Posts by BobHiggins

Quote from JedRothwell

I know little about mass spectroscopy. However, years ago, people who know a lot told me that EDX does not work reliably with samples of material such as powder or other particles not compact or electrically conductive.

I think that is an unfair characterization of EDX. If you can image with the microscope, avoiding charge build-up, then EDX will in general be a reliable indicator of what elements are present. EDX will only provide an approximate measure of composition ratios and really provides no information on molecular structure - just what elements are present. To deal with charge build-up, many SEMs will have the chamber at an air or argon pressure of about 7 torr, compared to the normal ultra-high vacuum that must be maintained in the column. This prevents measurements of secondary electrons, and of course, you may detect oxygen, argon, and nitrogen in the x-ray spectrum.

Most samples are placed on a conductive carbon sticky tape which will cause carbon to show up in every analysis - sometimes a lot. This makes it difficult to determine if carbon is really in the spot probed by EDX or not. Generally, you have to ignore the carbon in the analysis.

Also, EDX works by having the electron beam knock off electrons from the atom and when the electrons are restored, it gives off the characteristic photon spectrum of the element. The characteristic photons of low atomic weight elements are very low energy and don't make it through the window on the x-ray sensor. You need a special x-ray sensor window (polymer) to be able to detect down to boron (Be windows are more common). Seeing Be or Li is nearly impossible with any sensor window - you need a sensor without a window and a high vacuum system to seen Be or Li.

There is a caveat: if your sample is radioactive, it can generate spurious lines in the acquired x-ray spectrum that are not the characteristic lines of anything. The analysis software may not deal with these extra lines gracefully and may say that an element is present that is not actually there. I have never seen this happen.

Jack Cole , I sympathize with your characterization, but I am also an optimist. I look forward to hearing more from me356 when he finds himself in a position where he feels comfortable sharing more. I respect that he must keep some secrets so that he can realize financial gain from his work. Unfortunately, bringing such a radical new technology to market is immensely difficult for a lone inventor/engineer. His best opportunity is to file a patent on his process and realize early financial gain by licensing the technology to engineering companies that can bring the difficult new technology to product. ME356 is in a race, because others will independently discover what he is doing as well and the secret will be out. It doesn't even have to be a great all-covering patent to make money. There are companies out there that would pay well to add a usable LENR patent to their portfolio. And, there are ways that a clever patent attorney can cast the patent description that will allow it to issue.

Quote from Bob

With that passing of time, I am curious if there are any updates Bob H. would care to share with us?

I had a side project to create a solar supported camping trailer - done. Camped in the Rocky Mtns. Also took a trip to the centerline (800 miles) to view the eclipse. Now I am back and planning new LENR work. No schedule yet until I decide the right thing on which to work. I have the seeds of microwave plasma and DC plasma experiments, and may continue the Parkhomov-like experiments with new fuel mixes.

Note that even if the source is DC, the current won't be constant if you are using a series gas tube which is highly nonlinear, even containing regions of negative resistance. The gas tube is also used as a noise source, and the noise can become an oscillation at the right operating point where the negative resistance is presented. I would suspect that Rossi would not drive with a voltage source, but rather a current limit mode of a DC supply, making the voltage variable. The only thing is that the current can also now become variable because the gas tube is faster than the current control feedback loop in a current controlled power supply.

I don't trust Rossi's or Gullstrom's measurements of this. It cannot be adequately characterized by voltmeters.

One would normally measure the voltage across the resistor to compute the current and then use the voltage across the tube to measure the voltage. Then the input power is V*I if the voltage and current are DC or in phase. If the input voltage is pulsed DC, it may be difficult to measure depending on the pulse duration. It is all measurable if someone knows what they are doing.

Quote from Bob

With that in mind, why would one continue down the path of Rossi's leading?

