Posts by can

Graphical explanation of how 50V have been obtained, since it might not be immediately obvious for people without experience with floating-ground power supplies.

Partially wrapping the titanium wire with Cu filaments appears to have solved the overheating problems I had with it. I could now sweep voltage throughout a wider voltage range, with no overheating observed.

Since resistance at high voltages appears to rise less than it did earlier, it's likely that a part of that was due to the increasing wire resistance with temperature. Current increased and then dropped in a complex way up to mid voltages, possibly due to a combination of many changing variables. The behavior once the cathodic plasma started was more stable.

Here I swept voltage throughout the 27-50V range. I thought that shooting the video under low-light conditions would have made the plasma more visible, but the video ended up getting a bit blurry.

EDIT: the cathodic plasma reaction is at least partially driven by how much the cathode heats up (since it emits electrons), which could in part explain why the titanium wire, which acts as a resistor, appears to work well.

EDIT2: however, 26AWG Kanthal A-1 wire did not seem to work as well. A reason could be that its resistivity is very stable across a large temperature range, whereas that of titanium is strongly dependent on temperature. Unfortunately the same property coupled with the high reactivity with oxygen makes titanium a frustrating material to work with under these conditions (it breaks or burns easily).

I tried adding a short 0.3 mm titanium wire to the previously used 1 mm tungsten welding rod used as a holder. With it I swept voltage between 40V and 50V back and forth, where the cathodic plasma reaction already takes place. Titanium seems to work surprisingly well in this range, but if I switch back to lower voltages for example by turning off the bench PSU (31V) and leaving the auxiliary one (19V) enabled, where normal electrolysis takes place and current draw is in the order of a few amperes, the wire heats up considerably due to its high resistivity and can burn if current is not quickly lowered.

There appears to be a large current difference between the 49V and 50V steps. I'll try plotting the I-V curve in this region tomorrow.

Wyttenbach

The gas evolved during normal electrolysis should be generally speaking proportional to the current. In the video I posted earlier, current at 19V was in the order of 4 amperes, while at 50V during plasma electrolysis it was about 0.5–0.6 amperes. So, this could explain the observed difference in the evolved gas bubbles, if you're referring to this. If not, then I did not understand your point.

Never received that, and the last email I received from LENR-Forum is apparently from January 30.

What were the latest newsletters sent about? Perhaps I received them, but missed them.

Mark U

A lot of gas was being generated in a small area at the low voltage level; I'm not sure. Here is a brief slow-motion gif I made yesterday from that which I forgot to upload here, showing both the gas bubbles (briefly) and the plasma.

On a related note, I tried using new 25 wt.% KOH solution without other additives and it is still not behaving like it did previously even after bring temperature above 80 °C. I couldn't manage to get the sharp 1 mm tungsten needle to react like it did in the above video/gif.

I've been able to trace a partial current-voltage relationship though, and characteristic voltages were lower than I achieved earlier, with breakdown voltage apparently around 12–14V, and mid-point voltage below 40V. In the dotted portion current was unstable and I couldn't get reliable readings also due to a kind of hysteretic behavior.

Unfortunately I have little idea of what you mean exactly, but after a few more tests I think I can confirm that after evaluating the effect of temperature (the plasma reaction works better at higher temperatures) and other impurities, KOH (potassium hydroxide) does appear to consistently work better than K2CO3 (potassium carbonate) after all.

As for the impurities, I guess one can speculate that similarly with ordinary plasma reactions in vacuum tubes, specific mixtures may give better results than single elements/compounds in isolation, but this will be difficult to control precisely under electrolytic conditions with so many variables affecting the results.

Earlier on, I tried replacing the electrolyte with K2CO3 at maximum conductance concentration (34 wt.%). It did not work as well as with KOH; a video of that is here. So, I replaced it with KOH also at maximum conductance (about 25 wt.%) and surprisingly it appeared to behave similarly to K2CO3 (although better in some respects: electrolysis started at a slightly lower voltage), and not quite like the previously used electrolyte solution.

Then, I recalled that with the old electrolyte solution I dissolved at least 1 cm of 1mm tungsten electrode with anodic oxidation (the process which made it sharp as shown in the opening post), as well as putting various organics into it. It also contained some iron oxides from the counter-electrode. I tried to put these impurities back. The organics didn't seem to help much right away. Iron oxide in the form of a few milligrams of Fe2O3 powder helped somewhat and turned the solution reddish as it was before, but apparently dissolving tungsten material into it did the job. It is now apparently working just like before, perhaps somewhat slightly better due to higher conductance.

