Incubator type like I showed at ICCF24 and prof. Muto used.
As far as I know, Muto used an air-flow calorimeter, shown here:
I am not familiar with the term "incubator type" calorimeter. Does it mean a Seebeck calorimeter?
Mizuno style reactors WITHOUT precious metals...by Nickec
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He used this one first and switched to incubator later. I thought I posted some photos here with some details a few years ago. It’s like a convection oven and he did some modifications with that and then later another validator took that concept a bit further and that was the data I published at iccf
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It's an oven rather than a calorimeter.
Ah, yes! They call those things "incubators" in Japan. I was thinking in English. Those are constant temperature air cooled chambers. But they are not calorimeters. You cannot use one as a calorimeter as far as I know. I don't see how you could. They are very helpful for calorimetry for the same reason a constant temperature water bath is. They ensure a stable background within a fraction of a degree of temperature. But you have to put the experiment inside some sort of calorimeter, which -- in turn -- is placed inside the chamber. It can be isoperibolic, Seebeck, or some other type. An air-flow calorimeter is probably too big to fit.
Here is a photo of an experiment set up inside a constant temperature air cooled chamber, a.k.a. incubator:
In English, an incubator is a chamber to take care of premature babies, or a gadget to hatch chicken eggs.
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We Adapted it to work as a calorimeter as outline in our paper. I have a more detailed paper in Japanese that perhaps I can translate to English so everyone can read it. It’s more like a precision convection oven. A precise power level is applied to an insulated box with a fan inside. The temperature rises until radiative and convective losses reach an equilibrium and a stable temperature is reached. This calibration is repeated at different power levels and a regression is calculated. Then an active reactor is placed inside and the same steps are repeated. One can derive the wattage of excess heat by looking at the corresponding wattage that would be required to reach the now higher temperature with the reactor inside. Viola. You have a calorimeter.
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I have a more detailed paper in Japanese that perhaps I can translate to English so everyone can read it.
Or send it to me, and I will translate it.
It’s more like a precision convection oven. A precise power level is applied to an insulated box with a fan inside. The temperature rises until radiative and convective losses reach an equilibrium and a stable temperature is reached.
That does not sound good. The stable, terminal temperature inside the insulated box will depend on ambient conditions outside the box:
1. Ambient temperature.
2. Air currents, from fans, HVAC or what-have-you.
3. Relative humidity.
If the entire box is placed in a constant temperature laboratory room with no fans, that should work. Is that what you have? Otherwise the stable temperature will not be stable. It should vary as much as the ambient temperature in the room, with a delay. A long delay! Very annoying. 100 W will raise the temperature some precise amount compared to the outside, but if the outside varies by 2 deg C, so will the temperature inside the box, so you cannot draw any conclusions from the temperature. It will be noisy.
In some cases, people have used these boxes or thermoelectric beer coolers as gigantic calorimeters. A beer cooler is a thermostatically controlled thermoelectric refrigerator which can also be used to keep inside contents warmer than the surroundings. A beer cooler placed in an ordinary room is a Seebeck calorimeter in an uncontrolled environment, which is not satisfactory.
To do calorimetry, you set the box (or cooler) to a given temperature. You run a calibration, which produces heat. The power going into the box (or cooler) falls in proportion to the heat. Unfortunately for you, it also falls if the ambient temperature rises, or it rises if ambient falls. It is difficult to separate out the effect of the heat in the box from changes in ambient temperature. You can calibrate after a fashion by setting the box temperature with no experiment inside, and watching the effects of ambient temperature changes. That would take days or weeks, I think. I would not recommend it.
If the experiment produces too much heat, the temperature rises above your setpoint and you cannot draw any conclusions. The whole test goes down the drain. In other words, this only works when you back off the power in isothermal calorimetry. Back it off to zero and you have no place to go, and you can't measure it anymore.
Some boxes have both heating and air conditioning (usually thermoelectric). You can use that to maintain a stable temperature, but you cannot measure the heat by looking at the power consumption of the box because it takes different levels of power to heat something compared to cooling it. That's an apples or oranges comparison.
