Bob Greenyer has corrected me - Doh! I was saying that Piantelli professes that it is the H+ ion on the surface that is absorbed and it is the H+ ion that is in the ionic hydride, LiH - IT IS THE H- ion! I knew that - it was just old age kicking in. Thanks Bob G! So, you may see the previous posts edited to correct that mistake and not leave a wrong trail in the record. Of course the mistaken text will not show in the quoted text and I am unable to fix that.
@Director I don't really agree with your theory, but I commend you for thinking out of the box. I don't think ZPE is required to explain charge clusters, but an understanding of the true nature of the vacuum ether is probably needed.
@Director While it is possible that EVOs may be generated at Piantelli's rod surface grain boundaries, Piantelli's research suggested to him that the LENR was not occurring in the grain boundaries, but rather within the grains. He believes that the surface adsorbed H- ions were drawn into the "right sized" grains and the resulting energy delivered to the distributed number of atoms within his "right sized" grains behaving in a collective manner. He has a nice SEM and an expensive Bruker micro-XRD system to understand the size and orientations of his Ni surface metal grains. Piantelli would probably disagree that EVOs are complicit in his LENR.
I have been working on a theory of the vacuum ether that includes an explanation for formation of Shoulders' EVOs. I think this new theory explains a lot of things including photons, phonons, charge clusters, how EM radiation propagates, dark matter, neutrinos, nuclear structure, and I am working out gravitation. There are also some LENR clues as well.
lenrcentury Regarding the AURA reactor... Bob Greenyer, has not indicated that there has been a new invitation to test an me356 reactor. That doesn't mean that it won't happen, it just means that the invitation from me356 has not been given yet.
The intent is to test the plasma processed powder in a separate reactor with a heater. A new heater is being constructed that will allow both the DC heating input and have an additional input to provide RF (using a bias-T). Both DC heating and DC+RF will be tested. A new heater coil is needed because the present heater coil is bifilar wound and cannot be driven to stimulate an RF magnetic field in the coil. No big deal to wind a new one.
@Director Note that in Parkhomov-like reactions with LiAlH4, the decomposed LiH coats and wets to the Ni powder. LiH is an ionic hydride, and in its molten state supplies monatomic hydrogen H- ions directly to the surface of the Ni. This corresponds well to Piantelli's theory that it is H- on the surface of the Ni that is drawn into the Ni surface grains, and is responsible for LENR within his rod's surface grains. Piantelli believes LENR occurs within each "right sized" grains on the surface of his rod. He goes through a preparation process to prepare the rod by orienting the grains all in one direction to have the rod ready to be stimulated to induce LENR. The triggering he applies then stimulates a thermal wave (non-fourier heat transfer) within his pre-aligned rod grains. The triggering is very subtle. I believe the result with LENR may become an active thermal wave resonant structure, wherein the thermal wave transiting Piantelli's rod grains are responsible for the LENR. There could be SPPs and/or EVOs associated with the grain boundaries in such a system being stimulated as the thermal wave transits across the grains.
lenrcentury In this line of plasma treatment, I am still working on the equipment to treat the Ni powder. In the previous Parkhomov-like experiments, I found no excess heat.
Hi Dan, You are right that wirewound power resistors would introduce a lot of inductance. What I used were power thick film resistors, http://www.caddock.com/Online_…ktg_Lit/MP9000_Series.pdf , which are rated for 10nH of inductance. I don't intend to do calorimetry in this system. I am going to use this system to treat the Ni powder, and then put it into the previous insulated thermometry system to look for XH.
Here is what I am working on for treatment. The lecture bottle gas is He right now and will be changed to be H2. Also, I am showing an alumina reactor tube going through the coil. The processing will be done in a fused quartz tube that is the same size. I have the fused quartz tubes but I need to epoxy on a connector. I am working on the 13.56 MHz crystal signal source right now so as to eliminate the need for the waveform generator in the oscilloscope. The SS tree on the right is my vacuum system which is on a heavy duty cart.
can You are right. There is certainly opportunity for LENR related effects to occur during the pre-treatment. Perhaps it would be good to record video so if something unusual happens there will be a record of the visual event as well as potentially any radiation event. It would be nice to have a thermal camera to record the heating, but I don't have one at the moment. I will see if there are any I can borrow.
can Monitoring for the small amount of H2 absorption would be difficult. H2 is a very leaky gas and it would be hard to discern the absorption from a leak. Also, I plan to evacuate, load H2, and repeat as part of the process. I will monitor for radiations to look for activity. The initial preparation will be run in fused quartz tubes so that I can observe the plasma and how hot the powder is getting - ascertained by its thermal glow.
can The intent is to begin by using the plasma exciter to treat the powder in 10-50 torr of H2. Then I will heat the powder in the high temperature insulated measurement system with H2 gas at somewhat higher pressure - about 200 torr to test for LENR. Additionally, I am looking at modifying my heater coil (kanthal) so that I can drive it with DC for heating and RF to stimulate a plasma in the test apparatus.
I want to study the changes in the Ni powder under various durations of plasma treatment as well (SEM study).
