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Simultaneous Test Runs EU/US! - UPDATE 4

Written by Ryan Hunt on .

The EU cells and the US cells have done a pretty good job dropping resistance.  We are about to try a simultaneous run at 30 W to see if we see any excess energy.  Our thinking is that on Mathieu's last test run, he saw a large resistance rise (dubbed an unloading), but the resistance dropped rapidly after re-exposure to Hydrogen.  So, given that it re-loads in a few minutes, we think we'll give it a shot and see if both see the same things.

We will be cooling the cells, reading the resistance, and then heating passively, like we calibrated.

Wish us luck and follow the data, updates here for both sets of cells, and, of course, the comments from eager followers.  You can follow the data in the comparison tests in the data viewer that compile the key measures from each pair of cells, now.  

 

 Update 18:15 UTC - 

Both the EU Cells and the US Cells were switched on and BOTH indicated excess energy as the cells came to equilibrium at higher temperatures than during the calibration tests.  The EU cell with the active wire was indicating up to 2.5W of excess power over the 30.4W input power (~6% excess).  That is well above the 95% confidence limits for that cell (~0.25W).  The US Cell was indicating approximately 1.4 watts excess, again, well above the ~0.5W confidence interval.   Very exciting to see something positive and especially simultaneous.

The indicated excess seems to be corroborated by several cell temperatures higher than calibration values.  The control cells in each location are performing at or below calibration values.  

The internal cell temperatures seem to be slowly degrading, but the external cell temperatures are holding steady.  

The resistance of the active wires is slowly rising as, presumably, the hydrogen is leaving into the vacuum.

The EU cell has been cycled already, leading to the the active wire "unloading" and rising up to a higher resistance than the wire had originally. 

 

Update 20:45 UTC

The cells contrinue to indicate excess energy, even as the resistance of the wires keep rising, seemingly indicating a loss of absorbed hydrogen.  In our blog post First Results from HUG Concentric Tube Calorimeter, we noted that the resistivity drop during loading seemed to occur after the majority of the hydrogen was absorbed when we tested that wire.  That may indicate that there is still a good amount of hydrogen still in the wire even after the resistivity increases all the way back to the original values.

 

Below is a google doc that clarifies the test set up and field names for each of the HUGnet Lab tests.  They are listed in Test Field Definitions  and embedded below.

 

UPDATE 3 - June 27 4:30 UTC

Well, despite having done a test showing very small deviation in performance over a range of vacuum levels, we do, in fact, seem to be seeing a significant correlation between the level of vacuum and the external temperatures/P_xs).  

I would like to thank our attentive blog watchers for raising that issue.  I do believe that the original experiment that we were replicating could have been susceptible to that problem, also.  

So, how much of what we are seeing is explained by this and how will it look next time we load and try it again?

 

 UPDATE 4 6-28 21:00 UTC

The EU Cell has been loaded and run a couple times  - not as good a results as the first run, interestingly enough.  Though the resistivity dropped below the previous values each time and the bulk of that change happened in just a few short minutes each time.  That seems to imply that once the path is made, the hydrogen goes in and out pretty quickly.

The US cell was left to run longer and see what happened.  There was a slow decay of indicated excess heat over about a day.  Then we cooled, added hydrogen, heated for the loading phase, and saw the rapid drop in resistance just like the EU cell had demonstrated.  It'll be interesting to see what happens on our second live run.  

Mathieu also decided to try out calculating excess heat from T_ext1 and T_ext2 and then averaging the both of them.  Malachi then implemented them in a couple of new tests for EU Cell A and B.  These are still unverified works in progress, so don't take them too seriously, yet.

Along the same lines, we figured out how to link the latest data live to a google doc spreadsheet.  Just put the following formula in a cell, change the "id" in the URL to the test number you want data for, and voila - live data for you to calculate with in a google doc.  

=importData("http://data.hugnetlab.com/HUGnetLib/HUGnetLibAPI.php?task=history&action=last&format=CSV&data[type]=1MIN&id=fc0201"&"&"&minute(now()))

Here is the read-only link to one we are working on for Live Data from the EU Cells

 

 

