Posts by Stevenson

Quote from Frank Gordon

Following the hot spot video, there are a few slides showing pressure and temperature spikes that were obtained by codepositing Pd onto a ferroelectric transducer which will record both pressure and transient temperature.

Really nice presentation Frank!

Very interesting that the mini explosions shown in your paper are very similar to the one I recorded! Same timescale and shapes, even if they are collected in two different (but related) devices and with different means. I will retrieve and publish here some of the "click" that I recorded that looks like the one zoomed in the paper. It is quite evident that the underlying phenomenon is the same...

Quote from magicsound

I looked at Frank's LEC sample with an Optris IR camera, and saw nothing above the background temperature. At 320x240 pixels it's probably too coarse to be useful even close to the device.

Yes, same impression... Have you tried to observe the active sample on the SEM? Probably active sites will be visible either for the electric field perturbation and/or for the emission of some form of radiation.

Quote from Curbina

Did you take a screenshot of the recording of the control not making any “pops”?

I saved the audio files, so I can produce the screenshot or even send you the data... (the raw data is not as clean as the one I shown: there is a considerable amount of 50 Hz + harmonics superimposed)

Quote from Alan Smith

Interesting that it was too fast for your scope because long ago the late Ken Shoulders was battling with a similar problem when looking for signals from EVO strikes on an electrode. He (being very skilled in that stuff) built his own very fast scope.

The problem with the scope is not the bandwidth, but the signal amplitude: even very good scopes have a maximum amplification of 10-20 mV/div and a 8 bit resolution, so it is very difficult to see (and even more to trigger) a signal that is less than 1 mV. Probably an audio front-end + a scope would do it, but the problem with the trigger and the memory length will be still there.

Quote from Alan Smith

I'm not surprised that your FLIR shots showed nothing - but that might be a matter of sensitivity only. My guess is that UV detection might show something though.

The thermal camera has a very good temperature resolution, that is also self-adjusted depending on the scene you look at. You can reliably see fraction of a degree (this can hardly be done with thermocouples or PT100s). My problem was instead with the spatial resolution. i.e. the number of pixels and their dimensions.

With reference to the UV, I tried to detect them via fluorescent plastics, but I found no observable emission...

Quote from fabrice DAVID

“the heat energy finally transmitted to the palladium would have produced a sudden dilatation which can be detected by sensitive microphones as faints clicks”./.

Yes, I think the phenomenon could be the same, and I think that by using a piezoelectric transducer attached to the WE it would be possible to record these "clicks" (in my case I only recorded the effect on the voltage).

I want to add a related thing I noticed: vibration seem to stimulate the effect. Gently knocking the external part of the WE produced an increase in the voltage (however this could be related to the voltage generation mechanism, i.e. the charge separation inside the device more than the primary effect).

Quote from Gregory Byron Goble

Has anyone measured terahertz radiation emanating from an LEC device?

Terahertz measurements are a nightmare per se! Even when you know what you are measuring...

Hi all!

Yesterday I ran a couple of experiments with the LEC. The results are somewhat preliminary (they should be repeated before taking them for granted), nevertheless they are quite interesting.

I activated a WE with my usual technique and tested its activity measuring the open circuit voltage. It was not so good as other times, but it still generated about 150 mV (about the half of my best devices). Moreover it showed an extremely fast tendency to oxidize, so its activity decreased rapidly (timescale of few hours). Even though I managed to carry out the planned experiments:

1) I imaged the WE in open air with a FLIR camera sensitive to mid IR (around 4-16 um), in order to detect any potential hotspot. The net result was that no hotspot or increased temperature were found. On the contrary, the active zone appeared cooler than surrounding environment. There may be a couple of conventional explanation to this: the active zone probably had residual humidity trapped, so the evaporation caused a slight decrease in temperature, or the emissivity of the plated zone was different than control zones (for example the hotter appearance of the non-active zone on the left is due to emissivity issues). So I don't think there is nothing really interesting, until this coolness is confirmed to be something "anomalous". Other thing to note: the camera resolution appeared a bit too low to observe very small hotspots (if any). These are a couple of shots from the WE before and after the activation (the background had a controlled emissivity close to 1):

