Posts by can

I got 28AWG titanium wire, but unfortunately it did not seem to perform very well.

Out of the box it appeared like a rather dull metal with no obvious indication that it was composed of titanium. The wire is easy to bend.

However upon testing, it clearly behaves differently than the wires tested so far. Under cathodic electrolytic action, it tends to turn into a brittle blue-black material. This is probably titanium hydride, but some non-stoichiometric oxide may be present too.

The ball shape is formed because when it gets hot the wire appears to start combusting at very high temperatures. This process cannot be stopped easily by immersion in water (i.e. it will combust under water).

The remaining surface is still conductive, at least the voltages used. Sometimes it turns into a light green/gray, irregularly-shaped compound that looks like this. It's conductive in this form:

Other times this combustion eats up large portions of the wire at a time, like here, but strangely slowly compared to copper or molybdenum. Note the 'ghostly' appearance of the bottom portion of the wire (EDIT: perhaps it was a low-current arc?):

The "combusted" wire can be used on the top of the water level for a kind of plasma heating reaction (from atmospheric glow discharge), but it cannot be immersed too much in the electrolyte without immediate quenching. It appears to slowly vaporize and form residues (possibly TiO2) in its immediate surrounding when kept at high temperature like this.

Overall, in any case, performance for the plasma electrolysis experiments described in this thread seems rather poor, perhaps even less performing than the Kanthal wire I got a while ago. Keeping the plasma going on for more than a few millimeters under the water level does not seem feasible. Since this behavior is similar to that of the Kanthal wire, it's probably mainly the fault of the oxide layer formed on the surface, and possibly the high resistivity.

No change observed with the Geiger counter. RF emissions were rather low too, together with the current instability effect observed earlier, also after adding about 1g acetone and 1 ml 0.1M KOH solution as for the previous tests.

Regarding molecular hydrogen, even as far back as 1992:

Excited states of hydrogen emitted from a graphite diffusion source: Arrhenius behaviour

https://doi.org/10.1016/0301-0104(92)80080-F

Highly excited Rydberg states of hydrogen from a high-temperature diffusion source

https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-8984/4/49/008

Atomic hydrogen, he didn't specifically work on it until 2004.

I added a Geiger counter inside a clear plastic box at about 30 cm distance from the test setup. The Geiger counter is partially shielded from background radiation with a small VRLA battery and a 1-mm thick steel sheet, but the Geiger tube faces the setup without significant obstructions.

Using the same electrolyte solution prepared yesterday (which might have lost some acetone although it retained the odor), I made a few tests with 28ga Ni200 wire, 26ga Kanthal A1 wire, 1mm tungsten rod, trying to maximize the RF output with a small antenna located close to the Geiger counter. Testing was performed throughout the period highlighted in the graph below with red color.

The 1mm tungsten rod seemed to perform the best and produced low-level continuous crackling noise from nearby speakers, but only when trying to cause a plasma just below the water surface, with the tip somewhat incandescently heated. The Kanthal wire did not seem to produce anything despite glowing brightly. I could not get it to glow bright below any significant depth. The Nickel wire melted easily and did not seem to produce as strong RF as the tungsten rod, no matter how thick (from melting) or hot I could get it, oddly.

I didn't get the impression that the Geiger counter reacted positively to the reaction and if anything readings appeared slightly lower during the tests. However from the data it appears they were about on average, and in any case within noise margins.

The most significant observation perhaps is that—although it's kind of obvious—it became clear that the RF noise is strictly related to the current instability observed with a multimeter.

I will keep the Geiger counter active for the next tests.

To be honest, I'm generally more concerned about not getting zapped by the high voltage applied to the manually operated electrode and not breathing too much metal dust or gases emitted from it, or causing chemical explosions. At higher electrolyte concentrations (which seem counterproductive with my power supply, I eventually found) hearing protection is also required.

Alan Smith

I was thinking about bringing it back in operation, but I'm not sure of where to put it. I have a fan in the area blowing air on the HV power supply to keep its temperature low during the tests. In the past I observed a far too high sensitivity of that Geiger counter to air flow, probably due to radioactive dust in the environment (radon, etc). This seems to be a general characteristic of Geiger counters and has been reported by others in the past as well with different models.

The background gamma level is also relatively high in my place (85–100 CPM or more on average depending on the exact location) and with significant daily variation, so relatively small and brief signals might be difficult to discern from it.

