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News for US V 1.3

Written by Wes Baish on .

Sorry it's been awhile, folks. We just needed time to sort kinks in the V1.3 cell setup as well as make some headway on another version of cell for the concentric tube calorimeter (let's go with CTC and from now on, eh?). Paul also says the magic rule is to have 2 positive posts per every 1 negative post. So we'll just call the last US and update posts 1 negative entry. Laughing

The kinks I mentioned were mild speed bumps compared to Monday's blowout since it was a simple reorganizing fix. Our 3 T_Amb sensors are stationed in the experiment hood but apparently our air flow doesn't isolate them from the cells well enough. This was apparent as the T_Amb average rose with W_NiCr for both cells. We have since installed new thermocouples that are just outside the hood and roughly on the same horizontal plane as the cells, but not close enough to vary with cell temp. Easy!

In regard to concentric tube cells, we believed the calibration data was tight enough to get going on some real cell action. I spent Tuesday afternoon trying to engineer the ceramic scaffolding inside the 1/4" tube. This design featured the same thick copper wire for the pass through; it's snug as a rug inside the ceramic insulation tube. Welding this 24 AWG (~0.4 mm dia.) copper with 32 AWG oxide wire(~0.2 mm dia.) also used in V1.3 cells isn't the easiest task under the sun, and getting the ball of molten metal to fit inside those ceramic rods is nigh impossible! Malachi gave it his all on Wednesday, but the results weren't much of an improvement. . .

 

I did get a chance to photo the process, though. The green Cu flame is pretty cool!

And there's the weld. Too big for the ceramic! This is just oxide and copper, not Celani-treated wire yet.

We settled on fiberglass insulation the whole way through and an epoxy-sealed ceramic stem on the far side of the Tee joint. This should suffice to keep everything electrically insulated and Hydrogen tight!

The completed 1/4" reactor. We're using this for a new version of the CTC (I'll fill you in later). 

Here's a better look at the end of the cell. You are looking at the TSS (toothpick support system) to prevent the unruly passthrough wires and thermocouple from moving too much. 

However after our assembly of this reactor we realized we'd need a bellows valve and a pressure transducer for it to work. We'll charge it once with high pressure H2 and then seal it off to insert it into the CTC. We don't have any pressure transducers on hand so now we await their arrival. 

Curiouser and Curiouser 

Check out these two graphs, R_ox Vs W_NiCr for US1.3A and US1.3B respectively. The resistance in the active wire isn't behaving like it should as it decreases in US1.3B when we passively heat it with NiCr wire. That's the opposite of what we expect! We've seen comments on the issue but are in search of conclusive response as to what's going on in there. 

US1.3A R1_Ox and W1_NiCr. R1 is virtually static, as is expected.

But here in US1.3B R2_Ox is pretty well aligned with W2_NiCr.

Malachi had this to say earlier today, 

"@ Dieter

I see that the oxide wire in the Cell B is actually decreasing instead of increasing, like you would expect from a passively heated wire. The oxide wire in cell A is holding surprisingly constant, but it is increasing like we would expect. The resistance is calculated the same way for both cells, so I don't believe it's a software/computer issue. However, I recall in cells 1.0 and 1.1 that we saw opposite trends like this between two different celani wires (2 layer and a 14 layer). Again, these were different wires and now we have the exact wire from the same roll. Could there be this much discrepancy from two identical wires? We will be exploring this for a while today."

And our exploration has yielded few results as we can pull no answer from data analysis. 

What do you suppose is going on here? 

P.S.

Even though the data isn't a whole lot of fun, isn't it nice to see it in blog posts again?

 

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0 #11 Malachi Heder 2013-04-11 14:13
@ Ecco

Unit 1 and Unit 2 were added yesterday. Those test have been running, though not collecting much more than ambient, for a month or two. It will take some time before the data catches up. You can go back in time to see where it is at in this process, but I expect a couple of days to fully catch up.
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0 #10 Ecco 2013-04-10 22:05
I see that a "Unit 1" and a "Unit 2" have been added to the live data page, but they currently show no live data.
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0 #9 Edwin Pell 2013-04-10 21:49
Guys, it has been 5 days. I need a LENR fix. :-)
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0 #8 Malachi Heder 2013-04-09 01:06
@ Ron B

We have not done anything with them in a while. They just keep on, keeping on. It is very interesting, but like you said, we don't know what it means :) It does seem to be increasing, but the cells are at atmospheric pressure (from the slow leak of H2) and there could be impurities inside the cell. We have been busy with the new cells and it is unlikely that the older cells will get too much attention, at least for now :)
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+1 #7 Ron B 2013-04-08 23:57
@Malachi,
Did you tweak the Mica 1.0 cells power this morning (10:30am)?

It's cool to see that it's over 16W Pxs. Not quite sure what all that means in the new environment but it's awesome to see it just going up and up. When is was at this same pressure before the Pxs wasn't this large : )
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+1 #6 Malachi Heder 2013-04-08 16:42
@ Mathieu

Our vacuum has been at 1 mbar for some time, I believe we vacuumed the cells on April 1st and they have been at 1 mbar since then.
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0 #5 Malachi Heder 2013-04-08 16:39
@ All

We found that our wiring was not ideal. We fixed it and now the resistance is isolated between channels and reactors. There was some cross-talk between channels and was most prevalent in Cell B on the Oxide wire. This should take care of the problem. We will see in the calibration currently running.
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0 #4 Jack Cole 2013-04-07 02:11
Whereas this could be some type of error, it may also be accurate. In Celani's latest paper, he notes the resistance dropping rather increasing in contrast to Pd/D systems. See #6 results.

22passi.it/.../...
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0 #3 Mathieu Valat 2013-04-06 12:53
@Malachi,
What is the vacuum level you have in these calibrations. Can you compare that value with one cell or the other open to the pump with both closed.
Its is possible that oxygen would come in the loop somewhere in the Cell B.

It is recommended to have a variation of vacuum level lower that 3% per day before turning the current on. It is long but necessary to evacuate any remaining water for the cells.
I will update the protocol in this way.
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0 #2 Dieter Seeliger 2013-04-06 04:11
If you are in trouble welding these tiny wires, why not use a spot welder to achieve the connection ?
The connections in historic vacuum tubes were all done by spot welding.
This is a link to a DIY welder:
mdiy.pl/.../?lang=en
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+1 #1 AlanG 2013-04-05 20:29
The discrepancy seems more likely to be an instrumentation problem rather than difference between the cells. If the leads are long enough, try swapping the oxide wire connections for the two cells. If the problem stays in the same power supply channels, you will know where to look next.

One possible cause might be A/D cross-talk through a shared reference voltage, or perhaps faulty power supply decoupling. Similar interaction of channels was visible in the initial tests before the wire burned out.
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