As I said, this works well if the entire room has laboratory grade, finely controlled heating and air conditioning, and no fans. For that matter, you can do air flow, water flow, or isoperibolic calorimetry in that kind of room. You don't need the box. The entire room acts like the inside of a constant temperature air chamber (an incubator).
If changes from the heat inside are far larger than perturbations from ambient temperature changes, this method will work. Sort of. It is better for relative differences than absolute ones. I mean comparative differences. That is what J. P. Joule wrote when he described doing adiabatic calorimetry in an uncontrolled environment in 1841. He recommended using a large thermal mass of water. He described uncontrolled ambient air temperature changes: the “difficulty which exists in keeping the air of the room in the same state of quiet, of hygrometry, &c. during the different days on which the experiments were made.”
Joule, J.P., On the Heat evolved by Metallic Conductors of Electricity, and in the Cells of a Battery during Electrolysis. Philosophical Magazine, 1841. 19(124): p. 260
See p. 37:
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In English, an incubator is a chamber to take care of premature babies, or a gadget to hatch chicken eggs.
Quite right. It is a temperature stabilised cabinet. The way one of these for calorimetry is described by Daniel_G in post 3805 above. The core principle is that adding a new heat internal source reduces the amount of power required by the system heaters to maintain any given temperature. If the temperature rises above the set temperature because of heat emitted by the reactor you can derive the energy saving at that new temperature since to maintain any given temperature the oven heaters will require enough electrical input to exactly balance with convection, radiation and conduction of heat from oven to environment.
I think the biggest problem here is rapid transients - a heat burst might briefly double the oven temperature for example - to determine the energy in the burst would require either a bit of integral calculus or modelling/mimicking the excursive behaviour by tweaking the oven thermostat with a dummy reactor inside and measuring the energy required to do it. You need voltage and current sensors, an internal thermocouple in the reactor, a couple of external ones and some more placed near top, bottom, and middle of the oven. Probably 10 channels of data collection would do it..
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The core principle is that adding a new heat internal source reduces the amount of power required by the system heaters to maintain any given temperature.
That's what I thought. The thermoelectric beer-cooler approach. (Beer coolers work well when properly used. Passive beer coolers are also useful, with different techniques.)
If the temperature rises above the set temperature because of heat emitted by the reactor you can derive the energy saving at that new temperature since to maintain any given temperature the oven heaters will require enough electrical input to exactly balance with convection, radiation and conduction of heat from oven to environment.
If the temperature rises above the set temperature it doesn't work. Or I should say, it is too complicated for me! The temperature has to remain stable while input power falls. The power from the reaction is proportional to the decrease in input power. It is proportional, not equal, unless the incubator has resistance heaters inside and you can measure the power going into them directly without measuring fans, control electronics, and whatnot.
A beer cooler is definitely proportional because thermoelectric chips have very low efficiency.
In other words, it has to be isothermal. McKubre's calorimeter works this way. He measures heat by the decrease in heating power. In his case, the decrease in heating power is equal to the heat from the experiment. It is not just proportional, because he is heating a resistance heater inside the cell.
As I said, if the heat from the experiment goes above the heat you input to maintain the temperature, and your heater turns off completely, the temperature rises and I don't think you can get an accurate reading.
I think the biggest problem here is rapid transients - a heat burst might briefly double the oven temperature for example - to determine the energy in the burst would require either a bit of integral calculus or modelling/mimicking the excursive behaviour by tweaking the oven thermostat with a dummy reactor inside and measuring the energy required to do it.
If your goal is to measure energy, I do not see why transients matter. Transient changes in power will not affect that. It works like a bomb calorimeter in that respect.
If your goal is to watch the power carefully in real time, transients would be a problem. If that is you goal, I think there are calorimeter designs with less thermal mass and less delay from the change in power to the time it registers in output. The ultimate rapid response, real-time method is an IR camera focused on the reacting material, which is what Pam Boss used:
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Here is one of these thermoelectric coolers of which I speak. An "Electric Cooler & Warmer," 45 L capacity, for $189 That's big. You cannot make a 45 L calorimeter for that kind of money. "CHANGE MODES WITH THE FLIP OF A SWITCH" (from cooler to heater). For the hot mode, power only goes up to 58 W, so I guess you cannot measure any higher power than . . . 30 W?
