Both the US and the EU cell have completed their calibration cycles. The protocol is summarized in this spreadsheet here: V2.0 Protocol Table
The resulting calibrations are summarized in this spreadsheet, NOTE: the wire characteristics including R0 (initial resistance value at room temp is on the second tab sheet: V2.0 Protocol Calibration
In summary, the US Cells should be able to detect an excess energy signature of 0.5 watts or more. The EU Cells should be within 0.25 watts.
The US cell was in step 5.c, where we just hold the power steady and watch for deviation over time. The HUG team has decided to abbreviate this step in order to expedite the real test. In the last 48 hours, we have seen that the US Cell is sensitive to ambient temperature changes. While the measured ambient around the cells is supposed to be isolated by the protective shell and the heated air flow, it obviously is not working well enough. We will also do our best to control the room temp better, but it still means we will need to account for real lab temperature changes (as logged by the T_ambient on the CTC test). In my opinion. if we are seeing possible results that are just above the noise like that, anyway, it will be a null result.
The EU cells are also sensitive to ambient changes, the same way Celani's were.
We also see that the pressure sensor on the EU cell has something periodically adding an offset to it, but we do not have a clear understanding of why it is happening. It certainly appears to be a ground loop issue or some other wiring problem. That is unfortunate, but not critical to the experiment, so we will not be troubleshooting while the experiment continues.
Lessons from Mathieu’s loading will lead to deviations from the protocol for step 6 - the loading phases
Go to higher temp - just barely made it this time - maybe 35 watts to get to 200+C instead of 170. Matt’s wire loaded, but only at the very peak temperature the cell was able to achieve with the hydrogen in it. To give the protocol more robustness, we will up the power to 35 watts for loading in case the next wire requires higher temp to start absorbing.
Change the cycling, reloading time to(3 bars H2 and 35 watts) 6 hours hot, 1 hour cool, during that one hour we will measure the cold resistance and that would be when we vacuum out the hydrogen and any contaminants and replace it with fresh hydrogen.
Do the entire loading with totally passive heating, no active heating. Note, however, that we are running about 0.25W in the active wire to keep the resistance reading clean.
Increase the power and heat of loading because the black oxides are still visible near the mica supports where the wire is slightly cooler.
Comments
It was correct on the document rather than the table. We think we might however start with passive heating and then move to active heating as this is the most cautious approach.
The thing about passive heating in the V2.0 Protocol, it will really just be IR as due to the dynamic vacuum there will be no convective heating. It will be interesting to see if we see anything in this mode.
Fortunately, we anticipated this during internal discussions and hence the calibrations for both passive and active wire cell performance.
With a 250mW measuring current under pressurized hydrogen atmosphere before loading started, R0 on the active wire in EU Cell A was ~18.45 Ohm. I think this value is more comparable to current conditions.
for those that missed it
I don't think that cycling power on and off alone is going to help much active wire loading, though.
By the way, if I understand correctly, you are going to flush and refill hydrogen again next time the cell will be temporarily powered off, right? (that would be in about 2 hours, I think).
I don't say it is the case here, but there is something to checkout first.
A higher pressure for the inital loading(s) would have been interesting to check out too, but that probably goes outside the scope of this experiment.
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