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The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project is a group dedicated to researching Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (often referred to as LENR) while sharing all procedures, data, and results openly online. We rely on comments from online contributors to aid us in developing our experiments and contemplating the results. We invite everyone to participate in our discussions, which take place in the comments of our experiment posts. These links can be seen along the right-hand side of this page. Please browse around and give us your feedback. We look forward to seeing you around Quantum Heat.

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Like a mythical Phoenix, the dual vertical cells have each been reborn from their own ashes. Well, maybe not ashes, exactly, but after a good day and a half we have refurbished each cell and we are ready to start a test or two again.  The process was quite involved and demands a great many pictures.  

First step:  Taking the cells into the assembly room from the lab.  Malachi's nice smile here is actually an indication of his fierce determination to make bring this beast back to life.

 Once in the assembly room we got a good look at the damage.  It was actually kind of pretty with what I would call a copper-striped-mechano-tubular-tiger look.

 Cell 1.0 definitely had more of a black color to it.

 

When we opened up the cell, we could see the nice plating on the mica in cell 1.0.  Again, cell 1.1 definitely looked more black.  Besides changing the IR absorption of the wire supports, we found that this thin metal coating was very conductive.  This meant we had to replace the mica and the Macor.

The glass looked very nice, too.  Anybody wanna make a nice lamp?

 Then we got to work rebuilding everything.  We had one last pyrex tube in stock and an extra set of the Macor and the mica pieces that were to be used in other cells.  

 

The new mica supports had to have the binder baked out of them, so we improvised this process.  

The nozzle of hte heat gun fit inside the quartz tube.  Then, the heat gun was set to about 530C and the mica was left to cook inside the tube with air blowing over it for about 4 hours.  The binder in the mica as well as in the mineral wool insulation made quite a stink as it cooked out.

 Meanwhile, after a few hours we started to get the cells together again.  

 While we used all new macor, we did learn that a little buffer could polish off most of the metal.  And Wes finished cleaning them with a short bath in Muriatic acid.  We will use that set of supports for the stainless clad test cell that will go in the air flow calorimeter.

 Finally, we mounted the cells back in the stand and re-attached all the wires and plumbing.  We are definitely getting better at all the mechanics involved.

 Tadah!!  All ready to test.

After this, we pulled a vacuum on each cell.  It took cell 1.0 a while to off gas a bunch of ethanol that was left inside it.  Cell 1.1 pumped down more quickly.

Then we loaded with Helium for a first test.  The reasoning is that if we establish a run with helium, then when we put in the Celani Wire we can test it in Helium and assure ourselves that the unloaded Celani wire is in the same configuration and behaves similarly to the control Isotan44 wire.

After the Helium, we will run a test in 1 bar H2 and see if the rebuilt cells perform near the center of the confidence intervals from last week's data.  If it does, we are golden and can move on to putting in new Celani wires.  Otherwise, we will have to spend several  days running new calibration tests.

 

In other news, as we were waiting for some glue to cure and some mica to bake out, we got a chance to play with some pieces and try out a slightly different idea for wire supports.  We got some 0.6mm mica sheet, much like what Mathieu used when he rebuilt his cell.  I am hoping to make a denser smaller core that further isolates the hot part from the flanges.  After a little fine machining with a dremel tool...

It would look something like this.

 But that experiment will have to wait till we get the first ones rolling.

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0 #7 Eric Walker 2013-01-01 07:34
Sorry to hear about the accident -- they happen.

I would be very nervous trying to use the old calibration curves to draw conclusions about the rebuilt cells, given the threshold nature of the possible effect we've been exploring previous runs. I would be inclined to do new calibrations and keep busy on some parallel projects during the time that was required for this.
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+1 #6 David Roberson 2012-12-31 18:04
Happy New Year to all!

Great work MFMP team!
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+1 #5 David Roberson 2012-12-31 18:02
The new build looks good. Be careful!

I completed simulation of the time domain response of the units labeled FC0101 and FC0103. I used the ramp calibration steps that I downloaded beginning at 12/30 at 20:00. Both sets of data balance out as before and I detect a significant difference between them. The data labeled FC0101 has a time constant of 400.6 seconds. The second initial correction time constant is measuring 127.7 seconds which is a lot higher than others before.

The unit data labeled FC0103 is much like the previous data analyzed. The time constant is 300.8 seconds and the initial delay fix is at 35.1 second. The noise is well behaved.

There is a clear sine wave of ~200 second period noise running throughout the noise spectrum of FC0101.

Analysis was for transition of 78 to 103 watts.
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-1 #4 clovis ray 2012-12-31 17:59
you guy's are doing good, professional and honorable work, make this cell produce and you guy will be famous :-) . and rember i helped :lol: happy new year, and a grand one it will be, :-)
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+1 #3 Dieter Seeliger 2012-12-31 16:46
@All
A Happy New Year 2013 !
And let the fire burn.....
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0 #2 Robert Greenyer 2012-12-31 03:42
You live and learn - Nice work guys!
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0 #1 Ged 2012-12-31 03:15
Gotta admit, that fried glass would make some pretty cool lava lamps.
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