The USB RF receiver I recently got, on the other hand, at the minimum gain setting basically only sees noise produced by the plasma reaction (although in the past few days I've been mostly rather crudely gauging the intensity by how much noise could be induced on nearby loudspeakers).

magicsound

I think so; that likely came from the test performed a few hours ago with the short tungsten wire section of which I previously posted a gif animation. The jar was clean before that and I haven't made tests with other wires in the interim.

I managed to extend a remaining coiled tungsten wire section that I thought would be too short, allowing another test. I used, as previously, about 36 ml tap water + about 1g acetone + 1ml 0.1M KOH solution

Below is a video of the last few minutes of testing with it. Current readings from the multimeter were highly unstable. The bright white flashes were associated with strong EM noise that could be heard on loudspeakers nearby. This time the wire seemed to perform well until the very last few moments when a large section vaporized, ending the test.

I got to try a short section of 0.25mm tungsten wire from a small broken 12V halogen lamp as suggested earlier on in this thread by Peter (although he probably meant a high-power lamp). It turned out to be relatively brittle when I tried to extend the coil into a straighter wire.

Unfortunately I couldn't obtain large enough amounts for many tests (mainly because the wire broke in several small sections). Once it started getting hot it produced rather strong white light but it also combusted quite rapidly. Given the costs, I'm unsure if it's a suitable material for this type of semi-uncontrolled experiment where I deliberately raise temperatures to high levels.

I could only manage to make a brief video of the intense light strobing effect produced by the last few millimeters of wire. Due to the camera's autoexposure setting, it does not look as bright as it did in person.

Hopefully 28ga titanium wire (0.321 mm) which I should receive next week will work more reliably. It should form a passivating oxide layer, but also have a significantly lower electrical conductivity compared to the 28ga Ni200 wire I have been using so far. If that won't work properly either, then I will be out of other candidate pure materials to test.

Quote from jfloan173

If anyone has questions please ask me. and for safety's sake, use milligram masses of cnt's. 1 to 10 is safe.

From the username I'm assuming you are James F. Loan, one of the inventors of the patent application presented in this thread (WO2012088472A1).

What is the simplest and most economical configuration that can get a reaction working? Has natural water/hydrogen been demonstrated to work and to what extent compared to deuterium?

If brief EM bursts falling in the RF range associated with ionizing radiation are generated (as sometimes reported in the LENR field), monitoring would not be too difficult or expensive. The first portion of what is mentioned in the excerpt below might also be just radiation damage, though.

Quote from goldinium

tests done with 10mg resulted in failure of computers and electronic devices on a 15 meter radius, and death of all mice and flies on the lab, the researcher had mild radiation poisoning symptoms for several days.

I got a bottle glycerol and one of propylene glycol and after some testing there was no too unusual effect that I could observe with their addition up to 5%.

• Glycerol is a rather viscous liquid at room temperature; propylene glycol significantly less so but more than water.
• On their own (just tap water and either of these compounds), neither clearly appears to cause a cleaning effect on the cathode like acetone does, nor current instability effects.
• After a period of operation, glycerol makes the aqueous solution turn yellow, which was pointed out by Saksono et al in a previously linked paper, while propylene glycol does not behave the same and the solution remains more or less clear longer.
• I haven't tested much propylene glycol, but the most noticeable effect of glycerol is that at least in low percentages (2.5 wt%) it makes the Ni200 cathode heat up faster and more care needs to be applied in order not to melt it repeatedly. Operation seems sort of unstable; it could be due to the increased viscosity of the solution.
• Larger amounts (>5 wt%) seem counterproductive, but more testing is needed to make sure.

An unrelated but interesting effect I observed is that 38.5ml water + 3.85 wt% acetone + 2 ml of previously prepared 0.1M KOH solution (this should be equivalent to about 0.005M KOH in water) appeared to produce at times rather intense EM noise that could be heard on nearby loudspeakers. This noise was associated with the previously reported current instability effect, although the correlation was not very strong. Unfortunately I could not reproduce this to the same extent this in a second attempt (EM noise still appears but not as strongly). Also just KOH on its own in similar concentrations produces current instability, it turns out.

I eventually also tried measuring current with my 4000-counts clamp meter and it reports several amperes (5–15A) both in DC and AC mode while the plasma reaction is occurring and, importantly, the Ni cathode is incandescent. Current draw seems accurate with normal electrolysis, on the other hand. So apparently it's not just the multimeter that is displaying strange values. Of course, it's to be expected with a widely and randomly changing current and inadequate measuring instrumentation.