To use it as a calorimeter, you set it to "warm." and set the thermostat as high as it goes, to 130°F. Place a resistance heater and a fan inside. Input 10, 20, 30 W, monitoring power to the heater and fan. See how much the power going into the thermoelectric devices decreases for each step. Hopefully the points will line up in a nice linear fashion, and they will be the same each time you revisit the same power level. Otherwise it is not working.
This is basically a Seebeck calorimeter.
Ivation Electric Cooler & Warmer with Wheels & Handle |48 Quart (45 L) Portable Thermoelectric Fridge For vehicles & Trucks| 110V AC Home Power Cord & 12V Car Adapter for Camping, Travel & PicnicsIvation Electric Cooler & Warmer with Wheels & Handle |48 Quart (45 L) Portable Thermoelectric Fridge For vehicles & Trucks| 110V AC Home Power Cord & 12V Car…www.amazon.com -
For the hot mode, power only goes up to 58 W, so I guess you cannot measure any higher power than . . . 30 W?
Perhaps if input power drops to zero, you could jump to it and "CHANGE MODES WITH THE FLIP OF A SWITCH." In other words, you go to cooling mode and start measuring the power it takes to keep the temperature from rising. You have two calibration curves: one for the heating mode, and the other for cooling. 58 W heating, and 48 W more for cooling. I have no idea what range of calibration input power that would give you.
That would be a Rube Goldberg machine! I don't seriously think it would work.
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While attending ICCF 24 I came across the claim that Tadahiko Mizuno overcame the hurdle of high cost precious metal, Pd, by finding a way to eliminate it in his newest reactors.
Such a development can further add to the recent momentum of LENR activity.
As I type this we as yet know very little about these reactors and the tools used to explore their metrics.
In time, let us hope, let us work together, to realize the potential by speculation and measured iteration.
Some handwaving allowed. Precision preferred.
I find that threads give what they get. So I will give this thread a nudge and see what it gives us. Look for incubation and catalysis here. See it.
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I am happy to put our calorimeter out there open for criticism as I think this is a healthy way to improve and share it.
Jed I am an empiricist. I believe you raised some valid points. I will purposely adjust the lab temperature to 18C and 28C and rerun the calibrations. Let’s see what the theoretical influence of room temperature is on the results. We are now constructing a new lab with a custom designed precision temperature and humidity control so it will be possible to do that.
The temperature inside the oven is 200-800C. This is covered by a lot of insulation. My gut feeling is a few degrees difference in ambient temperature is not going to affect the results significantly.
Also we initially tried to fix the temperature with PID control and measure the reduction in power required to maintain a given temperature but that data was super noisy. When we flipped it around and fixed the heater input power and let the temperature vary, the data became very clean.
More later.
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We are now constructing a new lab with a custom designed precision temperature and humidity control so it will be possible to do that.
That should fix any problem, as long as there are no air currents playing over the box from something like a fan or the HVAC. The entire room acts as the constant temperature background for the calorimeter.
The temperature inside the oven is 200-800C. This is covered by a lot of insulation. My gut feeling is a few degrees difference in ambient temperature is not going to affect the results significantly.
Well, if the ambient room temperature is 2°C higher, the temperature inside should be 202 - 802°C. What else can it be? That is only a small difference in the fixed temperature inside the box. But if your reaction produces only a 10°C temperature difference, say from 200°C to 210°C, that would be a big difference. If your reaction produces a 100°C temperature difference, 2°C would not matter.
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Also we initially tried to fix the temperature with PID control and measure the reduction in power required to maintain a given temperature but that data was super noisy. When we flipped it around and fixed the heater input power and let the temperature vary, the data became very clean.
Was the PID control super noisy for the nonactive control reactor too? Or just for the LENR-equipped reactor?
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New thread.
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Note added in edit: I should reinforce something I said a few posts ago. Given the properties Daniel_G is claiming for the newly reconfigured Mizuno system, loss of temperature control and escape to meltdown should be easy to evoke even unintentionally. It should be a constant threat that the experimenters have to work hard to avoid. Push the input heater just a touch too high and positive feedback should push the system straight up the meltdown region unless vigorous cooling is introduced on an emergency basis. I don't understand why we haven't heard about any such thing yet.
