plating, but a suitable co deposition of hydrogen with the metal layer. Now you can begin focusing in codepositing instead of plating.

Quote from Curbina

Well, I think Alan Smith provided a very important advice as the LEC doesn’t require a good plating, but a suitable co deposition of hydrogen with the metal layer. Now you can begin focusing in codepositing instead of plating.

I appreciate the advice, my background is in electronics and radiation measurement, I am weak in chemistry. Clear description of how to go about the co deposition\plating process is helpful.

Hi Ken! Good to hear that you got a plating with HCl. It looks quite similar to the one that I got (it is less shining compared to the sulfate solution). Also in my experiments I got a kind of magnetite mixed with the plating: this made the electrode magnetic (i.e. capable of attracting iron wires). I suspect that it was this kind of nano-magnetite that triggered the effect. It's a pity that you still don't get any voltage...

If you want to try another plating solution, the most easy is the original one used and suggested by Frank Gordon: FeCl2. Don't use FeCl3: apparently it doesn't give good results.

Codeposition or Construction of Layers with Pockets

Quote from Purdue 1991 at the Playground Thread

This device consists of alternating layers of the deuterated porous metal 1 and the porous insulator matrix 2 (of honeycomb type or pressed powder layer made of dielectric material) sandwiched between two metal electrodes 3

For D-D fusion, the thin porous layers 1, 2 are first saturated with pressurized D2 gas 7. For D-H fusion, or D-T fusion, the thin porous layers 1, 2 are first saturated with pressurized H2 or T2 gas 7, respectively.

To withstand high gas pressure, the ceramic-metal chamber is constructed of metal and is coated or bonded on the inner surface with a ceramic insulator to prevent undesirable ionization of the gas in the space between the outer surfaces of the ceramic slabs and the inner surface of the ceramic-metal chamber.

Fig. 1. Shown are the porous deuterated metal layer 21, the porous insulator matrix 22, an optional insulator 23, a pulsed voltage source 24, and metal electrodes 25.

Figure 3 shows a two unit cell design 30, in which the unit cell 20 has been repeated twice. The unit cell 20 may be repeated as much as desired. A multi-unit cell assembly 30 has the feature of using many unit cells with alternating positive and negative electrodes as shown in Fig. 3.

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Quote from Ken

I appreciate the advice, my background is in electronics and radiation measurement, I am weak in chemistry. Clear description of how to go about the co deposition\plating process is helpful.

We are all learning here as we go, and I think I speak for many of us when saying that I also thank you for taking the hands on approach, of which each case is precious.

The basic idea is to keep in mind that in the current understanding of how the LEC might work, the effect requires hydrogen to get generated to give it a chance of getting absorbed by the metal being deposited. If there’s no water electrolysis, there’s no hydrogen to be absorbed.

Many of us here have been along for more than two decades and/or have been aware of the original work of Fleischmann and Pons which was with heavy water electrolysis to absorb deuterium in palladium, so we tend to take for granted that all of us know about this, which needs not to be the case.

Quote from Stevenson

Hi Ken! Good to hear that you got a plating with HCl. It looks quite similar to the one that I got (it is less shining compared to the sulfate solution). Also in my experiments I got a kind of magnetite mixed with the plating: this made the electrode magnetic (i.e. capable of attracting iron wires). I suspect that it was this kind of nano-magnetite that triggered the effect. It's a pity that you still don't get any voltage...

If you want to try another plating solution, the most easy is the original one used and suggested by Frank Gordon: FeCl2. Don't use FeCl3: apparently it doesn't give good results.

Hi Stevenson

I found a couple of other recipes.

One uses Ferrous Chloride and Calcium Chloride supposed to produce soft and thick deposits, the other uses Ferrous Chloride and Potassium Chloride for Hard deposits According to Blum,G.;Hogaboom,W. Principles of electroplating and electroforming, New York 1949. (I have ordered this book)

I noticed that the copious black sludge that accumulates in the bottom of the tank using Ferrous Sulfate when dried it turns an army green color and is slightly attracted to a magnetic. My plates themselves do not seems to be magnetized.

On another note when I try to cut paste text into my reply a box named "Code" comes up with the text. Appears to think I am entering computer code. How do I paste without this box?

Today I discovered something interesting.

I placed a small tube (6 mm OD, 13 cm long) of copper, close to a similar tube of aluminium (the gap was about 1 mm). The tubes were connected to a multimeter with a 10 MOhm impedance (copper to positive probe, aluminium to negative probe). As expected the resulting voltage was 0.0 mV.

Then I tried to ionize the air around the electrodes. The right way to do so should be to use a radiation source or a X-ray tube, taking care of not directly irradiating the metals (this would cause the photoemission of electrons).

Not having at hand an X-ray tube, I used two simpler (but not 100% equivalent) alternatives: a flame first and a corona discharge later, under the electrodes (a couple of cm below).

The flame does not produce ionization, but generate positive and negative charged molecules or radicals. The corona discharge actually generate some ionization.

The result was that when the flame or corona were turned on for a few seconds, the multimeter displayed a voltage, in the range 10 - 20 mV. This voltage was maintained for some seconds, even after the flame or discharge were turned off.