EDIT: below in the spoiler tag are notes from the tests made today.

Acetone addition might seem completely arbitrary, but regarding excess hydrogen evolution, its effect has been described for anodic glow discharge electrolysis—which also works but requires more voltage and energy on average than the cathodic version—in this paywalled paper:

Scavenging Effects of Aliphatic Alcohols and Acetone on H^• Radicals in Anodic Contact Glow Discharge Electrolysis: Determination of the Primary Yield of H^• Radicals

Plasma Chem Plasma Process 30, 299–309 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-010-9216-9

Figure 3 and 4 summarize the results also for the alcohols tested. Excess hydrogen evolution seems to follow a general trend where most of the effect is observed at about 0.5M concentration (in a 0.05M K2SO4 solution and 450V). I generally used 2–3 wt% acetone, which should be around the upper end of this range.

At this point one might wonder what would be the effect of polyalcohols like glycerol or propylene glycol (these are also popular vaping compounds, so they should be cheap and relatively safe to use). Unfortunately it appears that in this paper by Saksono et al. (an indonesian group that made many experiments on glow discharge electrolysis and uploaded most of their papers on ResearchGate) increasing concentrations up to 3% of glycerol might actually have a negative effect, with the no-glycerol solution producing more hydrogen with less energy:

Hydrogen Production System Using Non-Thermal Plasma Electrolysis in Glycerol-KOH Solution

International Journal of Technology.1. 8-15 (2012). 10.14716/ijtech.v3i1.1091.

This makes me wonder about the effect of propylene glycol, an antifreeze compound similar to ethylene glycol. Ruggero Santilli used the latter advantageously in an underwater carbon arc plasma reaction to produce larger amounts of his MagneGas compound. If it has a neutral or negative effect similar to glycerol, then hydrogen evolution might not be what one needs to watch for, in order to produce energetically useful novel hydrogen–carbon clusters.

While looking for information from other groups that might have used a glycerol–water mixture in the same reaction type, I came across this very recently published (September 2020) open access paper mentioning it. Unfortunately they do not report the results as the focus was on the solution conductivity–breakdown voltage relationship (or at least, I cannot find them here):

Contact Glow Discharge Electrolysis: Effect of Electrolyte Conductivity on Discharge Voltage

Catalysts 2020, 10(10), 1104; https://doi.org/10.3390/catal10101104

Quote

[...] With respect to pure aqueous media, the addition of an organic co-solvent leads to a higher faradaic efficiency for the H₂ evolution preceding the glowing discharge. Among different (poly)alcohols, we decided to employ glycerol due to the presence of three alcoholic groups per molecule and the high miscibility in water (this avoids the formation of different phases in the same system). Glycerol/water mixture was considered a meaningful case-study since it mimics the behavior of organic-contaminated wastewater [46,47,48].

Quote

[...] Glycerol was chosen as an organic compound because of its high miscibility with water, its low cost, its ease of used and handling. Additionally, as mentioned before [5,41], the production of H₂ exploiting the non-faradaic effects of CGDE, in H₂O and alcohol solutions, was a promising energetic alternative and glycerol, having three OH alcoholic groups, was of great interest for this.

The paper provides in any case a good general overview of contact glow discharge electrolysis (CGDE).

I removed the slitted copper tube and only used the plastic one to try narrowing down the source of the above effect, again using 28ga Ni200 wire.

1. Just 37.4 ml tap water: after allowing water to locally reach high enough temperature and start the reaction, it can be only occasionally reproduced.
2. Added 0.22g citric acid (0.031M concentration): significantly increased current draw, but the effect cannot be reproduced anymore; readings are stable even with the wire close to melting.
3. Added 1.12g acetone (3 wt.% relatively to water): now the unstable current effect is noticeably visible again and the wire can be more easily turned incandescent.

From the above (with the caveat that the very limited equipment used does not allow proper verification), it would appear that acetone has a synergistic effect of some sort.

EDIT: to clarify, in the previous post I reported that the effect seemed larger after adding more citric acid, but there was already acetone in the solution. So I started over to observe the effect of just citric acid, but it did not seem to work on its own.

Alan Smith

Occasionally I get crackles from nearby loudspeakers, so it is definitely producing intense back EMF at times.

