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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.

Join us and become part of the project. Become one of the active commenters, who question our work and suggest next steps.

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As the name implies, we'll try to keep this one brief.

Earlier Wednesday afternoon, Malachi was charged with the official decommissioning of Celani Cells 1.0 and 1.1. What great times they've given us. However we want to uphold an entirely transparent image, and the data stream was growing irrelevant. The bandwidth space can be afforded for new and upcoming experiments (stay tuned) as well as help us to dispel the rumors that we're currently generating excess heat. 

Let us be clear: since cells 1.0 and 1.1 have been removed from the hood (3/21/13) they cannot be relied upon, and it is impossible to claim current evidence of excess heat. The cells' thermal environment has entirely changed with no forced-air experiment hood, allowing them to keep the generated heat better. This does make it seem as though they're producing more heat than their calibration runs because they're running hotter with the same power applied. The calibrations for the cells were done with a constant fan, the P_Xs field would appear to increase, but this is not the case. If the ambient environment changes from calibration to live run, the data is invalid! 

We're discovering more and more each day the true extent to which the environment around the cells affects their validity. 

Air Draft Shield

With this enlightening (and totally not frustrating) news *gracing* us at every step towards live runs, we have found that a static environment is essential to increasing our faith and certainty in the experimental results. Even the position of the cells relative to our influent air (left V right) affects the thermal character. Our left cell was ~10% less effective at keeping heat than the right cell. 

To compensate our thermal mess of an environment, we built a polycarbonate box to put around the cells. The following is a visual account of the process. 

Here are the approximate dimensions.

We didn't catch much of him building it, but we did get the final product and installation. 

With an insulation top and heater fan blowing warm forced air over the exterior of the cells, we believe we may have found a temporary solution short of fully-engineered calorimetry. 

 We also covered the ambient sensors with paper cones to reduce radiant heat noise in the true ambient temperatures. Note the black polycarbonate barrier between the cells where the rest of the construction has been clear. We are trying to eliminate radiant heating effects to shield both cells from each other. 

 This picture was an attempt at getting a wide shot with plenty of zoom for details in the pipe work. 

PS - more pictures of this build in the Celani V 1.3 production category in our new Look gallery! 

As we've been alluding the whole time, these changes to better control the environment require a new set of calibrations. This is what is responsible for the slight increase in ambient temperature. Sorry to keep you in the dark! We have to plan for the changing seasons and increased temperature spring and summer will bring (eventually) and want to get a head start isolating the cells from the weather. 

More calibration runs will soon be under way. But even before that we have another speed bump to address.

IMPORTANT FINDING!:

A drift in the vacuum by 1 mBar gave us a 1 degree T_mica change on the night of the 17th of April.  Yesterday, we upped the pressure from 1 mBar to 5 mBar and the temperature of the mica went up by about 4 degrees, and the resistance of the wire went down, indicating the temperature of the wire went down.  That would seem to indicate that the wire and the mica are more tightly coupled with more gas molecules around them. 
Here is the thermal conductivity of the vacuum
 
We are in the middle of the steep part of the slope at 1 mBar.  We need to get closer to a micro bar to have good, flat range on the graph.  Our pump is capable of doing that, but Mathieu would need a new vacuum pump.  At that pressure and temperature, the Hydrogen would probably leave really fast, though.  This is a finding that will take some time to digest and accommodate.  
 
 

 

 

 

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0 #29 PasiH 2016-11-23 16:33
Hi,

Is the "Thermal conductivity of the vacuum" -chart missing per meter from the divider? As the unit for thermal conductivity is W/(m*K)
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0 #28 Malachi Heder 2013-04-26 18:23
@ Alan G

The US cores are oriented almost identically. Using your cross section shape of a trinangle for reference. Our triangle points down in cell B. In cell A it points down with a slight twist clockwise (if you look down the cell from the plumbing end) of 10-15 degrees.

Mathieu would have to speak for the EU cells.
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0 #27 AlanG 2013-04-26 18:03
@Malachi

Thanks for the reassuring report. The search goes on...
One further consequence of the cell geometry is that the far-field IR (perpendicular to the cell axis) will look something like this:


Are all four cell cores oriented identically?
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0 #26 Malachi Heder 2013-04-26 14:40
@ Alan G

Good point. Though I just made sure that our thermocouples on the inside and outside are not in that double IR exposure area. What we did when the cells were assembled was to put the end of the thermocouple in the middle of one side of the triangle. From your drawing that seems to be in a good area. Those pictures were a little misleading. It's hard to get a good shot with the glass tube and copper bands in the way.
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+1 #25 AlanG 2013-04-25 22:52
Thinking about why the glass TC measurements are sometimes inconsistent, it occurred to me that the cell geometry may be a factor. Consider the following crude drawing of the direct IR radiation from the wires:

The wires as wound on the mica supports radiate roughly in half-space, and there’s a small area of overlap where the IR exposure will be roughly doubled. As the size of the core structure approaches the glass diameter this overlap area becomes smaller:

From the posted pictures dated 2013 2 4, it can be seen that the glass TCs are in fact in or near this small critical area, and that a small displacement might result in a TC junction being outside the region of overlap. Of course this can’t be adjusted without opening the cells, but it might at least explain some of the curious differences we’re seeing.
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0 #24 Mathieu Valat 2013-04-24 14:17
Quoting 123star:
Hello, I noticed that now in Cell EU1.3A T1_Out1 and T1_Out2 are now almost identical, unlike yesterday. What happened?
Where are T1_Out1, T1_Out2, T1_Out3 thermocouple placed exactly along the external surface?

