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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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We have spent the last day and a half continuing to search for a good explanation as to why cell 1.0 is running 7 to 10 degrees cooler with the Celani wire installed and with a Helium environment than it did during the calibration.  

The ideas we looked at included:

Is the instrumentation was faulty? - We examined every bit of the measurement process, swapped out thermocouples, read the same thermocouples with different instruments, and did not find anything that looked off.


Is the heat was distributed differently from variations in resistivity along the length of the wire? To help answer this, we took thermal images of the cells and did not see anything that looked like it might account for this.  Interestingly, the camera told us a different story than the thermocouples were.  According to the measured temperatures, Cell 1.0 with the quartz glass actually ran slightly warmer than the pyrex version in cell 1.1.  The camera saw the opposite, though.  I don't know whether this is an emissivity issue of the glass, or something else.  

This image was taken on the 26th of December but at a higher power setting. (just happened to discover this on the camera and it makes a good comparison).

This was taken today

This is just showing the higher temps of cell 1.0 at a higher power on Dec 26.

And today.

And this is cell 1.1.

Any opinions?

 

Was the calibration run in helium the anomaly?  Was the wire with the contamination causing a reaction and generating excess heat or was there some other bias at that time?  To answer this one we decided to ask if there was a consistent relationship between the Helium calibration and the Hydrogen calibration for cell 1.0  and the same thing for cell 1.1.  My hope was that either the calibration or the Helium test run in cell 1.0 would have a lot in common with the relationships seen in the other cell.  Here are the plots.  To my eyes, they did not give a clean comparison to say one set of lines was not where it was supposed to be.

 

Our Conclusion:

This experiment is a poor design and the apparatus is extremely touchy.  Continued to try to nail this down may be futile.   If we continue to explore we may, or may not, learn what is causing this temperature issue in this cell.  If there is a resistance variation we may not be able to track it down short of pulling the cell apart and heating the wire and looking at it.  In the process we may cause more issues, though.   There are way better methods and apparati awaiting us that I am eager to explore, but instead, I am spending time looking for a meaningful, but relatively minor anomaly.  The temperature offset looks like it will be about 3 watt handicap to our power out calculation.  

Therefore, we are moving ahead with cell 1.0 and we will see what happens with that wire.  Meanwhile cell 1.1 seems to be extremely well behaved.  

We are commencing the loading phase where we heat the cell with the NiChrome wire and watch the Celani wire decrease in resistance as it is heated passively.  We are loading the cells to 1.0 bar Hydrogen.  Sometime tomorrow, after the resistances have stabilized we will run about 1.8 watts through the Celani wire to try to trigger some excess heat.

Let's see if either of these cells show us the New Fire.

 

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0 #22 Phố Đông Village 2016-11-16 15:18
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I
clicked submit my comment didn't appear. Grrrr... well I'm not writing all that over again. Anyhow, just wanted
to say wonderful blog!
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0 #21 Eric Walker 2013-01-20 22:25
I second Jones's comment about possible endotherm. It seems like as a matter of procedure we should not be throwing out the negative portions of the P_xs curve; I think they should be discounted against any positive portions of the curve, and then anything remaining above the error intervals used as the basis for a possible finding of excess heat.

There are obvious limitations here. If the amount of purported endotherm exceeds what is possible to store chemically, then that is something to be dealt with itself. But neither should we assume a priori that LENR is an irreversible process; if we assume for the sake of argument that it exists, perhaps it can be reversed, and in periods of endotherm this is what is happening.

I do not propose this as anything that is necessarily the most plausible explanation. Just that possible endotherm is a detail that we should be staying on top of in order to rule out another possible artifact.
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0 #20 Ryan Hunt 2013-01-13 05:07
We are live in both cells with 1.7 amps on each wire!
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0 #19 Harold Guy 2013-01-13 02:39
Could the H2 and He temperature differences simply reflect the different heat capacities of H2 and He? You can see in en.wikipedia.org/.../... that the difference is there. If there are significant convective flows in your cells you just might see a relationship between the temperatures that you measure, and the heat capacities of the gases in the cells. Have you looked at other gases besides H2 and He, like N2 and Ar. If you have, and there is no such relationship, that would be cool.

