By the way, I'm also running a Geiger counter at about 1 meter distance from the jar, but besides daily variations from presumably Radon progeny, which causes a slowly increasing signal when the windows are closed, no increase was detected so far. I don't think any should have been expected given that it's not continuously running in a hydrogen gas atmosphere, but the catalytic layers formed should be able to also dehydrogenate water to some extent, and the formation process itself should evolve some hydrogen (the [2Fe + 4H2O → 2FeOOH + 3H2] step, assuming it's correct).
For what it's worth, some time ago I tried using the yellow flame of a small lighter, heating a smaller carbon steel blade from the underside, and the process still worked. However, when I tried a blue flame from a gas stove, I couldn't manage to get it working. I haven't done many tests with that however, as I try to avoid making chemical experiments in the kitchen.
As for the temperature, I think the surface can get hotter than the melting point of potassium hydroxide (360 °C), but the green potassium ferrite layer starts getting formed at lower temperatures. At times, especially when excess KOH is used (or added), a transition can be seen where the surface becomes shiny and "wet" despite the quite elevated temperature. I've made a video showing such "wet" surface earlier:
Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.
Using excess KOH, it seems that water can get trapped below such liquid layer, and form large bubbles on the surface as it tries to break through it with temperature. Or at least, that's my interpretation.
With lower amounts of KOH on the surface, that does not happen. A few hours ago I started over with cleaned steel blades, and wetting them with a 2.5M KOH solution and applying heat seemed to work just right, although solution molarity could probably be further decreased. The initially formed green layer looked wet, but after a while it became opaque, possibly both from more of the underlying steel surface oxidizing and absorption of environmental gases.
The heating coil is kinked but that it was not intentionally set that way. It used to be straight. The setup was intended to be as in the schematic diagram. It's a rather improvised but relatively safe setup (so far, at least) that I'm running on the desk on my side.
Thanks for reminding. In some aspects it seems to contain more or less general information on the catalysts, while in others it's more detailed, but except one quick mention in paragraph [0029] it does not discuss in detail the characteristics of what is considered the catalytically-active phase, how it's formed, how it relates to Rydberg K emission according to the published literature, and so on.
What I described in the past few posts is for the most part an alternative, simple method for apparently directly obtaining thin films of such active phase at relatively low temperatures on various steel surfaces (in practice, it's not clear how good the end result is. For instance, it is easy to add excessive amounts of potassium hydroxide and form a potentially undesirable transparent liquid film that stays on top the newly-formed olive-green layer).
After some thought, I believe the process is something along these lines, at least in the ideal scenario:
Below is an gif sped up by 20x of part of the above process (it does not start from a clean Fe surface) from a video I made earlier.
My thought was that the KFe complex would be solid, though I have not checked its water-solubility - and thus can be separated by filtration. If you are concerned about free KOH forming carbonates then most of the unbound material - which would be potassium citrate at this stage-could be removed by washing the solid fraction in distilled water and re-filtering. However, I do suspect that the presence of some small percentage of carbonates in the end product would not be particularly detrimental. Sometimes you have to improvise a bit when exploring the possibilities.
KFeO2 is a metastable solid compound that only exists under specific conditions. Similarly to KOH, it quickly absorbs moisture and CO2 from the environment but with the addition that it decomposes in the process.
I don't think it can be filtrated as wetting the compound with water at low temperature immediately decomposes it into a brown mixture of various iron oxides, hydroxides and KOH. Excerpt below from https://doi.org/10.1002/9783527610044.hetcat0163
On the very short term this brown mixture can be reverted to KFeO2 if water is allowed to evaporate again at elevated temperatures. Actually I have a video where this is in part shown; see the first 30 seconds here (I used a KOH aqueous solution rather than just water):
Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.
The carbonates formed with prolonged dry exposure at mild temperature to atmospheric gases tend to have a white (when dry) or initially emerald green look (possibly partially containing Fe in some form although I can't rule out other impurities in the material). They form quicker at lower temperatures; see for instance in the photo below on the cooler edges of the olive-green sample.
From the same source as above:
From what I have observed however, stable carbonate presence is tolerated, if more KFeO2 can be formed again and if the existing carbonates get dissolved onto a wider area. I have usually accomplished this by adding more KOH solution to the heated surface, temporarily wetting it.
I think the addition of organic compounds to the mixture might not work well, as potassium hydroxide can easily absorb the CO2 evolved and form rather stable carbonates that decompose at much higher temperatures than those involved in the tests described (more similar to those typically employed when synthesizing K-Fe oxide catalysts from K2CO3 and Fe2O3).
Or at least, when I tried adding alcohol the heated surface appeared to rapidly make white deposits. The addition of graphite to the KOH solution also seemed to accelerate their formation. Even just breathing (exhaling) in proximity of the heated-treated surfaces can accelerate their decay via this pathway.
In the past few weeks I have been testing a variation of the above process and it seems it was actually simpler than I thought. If a KOH aqueous solution is allowed to coat a rustable steel surface and then to evaporate under oxidizing conditions and moderate heat, the oxides formed on the steel surface as water evaporates will react with the hydroxide residues, forming an unstable olive-green compound that appears to have the same characteristics of the catalytically-active potassium ferrite (KFeO2) compound described in this thread. I'm still not entirely sure if I'm observing what I think, however.