The thermocouples are placed the same way using the same method on both cells. CellA has been troubleshooted in order to ensure the reading are consistent between CellA and CellB. The coupling of the TCs are now done using carbon sticky discs cut in half. Those are placed at the end of each T_out TC and at 1/2 1/4 and the end of the wrapping of the wires.
I hope it tells you better the current setup. I still have to do this video explaining everything, but I am still working on this setup to make is more stable and predictable.
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0 #23 Malachi Heder 2013-04-24 14:13
@ Charlie Tap

The internal TC is touching the glass, but not attached with any thermal sticky tape, just the spring force of the metal.

@ 123star

I took Robert Ellefson's advice and put weather stripping along the bottom and lid of the thermal box. Along the bottom, I only put the weather stripping around the perimeter of the chamber where air is pumped in initially.
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+3 #22 Ecco 2013-04-24 13:24
@MFMP: will you test this too?
22passi.blogspot.de/.../...

Celani suggests that adding small amounts of hydrocarbons, and in particular Acetone, boosts excess heat effects in LENR devices, although no precise figures have been given in the blog above regarding the magnitude of said improvements.
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0 #21 123star 2013-04-24 04:11
Hello, I noticed that now in Cell EU1.3A T1_Out1 and T1_Out2 are now almost identical, unlike yesterday. What happened?
Where are T1_Out1, T1_Out2, T1_Out3 thermocouple placed exactly along the external surface?
Thank you.
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0 #20 charlie tapp 2013-04-23 22:23
robert is the tc inside connected to the glass? if so why couldnt it just float inside not touching anything giving absolute inside temp
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0 #19 Robert Greenyer 2013-04-23 17:36
@AlanG

You might have something with the heat cycle incident.
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0 #18 Robert Ellefson 2013-04-23 17:15
Quoting AlanG:
The copper bands can cool the glass by conduction and thus the thermal contact from each band to the glass can affect the internal glass temp...


This is an important point. Any time there are two rigid surfaces thermally coupled, small variations in surface conditions can cause large variations in thermal conduction. Mechanically-co mpliant thermal interface materials are critical when the heat transfer is of a significant magnitude.

If you keep the bands, I strongly suggest adding some double-sided adhesive heat-sink-mount ing foam or similar interface material.
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0 #17 AlanG 2013-04-23 17:05
If there is no improvement and the inside TCs seem to be working correctly, it suggests a large difference in thermal behavior INSIDE the cells. But because the T_Mica measurements are close, the difference must be in the thermal transport behavior. Possible issues:
Different gas composition (partial pressure) in each cell from leakage.
Different glass IR absorption. This could be from the glass itself or from residual metallic ion deposition from a previous heat cycle incident.
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0 #16 Robert Ellefson 2013-04-23 17:05
Another potential improvement would be to add structures that encourage laminar airflow when entering each cell. Air is much easier to control properly when it is flowing in a laminar vs turbulent mode. I've seen honeycomb-type materials used as filters, or arrays of tubing (soda straw bundles, for example). The key is to have a good length vs width ratio for each tube.

Given the current physical design of the reactors and their stands, it may make sense to re-orient the airflow so that it approaches from an angle normal to the main axis of the reactors. Then, so long as the airflow is reasonably consistent along the entire width of the chambers, the air will mostly interact with the cells at a single point of contact before exiting the chamber. This reduces the sensitivity of total convective coupling to small variations in initial flow conditions that interact with "upstream" and "downstream" portions of the cell structure.
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0 #15 AlanG 2013-04-23 17:04
The important fact is that the inside glass temp rise in cell B is about 40% higher than for cell A. The outside glass temps appear to track this as they should.

The copper bands can cool the glass by conduction and thus the thermal contact from each band to the glass can affect the internal glass temp measurements. Try removing the bands entirely and see how the T_GlassIn measurements react.
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0 #14 Robert Ellefson 2013-04-23 16:38
One source of variation could be differences in air mass flowing through the two cells. There is a good volume of plenum after the fan, then an aperture at the junction of the two cells, then air branches into the individual cells. The specific conditions in the relatively turbulent zone at the junction will have a large effect on the division of mass flow between the cells. If there were further apertures at the start and end of each individual cell volume, and the sum of the start aperture areas is smaller than the plenum-to-junct ion-zone aperture area, this will create more evenly-distribu ted airflow.

I also noticed that the underside of the new polycarbonate thermal box has a rigid interface between its bottom and the table surface. Any gaps underneath here will cause airflow directly from the plenum to the cell, or to exit the cell. Perhaps a weatherstrippin g-type of compliant interface material will help eliminate potential problems here.
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0 #13 Malachi Heder 2013-04-23 14:21
@ AlanG

That is part of what I was hinting at. The cells seem to be too different for how similarly they were built. The only thing I could think of is a larger leak in one of the cells. I fixed the leak in Cell B as much as I could (leak now at 5 mbar per hour) and Cell A isn't much better (3.2 mbar per hour).

@123star

None of our outside sensors have thermal grease on them. We were however thinking of painting the inside face with black stove pipe paint. The TCs seem to have a good, solid connection. Even without the grease.

@ bob findlay

This seems like a good idea. We may need to do this in order to eliminate the effects we are seeing.
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