Posts by can

I'm not sure how 200 psi becomes 13.8 kbar in the indicated patent application from Montgomery Childs on the anode construction. I think one has to keep in mind that these applications may contain deliberately misleading information.

It might then help to focus on what is being actually claimed (i.e. what matters for the patent office). Arranging the claims in a hierarchical tree can assist understanding what the application is actually about.

US20190059149A1

• 1. An electrode apparatus for plasma generation comprising: a hollow electrode assembly connectable to a gas source, comprising, at least one conduit in the assembly for supplying gas under pressure to the inside of the assembly, a gas permeable membrane on the electrode for permitting gas from inside the assembly to effuse across the membrane for supply gas to a plasma discharge from the electrode.
  • 2. The electrode apparatus of claim 1, wherein the electrode further comprises a plasma discharge head from which the plasma is discharged from the electrode.
    • 3. The electrode apparatus of claim 2, wherein the head is composed of a pure element or alloy selected from the group consisting of nickel, iron, carbon, molybdenum, chromium, vanadium, silicon, copper, palladium, platinum, lithium, aluminum, carbon and combinations thereof.
    • 4. The electrode apparatus of claim 2, wherein the geometry of the head is selected from the group consisting of a bulb, sphere, polyhedral, tetrahedral, octahedral, and icosahedral.
  • 5. The electrode apparatus of claim 1, wherein the gas permeable membrane comprising a metal matrix for dissociating diatomic molecules whereby dissociated atomic species effuse through the metal matrix and recombine within the plasma corona above the surface of the metal electrode.
    • 7. The electrode apparatus of claim 5, the hollow electrode further comprising a magnet therein for proving field lines to guide plasma formation, and wherein the metal matrix provides for gas effusion at a constant rate to the environment surrounding the hollow electrode at a lower pressure as compared to the pressure of the environment inside the hollow electrode.
      • 8. The electrode apparatus of claim 7, wherein the magnet of claim 6 being a rare-earth neodymium, samarium-cobalt, or pure ferromagnet, of compositions containing neodymium, iron, and/or boron, or samarium and cobalt.
      • 9. The electrode apparatus of claim 7, wherein the magnet is an electromagnet, the magnetic field of which can be controlled by an electrical current through a particular design of current-carrying wires or media.
      • 10. The electrode apparatus of claim 7, wherein the magnet has a remanence strength of at least 0.0 to 1.5 tesla.
  • 6. The electrode apparatus of claim 1, the hollow electrode assembly further comprising an electrical circuit in a tapered housing.
  • 11. The electrode apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a coating on the anode for promoting a dielectric protective layer which can alter the appearance and characteristics of the plasma discharge.
    • 12. The electrode apparatus of claim 11, wherein the coating is selected from the group consisting of lithium, potassium, sodium in the form of a refractory oxide mixture, decomposable carbonate, decomposable nitrate, a volatile material that would leave behind oxides, and reduced metals of lithium, potassium, or sodium.
      • 13. The electrode apparatus of claim 12, wherein the refractory oxide comprises one or more transition elements of the periodic table.
      • 14. The electrode apparatus of claim 12, wherein the refractory oxide coating comprises one or more lanthanide elements of the periodic table.
• 15. A method for generating a plasma comprising: providing a hollow electrode assembly through which a gas from a gas supply can pass and be effused across the casing of the electrode for supplying a gas for a plasma discharge, introducing the gas under pressure into the electrode assembly such that the gas passes and is effused across the casing, and applying a current and a voltage to the electrode assembly for generating a plasma discharge.

Recently I thought that perhaps a more continuously operating variation of Parkhomov's cell could be accomplished by having the anode itself dripping electrolyte solution (and possibly other impurities) one droplet at a time. When the droplet closes the circuit with the rest of the electrolyte connected to the cathode, an explosion should occur and the electrolyte droplet should vaporize. With a further very simple modification it might also be possible to keep the electrolyte level fixed at least for a period of time.

I already have the materials, but following further tests made after the previous video one of the capacitors of the DC boost converter I have been using so far failed, so now it's only providing half its nominal maximum voltage (400V). This might still be enough at least to visually observe a reaction but I don't expect it to last very long under the planned operating conditions.