Determining precisely what is exactly needed will not be straightforward, I fear. Apparently, some impurities or suspended particles make the electrolytic glow plasma reaction easier to start (or brighter) at lower voltages. This could also be something specific to the voltage-current level I'm using at the moment.

EDIT: probably this conclusion was not correct. It's likely that the KOH solution I previously used was more concentrated than I thought, since I did not keep track of how much KOH added. As I found out later, the reaction appears to improve with increasing KOH concentration up to very high levels.

Quote from Wyttenbach

You can also look at early Mills work: "R. L. Mills and S. Kneizys "Fusion Technol. Vol. 20" you have to dig it!

It's here: https://doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29644

but they use aqueous solutions up to 0.57M concentration and voltages in the order of 3V.

34 wt.% K2CO3 should correspond to 2.46M concentration.

What should I look for in this paper, more precisely?

Quote from Curbina

If you recall, In that paper I shared a while ago (the one that you found out had plagiarized a schematic from Mizuno), they specifically tried very high concentrations (thinking on the possibility of recycling the always controversial Reverse Osmosis reject stream as electrolyte, solving two problems at the same pass, by using a waste as source of hydrogen without having to spend any resource in adding the electrolyte), and also used microwave to generate plasma, and they reported efficiency over 100% at a certain combinations of high salt concentration and plasma energy input. They were surprised and invoked the possibility of LENR as the explanation for the "over 100%" energetic efficiency.

It could be only loosely related, but in an abandoned patent application by Ohmasa, a device is described where strongly alkaline solutions of NaOH or KOH (15–25 wt.%) are employed in electrolysis under vibration stirring. A full electrolytic glow plasma is unlikely to take place, but since a requirement for it is the formation of a gas or vapor sheath around the active electrode—which intense stirring could favor—it could transiently happen even at relatively low voltages, if the electrolyte solution is conductive enough.

I have sometimes thought that ultrasonic agitation could make plasma electrolysis easier to start, but I haven't had the occasion to test/verify this yet.

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2010023997A1/en

Quote from DnG

its always interesting when types of fermentations occur and then test the sedimentation from all the tests after all of it dries out .

I have no clue about what fermentation means in this context, but since I used a couple steel bars as the counter-electrode (anode here), there is likely going to be relatively large amounts of iron in the sedimentation, as well as likely silicon from the glass jar which is being slowly etched by the relatively concentrated hydroxide solution. Better controlled conditions would be needed for checking out if there's anything interesting there.

Quote from Curbina

can , as I understand it, you will always get better results at any voltage increasing the conductivity of the solution.

That's a safe assumption, but oddly in the many papers I've skimmed on the process, most researchers use moderately low electrolyte conductivity and higher voltages. I have never read about the process taking place at voltages in the order of 40V or so by substantially increasing conductivity, which seemed significant enough to start a new thread about since there might possibly be further margins for improvement.

Quote from Curbina

[...] From that paper is this graph, of course at higher voltage the effect of electrolyte concentration is more marked, but in all cases the more salt the better.

In my case however gas production appears to almost completely stop if I switch between 19V (normal electrolysis) and 50V (glow plasma). Current is much higher at 19V, but I don't have the means to verify if the gas produced per mole of electrons passed is different at 50V. Sometimes it has been reported that gas production in plasma electrolysis can exceed Faraday efficiency, but also that such behavior is anti-correlated with excess heat (is the extra gas recombining or disappearing somewhere?).

For instance, from Mizuno et al.: https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTgeneration.pdf

Quote

Figure 18 apparently shows the tendency of excess hydrogen generation to correlate with negative heat (an

endothermic reaction). The total endothermic heat was calculated at 6540J during plasma electrolysis.

Quote

When there is no excess heat, apparently the points for the excess hydrogen distribute around the no excess

heat region as in Fig. 19, indicating the difference between heat out and electric power is zero.

This is a continuation of a different thread which started with the transcription of Renzo Mondaini's plasma electrolysis experiments and ended up with partial replication on my part (mainly using a cheap low-power high-voltage power supply) as well as doing related experimental research.

The main problem so far has been finding a suitable power supply for experiments at higher currents. It is not easy to find affordable regulated power supplies for these experiments, and high voltages always pose some risks.