Contrarily to what I previously thought, a current is not required and indirect heat will also work. However, it will not work if the surface is completely oxidized. Apparently this process at low temperature using KOH requires a clean or only partially oxidized steel (iron) surface. Since a current is not required, arbitrarily large surfaces could be coated and modified with the same process.
In addition to sheets I also tried steel wool, or the heating wire itself.
However, when I tried a Fe2O3–KOH solution (hematite in the form of red pigment) it didn't work well; it didn't work at all when I increased the amount of hematite.
Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.
Platinum has been mentioned a few times by Holmlid (see for example excerpts below). As far as I understand, hydrogen-active/noble metals may in principle work for producing Rydberg atoms and matter of hydrogen, but their emission on the other hand does not occur easily from clean metal surfaces, so a combination of both catalyst types similarly to what is proposed by Star Scientific above (albeit for different purposes) could possibly be desirable.
The catalysts which are best suited for RM and ultra-dense hydrogen formation are so called hydrogen transfer catalysts, which dissociate the H2 molecules to separate H atoms on the surface, as also metals like Pt and Ir do. [...]
The mechanisms behind the catalytic transition from the gaseous state to the ultra-dense state are quite well understood, and it has been experimentally shown that this transition can be achieved using various hydrogen transfer catalysts, including, for example, commercially available so-called styrene catalysts, as well as (purely) metallic catalysts, such as Iridium and Platinum.
There is no direct claim of higher energy output that I recall reading, but they're incredibly unclear on this regard. I didn't get the impression that their technology was being honestly described. When I wrote that if there's more it could be more similar to BLP I was giving them the benefit of the doubt.
This is the one that seems applicable to their HERO technology, see attached file.
Regarding "strange claims", last year at about the same period of the ECW blogpost linked above I was sent what looked like promotional material for potential investors on this company. Below is a supposedly independent report of Star Scientific's testing related to their catalytic oxidation apparatus (names redacted). If what they're doing is not just fancifully described but otherwise ordinary catalytic combustion, it might be more similar to what BLP/Mills are doing than Norront AS/Holmlid.
The cores consist of a substrate, which in some configurations includes a heater and thermocouple, with several spray-coated layers. Generally, these coatings alternate between a hydrogen-absorbing metal and an insulating ceramic. One example is shown in Figure 1. Other designs may have more or less layers. All of the layers are porous, allowing the gas(es) in the reactor chamber access to all coatings
Sometimes they used Ni-Alumina layers, sometimes they used Pd or Rh in some form, but details aren't entirely clear on this regard. In any case, I didn't previously get the impression that results were dependent on rare, perhaps accidentally introduced impurities.
Now in 3D. They also have left out the drawings of the intended end-users. This makes sense, with an initial 15 kW you can't even heat one Norwegian family house in winter.
According to Holmlid, the large (or long, chain-like) clusters are those with super properties (superfluidity, superconductivity). Due to these properties they do not seem to release well their condensation energy to the environment, but instead retain it in a form of internal excitation. This also means they will oscillate back and forth to the less dense form called Rydberg matter. See section 4 here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1402-4896/ab1276
These clusters can easily release their condensation energy to the environment. Once they do, they should be stable.
The ones described above are clusters composed of only hydrogen/deuterium atoms in the densest form.
Mills' Hydrino polymer could be something different—possibly more similar to Rydberg matter—and picohydrides as theorized by Dufour may also have completely different properties.
My understanding (which could be incorrect) is that the form of H(0) that releases energy to the surroundings upon formation is also the form that supports the annihilation-like nuclear reactions.
So, by producing useful amounts of what could be named high-energy chemistry, it's sort of implied that significant energy in the form of nuclear reactions could potentially be released, if one wanted to.
Tritium is not necessarily a byproduct, depending on the point of view. In the 1MW paper it's incidentally pointed out that "alternatively, the reactor may be employed as a tritium-producing equipment, with gas separation and regeneration".
As for the EPO, I'm afraid they were looking for more convincing information.
The 15 kW is a bit of a surprise to me as this conflicts with numbers given by Holmlid's paper "Existing Source for Muon-Catalyzed Nuclear Fusion Can Give Megawatt Thermal Fusion Generator".
For comparison: the central gas heater in my Dutch home has a nominal power output of 22 kW.
Looks like they did not want to include power caused by meson decay although this design includes a 'muon thermalizer'.
This does not look like a wise promotion.
That paper mentions too a starting 15 kW output power, excluding the energy from the initial mesons (eq. 5, section V).
But then Holmlid also states that the power of the decay of the initial mesons would be 220 kW (eq. 7), which on a first sight doesn't make the complications from having to deal with tritium to reach higher outputs (slowly over time) very attractive. Also, protium (ordinary hydrogen) would work too, as even the latest paper on the interstellar rocket points out.
...unless producing tritium in large amounts is actually the point.
This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.More DetailsClose