The photo attached in this comment shows a slight variation of the rig shown in the previously posted video, which I haven't tried yet in actual action. Without the syringe plunger in place, relatively large tap water droplets drop at a rate of about 1.5/s. In theory when actually operating the needle shouldn't get damaged to any significant extent; in practice I'm not sure.

I found that a somewhat similar system has already been conceived by a Russian group and dubbed "Drop Spark Discharge" (DSD), e.g.:

• http://www.prague2003.fsu.edu/content/pdf/382.pdf
• https://doi.org/10.1070/MC1998v008n04ABEH000934
• https://doi.org/10.1134/S1061934819030122

and so on, with other papers authored by Yagov et al. who pioneered the technique, although they do not measure excess energy, transmutation, or other anomalous effects related to LENR, but use it as a somewhat unconventional atomic emission source.

I tried using the Geiger Counter on an unshielded location on the desk next to my PC at increasing voltage settings (400V, 500V, 600V) applied to the GM tube. The high peaks are when I placed a 1 Kg potassium hydroxide canister close to the GM tube as a sort of check source to observe immediate differences in response after changing the setting.

The base signal appears to have increased slightly and possibly become more stable, but the KOH peaks remained about the same.

To change voltage I sent to the Geiger counter, in sequence through the Arduino serial interface passthrough:

'stop\r\n'
'set hvg=xx\r\n'
'go\r\n'
'save\r\n'

With xx being a decimal number representing GM tube voltage divided by 5.7.

The 'stop' and 'go' commands stop and interrupt the 1Hz CPM output from the counter, which can potentially interfere with configuration commands. These are optional, though. The 'save' command saves the new configuration into the GC's integrated controller's EEPROM, making it persistent across resets

To check if the settings have been applied (besides actually measuring the voltage, which I cannot properly do with my equipment), it is possible to use the 'show' command as done for the other ones mentioned above. A typical output/response from the counter would then be—LFCR sequences omitted:

ttc: 1771
gms: 165
atc: 1500
hvg: 105

hvg here shows the tube voltage setting, which should correspond to the one previously configured. Here, 105×5.7=598.5V.

Other information:

• gms: the CPM conversion rate to obtain the displayed µS/h value
• atc: A threshold CPM value above which an alarm sounds (I've never tested this)
• ttc: The total GM counts recorded since the counter was last reset. This is a kind of undocumented function. An alternative mode of operation could be extracting this instead of using the 1Hz CPM value. In this case turning off CPM output with the 'stop' command can be useful. After that, one would periodically monitor for the response obtained from the counter after sending the 'show' command.

While surface area certainly plays a primary factor on sensitivity, according to tests made by the author in the page below, SBM-20 GM tubes become more sensitive and have a shorter dead-time up to significantly higher voltages than generally recommended. The voltage at which a continuous discharge starts occurring inside the tube appears to be higher than what can be safely set in the NetIO GC10 counter through the serial interface (the 2N80 power MOSFET used for the internal boost circuit has an absolute maximum voltage rating of 800V and some margin will have to be provided) :

https://uvicrec.blogspot.com/2…0-geiger-muller-tube.html

Other that the calibration will be slightly off, I'm not sure of what drawbacks there will be in running the tube at for example 600V instead of 400V (current setting on my counter; the default setting was 313V). Anode–cathode voltage from the counter needs a high impedance probe for accurate readings, so these values are just estimations based on the internal voltage setting.

According to the manufacturer (NetIO), GM tube voltage should be 5.7 × HVG, where HVG is the variable which can be tweaked. On my counter it was 55 by default (313V). Following some tests, yesterday I found that my SBM-20 tube (manufactured in the 8th week of 1985) stops working below a setting of 39 (222V).

Recently I got an Arduino Uno clone to play around with. It turns out it can also act as an USB RS232 serial interface for devices connected to it. Since I never got an USB–serial interface before either, I thought it would be interesting to try interfacing with the NetIO GC10 counter I have. I previously used to count and log 5V Geiger pulses from it using an audio jack connection and a very simple electric circuit, but this method over time proved to be a bit overkill for my purposes, in addition to being prone to various issues.