Forgive me, but I have not been following your work to this point. It is way outside my rather limited area of competence, but is quite exciting.
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0 #18 AlanG 2013-01-12 23:50
The hydrogen loading process is thought to involve dissociation of H2 into monatomic hydrogen within the lattice. This is an endothermic process and more layers on the wire might accelerate it, resulting in lower temps for that cell. This would not explain lower temps in helium of course.

As the loading approaches saturation it's possible that some H1 escapes back into the cell. Glass is known to be a catalyst for H1 recombination (exothermic) and this might cause a rise in T_GlassOut while the other temps are stable.
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0 #17 Ecco 2013-01-12 23:36
Is the direct heating run still planned for today (US time) immediately after the last power step in about an hour or for tomorrow?
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0 #16 David Roberson 2013-01-12 23:29
It appears as if my last posting was a false alarm.

Something unusual happened at the time stamp around 14:33 that I observed but soon thereafter the glass out temperature dropped below the expected curve. Initially, I calculated the power deficit to be 1.26 watts below my original calibration. After the unusual temperature climb the power rapidly dropped to 1.58 watts below calibration.

At the end of the 51.6 watt power step I calculate that an additional .317 watts is being absorbed by the cell. This is some form of endothermic behavior, or perhaps someone changed the test system at that time.

This post is regarding cell 1.0 behavior.

Maybe the next event will be what we seek.
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+2 #15 Jones Beene 2013-01-12 22:08
Endotherm, in the sense of "lost heat" as if there was a mystery heat sink - has been seen several times before in this kind of experiment - some far more obvious.

For instance, Dr. Brian Ahern's work for EPRI found endotherm.

My suggestion is to contact Brian for details - as it is too complicated to put into a few words. The anomaly of endotherm with some materials - may be part of a complete understanding and we have a hypothesis explaining both.

Rgds
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0 #14 Robert Greenyer 2013-01-12 20:29
for cell 1.1 there seamed to be more loading at 57W Pin (around 174 degrees T Macor)
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0 #13 David Roberson 2013-01-12 19:42
My program shows the glass out temperature is beginning to demonstrate a significant rise that exceeds the average noise floor. The remainder of the nearby data preceding this time period is well behaved.

Data feed time reads:14:33, 1/12/2013

Hope this is not a false alarm!

This is for cell 1.0.
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0 #12 Robert Greenyer 2013-01-12 19:41
From slide 3

22passi.it/.../...

Excess power was recorded at above 175 degrees
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0 #11 Ake malhammar 2013-01-12 18:50
The part of the heat which is radiated from the wire to the outer environment depends on its temperature, its surface size, its emissivity and the ir-transparency of the glass. From the top of my head I have it that quartz glass is highly transparent to infrared radiation.

I would tend to believe that pyrex glass is different because if the values for the two wires agree reasonably well it would indicate a poor ir-transmission which makes the thermal flow paths simpler and easier to control.

However, the insulated cell looks good. As a very critical observer the only thing I consider dubious is that the thermal sensors my not be attached as state of the art. The danger is that the wires act as heat sinks and lower the temperature at the measure points. The wires should therefore be firmly attached to the object for at least a distance of 20 mm. Dental plastics will do it but it needs an UV-pistol to cure. With great care other types of glues can also be used.
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0 #10 Ryan Hunt 2013-01-12 17:49
The loading in cell 1.0 looked like what we saw in previous loadings. The 2 layer wire in cell 1.1 was behaving different.

It looks like the resistances in both have now dropped down to a stable point. I am now sweeping the temperature range from roughly 200 C to 300+ C to see if we identify loading in another temperature range.

Cell 1.1 did have an interesting 2.5 C temperature rise for several hours that made P_xs rise from 0.75 to almost 2 Watts. On this cell that has been so well behaved, I got excited because it sure looks like that was above the confidence limits by over a watt! This is kind of a low temperature to trigger. Can anybody remember what Mastamateo saw at that temp on his wire?

The measurement current in the Celani wire is fixed with a resistor. At this time I do not want to change it and risk dealing with an offset or something. I guess we'll tolerate the noise.
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0 #9 Robert Greenyer 2013-01-12 09:05
@All

As wires have different layer thicknesses and the absorption is only a surface/special layer capability, you can imaging that the thinner the layer the less hydrogen that can be absorbed. You effectively have two resistors in parallel - the core - which has not changed and the outer layer.