I have never met Rossi. From the proceedings we see, he certainly appears to be a scoundrel. Yet, on the other hand, his work with Focardi seems to this day to have been genuine. I trust Focardi to the extent that he could have known what Rossi was doing and for the measurements he made of Rossi's device. Focardi measured gamma and saw the excess heat. So there may have been something there in Rossi's eCat days when he was working with Focardi. The ash delivered to and analyzed by the Swedes are from this more probably true time period. Because of my faith in Focardi, I consider that there is a greater probability that there may be some value that can be extracted from the composition analysis of the ash of that period. It was Rossi's work with Focardi that got me re-interested in LENR.

I follow the work of Cravens, Piantelli, and other LENR researchers. I consider that these people are the "real deal". So, what I plan is tempered with what they are doing as well.

@Bob, I have taken a short hiatus to complete a solar project. Even still, I am working with other researchers on their LENR projects. One of the other researchers asked for suggestion for next fuel to try and I suggested an additive that I have bought and plan to try: LiFePO₄. The elements of this compound were found in Rossi's ash during the Swedish analyses. He tried it with Ni and LiAlH₄. At high temperature it showed 26W of possible XH at about 1200°C. So, I may move this fuel additive up in my schedule. While he tested it at high temperature, it was believed to be a component of Rossi's low temperature eCat fuel, so experiments with cycling from 200°C to 450°C are also going to be tried.

My experiments will resume in August, in the same manner as before.

@David Fojt

David, I am considering dead volume and compaction as two separate issues. In general, I control the pressure with a back pressure regulator. I am not closing it off and heating which could cause the pressures to be extreme. The only reason that it seems that this experiment's tube fractured was from a plug that prevented the gas from escaping quickly enough.

Separately, is there an issue for LENR itself where the fuel should be spread out more thinly in the reactor tube? This could be for getting the heat out. As I posted to StephenC above, if the LENR outputs low energy photons, and the fuel is too compacted, then the photons could go into heating the fuel, whereas if the fuel is more sparsely loaded, the photons could be absorbed in the reactor tube. This could prevent local over-heating of the fuel.

StephenC

I have discussed this issue before - at the core, you have to ask yourself what is the carrier of the LENR energy? If many LENR events occur in a small NAE, and the energy carrier is phonon, then the temperature of the NAE will be the hottest with temperature falling off quickly with radius due to the small wavelength of the phonons. This would make the NAE burn out before significant energy is transferred to a lattice. On the other hand, if the energy is being carried away by low energy photons, they will not be immediately absorbed at the NAE, but can be absorbed in the condensed matter volume around the NAE. This could make the environment hotter than the NAE, allowing it to continue generating LENR events. It is like your microwave oven heating a potato - the potato can get hot without the plate the potato is sitting on. In this case the NAE is the microwave oven and the potato is the surrounding condensed matter. The heated volume in this case will depend on the energy of the photons being generated.

Of course, this argument applies to LENR being generated at NAE's as Ed Storms prescribes in his theory. Peter Haglestein suggests that phonons are involved in carrying away the heat. How does he address the temperature issue with the phonons? He says there are no NAE, but instead LENR happens one event at a time distributed in the condensed matter lattice. For example, a pair of D's fuse at a vacancy in the lattice but the next LENR event will occur somewhere else in the lattice. Peter's distributed LENR theory doesn't really seem to address the volcanoes that were seen peppering the surface of an active electrode - those don't seem to be distributed events, but rather more like a super-active NAE.

StephenC

Good observation. It deserves experimental evaluation.

Mats002

I am going to fabricate a new tube assembly. I haven't decided if I am going to expand the fuel space to 4" instead of 2" or just use less fuel. If I expand the fuel length I will have to run another calibration, but that is the only downside. The advantage of expanding the fuel space is that I can probably avoid any problems with forming a plug while still being able to put in the same or greater amount of fuel. More fuel should translate into more excess heat if LENR does occur.

I have asked Bob Greenyer to inquire with Alexander Parkhomov for his opinion regarding a loose fuel fill versus a compacted fuel fill.