Arduino Uno only has one built-in hardware serial port available (pins 0–1), which is shared with the USB computer connection. This means that if a serial device is connected here, it can intefere with PC communication. However, arranging a so-called soft serial connection with other pins is a possibility, although it will have lower performance than the hardware serial connection. To do this I used the altsoftserial library, which adds a serial port on pins 8–9. This is where I connect the Geiger counter.

The GC10 counter automatically sends CPM data every second. Every string is terminated with an explicit CRLF sequence, which in printf-like commands in many programming languages is represented by the escape sequence /r/n.

Below is a photo of my current arrangement. The Geiger counter is powered directly by the Arduino board through the VCC pin of the data I/O interface. The manufacturer points out that other VCC/DC inputs must not be used at the same time or the Geiger counter will be damaged.

In the above photo, black tape is covering the annoyingly bright LED and the loud buzzer (when it's enabled).

Arduino C code used:

#include <AltSoftSerial.h>
// https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_AltSoftSerial.html

AltSoftSerial altSerial;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  altSerial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  char c;

  if (Serial.available()) {
    c = Serial.read();
    altSerial.print(c);
  }
  if (altSerial.available()) {
    c = altSerial.read();
    Serial.print(c);
  }
}

Python code used to continuously log data from it through the hardware serial port:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Wed Jan 29 01:17:35 2020
@author: can
"""

import datetime
import serial   # https://pyserial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html


# Log file onto which new CPM data will be continuously appended
gc_logfile = "d:/logs/gclog_cpm_02.txt"

# No significant delay is expected, so the timeout should be low.
# Remember that the NetIO GC sends data every second
with serial.Serial('COM4', 115200, timeout=1.5) as gc_serial:
    while True:
        timestamp = datetime.datetime.utcnow().isoformat()

    try:
        # The NetIO GC terminates every CPM string with a LFCR sequence. We
        # will read new data until this sequence appears and try to convert
        # it into an integer value
        message = gc_serial.read_until(b"\r\n")
        cpm = int(message)

    except ValueError:
        # Communication problems may lead to malformed messages that will
        # cause value errors when trying to extract the desired value. If
        # this happens, skip and try again. This entry is not logged
        print(f'{timestamp:26}, CPM not found. Message: {message}')

    else:
        # Semi-graphical output on stdout
        print(f"{timestamp:26}, {cpm:4} {'█'*int(cpm/3)}")

        with open(gc_logfile, 'a') as log:
            # A newline must be explicitly added in the logfile string
            line = f"{timestamp}, {cpm}\n"
            log.write(line)

Typical output from the above code

2020-01-29T12:02:38.193560, 86
2020-01-29T12:02:39.197706, 87
2020-01-29T12:02:40.204730, 88
2020-01-29T12:02:41.208844, 89
2020-01-29T12:02:42.212709, 90
2020-01-29T12:02:43.220673, 90
2020-01-29T12:02:44.215784, 90
2020-01-29T12:02:45.230620, 90

Other Resources

• NetIO GC10 Geiger Counter Assembled Unit (official shop page)
• Specification of GC10 Data I/O Interface (pdf)
• General Specification of GC10 (pdf)
• Suggested Arduino code for GC10 serial I/O (code)
• Arduino Mega–GC10 connection (diagram)
• Output pulse circuit (diagram)
• Geiger Counter GC10 users page (official support discussion board)

EDIT: it appears that code indentation got messed up while copy-pasting code here. This will not be an issue for the Arduino code, but it will for the Python code for logging. Until I fix this in this comment, the Python code is simple enough for most people with some experience with the language to quickly solve the issue in their favorite IDE.

EDIT2: the problem above appears to have been solved.

Quote from Drgenek

I would like to understand UDH. Can you suggest where to start? I need experimental reports and data. I want to compare various explanation of BLP or Norront fusion results.

I think this recently published paper on the subject by Holmlid and Zeiner-Gundersen offers an adequate general overview on the experiment principles and the latest thinking in the background theory; it's open access:

Ultradense protium p(0) and deuterium D(0) and their relation to ordinary Rydberg matter: a review

However the group doesn't usually report about thermal generation. So far Holmlid has mostly focused on particle emission and UDH/UDD characterization. The energy of the emitted particles often seems to greatly exceed the laser pulse energy into the vacuum chamber, but this conclusion generally comes from extrapolating particle current measured at a small collector foil(s) over a full sphere around the target.

