I left home for Budapest at 6 am on Thursday, got home near midnight on Friday. George and his colleagues made me very welcome, and on Thursday we spent a lot of time in the lab, where I collected a machine to test independently in my lab. George and Co ran some tests, mostly to show me how to operate it. It will take a few weeks for me to gather together the things I need to run a test here. They have built 5 of the latest iteration of the device, and others have gone to David Nagel, Guido Parchi, and Andras Kovacs.
The photos below are from the test run in George's lab near Budapest.
This is the general layout. The DC PSU is a fairly scary set-up, but they run the project on a shoestring basically, nobody gets a salary. The red variac feeds the secondary of a microwave transformer visible to its right. This is fitted with a diode bridge rectifier and a couple of chunky smoothing capacitors. Normally they stick to a maximum input voltage below 3kV DC, at a few mA. This reduces the rate of electrode erosion.
A close-up of the PSU.
This is the input waveform as created from the high-voltage DC input by the onboard LRC 'tank' circuit.
This is the general set-up before starting the run, There is a 'spare' electrode assembly on the bench next to it. The electrode gap is adjustable, and when the machine is running you can clearly see sparking across the gap. The two analogue mechanical dial thermometers are coupled to resistors embedded in insulation directly beneath them. The one on the left is input, on the right output. The tubing is connected to the vacuum pump and hydrogen generator.
The pressure gauge - this is the H2 pressure. (Not D2)
More soon.
BTW- this is a lab workhorse device, mine is slightly more elegant Just slightly.