Recently I realized however that by using considerably higher electrolyte concentrations than usual (about 15–20% KOH by weight), cathodic plasma electrolysis can start from as low as 40V, with breakdown voltage (the voltage above which current starts decreasing with voltage, signaling the transition from normal electrolysis to plasma electrolysis) around 18–20V. This means that in principle it's possible to use commonly available 0–60V / 5A adjustable bench power supplies for these experiments, at least up to moderate power.

I only have a 31V bench supply at disposal, but due to the floating outputs it is easy to use it in series with another fixed-voltage source. I happened to have a 19V / 4.5A power supply, so I am able to test the 0–50V range up to 4.5A. Below (solid region) is the current-voltage relationship of the cathodic reaction using a 1 mm-thick sharp tungsten electrode. It appears that current reached a minimum at about 45V in this test, and should only increase after that. This minimum is technically called mid-point voltage in related literature.

The non-linear results are similar in general behavior to those reported by others, for example as seen in these graphs below from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11090-017-9804-z (open access) and https://doi.org/10.1088/0963-0252/26/1/015005 (paywalled), respectively. At least up to 50V the current value reported by my bench power supply appeared to be in agreement with that of a 40A clamp meter, for what it's worth.

Here is a test with the same tungsten cathode, switching between 19V and 50V repeatedly. Gas production seems much greater at 19V where normal electrolysis should be taking place.

An interesting observation with this relatively high-current, low-voltage plasma electrolysis is that by using a tungsten rod at the anode, oxidation and removal of the oxide layer formed by the plasma is so fast that the electrode becomes cleaned up and turns quite sharp in the process. This could be a useful method for obtaining tungsten needles. Other materials tested (so far only nickel, titanium, kanthal A-1) did not seem to behave in the same way during anodic oxidation.

As far as reaction products go, I haven't been able to detect anything unusual using a CMOS "cosmic ray detector" that has been collecting background data for weeks. At the maximum voltage I can use at the moment, electrode wear is rather limited and the reaction can go on almost indefinitely if it wasn't for electrolyte evaporation, and electromagnetic noise from prior testing appears to occur when wear starts getting severe, thus at higher voltages than the mid-point voltage.

The cathode reaction however appears to be subjectively putting proportionally more heat than normal electrolysis does at a much higher input power into the electrolyte, although to be fair I only have a single temperature sensor, so this is far from a reliable indication of excess heat (example: electrolyte temperature during plasma electrolysis of 75 °C, whereas with regular electrolysis it's about 81 °C, but with more than 3 times the total input power. Odd). The plasma reaction also appears to aerosolize large amounts of electrolyte, so this would have to be taken into account when performing evaporation calorimetry.

So is this method better than using high voltage power supplies and standard electrolyte concentrations? On one hand it does allow using more affordable and safer power supplies, but on the other a highly conductive electrolyte is needed and there aren't many other choices available besides KOH and NaOH, which are dangerous to use at high concentrations. K2CO3 could be used, but the maximum conductance (at 34 wt.%) is less than half that of KOH, according to a document I found here:

https://www.emerson.com/docume…ls-rosemount-en-68896.pdf

With D, condensation to the ultra-dense form should be easier and release more energy, and spontaneous D–D fusion releasing energy locally should be occurring as well. Annihilation reactions from which muons are eventually formed however might not easily deposit their energy locally without thick shielding or special shielding.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aadda1

Quote

Since the bonding is slightly stronger in D(0) than in protium p(0), it is likely that deuterons (which are bosons) condense to d(0) more easily than protons (fermions) do to p(0), and that d(0) is more resistant against excitation and fragmentation

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1402-4896/ab1276

Quote

There exists one clear difference in the cluster forms for protium p(0) and deuterium D(0). This concerns the distances observed in the CE experiments. The CE experiments on D(0) clusters give distances of approximately 2.3 pm (s = 2) and 0.56 pm (s = 1), while those for p(0) give distances of 2.3 pm (s = 2) and 5.0 pm (s = 3).

I'm not sure if the resistivity decrease is related to the superconductivity of the chain clusters of H(0), since above a certain temperature these are supposed to disappear due to reaching their critical temperature. I recall that the resistivity decrease observed in Celani wires persists regardless of temperature, until all or most of the hydrogen is removed from it with heat and vacuum. It could be that the properties of UDH are different when it is absorbed inside the material than on the surface, but this hasn't been investigated so far.

