Conjecture 5: A steel tube filled with nickel powder can help analyze the consequences of hydride decomposition inside an LENR reactor.
Can the materials used by A.G. Parkhomov be placed in a metallic tube and heated to investigate the pressures which might be seen inside the alumina tube of an AGP-like system?
Imagine a short common steel pipe with two pipe caps fitted with an inexpensive pressure gauge heated by torch.
Conjecture 4: A quartz tube can serve as an LENR reactor vessel.
Can a reactor body, useful for LENR investigation, consist of only a quartz tube? Can metal powder prevent tube failure by absorbing hydrogen and preventing high pressure inside the tube?
Can an experiment show whether alumina is required in an AGP-like reactor?
Can common insulation like fiberglass batting wrapped around a quartz tube conserve enough heat inside the tube to allow LENR exploration?
Conjecture 3: Amateur LENR experiments can be conducted without common temperature measurement tools.
If you had no thermocouple, no IR thermometer, no temperature sensing system at all, could you calculate the maximum temperature of a given reactor body and contents - knowing their materials, sizes, and shapes - for a given heating wire system?
Example: 100mm long, 10mm OD, 5mm ID, alumina tube, filled with 1.0g nickel powder and 0.1g LAH, wrapped with 150mm of nichrome type XYZ wire, fed with sufficient power (voltage and amperage measured in real-time during experiment) to reach maximum possible temperature of wire.
Logic seems to indicate that if there is enough heating wire, and sufficient heating time has been given, then a reactor body will reach a temperature near the maximum of the chosen heating wire.
Is there a way to look for heat after death *without* a thermocouple or an IR thermometer?
Reading old books about how experiments were conducted inspired this conjecture.
Imagine if the reactor continued to glow brightly enough and long enough, whenever heating power was cut, that visual inspection, that the naked eye, appropriately safeguarded by brazing goggles, could discern whether a given reactor system was an example of anomalous heat.
Such a reactor could be cycled by applying and cutting heating wire power for a very impressive demonstration at very low cost.
If a control reactor, an empty reactor, a reactor with "inert" contents were simultaneously fed with the same heating wire power supply the demonstration would take on a very interesting perspective indeed.
Conjecture 2: MILN objects can be repurposed as LENR reactors.
Could a spark plug insulator be gutted, filled with powders, sealed, and sufficiently heated to imitate the processes of AGP's reactor?
Could another common ceramic object, manufactured in large numbers (MILN), serve as a reactor body?
I have started this thread to provide a place for ideas, possibly untenable ideas, that could be investigated relating to amateur CMNS/LENR/LANR/FPE/Cold Fusion. This thread is meant to motivate experimenters and inspire protocols.
First conjecture: An aquarium heater can serve as an LENR Testbed.
Some aquarium heaters use quartz tubing. Could any such heater be converted into a testbed? Perhaps merely to test hydrogen uptake of various materials. Or to investigate material decomposition in heat cycles.
AGP emailed me:
"1.0 grams nickel plus 0.10 grams LAH. But the high accuracy of a ratio is hardly important."
большое cпасибо Александр
AGP emailed me:
"1.0 grams nickel plus 0.10 grams LAH. But the high accuracy of a ratio is hardly important."
Alexander: You wrote that one gram of nickel powder accompanied 10% LAH.
Does this make the total mass 1.10 grams? Or is it 0.90 grams of nickel and 0.10 grams of LAH?
For experimenters concerned about getting these tiny weights under control, please see my blog - http://ni.comli.com - where a homemade microgram balance makes measuring quick, easy, and cheap.
I wonder Brian, if you have received a clarification about the ratio of nickel powder to LAH?
AGP wrote that one gram of nickel powder accompanied 10% LAH.
Does this make the total mass 1.10 grams? Or is it 0.90 grams of nickel and 0.10 grams of LAH?
For experimenters concerned about getting these tiny weights under control, please see my blog - http://ni.comli.com - where a homemade microgram balance makes measuring quick, easy, and cheap.
Common knowledge, or common interpretation at this time is that the LAH must decompose, where it goes subsequently needs investigation.
Will you rely on the Quartz Tube alone to contain the reactor contents in the sense of this schematic drawing?
So the alumina tube is *not* sealed before placing it inside the quartz tube?
Notes to others viewing this image: The CAD drawing assumes a closed end alumina tube which is commonly sold. The left end of the schematic shows such a tube. The right end of the drawing depicts a cross-section of a melted quartz tube and an open end of an alumina tube. This drawing is proportional in the x-axis but truncated in the y-axis --- to better visualize the ends. I started with a tube length of eight inches and cut out a section in the middle to produce this drawing for convenient posting to this forum.
If Brian is using an open ended alumina tube, just imagine both ends are like the right hand end in the drawing.
According to an online calculator here: internal pressure stress calculator it appears if the LAH simply decomposes the quartz tube will burst.
The calculator disallows pressure above 100 psi (approximately 6.89 bar).
So either the hydrogen does something other than pressurizing the vessel, or it leaks out, thereby relieving pressure. Here I mean that in Parkhomov's apparatus either it leaks or it bursts or something else occurs. Since he stated he detected no leaks, and it did not burst, something needs investigating. Something we as yet do not understand.
On a chemistry forum I visit a poster theorized that a Rossi reactor got hot simply because monatomic hydrogen reacted with moisture in the air at the outer surface of the alumina as it leaked out. Long run times and small amounts of available hydrogen seem to rule this out, but for short runs calculations are essential. You might think steam would be easy to see outside the tube. Perhaps.
Ecco: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_aluminium_hydride
"...
Thermal decomposition
LAH is metastable at room temperature. During prolonged storage it slowly decomposes to Li3AlH6 and LiH.[12] This process can be accelerated by the presence of catalytic elements, such as titanium, iron or vanadium.
When heated LAH decomposes in a three-step reaction mechanism:[12][13][14]
3 LiAlH4 → Li3AlH6 + 2 Al + 3 H2 (R1)2 Li3AlH6 → 6 LiH + 2 Al + 3 H2 (R2)2 LiH + 2 Al → 2 LiAl + H2 (R3)R1 is usually initiated by the melting of LAH in the temperature range 150–170 °C,[15][16][17] immediately followed by decomposition into solid Li3AlH6, although R1 is known to proceed below the melting point of LiAlH4 as well.[18] At about 200 °C, Li3AlH6 decomposes into LiH (R2)[12][14][17] and Al which subsequently convert into LiAl above 400 °C (R3).[14] Reaction R1 is effectively irreversible. R3 is reversible with an equilibrium pressure of about 0.25 bar at 500 °C. R1 and R2 can occur at room temperature with suitable catalysts.[19]
..."
When I looked at the powders and found the one at your mentioned price, Brian, I was surprised that it was 100 mesh. This seems at odds with the powder size AGP clarified.
The link above seems closer to his chosen powder size.
Am I confused?
What is the calculated volume of the reactor, Brian? Or, what is the included length? Are you going for the same volume as AGP used?
Will you use a variac or a stove control? Avoiding rectification?
Quartz tube as in a tube furnace? Like this NMR tube?
Is the choice of tube related to your belief that magnetic fields are important to the phenomena?
Very valuable and informative post. Thanks to both you, David, and Brian for sharing these questions and answers.
Below find links to materials Brian specified. I cannot yet guarantee that these are accurate.
I hope Brian might chime in and correct if needed.
I will try to edit this post with more links later. Last edit Monday 1-26-2015.
