Posts by GlowFish

BobHiggins

A quick question. Why not tie the CT through a bridge rectifier? If I understand correctly, the CT should act like a current source so a bridge rectifier shouldn't affect the reading. That should allow you to read positive and negative swings. It should make the output filtered signal a little smoother.

Just a quick question. The rise time is about 10ns while the fall time is approximately 60ns. The switching hardware is a half-bridge. Why the relatively large switching characteristic difference?

@me356
Just a post following up on a request from a month ago regarding possible video's of the experiments you are currently conducting. I believe you replied saying videos were a possibility. Have you managed to find the time to create some videos for the interest of the community?

@me356

You have posted that you seem to get fairly obvious results.

Perhaps with respect for your concerns, can you make a short video clip of your latest achievements and your latest reactor experiments so that others on the forum following with interest can see the results of your work even if you don't wish to publish methodology just yet?

You may need to put a shield of some sort in front of the IR thermometer to mask out the arc as I don't think any IR coming from an arc will give you meaningful results. You may have to focus/blank out everything except the nickel electrodes and focus on them for emitted IR to get a reading of the internal temperature (of the electrodes at least).

One last question regarding the Geiger counter. You reported an anomaly regarding the CPM. Could the the arc generate huge amounts of EMI? Would that EMI actually affect the measurement electronics of the counter (especially if it were held close)? The arc could also be generating X-Rays depending on the energy you put into it which might also fall within the detection/sensitivity range of the counter.

A question regarding your spark generator.

Are you using a capacitor-discharge type system where you charge up a cap then let it discharge through an HT transformer or are you using a FET/IGBT (or something similar) to hard drive an HT transformer? I ask because once you have an arc formed, the arc is highly conductive and acts like a dead short. A hard driven system could then see large current spikes which could damage it.

This spark assembly looks like a "hot" fusion approach called the Z-Pinch. As far as I understand, the Z-Pinch is related to the Tokomak design. What is the thinking behind this reactor approach with regards to LENR and how would the results be different from "hot" fusion?

Alan Smith

True, pure Lithium would just dissolve again. I was suggesting a mixture of nickel and a small proportion of lithium but that might still be too far out.

Just for interest, apparently (according to some Google searches) it is actually possible to plate lithium but you have to use a less reactive solvent (i.e not water) for the plating to stick. Some methods even suggest plating a second layer of less reactive metal over the lithium to shield/protect it once the process is finished. Also Lithium ion batteries seem to have a detrimental effect when overcharged in that the lithium comes out of solution and plates the electrodes internally causing shorts in the battery.

One or two questions.

When you added the Lithium, did you mix the nickel and lithium through?

I suppose only me356 could answer but does the nickel have to be in powdered form? Powder would give you more surface area but is it still strictly necessary? If nickel powder is not necessary then perhaps you could electroplate the inside of your steel reactor with nickel (perhaps add the lithium then so that the resultant electroplate would be an alloy of nickel and lithium?). Then you would not have to worry as much if the steel reactor was absorbing Hydrogen as it would have to go through nickel first.

Could it be that you would only observe hydrogen absorption once the internal pressure went over a threshold?

A question regarding your plasma experiments. From what I read you claim to have seen neutrons. I have no idea as to how you performed your experiment or the nature of the apparatus used but I would like to point out the "desktop fusion" experiments with the Farnsworth Fusor. The Fusor has been around for ages and fusor experimentalists can readily obtain neutrons from it. Similar plasma principles are used in industrial neutron generators. Obtaining fusion with electric fields has been done fairly readily. The ever present problem is that fusors (as of to date) generate no net excess power. My question is, how do your plasma experiments differ from that of a fusor? Did you get excess heat or did you base your findings just on the fact that the system produced neutrons?

@Paradigmnoia

The issue with power measurement is the accuracy, resolution and capability of whatever it is that you are using for measurements. Accurate measurements of AC power require true RMS meters which can be pricey. Added to the complexities is that depending on what you have connected (and the quality thereof), even switchmode supplies, triac choppers etc draw "spikey" currents from your wall socket which are very tricky to measure. Normal run-of-the-mill multimeters which are commonly available might not give you good readings under these conditions. The best is if both the current and the voltage that are being measured are steady DC. If you add choppers etc to the system then you need to add filters to the supply. Just measuring at the wall plug with no filtering could give you variable results. It is also easier to measure DC with a (slow) computer connected ADC which is what you would probably need if you want to keep a streaming record of experiment results.

From the attached circuit diagram it seems you are measuring the power supply voltage behind the switch so it should (theoretically) be steady. The supply current would be a chopped signal. If D is the duty cycle (between 0 and 1), assuming Iavg = Ipk*D, Pinstant = Ipk*Vdc, Pavg = Pinstant * D then Pavg = Ipk*Vdc*D which is Pavg = (Iavg/D) * Vdc * D which is Pavg = Iavg * Vdc. Please check the calculation but it should be possible to record the actual power going into the resistive load assuming that you have an accurate average current. Therein lies the issue. Can you trust a meter to give you an accurate average current? I assume the lowpass filter on the current measurement is intended to aid with that? As Alan Smith pointed out, steady DC voltages and currents are far easier to measure. Since you already have a variable DC power supply, why the extra complexity of a chopper?

A quick question regarding the experiment. Is the housing made of alumina like previous "Glowstick" experiments or is it stainless steel? I read that steel has an ignition temperature of about 816degC odd. If the reactor was made of steel or had steel components, might not the high initial temperature cause them to ignite and burn?

There is a type of vacuum cleaner that filters out the incoming dust through a container of water then mops up the leftovers with a fine particulate filter. Perhaps you can set up a similar water filter to clean the dust from the air going into your chamber. I would assume you only need to clean out the dust from the experiment chamber/area.

Or just use the output of the vacuum cleaner if you can find one.

Apologies if this has already been suggested.

A slightly more expensive solution but why not have two detectors, one placed close to the reactor and another placed a few meters away along the same axis? Assuming the reactor is a "point source", the closer detector will experience a greater shift in the spectrum than the one further away (assuming there is indeed a source from the reactor). I would think both detectors would report similar "background" counts if the source was ambient. That way, you can eliminate changes in the background count "on the fly".

Is there any chance that increased levels can be generated by electric discharges in the tube from the coil through the gas to ground?

Could a verification calibration run with an "inert" powder (such as sand) and TiH2 be performed? If there is indeed excess heat then the calibration run should be similar to the original calibration run. It would be good to determine if the results are indeed from excess heat and not some sort of conduction effect of the high pressure hydrogen.

EDIT: I just remembered that this reactor uses the Nickel in the heater wire instead of separate Nickel powder fuel charge so this probably won't be possible unless the heater wire is coated with something.

@me356

Out of interest, if you are using Titanium Hydride purely as a hydrogen source, are you attempting to see if Lithium is not required for the reaction? Or are you adding Lithium separately?

Would ordinary black irrigation pipe wrapped in a spiral around the reactor tube work (Spaced some distance away)? Would the water flowing through the pipe cool it sufficiently or would the IR just melt the plastic?

Is it possible to switch to a mode where your PID loop controls the input power using the PCE data as feedback? Or it is not currently wired up that way?