See: Phase transition temperatures of 405-725 K in superfluid ultra-dense hydrogen clusters on metal surfaces: AIP Advances: Vol 6, No 4 (scitation.org)

I was looking at it more like this:

Related: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-011-1371-6

Rob Woudenberg

Strontium (Sr) from the nitrate is applied:

https://www.researchgate.net/p…ower_at_High_Temperatures

Quote

The knot preparation starts with a wire of a Constantan variant (Cu55 Ni45) free of manganese. The wire has a PTFE coating (the yellow material shown in Fig. 3). The diameter of Constantan wire is listed in the supplier’s specification sas 193 µm We measured it as 197±3µm. The external diameter including PTFE is 730 (±5) µm (Fig. 3, top).Decomposition of PTFE sheath is carried out at 550◦C in air flow and at 0.15 bar for 10 ks. (Caution: a “water vacuum pump” was used to vent traces of hydrofluoric acid from the decomposition of PTFE). The wires were then dipped in 8% HNO3 for 5 min and rinsed in distilled water. (Fig. 3 wire in the middle.) Several cycles (5–10) were repeated of deposition of diluted solution of nitrates of Fe, Sr, K, Mn and high temperature decomposition (500–800◦C) to oxides. A typical procedure starts with a ∼200 cm wire. After preparing the knots (14 knots of eight loops each) the resulting length is ∼130 cm.

The magnetic field could possibly be useful for forming Rydberg matter, since the excited atoms will align parallel to the magnetic field and will have a longer lifetime under it. However it was reported by Holmlid to be counterproductive for UDH formation. The effect on RM has not been tested by him/his group.

Rob Woudenberg

I think this is a matter of unclear wording, i.e. whether they mean that H RM formation is "not possible anywhere" without alkali metals, or if it's just "not possible in practice" with catalysts similar to the iron oxide-based ones used—since, by the way, they also have specific surface areas in the order of ~5 m²/g or less and therefore generally provide a low hydrogen density on their surface.

Judging from what is being described in the paper, the easily formed RM of alkali metals for all intents and purposes scavenges hydrogen atoms from the surface of the catalysts, apparently bypassing the need for having a high density of H atoms on the surface that can cluster together before forming covalent bonds (H₂).

It's probably best to ask Leif Holmlid or one of the other authors for clarification here.

Wyttenbach, I don't know where this 11 eV spin bond energy comes from; please provide references. What is the definition of 'spin bond' as used here, anyway? Please don't throw specific jargon from your papers without explaining it first.

Badiei and Holmlid have measured a bond energy of 9.4 eV per H atom in Rydberg matter at the lowest energy state:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2004.05.027

https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-8984/16/39/034

Rydberg matter can be also formed from molecular hydrogen, but the ultra-dense form can only obtained from that of H atoms: https://www.sciencedirect.com/…1008144?via%3Dihub#sec2.3

Quote

Types of surfaces for H(0) formation

If the covalent H–H bond is not broken on the catalyst surface, H(l) RM cannot be formed, but H₂(l) RM is still possible and can be detected in some experiments [75]. This form of RM is, however, not the ultra-dense hydrogen H(0) but H(l). Thus, the dissociative adsorption step is crucial for the process of H(0) formation.

Quote from Wyttenbach

It's all in the standard write up. The spin pairing orbit is the electro-weak (1FC) component of electro-strong force (same a first derivative). You can directly see this energy in the 4-He enhanced binding force for the first electron. [...]

I was looking for a direct reference/source to better understand the origin of that value.

Quote from Rob Woudenberg

B.t.w. what I miss in Holmlid's paper is how H atoms migrate to H RM. There should be a step in between that forms H Rydberg atoms which in turn are clustered to H RM by condensation.

My understanding is that the H atoms adsorbed on the surface directly attach/incorporate themselves to the K RM clusters just outside the surface, forming mixed K–H RM clusters. There does not seem to be an intermediate step to excited H atoms, at least if enough K RM is present.

It seems that the bond energy of adsorbed atoms with the RM clusters is higher than with the surface, and therefore they will be incorporated into the RM faster than they can thermally desorb on their own (so, since K RM is much more easily formed, H RM formation from adsorbed H atoms should be almost automatic, if K RM in sufficient density is available).

The H atoms in the K–H RM clusters then fall into lower excitation levels down to H(1), presumably causing the ejection of K atoms from the RM in the process (since K atoms have occupied inner orbitals into which their excited electron cannot de-excite to); Fig 3E refers to this as "growth of purer H(RM) clusters".