Here is a photo of the inside of the cracked reactor tube end. You can see the fuel molded into there.

I would guess that the white powder is largely LiO, LiH, or LiOH. It doesn't seem to be rapidly darkening like LAH would in the open air.

One thing struck me on viewing this that I have not considered before. Could the compaction of the fuel be detrimental to seeing LENR? If you recall the controversial Lugano report, The inner reactor tube was told to have an inner bore of 4mm, compared to this tube which has an inner bore of 3.68 mm. The Lugano tube was about 200mm long and into that volume was placed "about 1 g" of fuel. 1 g of fuel would be a sparse fill for a 200 mm long reactor tube. In my tube I have nearly that amount in 50 mm compacted into the end. Anyone have any opinions about the fuel compaction?

It doesn't look like the Li has attacked the alumina significantly. I suspect that a plug formed while H₂ was being released at the tube end, creating a transient internal high pressure that the tube could not sustain.

Here is the plot of the data in the last day. You can see that the pressure is dead flat - it is atmospheric pressure.

This is due to the crack allowing all of the H₂ to be leaked out. Note - none of the Li or any of the fuel leaked out.

@David Fojt

Yes, I have that paper. The biggest issue with SS is not the Li or the hydrogen permeation, it is oxidation at high temperature from the outside. SS may be OK if the outside of the tube is bathed in argon. However, I do not think the Kanthal for the heater coil would be happy bathed in argon - it needs oxygen to keep from eroding. The Kanthal loses oxygen when hot and needs to be soaked in oxygen continuously to replenish the oxide being lost.

@David Fojt

David, I have not had this problem before with LAH. This problem only occurred when the metallic Li was added. I am going to dissect and look for weakening from the inside. My past experiment plan was to use a SS tube. The SS tube was found to oxidize completely through - from the outside - when it was heated in air to over 1000°C. If I was running experiments below 600°C, the SS tubes would be a good choice. If the SS tube were really thick, it might work OK to higher temperature. My understanding is that Li will also attack SS. What is reported to work best with Li is a pure iron tube, but pure iron is nearly impossible to find.

I have just disassembled the system and removed the reactor tube. It has a spiral fracture around the tube that leaked out the gas. Here are a couple of photos:

I have stopped this experiment. As you know (I think I said), this experiment was a re-heat of the previous experiment's endpoint. What I saw during the first cycle was no significant variation in pressure, which hovered around 10 PSIA. To me, this meant that the tube has likely breached. In fact, I now think the tube cracked at this point in the previous (initial heating) in the original experiment:

In this first heating event, the pressure rose to nearly 90 PSIA while hot (~700C) and then fell in a sharp and unexpected manner. Notice how the pressure settles out just above 10 PSIA after the event. Atmospheric pressure here is about 10.6 PSIA. Also, at the end of the experiment, there was a brief evacuation, but the pressure never showed a dip. On cycling over temperature in this re-heat experiment, the pressure was constantly around 10 PSIA. I suspect that the extra metallic Li that was added to the fuel must have affected the alumina tube integrity, which resulted in a crack. I will be disassembling the system today and will do a postmortem analysis.

@David Fojt

Of course, that can only be done in a future experiment. This experiment is already closed and running - the plane has left the gate.

I have just begun a new experiment that will run for about the next 3 days. Data will be stored in the Google drive Experiments folder having the name "Experiment_Cycle_20170609". Here is the programmed profile for the run:

Aside for looking for XH, it will be interesting to see if the broad dips in the GM counts occur and the broad changes in pressure. During this experiment, no gas will be released. The fuel is the same as the previous run - I.E. I have not removed the reactor tube or its contents. It is a re-heating with the ash from the previous experiment (AH50 Ni + LAH + Li metal).

I think I am going to write a script for cycling and start a run with the same fuel this week.

Here are some final curves - first a full view, and second a zoom in the high temperature region: