Posts by GlowFish

Quote from ogfusionist

Makes perfect sense for people not suffering from paranoia on the subject. I have a reactor that produces excess heat by proton interaction to produce helium. I'm not paranoid when viewing the reaction and can appreciate the positive side as well as the negative. Everything will be negative for you. You're great help for institutions that will suppress this energy source until burning oil is no longer immensely profitable.

Sorry that with your mentality you're incurable. Excuse for my post is that other readers become aware.

Correct me if I am wrong but you have mentioned a reactor a few times I think. It would be of great interest if you could post a picture of it or a link if you have already. Thanks.

Just a thought, why not control input power instead of trying to regulate temperature to a fixed point. Bar rapid changes in the reactor, a certain power should give you a certain temperature unless some other factor suddenly comes into play. It might be easier to spot any excess heat occurring if the temperature fluctuates with fixed input energy. I would imagine that coil power would be slightly easier to control than a somewhat non-linear temperature. Having a coil power that is fixed might reduce temperature and power fluctuations due to the temperature measurement/control process. Temperature limits or trips could be added to prevent runaway reactions if required but don't serve as the primary control.

A question regarding the suspected EM noise interfering with equipment. Did the interference occur with or without the wired TC being used in the reactor?

Regarding pressure. Aren't there safety valves that "burp" gas when the pressure exceeds a certain threshold? Perhaps in the future a safety valve could be added to the reactor tube so that if and only if the pressure should rise above expectations, the excess gas would be burped and you would not have to abort the experiment.

Quote from me356

Also I have checked that SiC element is producing so intense EM field, that my IR meter (that is reading data from TC) was unstable at 800W and more.

It is possible that EM from the heater coil could be causing interference but the mains frequency is quite low and interference is more likely to be common mode. I am not sure how your TC is bundled but if you twist the TC wires all the way down its length you can reduce effects from outside fields. However I would suspect that a ground loop from the heater coil, through the TC and through the USB connection is more likely to have an effect on the measurements if the USB is not isolated. Perhaps remove the wired TC and just use the Pyrometer as that is really why you got it as I understand so that you don't have to rely on contact methods to measure the temperature. That is assuming you had the wired TC on the reactor.

Just a question and a thought. I would assume in this case a working fluid or gas would be piped through the core of a reactor and the gas itself used to drive the turbine? Is there a huge disadvantage of using a heat exchanger like conventional reactors where the coolant is kept separate from the working fluid due to radiation concerns etc.? In that case, can you use CO2 as the coolant with whatever advantages it has in terms of IR absorption etc, but then transfer that heat to an Argon working fluid using convection? Heat would not magically vanish unless you have poor insulation and lose it to the environment.

Using thicker should reduce the chances of the heater coil burning out or at least prolong the life of it a bit. While this would reduce the overall resistance of the coil, why not make two coils of half your required resistance and wrap them one on top of another with a little cement to separate them, i.e have a two layer coil. You can then connect the ends of the coils in series to increase your resistance or can even connect them so that the coils reinforce or counter any magnetic effects.

Quote from FreethinkerLenr2

Thanks all for the feedback. I am in vacation mode today, so I will have to get back to you all on the different items. I managed to scribble a wire diagram to explain where I measure

Thanks for that. If you have a moment, try moving the current measurement after the SSR and see if the spikes are still there to try an rule out any oddities with the SSR such as shorting.

I see from the graph that there were no spikes at the lower current levels but there were at the higher levels. Did the spikes vanish again when the current was reduced? It is possible that there is some odd readings at the turn on point due to measurements from the meter but I wouldn't really expect that from a true RMS meter and if that were the case then why wouldn't you see spikes at lower power levels as the waveshape would still be the same. Is the current measurement and/or SSR before or after your transformer?

If the SSR and current measurement is before the transformer then those spikes might be current inrush into the transformer as it energizes. That might only occur at the higher voltages due to transformer saturation.

Another possibility that came to mind was that something is arcing at the higher voltages (= higher currents) at the SSR switch on and drawing large current spikes while not arcing at the lower voltages.

A question about the control. Does the controller have a fixed setpoint or does it have a "high" and "low" threshold for On and Off?

Quote from Majorana

For example: If you insert the geometric parameters of me356 's last run, you will get

R_Al = 100 MOhm
R_K = 10 Ohm

Can you post those calculations Majorana? For some reason I calculate approximately 45kOhm using these parameters:

∅D = 15mm, ∅d = 10mm tube, I have also ∅D = 16mm, ∅d = 12mm, but first one fits fine on the reactor tube.
20AWG (0.812mm) Kanthal A1 wire, 3569.8mm length (R = 10Ω), 66-67 wraps with 50-100mm total leg length (<3% power loss)

from an early post in me356's run.

using the rho value of 100000 Ohm.m you quoted. Using pl/A, where l is (16mm - 12mm)/2 = 2mm = 2e-3m, A = 2piRL (where R is about (16mm + 12mm)./4 = 7e-3m) and L is 100mm which is the heater coil overlap.

The result does sound a bit low though. Any pointers?

Experiments by MFMP have suggested that there is a possibility of electrical leakage between the heater coil wrapped around the outside of the reactor tube and a thermocouple placed inside if the heater power supply is not isolated. Apparently it can arise as the conductivity of the alumina increases with temperature forming an electrical path. Possibly the anomalies in the thermocouple are due to electrical interference? Did you post details about the electrics of the experiment setup?

Just trying to understand the experiment setup. From the pictures, did you use a copper pipe coil for the calorimetry?

Without the raw data it is a little difficult to tell but the calorimetry output follows the input power fairly closely. I don't see any obvious signs of excess heat.

Thanks. Just a question or two. Your mains voltage about 230V? If it is, that cap might be a little borderline. Will 100k allow enough current to drive the IGBT? I recall that to obtain fast rise/fall edges, you need a fair current spike to charge the gate capacitance. Without that, the IGBT takes too long to switch and can get quite hot.

Would you be able to post a schematic of your proposed circuit, purely for interest sake?

If you use a DC supply (Can be switchmode or just rough rectifier + caps), you can probably generate whatever PWM signal you like using a FET or something similar to supply the heater and just measure on the DC side to get current and voltage. That way, you don't need fancy high end power meters that can measure to the nth harmonic.

I don't know if the issue had been resolved but sometimes the older Pi's could not provide enough power through the USB port due to the limitations of the regulator on the board. You might need to use a powered USB hub if the Pyrometer draws a lot of power.

An X-Ray generator uses an electron beam fired at a spinning metal target to generate x-rays from bremsstrahlung radiation. I am not a physicist but why would a proton beam cause fusion and not have a lot of its energy dumped in X-Rays as it makes "small direction changes" as it scatters through the lithium?

Was the Arduino controlling the Triac switch? Will that function now go over to the Pi?

Quote from me356

UPDATE: it seems that the pyrometer is able to stream data in realtime. Whats more, it is using Serial interface so it can be connected directly to my Raspberry Pi. If this is true, then it is perfect. No more cables

That is good to hear, although looking at the link you posted, I can't see a serial interface, I only see a USB interface. While the USB might emulate a serial interface, would the provided drivers work on a Raspberry Pi? If the chip uses a common USB to Serial interface chip, you might be in luck but it would be nice to be sure. Just an observation from someone who has :dash: with USB to serial converters.

Why not have the quartz heating tubes in a planar array and place the reactor tube at the focus of a parabolic reflector? That should focus the IR onto the reactor without having to have the quartz tubes in physical contact.

Other option which is a little more tricky is to have a quartz heater tube in the centre and have a fuel cylinder surrounding it. Then all the IR radiated from the tube should be absorbed by the fuel canister. Unfortunately that would require a dual cylinder shaped fuel canister.

There was some discussion that either electric or magnetic fields had some part in generating the reaction, not just heat. I haven't seen any answer one way or the other but you still might need a coil to generate the field.

I am no scientist, but metal, unlike ceramics such as glass, it usually a lot more "elastic". You could probably induce high frequency vibrations with an oscillating magnetic field (as you would with a speaker) but the metal is more likely to get hot dissipating the energy than shattering. Metal does undergo fatigue under extreme stresses over a long period of time (like an aircraft) but I don't know if that is the metal ripping apart at the lattice level or just shearing along a line. Therein is the question, what can possibly create the vibrations of high enough frequency and amplitude to fracture metal without tearing itself apart?

Quote from Longview

When the wire fails, it opens a gap which begins to arc

I would also expect a brief arc as the heater wire failed. There was 80V AC across the coil at the time. Electric arcs can reach extremely high temperatures. Arc welding is used to readily melt steel. That damage "spot" is probably due to the arc explosion as the heater wire parted, arced then vaporized. @me356, can you check the seal around the pressure gauge? If there was a leak in the beginning, it would most likely be at the sealed end points. The hole in the tube that you pointed out might have just been created at the end.

What kind of pressure gauge did you have in mind? How were you planning to mount it? I am always concerned that tubes to measure pressure get blocked by debris from inside the reactor, especially when everything starts gassing or melting.