That graph won't change the fact that the negative differential resistance is an unavoidable characteristic of all electrical arcs in the real world: a ballast/some form of circuit impedance is always needed when dealing with them in order to prevent current from increasing in a positive feedback loop, eventually causing component failure.

With this I call myself out of the discussion. To make it clearer, I reject your explanation.

Yes, arc plasmas have negative [differential] resistance. That's the term for what he explains in the excerpts I posted earlier, this one below being an example:

Quote

[0:47:04] So, what occurs in the SunCell is that we have a mechanism of dissipating those charge species and recombine them very quickly, so we have extremely high current. It's called an arc plasma state. Arc plasma state actually lowers the energy the higher the current. Opposite of Ohm's law—like a toaster: if you increase the current, voltage has to increase. That's the Joules per Coulomb, energy per charge—in this case actually it gets lower, so you get positive feedback. Lightnings are an example of arc plasma and actually the higher the current, the lower the voltage and accelerates the process.

Quote from Director

The issue is that it's extremely easy to slip from the negative resistance regime to the arc discharge.

Arc discharges do usually exhibit negative resistance. You seem to have confused ideas on this regard.

Quote from Director

But a true arc discharge isn't what allows for the self limiting reactions (with positive resistance such as in his previous systems that operated in a glow discharge regime with positive resistance) to turn into self re-inforcing. It's the specific negative resistance regime that allows that.

This is not what Randell Mills is saying.

I took the time of transcribing some excerpts from [relatively] recent BLP presentations where Randell Mills explains his choice of an arc plasma for his SunCell reactors. I see no indications that he's limiting current, quite the opposite actually.

* * *

Brilliant Light Power's December 6th, 2016 Washington, DC Roadshow

[0:38:51] […] The acceptor would have to become ionized in the reaction, would have to be an ionization reaction. And in the ionization reaction you're going to build up electric charge, and that's limited: that's like when you're sliding your feet across, walking across the rug in the winter and you touch your filing cabinet and you shock your finger, a snap.

[0:39:10] I mean, theoretically you could keep charging up indefinitely and then your arm will like fry up like it got hit by lightning. The reason it doesn't happen is because there's more and more electrons accumulated in the body and it becomes higher energy and it becomes higher charge and it stops the reaction.

[0:39:26] Similarly these electrons build up and it stops that forward reaction. So the idea is to use a state of matter called the arc plasma state whereby the reaction actually increases the higher the current that goes through the reaction. So you drive a current through it. Typically the more current you drive, the more energy: that's Ohm's law, V=IR. Joules * Coulomb is higher the higher the current; this is the opposite.

[0:39:53] The energy per charge actually drops the higher the current, and it recombines these electrons and ions and the reaction rate becomes explosive. Like that. […]

* * *

Brilliant Light Power's December 16th, 2016 London, UK Roadshow

[0:52:41] […] In this case too, it changes the energy levels. So there's a way of actually making use of that to the advantage of making the reaction go to high kinetics, and that is: in a typical case the more charge, the more energy. That is, like if you look at a toaster for example. V = IR, Ohm's law: the more current, the more voltage it takes to drive that current to the toaster, and voltage is Joules * Coulomb, that's energy per charge.

[0:53:13] For something called the arc plasma state it actually is the opposite: the higher the current, the lower the voltage. The lower the Joules per Coulomb energy per charge. So you get like a positive feedback. So when we apply those conditions to the reaction… boom: massive explosive kinetics. Not percussion wave explosion, but light, just a blast of light […]

* * *

Brilliant Light Power's February 28th, 2017 Irvine, CA Roadshow

[0:45:27] […] So, the breakthrough for this, this transformation of [..] the company occurred around the Fall of 2013, where I was looking at the theory again and one of the things I was perplexed is if the electron is attracted to the proton and you have a mechanism for making that drop to a lower state, which releases a lot of energy—like 200 times the energy of burning hydrogen—the rate should be very high.

[0:45:48] So what's impeding it? And you know someone argued "if that were true then all the hydrogen in the Universe would pretty much be in this state". Well that is true. If you look at dark matter as the hydrogen in his hydrino state and essentially all the hydrogen in the Universe is in fact in that state. So you look at the Universe and said "everything you can see" it's a little tiny sliver of what's out there, and what's out there is hydrino form of hydrogen.