2) I noticed (and this was not the first time actually) that the voltage measured on the LEC featured some small abrupt variations from time to time, so I decided to connect it to an audio interface to the PC, to record the signal at 44.1 kHz (22 kHz bandwidth). The audio interface was a good choice allowing to record for extensive time with an adequate frequency and amplitude resolution. The "pops" were clearly visible on the recording (timescale is seconds, amplitude is linear "mic" level, digitally amplified):

Also this result has to be confirmed, but it may be very interesting: these "pops" are very short in time (few ms) and sometimes happen in bursts. Apparently they have the characteristics of small "explosions". If this is true, this may be the way the ionization is generated: discrete energetic events that ejects "something" (accelerated particles o radiations) in the gas. Experimental notes: as a control, I connected a dummy LEC to the same audio input, in order to establish if this signal were noise/interference from outside. The dummy LEC didn't show these features. Interestingly enough, the use of an audio interface, with high impedance and very high sensitivity allowed to observe something that it is difficult to capture with an oscilloscope (thing that I've tried in the past, without meaningful results).

Another interesting observation: while the LEC output was spontaneously decaying due to oxidation, I observed some polarity reversal when changing the attached load or instrumentation. This imply that the work function difference is not the only source of voltage, there is probably some additional diffusion or space charge phenomena that can be temporarily reversed depending on the initial conditions.

Next experiment will be applying a PWM modulation to the plating current (same average current density as usual, but much higher peak current). Stay tuned!

Quote from Alan Smith

You may remember that initially it was only electrolysed for 3 hours- I will probably run it in electrolyser mode over the weekend for a much longer period.

I suspect that long plating may be not necessary, for a number of reasons: 1) as suggested by Ed Storm the ionizing agent must be in proximity of the surface (otherwise it would be screened), so even very thin layers should work; 2) in my first experiment the co-dep layer was very thin and it worked very well; 3) Frank suggested to redo a very brief co-dep if the electrode does not produce the effect, and this has been confirmed by some replicators (comprising me).

Quote from gio06

Very interesting! I suggest to set up an experiment inside a well-controlled isothermal environment to obtain a table/function that shows the dependence of power output on the temperature

If you search for the ICCF24 presentation from J-P. Biberian on Youtube, he calculated the equivalent "activation energy" of the LEC, this gives you the dependence on temperature (based on Arrhenius equation).

However there are two different phenomenon involved: the ionization and the voltage generation. The first is more related to the "anomalous" effect, the second is probably related to more conventional effects that are function of the electrodes work functions and other factors that are also dependent from temperature (in a different way). In my opinion it would be better to characterize the ionization only (by measuring the forced current) to investigate on the dependence of temperature of the effect.

Quote from Cydonia

What kind of percentage would you give to the chemistry hypothesis to explain the LEC case ?

Almost 0%. I tested "dummy" devices that were identical to the active one either mechanically and chemically, and they didn't generate voltage and current. You could explain the voltage with some very involuted chemical process involving the interaction of gas with the electrodes, but it doesn't hold against experimental data. And in any cases, as I wrote multiple times, in the LEC you have a meaningful current flowing trough air at atmospheric pressure with only a small voltage applied: no way this can be achieved by chemical means!

Quote from gio06

Obviously I was referring exclusively to LEC.

"Energy localization" just helps H2 dissociation in Celani wire but cannot explain the excess heat.

It's an important concept in heterogeneous catalysis.

The concept of "lowering activation energy" does not explain really how catalysis works!

From what we observed I think we can exclude a catalytic effect: apparently the gas is ionised in the entire volume, not only in contact with the surface (Alan's last cell is a good example). Also, it is not only H2 that is ionised, but even air (N2 requires > 15 eV) and other gases and vapors. No known (normal) catalyzers allow for this level of "energy gains".

Energy localization could be an explanation (as it could be for many LENR systems), but it is a bit too "qualitative" and generic to be considered and experimentally verified at this stage: how big is the localized energy peak (in eV)? Are we talking of eV, keV, MeV? Apart from the energy availability, what are the mechanism that ionize the gas employing that energy (does it exists theoretically and is it compatible with the experimental conditions)? Is it via phonons? Via electromagnetic emission? Via ballistic particles? Via byproduct of localized fusion reactions? Too many questions without answers currently... I prefer sticking to the experimental evidences and moving step by step, little but steady.