I have put a short video tour of my plasma exciter prototype on Youtube. It is unscripted and has a lot of "uhhh" when I am trying to think of the next thing to say (so don't be too critical). It shows the use of the 13.56 MHz excitation to light up a gas plasma testing tube. Now I am going to mechanically mount the coil assembly to my vacuum fixture so that I can apply the RF to a tube containing Ni powder and H2 gas. I will put the exciter all together in its own assembly with a crystal oscillator source (instead of my waveform generator in the oscilloscope) and with a switching power supply. It would be nice to add a single button press for starting the plasma - easy to do.
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One of the hard things in this was protection of the RF power amplifier. When the plasma snaps on, the impedance looking into the coil changes as a step, going from high impedance to low impedance. As you search the tuner to re-match into the lower impedance, I have had it burn out a power transistor in the output of the amplifier. Because of this, I put power resistors in the output of the amplifier to limit the range of possible impedance swing seen by the amplifier output transistors. While adding these resistors reduced the maximum achievable output power and reduced the RF conversion efficiency, it has been successful in preventing damage to the amplifier during tuning of the load.
By law, the cost of decomissioning is including in the cost of electricity. It is baked in to your rates. By the time the plant is finished, the money should be in the bank.
Jed, does that money go into escrow such that a utility in bankruptcy cannot touch those funds?
It seems a little insane. The ruling makes it seem that the nuclear plant's only danger is while it is operating. It is likely that the turned OFF plant represents a greater danger to the public from disasters. The danger is that since it is not turning a profit, no investments can be afforded to buttress the plant against possible dangers from volcanoes or tsunamis. Decommissioning a plant is very expensive and time consuming - taking 20+ years typically. Only a vital power business or government can afford to do the work to remove a plant that is taken from operation. Note that it was the spent fuel storage pool at Fukishima that posed the greatest danger. These spent fuel storage pools must be constantly fed with cooling water (the spent fuel is producing about 25% of its operational heat) or the disaster becomes far greater. Who is paying for the cooling pumping and protection of these spent fuel pools in a plant that is not generating any profit?
So, here are the SEM images of the Ni powder sample that Bob Greenyer sent me which he obtained from Alexander Parkhomov (for comparison to the Hunter AH-50). The morphology two powders look extremely similar, with the Parkhomov powder being somewhat larger granules on average.
I have looked as EDS options and I find that IXRF (http://www.ixrfsystems.com/cat…s-elemental-analysis.html) has an excellent solution. Their hardware is as good as Bruker and their software is better. Plus, IXRF provides free lifetime software updates but you have to pay a lot for updates from Bruker. The cost of the IXRF EDS option for the TM3030plus is 2/3 of the cost of Bruker's EDS option.
Thanks for the link. I bought my SEM from the regional Hitachi field representative - it was her demo model; so not new. Hitachi is introducing their 4000 series and she will be demonstrating that model beginning in 2018.
After doing some maintenance aperture replacements in the column of my SEM, it is working pretty well. I have taken a first set of survey images of the as-supplied Hunter Chemical AH-50 grade Ni powder that I have been using. I made a Ted Pella pin stub sample holder adapter, and hopefully this afternoon I am going to take comparative images of the Ni powder A. Parkhomov uses. My SEM is a Hitachi TM3030plus. It doesn't have EDS yet, but I hope to add that in January if I can scrape together the funds. Enclosed are some of the AH-50 images. The images are taken at 15kV using both the SE detector and Backscatter detector in a combined image mode in high vacuum within the sample chamber (since everything was conductive). The powder is adhered to the aluminum sample pedestal with conductive black tape. While this SEM doesn't have the ultimate resolution of late model full size SEMs, for a tabletop SEM, the resolution is adequate for this work - the resolution is better than the 20 year old physically large full size SEM we had at the company I worked for previously. The only facility requirements for this SEM are a sturdy tabletop and an ordinary wall plug (~500W).
I still believe that Ni, and Ni powder in particular, is a likely key to higher power LENR. I have not been idle in the last 4-5 months. I am getting setup for treating of Ni powders in an RF H2 plasma (13.56 MHz, 5-40W) - sort of like what is being done by Mizuno and probably me356 (since what he does is just a guess). The changes in the Ni granules will be documented over the course of treatment with SEM observation (I am bringing an SEM online in my lab in about a week). This has required new lab hardware and reworking of some lab facilities. Hopefully plasma treating will begin before the end of the year.
If one were to go for Helium-4 as a routine signature for LENR activity
perhaps a $2000 visible region spectrophotometer would suffice?
MKS sells a high resolution mass spectrometer RGA for the mass range of 1-6. It is probably in the $15k range. It is the same quadrapole mass filter as their regular RGA, but run at a higher frequency. Mass spectroscopy of these gasses has to deal with the other molecular interferences in the measure. For example, measuring 4He, one has interferences of 2D2, and HT (and there are others) which have masses of ~4, but not exactly the same as 4He. A high resolution 1-6 m/e RGA can separate the 4He from the interferences.
Yup. That is essential for some kinds of samples. Such as flies. (Insects; a biologist told me that.) However, it does not work with powder.
Gold coating is not required for analysis of non-conductive samples in all SEMs. Modern SEMs have a charge reduction mode that puts ~7 torr of air or argon in the sample chamber to allow charge to bleed off a non-conductive sample. The column of the SEM is still kept at ultra-high vacuum. In charge reduction mode, gold coating is not required for a conductive or non-conductive sample (or your fly). There is no problem with analyzing powder on EDX, but EDX only provides an approximate quantitative atom analysis. SIMS would be much better and would use a mass spectrometer.
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