LAB COFFEE TIME AND SWOP-SHOP

He's not musical, but he makes great coffee. And we have an arrangement, I'm teaching him everything I can, and he helps me with the data engineering. He wants to be a chemical engineering consultant in years to come.

This is what we're working on...

Dr Richard*

It's a hydrogen/Al reactor. The complications arise because it has heating/cooling circuits, gas purifier/driers - and more.

Pretty much finished now - I just have to mill a proper set of mounts for the stirrer motor- We used a drill temporarily for testing.

They are the fans that blow air across the copper coils of the hydrogen gas cooler behind them. It's a strange thing in some ways- the reactor temperature is held at 80-85C but the gas comes out at up to 120C. Hydrogen has very high heat capacity...and the gas bubbles escaping the reaction sites carry a lot of that heat with them..

I'm spending time on LEC R&D for a presentation at Assisi (IWAHLM) at the end of September. This is principally materials research, and also research to determine if co-dep is an absolute requirement to create a working electrode. That fact has some important consequences.

This simple set us is for smelting alloys of zinc, tin, indium etc as carriers for the metal powders I want to test - the alloys are mostly working as 'glue' to hold metal powders.

Here a trial alloy/powder-composite electrode is being electrolysed. I need to improve my skills in the alloying game- it's a craft I have not practised before.

You are nearly there. I'm using low melting point metals like indium or tin as an adhesive to glue (coller) powders that I know adsorb a lot of hydrogen and are active as lenr fuels onto brass sheet electrode blanks. Then these are electrolytically loaded with hydrogen in the hope they become working electrodes. No co-dep, just 'conventional wet loading.

This idea is based on a suggestion from Ed Storms in conversation at ICCF-24 that the LEC is a very sensitive form of 'cold fusion detector' A low voltage low energy Geiger counter.

This is the hydrogen reactor on a test run - no hydrogen today

Vimeo

Curbina Good question! The shaft is supported by 2 sealed ball bearing races inset in the cap the cap which is machined from solid Delrin (That was fun) The shaft is also a close fit but not tight into the Delrin which is also packed with high temperature grease. The bearing races are themselves pressed against silicon rubber seals by springs held in tension by collars on the shaft. It works pretty well, I was surprised by how gas-tight it seems to be.

The thing to remember is that this is low pressure stuff which is much easier The reaction kinetics are unusual, go above just 1 bar and 95C and the products change completely, so the reactor is held in a tight window of pressure and temperature.

I think you should buy the slightly thicker 1.5mm foam - the 1mm is very floppy but 1.5 mm is stiff enough to use in modest amounts with no additional support. BTW, big bonus is that you can solder onto it very easily with ordinary multicore solder as used for electronics.

Power supply looks like good value. I have two home-brew ones in the lab, Each has 3 channels with voltage and current control up to 60V and 15A perchannel. The driver unit is a 2kW server PSU. The parts were all cheap enough. I'll find some links. And a picture.