Quote from Alan Smith

Recovery from a direct short circuit is very quick for the terbium, I can do the 'blow' test tomorrow,

As I wrote before, the LEC does not behave as an ordinary chemical battery: a short circuit does not hurt in any ways its life and performance. This is because the "source of energy" is somewhat independent from the voltage generation stage. The blow test instead should "upset" it a little bit more, since the ionized gas is removed and it will take some time to regenerate. This will provide two very important answers: 1) a direct evidence that the gas is actually ionised inside the cell; 2) measuring the recovery curve (that should be way slower than the short circuit), it will provide some numbers to calculate the ionization flux.

Both this kind of experiments have already been done (more or less), but your latest cell seem to be particularly well suited for them (and others).

Quote from Alan Smith

and the fact that this is chips with a large surface area rather than solid

Yes, using chips to extend the surface area was a very good idea.

BTW, since the ionizing flux seems to be quite large, you can try to do some radiation measurement inside the cell or just putting some fluorescent plastic in it, just to see (again) if something can be detected...

Quote from Alan Smith

dry' the lead anode is 45mm away from the terbium chips in the stainless cup at the bottom, suggesting that a closer spacing might give a much higher voltage

Wow! 45 mm! It is an enormous distance! I would love to see fraction of mA flowing in that 45 mm of air under an external small voltage! I think this will astonish a lot of people...

Can you confirm that after flushing the air inside the cell with fresh air, it will take some time to rebuild-up the voltage? This would be an interesting measure of the ionization flux and ionization dynamics.

Quote from gio06

The proposed mechanism is quite simple:

Energy localization causes the catalytic formation of ionized gas that behaves consequently as a gaseous electrolyte

of a battery

Energy localization and/or anharmonic oscillations may be involved in a lot of LENR phenomena, but it is something that has to do with the very root cause of the phenomena. We are currently observing and experimenting with n-th level consequences of the root cause (the voltage is a consequence of the ionisation, the ionisation is consequence of a radiation of something else that we still have to detect, the ionising agent may be directly or indirectly connected to the root cause). So it is currently very difficult to draw conclusions. We have to (and only can) proceed backward from the experimental side. In my opinion the immediate questions to answer are:

1. Is there any ionising radiation acting on the gas volume, or is the ionisation a surface phenomenon?
2. How energetic is the ionising agent?

Quote from Alan Smith

I am also considering using ammonia vapour which has a similar ionisation energy to nitrogen.

According to NIST data, ammonia (gas) have a ionisation energy of 10.2 eV, much lower than N2 (15.5 eV).

Quote from Alan Smith

THF is particularly useful for electrolysing materials subject to forming hydroxides in water - as many of the lanthanides I want to test are.

Interesting... I didn't know THF and this specific application. Can you dissolve ionic salts in THF? If so, probably this can be used to deposit alkali metals on the cathode avoiding their dissolution as hydroxides (?)

Quote from Alan Smith

Your comment about Triboelectricity above is interesting and led me to look at it a little more closely as a possible mechanism. If it is related to friction/adhesion phenomena the only de-adhesion (is that really a word?) phenomenon we might see is the release of hydrogen from the working electrode surface.

Actually the reference to triboelectricity was to the X-rays generated by the scotch tape. The LEC electrodes, being metallic, cannot generate triboelectric effects as far as I know (because the charges are free to move in the conduction band).

Quote from Alan Smith

There is also the possibility that electrolytic hydrogen adsorbed/absorbed into the working electrode is partly monatomic, and that we are seeing ionisation caused by 13eV photon emissions from recombination of H+H -> H2? Though this is way outside my field.

I think it is theoretically possible, but this would generate a very small amount of ionization, either due to the relatively small de-a*sorbed flux, either because that very low energy would be captured by the very few atomic layers of gas. Moreover air contains about 70% of N2, that has a ionization energy of 15 eV (>13 eV), instead we know that air works even better than H2 alone!

