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

Quote from Cydonia

diffused across a ductile Pd metal which isn't involved by embrittlement under hydrogen

Please don't be too concerned over the use of the word "embrittlement". Even HE researchers freely admit that it is a misnomer, as there are examples of increased ductility within the crack region, with possible increased mobility of dislocations. The term is a hangover from the 19th century - and really needs to be abandoned in favour of "hydrogen induced failure", or some such.

I started to suspect LENR involvement in the observed HE effects some thirty years ago - but to suggest that within the normal HE research circles was (and still is) "forbidden"

To well understand what means hydrogen embrittlement , people need to well master the concepts of twinning and slipping involving the stacking fault energy ( local energy storage by deformations)

slipping and twinning - Google Suche

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…stacking%2Dfault%20energy.

Quote from Frogfall

Please don't be too concerned over the use of the word "embrittlement". Even HE researchers freely admit that it is a misnomer, as there are examples of increased ductility within the crack region, with possible increased mobility of dislocations. The term is a hangover from the 19th century - and really needs to be abandoned in favour of "hydrogen induced failure", or some such.

I started to suspect LENR involvement in the observed HE effects some thirty years ago - but to suggest that within the normal HE research circles was (and still is) "forbidden"

Quote from Frogfall

This thread is about stuffing hydrogen into metals, and getting weird results. To ignore a hundred years of research into hydrogen inside metals would be de facto insanity.

If you are "aware about HE and theories around that" then you know that both the historical and current theories are totally inadequate to explain the observed phenomena.

Note that in some of the discussions recounted in the above journal, researchers were scraching their heads over the possible "contamination" sources of some of the elements that were found using SEM on hydrogen induced cracks in titanium alloys (even to the point of inventing a scenario, without evidence, that operators might have eaten fish and chips for lunch, and failed to wash their hands afterwards).

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There’s a couple of papers of people doing lubrication tests that also found possible anomalies as changed elements. They mention LENR as a possible cause, as one of the lubricants is aqueous based. These results you show reminded me of those papers.

Friction Behavior of Iron-Carbon Alloys in Couples with Plasma-Electrolytic Oxide-Ceramic Layers Synthesized on D16T Alloy - Materials Science

We study the tribological behavior of 45 steel, U8 steel, and SCh 21-40 cast iron in couples with plasma-electrolytic oxide-ceramic layers synthesized on D16T…

link.springer.com

Friction Behavior of Electric-Spark Coatings Under the Conditions of Boundary Lubrication - Materials Science

We study the friction characteristics of “disk–shoe (segment)” friction couples of 45 steel with applied electric-spark coatings. Their wear resistance under…

link.springer.com

I am sure I posted at least the first a while ago, but the challenge is to find where.

Quote from Curbina

There’s a couple of papers of people doing lubrication tests that also found possible anomalies as changed elements. They mention LENR as a possible cause, as one of the lubricants is aqueous based.

I'm surprised that they felt able to mention possible transmutation as a source of anomalous elements. It normally gets blamed on contamination - even if some ridiculous and bizarre contamination route has to be proposed to account for it. I'd be interested in seeing the papers, if you can find them again (Edit: thanks for adding the links Curbina )

A couple of decades ago, I was involved in an investigation into weird "contamination" effects that were affecting the ability of alloy steel components to respond correctly to surface nitriding treatment. It turned out that there had been changes in the formulation of coolants for specific types of machining operation, to make them more "environmentally friendly" (aqueous rather than oil-based). This seemed to change the surface chemistry of the components, but only in patches where a slightly higher than normal heat input from metal cutting, or grinding, had been involved. Using a more aggressive surface cleaning regime, prior to the nitriding treatment, had no effect - so it didn't seem to be a surface residue effect. It was as if the top few microns of steel had been altered in some way - and the normal nitride formation couldn't take place in those areas. To keep everyone else happy, I kept to "molecular only" hypotheses for the surface changes - and just advised that only oil-based coolants were to be used for certain critical operations. This "solved" the problem, although I really wanted to carry out more tests to look for possible changes to the elements of the outer layers of the material. Unfortunately, as usual, there was no budget for further exploratory research

Do you remeber what was in the coolant? Presumably a soap of some kind?

Quote from Alan Smith

Do you remeber what was in the coolant? Presumably a soap of some kind?

Unfortunately not I guess it would have been a cocktail of surfactants and detergents.

