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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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Since the resistance drop during loading seems to be correlated with real hydrogen absorption, we wondered how difficult that was to recreate.  To explore that, we decided to make our own wire to fit into a LENR stick test cell and test for resistance drop when heated in hydrogen.

Starting with Block Constantan - 200 micron diameter with a black, oxide coating, we treated this particular wire with 2160 cycles. 

- Approx 21 V, and 3 amps

- 5 seconds on, 5 seconds off (not exactly as described in this paper http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CelaniFexperiment.pdf)

Wire resistance increased as the cycles progressed, causing the power to decrease over time.
Similar treatments had produced wires that kink, which is similar to the way the Celani wire behaved.  We have not looked at it with SEM, yet, as our microscope is tripping out too easy.

Length:40 cm long
Sample of wire saved for SEM analysis
 
Put into LENR stick on 9/18 - it had set for a couple days in the jig after processing before being used. Small possibility it was touched or had dust settle on it.
R0= 7.9 ohms (multi-meter)
R0= 7.3441 ohms (first readings from HUGnet)

 

 

This will be a simple test of loading, but done in the calorimeter, just to see what happens.  

It is in test FC0407 - LENR Stick: HUG Made Wire in data.hugnetlab.com

And in Calorimeter CTC#3, just above that.

We have more documentation in our Evernote notebook for this experiment here: First Homemade Celani Wire 

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0 #41 Edwin Pell 2013-10-21 22:20
Malachi, I suggest seeing what we have in both the Celani wires and the one home made wire. First an SEM look. Then a cross section in SEM. Then cross section and acid etch to highlight features and SEM.

Also pull off some of the surface of a Celani wire and do atomic composition with EDS and composition of raw wire and home made wire.

You might get university help by saying you are studying hydrogen storage in nickel and nickel/copper alloys. This is a safe topic very green energy for the hydrogen economy...
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0 #40 Ecco 2013-10-17 19:33
@Malachi: additional ideas for new wires treatment would need ready SEM access to check out if they work as intended. Anyway, in no particular order:

- Direct power stimulation (this can be done with the wires in place)
- High temperature oxidation cycles under air -> high temperature (500+ °C) oxide reduction under hydrogen
- Nitric Acid etching
- Liquid nitrogen heat shock treatment (this will create loads of micro cracks. However the right balance to not have very brittle wires would have to be found)
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0 #39 Malachi Heder 2013-10-17 14:51
@ All

We are trying to come up with a new idea for our home made wire. Any ideas?

I think we've demonstrated loading on a joule heated wire, but what's next for it?

Do we try a new wire? Do we continue to load? Do we try power through the active wire?
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0 #38 Robert Greenyer 2013-10-12 15:50
@All

Looking interesting.

In this paper by Celani et al.

iiste.org/.../...

Whilst an old paper, he discusses the use of HNO3 in section 2(f) after after correct (not too high) current driven, thermal cycling and there is an SEM image of the skeletal result (figure 10 on page 43). We have discussed internally the capability of HNO3 solutions to dissolve things at different rates.

The combination of processes - the boiling off of copper, the oxidisation, the HNO3 treatment and lastly reduction in the H2 atmosphere could all be part of developing the critical surface morphology that could be a skeletal open pore structure with nano wires/cracks with non-linear surface binding forces and desirable crystal sub-structure all supported on good conductor.

In 6 1) - he notes that a wire achieved a resistivity drop of 18% - in the EU test right now - even when powered, we have seen 29% and around 18% for the 2 wires in the active cell. Though Celani has seen wires of this level of loading.
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+1 #37 Ryan Hunt 2013-10-11 21:45
@ Ed - I like the idea of selling a wire joule-heating bench. That could be done quick and cheap. The recipe we used in published in the notebook.
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0 #36 Ryan Hunt 2013-10-11 21:42
@ Ed - I like that idea. I wish I had the time today to work on that. All the data is there, though, if anyone else wants to pull out the pressures, temperatures, and resistances. The trick is that the temperature is not consistent through the volume of the cell. That means the only certain place to determine the full loading is when the cell is cool. The next best thing is to develop a correlation between temperature and pressure when there is no absorption.
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0 #35 Ecco 2013-10-11 21:40
As a possible treatment I would also propose soaking a heated wire in liquid nitrogen in order to form thermal shock cracks on its surface and perhaps even deeper into the bulk. It would then be interesting to see SEM photos of such wires.
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0 #34 Edwin Pell 2013-10-11 21:34
I think you have enough data to publish loading versus temperature. The community would love to see that graph.