This experiment possibly demonstrate how the LEC generate the voltage: this effect is a kind of "gas pile". It is apparently very similar to an electrochemical pile, but it works with ions in the gas. The principle is quite intuitive, but I never heard of something similar actually!

BTW, I also tried to put under the electrodes liquid water (without contact), boiling water producing steam and smoke from a wood stick. In all these cases no voltage was generated. Also using two electrodes of the same metals does not generate any voltage.

Quote from Ken

On another note when I try to cut paste text into my reply a box named "Code" comes up with the text. Appears to think I am entering computer code. How do I paste without this box?

Use the “quote” function instead, you can quote entire posts by selecting the quote option in the drop down menu (the three vertical dots in the right of every post header)

Or, alternatively, You can select a text and the options of “save quote” “insert quote” should appear in your screen if you are on a mobile.

If you choose insert quote, The text will be added to your reply, in quote format.

Hope this is nearly clear enough for being of use for you.

Quote from Stevenson

Today I discovered something interesting.

I placed a small tube (6 mm OD, 13 cm long) of copper, close to a similar tube of aluminium (the gap was about 1 mm). The tubes were connected to a multimeter with a 10 MOhm impedance (copper to positive probe, aluminium to negative probe). As expected the resulting voltage was 0.0 mV.

Then I tried to ionize the air around the electrodes. The right way to do so should be to use a radiation source or a X-ray tube, taking care of not directly irradiating the metals (this would cause the photoemission of electrons).

Not having at hand an X-ray tube, I used two simpler (but not 100% equivalent) alternatives: a flame first and a corona discharge later, under the electrodes (a couple of cm below).

The flame does not produce ionization, but generate positive and negative charged molecules or radicals. The corona discharge actually generate some ionization.

The result was that when the flame or corona were turned on for a few seconds, the multimeter displayed a voltage, in the range 10 - 20 mV. This voltage was maintained for some seconds, even after the flame or discharge were turned off.

This experiment possibly demonstrate how the LEC generate the voltage: this effect is a kind of "gas pile". It is apparently very similar to an electrochemical pile, but it works with ions in the gas. The principle is quite intuitive, but I never heard of something similar actually!

BTW, I tried also to put under the electrodes also liquid water (without contact), boiling water producing steam and smoke. In all these cases no voltage was generated.

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That was a great intuitive exploratory experiment! Thanks for sharing.

Quote from Ken

I appreciate the advice, my background is in electronics and radiation measurement, I am weak in chemistry. Clear description of how to go about the co deposition\plating process is helpful.

Hi Ken.

In order to raise the voltage while keeping the current at a reasonable level you will need to increase the resistance of your electrolyte. This means reducing its concentration so as to reduce the number of free ions. This paper from Spzack and Pam Boss gives the essentials for Palladium in Heavy Water, but basically there is little difference if you are using Iron in light water.

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSreliablepr.pdf

They say in this extract :-

"2.3 PREPARATION OF Pd ELECTRODE BY PROCESS OF CO-DEPOSITION

Based on the above discussion, a rational approach to construct a Pd electrode suitable for
rapid initiation of the F.- P. effect is by electrodeposition of palladium in the presence of
evolving deuterium(3). In practice this can be done by deposition from a nearly saturated
solution of PdCl2, (approx. 0.05 M), in D2O containing 0.3 N LiCl. The rate of deposition is
potentiostatically controlled with the cell potential selected so as to promote vigorous deuterium
evolution. Our present practice has been to begin the electrodeposition at a cathodic
overpotential of 0.8 V and gradually increasing it to ca 3.0 V. The preferred substrate is a copper
foil, although nickel has also been used. The evolving deuterium is co-deposited with Pd forming
the β phase or, perhaps, containing even higher deuterium content. The Pd samples,
electrodeposited in the presence of evolving deuterium were characterized by X-ray
photoelectron microscopy. Resulting spectra were those of extremely pure palladium without
traces of Pt, Ag, Rh, Si, Cl, i.e., elements that could have been deposited in the course of
electrolysis(4)."

See the reference here to 'cathode overpotential' - this means the voltage applied over and above the voltage that thermodynamics states is necessary for that part of splitting the water which happens at the cathode. The theoretical minimum voltage required by the thermodynamics of water splitting is sometimes referred to as the 'Faraday Limit' in round numbers 1.5V for light water. So they were using 2.3V (1.5 + 0.8) to 4.5V (1.5 + 3.0) to produce that 'vigorous deuterium evolution' which woukd be visible as bubbles from the cathode surface.

The paper linked above is in the lenr-canr library - this library was set up and maintained by our member JedRothwell BTW - has a good search function and typing in 'co-deposition' will lead you into knowing more about electrochemistry than you should....

There are 2 useful books in the forum library too. I will add them later.

They are in this thread - posts #58, and #65

Post

THE USEFUL BOOK THREAD

Semi-retired LENR researcher Ed Lewis asked me to post this little article about his book- also available here. It's pretty much off topic for LENR, but interesting as a sideways look at cycle theory. Members who wish to bring other interesting or useful books to the forum;s attention are welcome to do so here.


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This theory is 30 years old, and based on the prior timing, I predicted 30 years ago in 1989 that technological acceleration would start about the year 2000 (it started in 1998 or…

Alan Smith

Jul 28th 2019

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