There was a whole bunch of rival products coming out around the same time - driven by cost and environmental concerns. I kept having to flag up concerns over risks to performance, reliability, and fatigue strength due to arbitrary changes to fluids used in machining of critical components. Sometimes people took notice, sometimes they didn't.

Quote from Frogfall

I'm surprised that they felt able to mention possible transmutation as a source of anomalous elements

I guess in this case is because they found the issue only in the lubricant with an aqueous component, this may have get them confident that H was involved.

Quote from Frogfall

(Edit: thanks for adding the links Curbina )

If you need the papers I still can give it a go at finding them in the clutter.

Frogfall , Found the first one from 2017 https://www.lenr-forum.com/attachment/15187-student2017-pdf/

Looking at the recent literature - surfaces exist that will emit electrons with energy a few eV or lower. The following link shows a surface emitting at less than 10V

Cookie Absent

Now, 10V is I think too high for any possible electrochemical work function generated voltage - but only by a factor of 5 - 10.

It seems possible that unusual surface characteristics, even surface plasmons, could provide that sort of Q.

Possibly a large isolated plate could pick up - due to capacitive coupling - 10V or so of 50Hz hum which would be enough, at the very low emission currents needed, to trigger this type of emission mechanism. This mechanism could be eliminated by connecting the two electrodes via a large capacitor so reducing the capacitive coupling onto the electrode of extraneous sources.

Whether this flies or not - the fact that electron emission into the atmosphere from < 10V sources is known to work (at currents of uA/cm^2) perhaps shows a common mechanism with LEC ionisation.

THH

In fact Pd will crack or swell if the loading will be faster than the unloading. This is what McKubre done with successfull XSH. BUT Fralick done D/H diffusion, so we can expect an equilibrium between loading vs unloading with only xsh by D2 way not H2 in this experiment.

Quote from JedRothwell

I do not know, but the people at J-M and Martin Fleischmann told me that J-M did a lot of work to develop the Pd in those diffusers to prevent them from cracking or swelling. I guess that means they are not embrittled. Fleischmann described his experiment to the people at J-M and asked what material they recommended. They said to use the same Pd they use in the diffusers (hydrogen filters). In that sense, Fralick and the people at BARC were doing a close replication of the original experiment. I do not think they realized that at the time. Maybe they still do not know? I should tell Fralick.

Mizuno cut his teeth studying embrittlement. His goal was to study embrittlement in the steel walls of a fission reactor. He used Pd-D because it loads and embrittles much more quickly than steel. He found some excess heat. He did not know what to make of it, so in the end he ignored it. See his book for details.

I recall other electrochemists also studied embrittlement. McKubre? Bockris studied the damage caused by inadvertent electrolysis in metals in the ocean, such as drilling platforms.

Quote from Frogfall

It was as if the top few microns of steel had been altered in some way - and the normal nitride formation couldn't take place in those areas.

Interestingly, [a well known UK aero engine manufacturer] had hit exactly the same problem, at around the same time, as us - and as we were using the same industrial research consultancy, we were able to benefit from some cross-comparison of effects.

What we found was that the trigger was incredibly subtle. For example, during grinding operations, any slight resonance in the component meant that the minute "standing wave" was subsequently revealed by the nitriding pattern - presumably because 'nodes' had slightly less heat & vibration input than the "anti-nodes".

Quote from THHuxleynew

Possibly a large isolated plate could pick up - due to capacitive coupling - 10V or so of 50Hz hum which would be enough, at the very low emission currents needed, to trigger this type of emission mechanism.

Last year Matt Lilley and I studied LECS using a battery-powered meter with the grid power to the whole building turned off. So another mechanism must be at play here- grid power on or off made no difference.

I was reviewing a video where Bob Greenyer attempted to put forward some ideas about how the LEC could work and it is about the known electron scavenging properties of Pd and that are also shared by Alkaline metal compounds. He puts it all in reference to many other things but one Japanese patent from 2014 talks about these alkaline metal

Compounds and mentions the electron scavenging and also that these compounds may lead To nuclear reactions.

Not necessarily applicable to the multiple ways in which the LEC has been replicated by now, but to some of them, specially the ones with iron in it. Just another thing to have on the radar, specially considering that Ed Storms also is talking about direct production of electrons.