From further testing, the oscillating readings appear to be loosely related to the degree to which electrolyte solution surrounding the electrode is boiling, or electrolyte temperature: readings are more stable under "only" warm conditions and it takes a period of operation before this happens. Increased gas evolution and temperatures from acetone addition would possibly have a magnifying effect.

While it would be very interesting if I truly got significant backcurrents decreasing the average power applied into the plasma reaction, I realize that the multimeter used is inadequate for measuring this reliably.

Before hitting "reply" I tried another test by adding more citric acid in slight but arbitrary amounts and the current instability effect got stronger. This did not increase conductivity so much that turning the cathode incandescent under water became difficult (like what usually occurs with KOH—potassium hydroxide), but gas production likely increased. It also started producing a more noticeable sugary smell from citric acid decomposition.

Unfortunately the reaction became less manageable and the Ni wire appeared to melt more easily as in this brief test where I also put the same multimeter in current reading mode in the background.

EDIT: after adding some more citric acid I tried with both 0.4 mm kanthal wire and the 1.0 mm tungsten rod but it seems more difficult to obtain the same reaction with them even if the load on the HV power supply isn't any lower. It looks like the cathode still has to become brightly incandescent after all, and with thicker wires this is more difficult within the limitations of my power supply. A too large amount of citric acid also starts working against the effect with the Ni wire.

Curbina

I probably did not write too clearly what I actually meant. I was mainly referring to the differences between run #2 and #3. In both cases the aqueous solution was the same, but in run #3 2.5 wt.% acetone was added. Run #3 became choppier, while run #2 overall showed stable readings except when voltage was high (dynamically depending on testing conditions; I did not alter voltage directly).

Here is input power (calculated as simply V*I) versus voltage as a standard line graph (incorrect since readings were not taken continuously).

DC current (yellow instrument; it's showing the opposite current sign here. The other instrument is showing voltage÷2) would often drop like this, sometimes more wildly:

Again, I am fully aware that multimeters like these are only meant for stable DC or standard AC, and that one is not supposed to mix together readings from separate instruments updating at a different rate.

Curbina

Acetone does not dissociate into ions and should not contribute increasing the conductivity of the solution, so I was thinking that perhaps the current instability effect arising after adding it again in small amounts might be due to something else. For instance, if it causes a larger volume of gas to be produced and surround the cathode, it might make current flow choppier and confuse low-cost multimeters.

The larger volume of gas from acetone (or other organic compounds) addition was proposed a few posts above to be due to their "scavenging" effect of the H/OH radicals produced in the plasma region (which would otherwise quickly recombine to water) rather than increased solution conductivity.

I made a few tests with a cheap multimeter in series with the electrodes for measuring current during the plasma reaction. Readings are not very accurate, but it appears it's in the order of 60 mA at 400V. I think the general shape of the current-voltage curve is mainly due to HV power supply limitations and not due to the characteristics of actual plasma reaction. For properly checking that out I'd need a better constant-voltage power supply.

Above a certain voltage (when the cathode becomes brightly incandescent) current readings become unstable and the multimeter starts displaying implausibly low or even negative values. Interestingly, with just tap water (with some citric acid residues) this did not happen, but it started again after adding acetone.

This is likely mostly a power supply–multimeter-related artifact during high load conditions or possibly when a large amount of gas surrounds the electrode (which should be occurring with acetone addition), but it could still be regarded as another indicator that the few wt.% acetone indeed has some effect. Of course, this also means that for reliable power measurements better tools are required.

Curbina

Difficult to tell without more details. The pulsating or oscillating action may be forming voids or gas pockets around the electrodes and plasma discharge could be occurring there if voltage is high enough.

I also suspect that electrode erosion or debris in the electrolyte solution may also potentially be a scavenging source for the reactive H/OH species formed in the plasma. So one has to wonder whether under active conditions the electrolyte solution looks as in the beginning of the experiments. Earlier on I tried adding graphite also for this reason (more in detail, in an attempt to provide a non-metal surface for H atoms to get adsorbed on), but it gets quickly displaced away from the reaction zone.

I mentioned this before, there are a number of references to "carbon-rich liquids" in glow plasma electrolysis in this open access paper: Sen Gupta, S.K. Contact Glow Discharge Electrolysis: A Novel Tool for Manifold Applications. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 37, 897–945 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-017-9804-z

The author refers to their function as H/OH -radical "scavengers". Generally they are ketones like acetone, or monohydric (with a single OH group) alcohols like ethanol or iso-propanol.