[0:46:25] So, what's holding this reaction back? And if you look at it you have an energy transfer from the hydrogen atom to an acceptor, and it's a big amount of energy, it's more energy than the ionization energy of any known molecule or atom. So it has to be an ionization energy reaction in order to accept this energy from the hydrogen, so it has to be a resonant ionization. So then you're gonna have ions and the ions actually impede the rate of reaction: the more ions you get, the more space charge, the more repulsion—if you wanna think that way—it raises the energy level of everything so there's no longer a match.

[0:47:04] So, what occurs in the SunCell is that we have a mechanism of dissipating those charge species and recombine them very quickly, so we have extremely high current. It's called an arc plasma state. Arc plasma state actually lowers the energy the higher the current. Opposite of Ohm's law—like a toaster: if you increase the current, voltage has to increase. That's the Joules per Coulomb, energy per charge—in this case actually it gets lower, so you get positive feedback. Lightnings are an example of arc plasma and actually the higher the current, the lower the voltage and accelerates the process.

[0:47:44] This actually is a positive feedback reaction, so when we did this, created that kind of condition with something that can provide the hydrogen and the catalyst… boom! Just like explosive power […]

* * *

Dr. Mills Fresno State lecture (Mar 20, 2017)

[0:43:11] […] What's impeding the kinetics of this that's not happening very very fast and making a lot of power? That's one thing to have energy if you're [?] 200 times the energy burning, but it's another thing to get the power so you going to actually get this reaction rate high enough so you can get some useful power out of it.

[0:43:27] So, it turns out the issue was that once the energy was transferred from the hydrogen atom to this energy acceptor it creates electrons, free electrons and ions, and that creates a space charge that impedes that forward reaction. So we built a device that would put an arc plasma on it; that is something that higher the current, the lower the voltage, the lower the Joules per Coulomb and is lower the energy and it gave a positive feedback on the reaction. And voila! Explosive kinetics.

Wyttenbach

Tens–hundreds of kHz as I've previously written wasn't certainly going to be with 10000A discharges. I meant that those frequencies can be easily achieved with that system, which made sense in the context of deliberately limiting current as proposed in the thread. BLP came later in the discussion as I remarked that their approach seems to be going in the opposite direction with what could be defined as large sparks.

Quote from Director

To hear Randell Mills talk about the self sustaining plasma ball that exists even after the input has been cut off, start listening around 59:00 minutes. He eventually shows the plasma ball and states that at that moment all input power has been cut off.

Mills does mention about self-sustaining plasma, but not plasma balls, at least at about the indicated time. What's visible there is intense light saturating the camera looking at the reaction through a round viewport.

[58:55] So, I'm gonna play a video here. I wish it had some sound, cause it kind of sounds really cool. But nonetheless... so I'm going to explain.

So we have here electromagnetic pump on one side and on the other side; these are the molten silver reservoirs. We're looking down to the dome and... so we have a viewport there... It's in a vacuum chamber and then we have a window where we can look into the cell.

So we're looking down into the cell and what we're going to do here is going to turn the pumping power up and then we're going to gradually turn on the ignition; and then you'll see that when these two streams hit we'll get electrical contact, let's put ignition on and then nothing should happen, but what you're going to see it's going to make a great plasma.

And then through the video at different points we'll turn it off and you'll see that it persists, and then by the end we'll turn it off and you can't tell the difference whether it has power into it or not, because it's in auto [?] mode.

No one has ever created a plasma that self-sustains itself. And you'll see that. And this is at atmospheric pressure, which is insane, to have a plasma of this type at that high pressures.

So that's going to go on and then it'll get so hot that we're vaporizing away the silver because it can out of the top of the dome, and then the water line start popping or whatever because power it's getting to high and it's kind the end of it, so…

This seems higher than 10 Hz (reaction starts at 0:22).

BLP tests usually involve impulsively dumping large amounts of currents at low voltage—peaking thousands of amperes—into their gas-metal (or gas) mixtures in what is fundamentally a series of very large brief sparks. You instead are proposing a sort of current-limited arc discharge. Which is it?

https://www.lenr-forum.com/attachment/10911-text-opt-pdf/

With the spark gap oscillator you also apply DC and depending on the characteristics of the circuit and the spark gap it automatically produces oscillations in the form of discharges at a rate which can go up tens-hundred kilohertz or more.