A few selected relevant excerpts from the explanation:

Quote

The electronic excitation energy or even more simply a Rydberg electron can be transferred from alkali atoms to hydrogen atoms or ions, thus forming hydrogen Rydberg atoms which condense to hydrogen Rydberg matter clusters [55]. Experiments detect mixed alkali-hydrogen clusters [56], which shows that the transfer of excitation energy to hydrogen probably goes via Rydberg matter clusters instead of via Rydberg atoms which was the process originally believed to be involved. [...]

Quote

[...] One common idea of the formation of clusters of atoms at surfaces is that atoms desorb from the surface separately and that cluster formation takes place outside the surface. This is logical if the bonding to the surface is stronger than the bonds within the cluster, and it is in such a case unlikely that a cluster can survive thermal desorption, since this process involves violent energy-transfer collisions from the atoms in the surface. However, in the case of RM clusters this common principle is not applicable.

Quote

[...] The reason for this process is that the bond energy for the electronically excited atoms in the cluster is larger than that to the surface, and the incorporation of such an excited atom in a cluster makes it possible for the atom to leave the surface with lower thermal desorption energy and thus to desorb much faster. The bond of the Rydberg atom to the surface is then cleaved and transferred into the RM clusters.

Below is a modification of fig.3, with added captions for each subfigure:

Quote from Wyttenbach

Electron spin pairing releases about 11eV/pair. This indirectly lowers the potential of electrons. No exited states needed.

With H* its a bit more complicated as the charge generating orbits change, what directly lowers the potential of one electron.

Where does this number come from?

Rob Woudenberg

I do not have much plasma physics knowledge, but I'm not sure if the processes have many similarities. The description the Penning mixture page on Wikipedia suggests that the inert gas (with high ionization energy) must first be excited. Then, as it de-excites, the quench gas is ionized.

In the Rydberg matter (RM) formation process as described in the latest paper by Holmlid et al., the easily excited K atoms first form Rydberg matter. Then, the K RM formed interact with the H atoms adsorbed on the surface. It seems almost the other way around, and the formation of H RM does not have to go through excited states of H atoms.

milton

It hasn't changed, in that it indeed is the active compound of iron-oxide styrene catalysts and likely also other alkali-promoted iron oxide catalyst types. It could perhaps be added that the decomposition of this compound at higher temperatures (>800–900 °C) and/or vacuum conditions yields a potassium-deficient ferrite phase (K₂Fe₂₂O₃₄, also known as potassium β-ferrite) from which potassium loss should be even faster, which could in turn lead to faster potassium alkali Rydberg matter formation. This potassium loss is industrially disadvantageous, so it is usually avoided with stabilizers (oxide additives).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2021.02.221

Quote

[...] The use of additives to delay the loss of the promoter may give further options [87,88]. One of the strategies to stabilize alkali in the mixed oxides is to hinder the alkali ion bulk diffusion, as observed for Cr doping of β-ferrite. This strategy may not be so useful for H(0) formation, since the promoter needs to be able to diffuse and desorb for Rydberg states and Rydberg matter to be formed.

https://doi.org/10.1006/jcat.2002.3725 (2002)

Quote

Abstract: Thermal desorption of potassium ions and atoms from K-doped iron oxides (Fe3O4, Fe2O3) and potassium ferrites (KFeO2, K2Fe22O34) that are the principal phases of the iron oxide catalysts for dehydrogenetion of ethylbenzene to styrene was investigated. From the Arrhenius plots the activation energies for desorption of K and K+ were determined in the process temperature range for each of the phases. Based on these results the desorption energies obtained previously for the commercial styrene catalysts were reinterpreted and the K storage and release phases were explicitly identified. The results were discussed in terms of a surface stability diagram. It was shown that in the active state of the catalyst the K2Fe22O34 component is responsible for excessive potassium release. The proposed optimal morphology of the catalyst grain consists of a core K2Fe22O34 surrounded by a compact shell of active KFeO2, while a core and cracked-shell model was adapted to account for the potassium desorption data from the real catalysts.

Key figures from the above paper:

Another related more recent publication on the topic: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcat.2007.02.009

In a 2006 paper by Alpermann and Holmlid it was inferred that Rydberg matter formation was more intense from potassium diffusing from graphite patches and this K₂Fe₂₂O₃₄ phase: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.saa.2006.09.003