JP2014047082A - Higher alkali metal-transition metal oxide - Google Patents

Quote from Curbina

https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2014047082A/en

The process described here is similar to that I accidentally found a good while back, only I used KOH instead of NaOH. When KOH solution (i.e. KOH in the presence of water) reacts with clean iron surfaces from moderate temperatures up (~250-300 °C), it oxidizes them rapidly forming on the surface a hygroscopic green layer similar to the catalytically-active phase found in industrial iron oxide catalysts under active conditions.

I'm not sure if it's related to the LEC however.

Quote from can

The process described here is similar to that I accidentally found a good while back, only I used KOH instead of NaOH. When KOH solution (i.e. KOH in the presence of water) reacts with clean iron surfaces from moderate temperatures up (~250-300 °C), it oxidizes them rapidly forming on the surface a hygroscopic green layer similar to the catalytically-active phase found in industrial iron oxide catalysts under active conditions.

I'm not sure if it's related to the LEC however.

Is not the process per se, but the electron scavenging effect what calls my attention, more than anything else in particular, and also in light of the latest ideas put forward by Ed Storms after his meetings with Frank Gordon at ICCF 24.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Looking at the recent literature - surfaces exist that will emit electrons with energy a few eV or lower. The following link shows a surface emitting at less than 10V

Not exaclty: 10 V is the voltage difference "inside" the emitting electrode that accelerate electrons toward the surface, where they are emitted by tunnelling or field emission thanks to the external voltege (200 V or more across 0.5 mm). I would say that this is quite a bit different from the LEC.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Possibly a large isolated plate could pick up - due to capacitive coupling - 10V or so of 50Hz hum which would be enough, at the very low emission currents needed, to trigger this type of emission mechanism.

In the tubular implementation of the LECs, the active electrode is essentially screened from the 50 Hz by the outer counter electrode.

Quote from THHuxleynew

This mechanism could be eliminated by connecting the two electrodes via a large capacitor so reducing the capacitive coupling onto the electrode of extraneous sources.

I did this in my first replication. My aim was different (collecting the generated energy), but the results showed no difference with or without the big capacitor.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Whether this flies or not - the fact that electron emission into the atmosphere from < 10V sources is known to work (at currents of uA/cm^2) perhaps shows a common mechanism with LEC ionisation.

Actually the paper shows a more specific situation: <10 V is the voltage applied across the active electrode, but 200-600 V are still needed between this and the counter electrode separated by 0.5-1 mm of air.

Compared to this, the LEC generates ionization (but also voltage and current) with no applied voltage. In my opinion, it is hard to make a comparison.

Quote from Stevenson

Not exaclty: 10 V is the voltage difference "inside" the emitting electrode that accelerate electrons toward the surface, where they are emitted by tunnelling or field emission thanks to the external voltege (200 V or more across 0.5 mm). I would say that this is quite a bit different from the LEC.

OK, it is, and I did not catch that. Thanks.

But not maybe different in a way that prevents this being proof-of-concept. Once we have ions away from the surface a high field will increase the probability of no-recapture. But for very low currents that maybe does not matter (the areal current from this device is 1uA/cc - much higher than for an LEC). It shows that a low voltage is enough to emit electrons - and the local field near the surface can be very high due to surface effects perhaps.

Uncertain, I agree, but possible?

THH

Quote from THHuxleynew

Looking at the recent literature - surfaces exist that will emit electrons with energy a few eV or lower. The following link shows a surface emitting at less than 10V

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5077062

Now, 10V is I think too high for any possible electrochemical work function generated voltage - but only by a factor of 5 - 10.

It seems possible that unusual surface characteristics, even surface plasmons, could provide that sort of Q.

Possibly a large isolated plate could pick up - due to capacitive coupling - 10V or so of 50Hz hum which would be enough, at the very low emission currents needed, to trigger this type of emission mechanism. This mechanism could be eliminated by connecting the two electrodes via a large capacitor so reducing the capacitive coupling onto the electrode of extraneous sources.

Whether this flies or not - the fact that electron emission into the atmosphere from < 10V sources is known to work (at currents of uA/cm^2) perhaps shows a common mechanism with LEC ionisation.

THH

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The paper you quote says:

“The energy of the emitted electrons depends on the applied voltage and can be controlled.“

Beyond your neeed to find things that have some common features

to the LEC it seems you really refuse to acknowledge that the LEC produces voltage that is spontaneous, and independent of any external energy source. The device you are trying to put as a comparison only works with an external energy input.