Quote

[...] The H₂ generation by CGDE could be further increased through the use of potential H^· scavengers, one H₂ molecule being formed from one H^· radical by interaction with its scavenger. Among the potential H^· scavengers are acetone, methanol, ethanol, iso-propanol, n-propanol, n-butanol, etc.

In another paragraph from the same paper he quotes the observations of another group that used phenol. The mode of operation is more explicitly pointed out, i.e. the compound removes (or scavenges) OH radicals generated from the plasma area and prevents H₂O from forming. Note that CGDE = cathodic glow plasma discharge.

Quote

[...] The rate of reduction was interestingly found enhanced in the presence of phenol etc. They ascribed the observed reduction to the role of H^· radicals produced during anodic CGDE and its enhanced rate in the presence of phenol to the increased availability of H^· since phenol could scavenge OH^· and prevent formation of H₂O by the reaction between H^· and OH^·.

In this other paper (paywalled) from the author of the first one it's suggested that the carbon-bound hydrogen atoms in such organic compounds can react with both the reactive H and OH radicals formed (same mechanism but worded differently). This implies that they are decomposed in the process: Gangal, U., Srivastava, M. & Sen Gupta, S.K. Scavenging Effects of Aliphatic Alcohols and Acetone on H^• Radicals in Anodic Contact Glow Discharge Electrolysis: Determination of the Primary Yield of H^• Radicals. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 30, 299–309 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-010-9216-9

The same author(s) do not report using alcohols like propylene glycol or glycerol, but the proposed mechanism should not exclude them.

I won't be able to measure the exact gas output but I should at least be able to visually observe the extent to which these compounds prevent cathode oxidation when allowing the cathode to become incandescent during plasma electrolysis.

EDIT: as an additional note, Ruggero Santilli (often cited by Curbina) has sometimes mentioned that the main inefficiency source in underwater arcs is from hydrogen and oxygen recombining to water; see for example page 63(79) in : https://thechurchoflife.net/wp…942d08aee8c477fade4da.pdf

Quote

[...] Recall that the primary source of the large glow created by underwater arcs is the recombination of H and O into H2O following its separation. This recombination is the reason for the low efficiency of underwater arcs and consequential lack of industrial development until recently.

By comparison, the PlasmaArcFlow causes the removal of H and O from the arc immediately following their creation, thus preventing their recombination into H2O, with consequential dramatic increase of the efficiency, that is, of the volume of combustible gas produced per Kwh.

The addition of an alcohol or carbonyl compound as mentioned earlier would, incidentally, improve the reaction proposed by Santilli by preventing or mitigating recombination to water.

Just wanted to point out that it might not be immediately apparent that the authors apply a voltage across a 200 nm Al₂O₃ thin film sandwiched between metallic films as electrodes (though it is not entirely clear to me which is the anode. Is it the top one?). The applied electric field is in the order of a few MV/cm.

When they used a palladium film top electrode, a much larger number of craters is observed. Since Pd absorbs hydrogen, it's suggested that hydrogen explosion events might be involved, and a possible link to the 'supposed' cold fusion (citing the original Fleischmann-Pons experiments) is proposed.

The conclusions:

Convenience link to paywalled paper: https://doi.org/10.1109/TDEI.2020.008526

Curbina

I see the arc more as a point-to-point, high-intensity current flow. What I'm doing appears to be glow plasma, with the reaction more or less homogeneously distributed along the immersed electrode surface, at high voltage and relatively low current flow.

Right now I'm mostly occupied with checking out what conditions appear to improve the reaction or making it easier to trigger with my power supply, and haven't been measuring heat at all. Besides, single-point temperature measurements are not very reliable due to thermal stratification, so more complex methods would be needed.

Larger amounts of acetone tend to be kind of hazardous due to high flammability, but even small amounts appear to significantly increase the amount of evolved hydrogen (either directly or indirectly—e.g. from acetone decomposition in the plasma). I'm aware that R.M.Santilli has reported using ethylene glycol (antifreeze), so perhaps an idea along those lines could be adding propylene glycol, a non-toxic antifreeze compound also often used for vaping, etc. However since it would increase the boiling point of water, it might make the reaction more difficult to trigger in my case.

EDIT: glycerol is another possible choice in alternative to propylene glycol, slightly less expensive and non-toxic.

EDIT2: I ordered one liter of each. I plan testing initially something like 5–10 wt%. I typically use about 35–40 ml water, so they should last for many tests.