Interestingly, Helium has a ionization energy of 24.6 eV: if it will produce the effect we know that the radiation energy is greater than this value. It would be a simple yet very valuable test...

Quote from Alan Smith

This is in a closed container in a mix of air and acetone vapour. It has been shorted out around a dozen times, but not left carrying any load, nor h had an external voltage applied for any longer than was neccessary to measure the internal resistance.

I was reflecting that the LEC life, contrary to ordinary batteries, is not affected by drawing a current (e.g. shorting terminals or attaching a load) or not: the internal energy source is completely independent. This is something remarkable! And may be a good proof that the origin of energy is not chemical.

Quote from Alan Smith

Catalysis and catalyst materials is something I know a fair bit about. They generally only operate in a very specific window of temperature, pressure, and reactant availability. I'll give you an example, I use a catalyst to do my hydrogen/aluminium work. It is only 100% effective at between 80 and 90C. a concentration below 0.2Mol, and pressure between BarG and 2Bar Exceed those parameters and different unwanted reactions dominate.

The LEC effect seems too broad across materials and temperatures for any of that to be the case.

Thank you for the clarification and explanation!

Quote from Alan Smith

Last week's nickel/nickel is still producing 120mV.So it works with identical metals.

Still producing the voltage after a week? Good! Probably this confirms that the Fe based devices dies very fast due to oxidation more than hydrogen unloading...

What about its conditions during this time:

- Air or hydrogen? Closed or open?

- Has it been lent open circuited, short circuited or loaded?

- Any external voltage applied?

Quote from Alan Smith

We are running out of non-nuclear explanations for 'something is ionising the gas between electrodes.'

Have you measured the forced current? (Applying 5V should be fine to measure fraction of mA)

Quote from Alan Smith

And why should there not be a nuclear explanation (if we were to include low-energy X-Rays), after all even sellotape (Scotchtape in the USA) emits 15keV X-rays in a vacuum.. In a gas they would cause ionisation...

That phenomenon is relatively more conventional: it is a surprisingly effective case of triboelectric effect. Its a (very non-linear) energy conversion more than a generation: the emission is only present when the external force is applied. Probably in the case of the LEC, the energy required to ionise the gas for a week or more will surpass any possible chemical energy and/or process energy (we have to do some math...).

About non-nuclear explanations, I was wondering if it may exists some form of catalytic effect able to ionize the gas? This is my only residual doubt...

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Has anyone tried a thoriated tungsten welding rod in the middle?

A little bit too "dirty" for now...

Quote from Alan Smith

Can I ask how? Via calcium hydroxide electrolyte or some other method? Metallic calcium is quite reactive in air or water.

I was thinking of dissolving a small amount of CaCl2 into the electrolytic solution: it should partecipate to the co-deposition process and so some Ca++ ions should be embedded into the metal lattice. Probably the most external layers will react with water forming Ca(OH)2, but it worth a try... Also potassium is a good candidate (in addition of having a low work function, it also has a radioactive natural isotope).
BTW, I found this very useful book about work functions of elements and compounds:

Handbook of Thermionic Properties

fabrice DAVID, I agree with the first part of your explaination: LENR and "down-conversion" that cause the ionization of something. However, since the device is almost perfectly symmetric in carrying the current, a symmetric mechanism and probably an equal number of positive and negative charges are requires to explain the conduction.

Drgenek, I confirm that air works better than hydrogen (with reference to voltage, actually current would be a better indication) and, as said by J.P. Biberian alcohol or acetone works even better. I will be not surprised at all that a mixture of air or hydrogen with argon or xenon will provide very good results...

BTW, there are some curious similarities with the behavior of the Celani constantan wires: he reported too that acetone increase the effect, that its wires are able to dissociate water and that a very small voltage appears along the wires...

EDIT: just to back up what Jed wrote: Prometheus — MATRIX: Self-Powered Solutions (matrixindustries.com)

JedRothwell, I agree with you: even generating a small electrical power would be enormously valuable if it can be made reliable, long lasting and physically small. However, the latter attribute probably is hardest to achieve for many systems. You have physical constraints that do not allow to scale down dimensions. Probably you can power a smart watch right now with the BEC HHT+thermoelectric generator, but you cannot wear it on your wrist... So it is somewhat easier to scale up the power to circumvent this limitation (also because most LENR systems output thermal energy).