Now to calculate 2 resistors in parallel

Rt = (R1 X R2)/(R1 + R2)

So for a 300+ layer wire there is much more active material that can absorb Hydrogen. For 14 layers FAR less and for 2 less still. This will manifest itself in a less significant resistance change for the wire.

HOWEVER - a small resistance change in a wire with a VERY thin layer may mean that that layer itself has absorbed a large quantity of Hydrogen - just it can't effect the overall resistance that much. It might be equally as active on a per mass basis as the thicker layered wire.

We draw your attention to the "random coated" stock wire we bought whose resistance changed in the same way as Celani wire - just only 2.5% not around 20% (for the 350 Layer wire)
and we suspect it was very active in its own right but still outshone by the active Celani wire. Maybe the high layer Celani wire would run harder and longer with more total energy than a less layered wire. There may well be a sweet spot in the number of layers and the cost to produce. That may be 2 or 14 layers and not 300 or 700.

What the current loading is showing is a 14 layer loading a fair bit and the 2 layer wire loading a little bit but both less than a 350 layer wire. Overall the story is the same as the 300+ layer wires used in previous US and EU runs. We see less of the tell tale resistance change - but it might be just as effective for short runs.

When this is established (especially through passive heating) we will know the ideal layer numbers and thickness for optimum bang for buck - and this is the beauty of an active material on a wire - we can the see the optimum number of layers to process onto Nano particles or Nano open celled foam where the overall surface area will be maximised for the material bulk.

Then we are really cooking
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0 #8 Ecco 2013-01-11 23:38
@Ryan Hunt: I think the active wire resistance is noisy because the current applied is too low, hampering measurements. The resistance of the heater wire was noisy too when power applied was near zero. Look:


i.imgur.com/VEODV.png

Try temporarily increasing input power to the active wire to a few milliwatts, it shouldn't increase temperatures significantly, but it should make resistance readings more stable.

EDIT: or were you referring to long period noise (slow oscillations) instead?
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0 #7 Ryan Hunt 2013-01-11 23:29
I think maybe the 2 layer wire in 1.1 already dropped most of its resistance while we were playing in Helium. With only 2 layers, I think this is behaving much more like a plain Isotan wire.
Both wires have a fairly noisy resistance signal. There have been some suggestions that this may be due to hydrogen gas convection currents inside the cell disturbing the temperature of the wire. I don't know.
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0 #6 Ecco 2013-01-11 23:27
@Arnaud: the 2-layer wire installed in cell v1.1 is the of the same type used by STM Microelectronic s / Ubaldo Mastromatteo in recently reported experiments, and has been found to show the anomalous heating effect at higher temperatures than wire with more layers. So it could be that it also needs higher temperatures to show the electrical resistance anomaly.

The only way to find out is by increasing power to the heater wire or waiting for the active heating run (power directly applied to the active wire).
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0 #5 Arnaud 2013-01-11 23:18
@Ecco :
Wire on cell 1.1 is showing an increase of resistance while temp is going up. The Celani's magic is gone for this one. I'm pretty sure.

Wire on cell 1.0 has shown firstly an increase of R which inline with celanis claims. It is a good 1st step. Then when T° mica reached 160°C, a very slow but steady decrease of the R and still going down. But this is very very slow. After 2 hours, R/RO = 15.52/15.75 = 0985. Celanis showed a faster decrease of R/R0. This wire has a problem too, but still worth a try.

As I said before, I hope I'm wrong, but 1st signs aren't good.
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0 #4 Ecco 2013-01-11 23:01
@Arnaud: Power was applied at 22:00 GMT. You have to check data from that. On Cell v1.1 "Resistance (Red)" appears to be just increasing with temperature and input power, while on v.1.0 it's slowly but constantly decreasing.

Cell v1.1 has a 2-layer active wire, while cell v1.0 has a 14-layer active wire.
Perhaps in indirect heating conditions even more heat is needed for the 2-layer wire to show typical effects. The heater wire (and the glass tube) should be able to withstand up to 100 watts of power. I don't know if the USA team is going to ramp up power up to that level.
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0 #3 Arnaud 2013-01-11 22:53
Did u load with H2 at around 21:30 GMT ? Or is it still He loaded instead ?

With H2, the reistance of celani wire should have dropped in both cells. But neithier one has shown any significant drop of resistance.

There are also glitches when power on NiChrome is applied . Is it possible to isolate the measurements of the 2 powers a little more ?

Did you fried de wires ?

Hope I'm wrong here
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