Some systems self destruct at relatively low temperarures, meltdown is something I have seen only once at 1700C, Witness to which was a partly melted fused alumina fuel container.
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Some systems self destruct at relatively low temperarures, meltdown is something I have seen only once at 1700C, Witness to which was a partly melted fused alumina fuel container.
"Meltdown" is a term I have been using. It is dramatic. Maybe too dramatic for what I mean to convey. "Ignition" may be a better term and is more in line with what seems to be Daniel_G's thinking.
Systems possessing a heat-activated exothermic reaction (whether LENR or not) should have an ignition point -- a threshold beyond which a positive feedback develops that allows the system to escape the restrains of local passive cooling. The temperature will then go up and up until something happens to stop it. So far, Daniel_G has not described any property of the reaction itself that would put the brakes on things -- he has simply said that the exothermic reaction produces heat at a steady-state rate that increases exponentially with increasing temperature. No brakes there. So the brakes would presumably come from either the fuel becoming exhausted, or from a derangement of the microarchitecture that is supposed to support the reaction (clefts in lattices and that sort of thing). "Meltdown" in this case need not appear as a bulk melting of the reactor parts. It would just seem that the reactor stops working with no visible change otherwise.
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So the brakes would presumably come .... from a derangement of the microarchitecture that is supposed to support the reaction (clefts in lattices and that sort of thing
Yes.
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We are getting 0.2W per cm2 so our latest prototypes which are about the size of a notebook computer have 40,000cm2 of surface area so if the 0.2W/cm2 heat output holds, these units will produce about 8kW of heat. We don't know until we try but if we will get anywhere near that, but whatever heat is produced will be in a form that is readily convertible into high pressure steam. Also, advanced controls will allow us to remove only the excess heat so COP should be infinite.
Daniel, excellent results. The notebook computers are around 9x12 inches or around 22x30 cm = 660 cm x 2 sides = around 1300 cm2 or around 260Watts going into your calorimetry which I I understand it is a "incubator" (i.e. a rectangular shaped volume like a small oven or incubator) which I assume you calibrate it with a resistive heating element in the incubator using its normal conductive heat transfer through the incubator's insulation which should go linearly with delta temperature. I like your constant temperature regulator design as well -- makes sense and is simple. My understanding is that with sufficient insulation the device doesn't need any more electric heating after "boot strap" (i.e. lighting the fire). I also understand that for long periods (weeks) the device doesn't need to be refueled as all the fuel is within the volume of the reactor and there is no need for new D2 or H2 flow. That seems like a pretty complete demonstration.
Am I correct in my assumptions about
1) Around 200 to 300 watts out with no electric power being supplied?
2) around 1300 cm2 reactor surface area
3) no on-going fuel supplied?
If all true, the world will beat a path to your better mousetrap! I look forward to reading about your success in the next 12 months.
Thank you.
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That should fix any problem, as long as there are no air currents playing over the box from something like a fan or the HVAC. The entire room acts as the constant temperature background for the calorimeter.
Well, if the ambient room temperature is 2°C higher, the temperature inside should be 202 - 802°C. What else can it be? That is only a small difference in the fixed temperature inside the box. But if your reaction produces only a 10°C temperature difference, say from 200°C to 210°C, that would be a big difference. If your reaction produces a 100°C temperature difference, 2°C would not matter.
Jed -- I think too unnecessarily complicated. If as I believe Daniel intimated, he has cold (tap temperature) water available behind a water valve and a fan to circulate the oven air through a heat exchanger (i.e. like a car liquid cool "radiator"), when the control says it needs to cool it can open the valve the right amount and the amount of watts being removed can be computed via delta-T in the water quite accurately. When the reactor needs heat, the water flow is turned off by the control and power is applied to the resistive heating element. With thick enough insulation and perhaps some foil, the radiation losses and the losses to direct conduction/convection through the insulation blanket (i.e. asbestos, fiberglass, whatever) can be relatively low and will not vary greatly with ambient room temperature or air convection in the surrounding laboratory, such that a 2 or 10 degree C difference doesn't make hardly any watt difference in the measurement to the outside.. Then, we don't have to deal with Seebeck sensors and thermo-electric coolers. KISS - Keep it simple science!