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Comments   

 
0 #87 Malachi Heder 2013-07-08 15:12
@ Paul

The calibrations were run under vacuum conditions and at positive pressures the heat transfer from the wire to the sensor is much different, making the Wa_Xs inaccurate.
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0 #86 Paul 2013-07-07 19:30
Let me ask Edwin's question from the opposite direction: what possible reasons argue against 6W Px (almost +15%) for more than 48 hours?
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0 #85 Ron B 2013-07-07 06:37
@Ryan
Yes, Very curious bump up on the resistance. It seems there's no local cause for the change. Another LENR mystery?
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0 #84 Ryan Hunt 2013-07-07 03:03
The cell is pressurized in loading phase, right now, far different than the calibration conditions of 1 mBar vacuum.
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0 #83 Edwin Pell 2013-07-07 02:47
Is cell A at 6 watts excess power?
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0 #82 Ryan Hunt 2013-07-07 02:36
@ All - we are continuing to just watch the US Cell A as the Celani wire SLOWLY decreases in resistance. I am inclined to watch till it stops before trying another run. There was one 0.1 ohm bump up in resistance that I can't explain. Weird stuff going on in that wire, I think, considering how rapidly it decreased in resistance before we sent current through it directly.
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0 #81 Ryan Hunt 2013-07-07 02:32
@ Jamie Sibley - In our initial calibration we noticed that the two wires achieved different temperature rises by up to 3 or 4 C. In that cell, however, it was only different by less than 1 degree, so you might have identified something interesting.

@ David Jones
- We have a turbo molecular pump on that apparatus that we could use to pull a really hard vacuum (10^-7 torr), but that would almost certainly de-load the hydrogen from the wire even faster. That is how we degassed the nickel powder during our early experiments.
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0 #80 Ron B 2013-07-05 18:32
@Malachi,
That must have been it. It was early on. Thanks for the update and all that you and your team there are doing.

Hopefully you're making good progress on the Steel and Glass cells (Macor and Mica). It will be exciting to see what they do with the new setup/protocol.

That's an interesting data point (about the loading going slower with direct verses indirect heating). Someday this will all make sense (I promise!) lol
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0 #79 Malachi Heder 2013-07-05 16:06
@ Ron B

What time did this happen? If it was at the beginning, before the script was started, that was because I incorrectly set the script and as a result I had to reset the boards.

@ All

It looks like putting current through the celani wire yesterday altered it's loading behavior quite a bit. It's much slower now.
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0 #78 Ron B 2013-07-04 10:45
The resistance for both the active and inactive wires dropped for a short period of time to very low values. They did return to "normal" values but then later the active wire dropped very low for resistance and is staying there.
Any clue what has happened?
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0 #77 Malachi Heder 2013-07-01 15:24
@ Ecco

We must have had a hiccup in the data replication. The data is about 1 hour behind and still updating. It should catch up.
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0 #76 Ecco 2013-07-01 14:57
@MFMP: live data is not getting streamed to the public, at the moment.
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0 #75 Malachi Heder 2013-07-01 14:55
@ David Jones

The vacuum gauge is outside of the temp control box that our reactors are in. If you look at the ambient temperature from the CTC test (out in the room), you'll notice that the vacuum gauge follows that really well too. This could mean that the ambient is, as much as we've tried to reduce the effects, still causing these trends and reaking havoc with our experiments :(
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0 #74 David Jones 2013-07-01 12:39
If you plot Wa_Xs against Vacuum pressure over the last 12 hours you will see that they closely track each other. Consequently, it is not possible to know if the excess output is due to the presence of hydrogen initiating LENR or simply due to heat conduction through the gas.
I would suggest that some method needs to be found to keep the vacuum pressure within tighter tolerances. A large ballast volume (as I suggested some time ago) connected close to the active cells may do the trick if it is simply hydrogen outgassing from the wire through a restricted pumping line.

Another thing that might help is a diffusion pump or similar item to really pump the pressure down below a level where heat conduction through the gas is negligible. but not sure how well these pump hydrogen given that it is such a light energetic gas.

I would think it should be easy to 'borrow' a diff. pump from a University - we used to be swimming in the things at St Andrews Uni.
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0 #73 Ecco 2013-07-01 09:01
Mica temperature however is almost exactly the same. Actually, it's slightly lower now in [C] than it was in [A].

If the wire was truly hotter, wouldn't mica temperature be hotter as well?

T_In1, T_In2 and T_Ext3 are also lower now than they were in [A].
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+1 #72 Robert Greenyer 2013-07-01 08:34
@Jamie Sibley

I think you have spotted something interesting there, and an experiment within an experiment.
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+1 #71 Jamie Sibley 2013-07-01 04:34
I think this looks very promising.



Area A: 3.5 Bar H2, 35 Watts on NiCr wire, 125*C
Area B: No H2 Pressure, 35 Watts NiCr, 125*C
Area C: 3.5 Bar H2, 35 Watts NiCu wire, 130* C !!

Looks like we gained 5*C by changing to the active wire even with the same H2 pressure as earlier. Given that area A and C are both at the same H2 pressure, this data should not be subject to the H2 thermal conductivity errors I mentioned previous.
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0 #70 Robert Greenyer 2013-06-30 17:36
@All

US cell A at parity now, Control (B) below
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0 #69 Robert Greenyer 2013-06-30 17:32
@Ecco

Best loading to date and live run has begun
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0 #68 Ecco 2013-06-30 17:17
The active wire in US Cell A after finishing passive loading reached a remarkably low resistance value of 12.26 Ohm, which implies a R/R0 value of 0.704
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