An apparatus and recipe would meet the goals of the MFMP 100% but if you can fill in pieces of the "eco-system" of understanding like this graph that is bonus points/ gravy/ a good thing.
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0 #33 Edwin Pell 2013-10-11 21:16
Congratulations , it loads! 7% hot and 11% cold.

Now the question is if you etch out the Cu, CuO, CuO2 with acid and heat again how much more will you get? How much deeper into the wire will the segregation/oxi dation go?

Then there is the big question, will this wire make excess heat as is at 7%?
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0 #32 Ecco 2013-10-08 17:39
It looks like cycling power once down, then up, caused resistance to increase when powered. Strange.
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+2 #31 Malachi Heder 2013-10-08 15:58
@ All

We are seeing loading (resistance decreasing). We will try temperature cycling to see how far it will load.
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0 #30 Malachi Heder 2013-10-07 21:56
@ Ecco

It is starting to. We had to turn the AC unit off for the better part of the afternoon. It is back on now and it should help cool down the cells.
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0 #29 Ecco 2013-10-07 21:29
It looks like at 25W of input power the outer tube on CTC #3 starts to overheat.
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0 #28 Malachi Heder 2013-10-03 18:31
@ Ecco

The adjustment was done before I started the script. One of the thermistors broke out of the solder, so that was necessary to fix. I won't adjust them if it is not necessary :)
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0 #27 Ecco 2013-10-03 15:39
@Malachi: if you won't adjust the active insulation anymore, this data can be still used as a reference point to check out if loading will bring improvements to the calculated output values (and temperatures).
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0 #26 Malachi Heder 2013-10-03 14:38
@ Ed Pell

I'm thinking we will keep increasing it. The goal is to see the wire load, which it is doing now. We will stick on this 15 watt step to see how far it drops. After that we will increase the power again.

@ Ecco

Nothing looks wrong physically, I did adjust the active insulation yesterday, but that shouldn't have taken the cell this far out of calibration, if at all. I will say that this calorimeter has the same position and magnitude effects. As much as we try to get the cell in exactly the same position, we can't get it perfect. Just keep those effects in mind while looking at the data.
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0 #25 Ecco 2013-10-03 11:14
I tried making a few graphs from the latest 0-15W sweep run for this cell. I think the data shows that there's something wrong with the calorimeter.

Excess Power graph

i.imgur.com/5iKjaS6.png

It starts from negative values because for some reason at 0W the inner tube is cooler than the outer tube, causing output power to be negative. Other than that, the overall trend of this curve is just weird.


Temperature rise efficiency

i.imgur.com/q5D2VAL.png

This graph shows how much effort (power) the cell needs for each power step to increase temperatures. Usually, the lower the power, the lower the effort required should be. However for some reason at low power it takes more effort for for the cell to increase the temperature of the inner tube over that of the outer tube. Then, again weird overall trend for that curve. It remains flat when it should be decreasing. Actually, this isn't a problem per se, if the calibration takes this cell response into account. It doesn't in this cell's case, however.

The Internal temperature rise over the inner tube is more natural-looking although I guess it's being slightly affected by the fact that the inner tube is not increasing in temperatures normally.


Delta T per watt

i.imgur.com/FD3iKDZ.png

This is a more general indicator of how internal temperatures are increasing for each step compared to their previous one. The hotter the temperature gets, the lower the increase for each step should be, unless the cell is building up heat (overheating) or [drumroll] there is significant excess heat production.

Nothing very interesting to note so far. There's a slight bump centered around 11W which could be a symptom of the weird problems the cell is having.
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0 #24 Ecco 2013-10-02 20:30
@Malachi: yet, so far the calculated output power is significantly lower than the input, though; at 0W it's negative (about -0.10W).
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0 #23 Edwin Pell 2013-10-02 19:30
I'm excited. Malachi, what are you thinking in terms of maximum temperature. The multiwire went to 400 degree and was just starting to load. I am surprised the home made wire is loading so much at so low a temperature. We will know more when it gets to 15 watts applied.
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0 #22 Malachi Heder 2013-10-02 18:52
@ All

The data should be back now. There was server downtime last night.

I just noticed the active insulation on CTC#3 was not working properly. I fixed it and am starting a sweep of 0 to 15 watts in steps of 1 watt and at 1 hour each.
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