The corresponding circuit is at its minimum a capacitor in parallel with the power supply and the spark gap. It doesn't get any simpler than this.

For background also try reading section 2 here ("Spark-Gap Oscillator"): https://frankgermano.wordpress.com/teslas-lost-inventions/

Would a spark gap oscillator work for the cold fusion the easy way? It would be trivial to build one, provided the availability of a suitable power supply.

Quote from Director

2) Once fueled up, start the discharge and enter the negative resistance regime without going into a true arc discharge. (The fireball, complex space charge configuration, or macro-EVO will form during this period.)

By this definition, an electrical spark is a discharge that has entered the negative differential resistance region, but did not make it to a true arc discharge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_spark

Quote

[...] The exponentially-increasing electrons and ions rapidly cause regions of the air in the gap to become electrically conductive in a process called dielectric breakdown. Once the gap breaks down, current flow is limited by the available charge (for an electrostatic discharge) or by the impedance of the external power supply. If the power supply continues to supply current, the spark will evolve into a continuous discharge called an electric arc.

Quote from Arun Luthra

I'm not sure what failed. It is not providing voltage, and it is drawing the max current from the DC power supply, where I set the current limit to 4.6A. Seems like something is shorted out. I think I was driving it too hard trying to maintain a continuous plasma.

Today after I tried a few tests at maximum voltage (800V across both electrodes) I found that the DC boost device was emitting strange noises and not working as intended when about a couple hours later I wanted to make another test. That was the kind of noise it usually emits when current is being limited due to excess draw. It turns out that one of the 400V capacitors failed shorted: it's reading 0 ohms across both leads.

For what it's worth, inspired by the report of this thread I've made some rudimentary tests with a vaguely similar-looking setup with steel electrodes at 800V DC (using a low-power DC boost converter), with the thin/pointy anode barely above the cathode plane, the latter of which previously wetted with a potassium hydroxide solution of low molarity (I don't recall the exact value, but it was probably < 1M).

It's rather difficult with such relatively low voltages to produce sparks with dry electrodes even with a quite narrow gap (which I couldn't precisely adjust), but once there's an electrolyte film it seems much easier. In my case the film quickly evaporated—meaning that the sparks didn't get abundantly produced for a very long time—but I thought that perhaps a jar filled with water isn't really necessary if such film could be renewed (preferably in a closed container).

In theory if the capacitors completely discharged-charged after each spark, they would release about 1.6J of energy during each event, so about 20 times less energy than what was theoretically available in Parkhomov's experiments as reported. I don't think they completely discharged in my case but I haven't tested this specifically.

I do not expect my device to last very long under this sort of testing as the electrolytic capacitors aren't meant for heavy duty usage and the DC boost circuit might not be entirely protected from what essentially are short-circuits. In the background in the photo above a larger transformer I plan to eventually use for a more heavy duty HV power supply can be seen, but I haven't decided anything yet about it.

The documents on lenr-canr.org unfortunately stop at about year 2013 and there's not much from about year either; the patent application documentation that I previously linked was a "free" and relatively easily accessible source for some of the newer papers from the group.

Quote from LeBob

How about Tungsten and Palladium?

From the tables of the document linked in the quoted comment they could release roughly ("in the order of magnitude of") 67 and 24 keV per reaction respectively, although I imagine tungsten would also be easier to experiment with in larger quantities at higher temperatures.

Clearer excerpt on the energy of formation of pico-hydrides, from Pico-chemistry: The possibility of new phases in some Hydrogen-Metal systems linked in comment #14 :

I wish I knew their reasons for doing this. It doesn't seem ordinary trolling.

As for myself, I always try when reporting my very humble testing to provide as much information as materially possible, and even what I'm thinking in the process, as it can sometimes happen that what on the surface might appear like trivialities that can be safely omitted could be in reality very important details. This is actually often a problem in the experimental sections of peer-reviewed scientific papers, but it has happened (or used as an excuse to justify null results by others' replications) also in experimental reports from the LENR field.