The LEC (as well as few other systems) is somewhat different in that: the output is close to be practically useful and dimensions can be probably scaled down. It's a good option.

I also agree with you that some attributes such as reliability, useful life, industrial scalability, are even more important than power level.

Quote from Bob Ellefson

I had a brief conversation with Larry Forsley about the LEC. He was thinking that the conduction channels are being opened by thermionic emissions. Has this notion been explored yet?

Thermionic emission would imply emission of electrons only. If so, the LEC would behave unidirectionally, like a diode. Instead it shows a very symmetric conduction capability. This imply that both positive and negative charges are present, and that there is no preferential emission from one electrode (i.e. most probably charges are created in the gas).

Work functions are for sure involved in the generation of the voltage, but we don't know if they can affect the generation and amount of ionization. However, we will have some answer for both these questions: in the forthcoming weeks (months?) I will try to add some low work function elements during the co-deposition process (mainly calcium) and I also plan to scan an active electrode with a FLIR thermal camera (if hot spots will be present they may be responsible for a thermionic emission).

Quote from Shane D.

Now since the event is over, are you still going to work as a team, or do Frank/Harper go it alone from here?

Of course we will keep in touch, but we will work independently. I will continue to investigate on the LEC phenomenon and I will try to involve other people if possible. I'm very interested in understanding the origin of the gas ionization, more than scaling up the output. If something will be discovered, this will for sure help Frank and Harper, but may also have collateral implications and applications.

Quote from JedRothwell

That seems like a distant prospect, but they think they can increase it by various methods, each 1, 2 or more orders of magnitude, and they add up to quite a lot.

I think Frank's assumptions are absolutely reasonable: there are many ways to scale up the output even without having understood the inner mechanism. Once you have a better understanding of the phenomenon, you can do even better!

Quote from JedRothwell

Ed Storms said they are going to try some his material. That might work very well, adding a few orders of magnitude. Let's hope so.

That would be great. I liked the presentation of Dr. Storm about how to increase NAE/NAS density. And his "doped" Pd may work great in this context too.

I was very impressed by the presentation of Dr. Egely. It was very detailed and clearly highlighted a really deep study of the matter (from an historical and documental point of view). A number of inventor in the past made independently similar claims: it is possible that they observed the same phenomenon. Clearly a replication will be needed to assess the veracity of the claims. Third party qualified observations (such as the one from J.P. Biberian) add some credibility, but in this field replication is (or should be) the real milestone or even the holy grail. By the way, since I'm an electronic engineer with some experience in high voltage, I candidate myself for a replication...

ICCF24 was a very good event! The organization was great in many ways. The starting was great with the tailor-made rap song by Baba Brinkman and the Hopin platform worked like a charm, allowing many peoples (more than 120 on average) to follow every day and other people to present remotely. It was even possible to watch the poster sessions and some collateral events and switching between sessions. It was fun for me to present from a (very) remote location with that a platform (looked somewhat like being on a TV show!): the only downside was the time lag: I had to present at late night, partially asleep!

The chat was also valuable feature and was fun. It was a pity that it wasn't used for the Q&A (people asked questions, but the were not relayed to the speakers).

A good number of presentations were very interesting and it was a pleasure to see NASA and other govt agencies involved and publicly reporting positive results. Some works were very encouraging on a practical side (the theoretical works were a mess as usual, but I know, it's a limitation of mine to be scared by slides full of equations...) The "old guard" was quite open and collaborative and there was also some very skilled young guy presenting. Yes, also in my opinion it was a turning point (maybe not 90 or 180 degree, a little bit less, but it's ok...)

Worth to mention, a number of apparently practically working technologies were presented: the BEC Hot Tube (missed the demo, but this kind of accidents are something that happen), the surprising and well documented Egely device, the LEC, etc.

I look forward to watch the presentations I missed due to the time lag, when available...

The only negative thing in my opinion was the lack of publication of conference proceedings with full papers! Only abstracts will be available for the future generations (and for lenr-canr.org)...