How do you spell SNAFU?
This is one of those moments when you rock back in your chair with a contemplative pained look on your face. A time for a stiff shot of scotch instead of popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. Let me tell you a little story.
About 10 minutes after we completed the analysis and write up of the all the data, we made the decision to try to get a couple calibration runs done in Helium so we would have some way to prove the active wire was installed in an equivalent manner. The first thing we decided to do was to purge the cell of hydrogen by heating it in a vacuum. The problem was, I didn't compensate the power setting for being in a vacuum instead of a gas with good thermal conductivity.
The wires got bright red and threw off enough atoms to coat the glass in nice spirals of copper on the inside. The white Macor in cell 1.1 (on the right) turned black like it was spray painted.
The glass will be easy to replace. The real worrying part for me is whether the wire supports will clean up easily, or will need to be replaced. If we need to replace the supports, it will take longer. Any which way, when we get it put back together we will have to run a few test cycles and see if still performs the same way. If it doesn't fit the nice baselines we just developed, then the team will be set back over a week because we'll have to redo the test runs and all the analysis after refurbishing the cells.
The real kicker is that this same thing happened to Mathieu several weeks ago and I still made the mistake of specifying too high a power at the end of a long day of mental exertion and in the midst of enthusiasm to get the experiment rolling.
To help us all get through this, I need a little help from this highly international audience. In the comments below, please put some appropriate curses in whatever language you like to curse in. Thanks.
Comments
Why a pure nickel wire or even a nichrome wire won't exhibit the same characteristics is unknown to me.
While keeping the glass clear makes for nice pictures, is there any particular reason that the glass must be transparent? Namely, what would be the effect if the glass were cleaned using hydrofluoric acid to simply etch the top contaminated surface off? Would the opacity of the frosted glass disturb or enhance measurement accuracy?
Of course, new calibrations would be needed. Also I'm not sure if the remaining oxide coating on the inside would affect the reaction. It's worth trying in my opinion, though.
On the vertically mounted rig this could be done on the second cell while keeping the first one properly/cleanl y built. I'm assuming that the quartz tube was still being used just for testing and not really serious analysis (since it's been proven to not faithfully replicate Celani's testing conditions).
thnx for the link Alan, very interresting will study this in detail.
I think Hydrogen catalysis is a key to LENR reactions, so this catalysis on glass surface could be a step in the right direction.
seems right, and even if cleaned it might be cleaner than before...
however if you recalibrate from scratch, the metalization may increase opacity of the glass to IR...
Bichromic acid is often used to clean glass for biological and chemical assays and to prepare mercury barometers. Here's an interesting paper on the effect of the cleaning process on the hydrogen catalysis of both quartz and pyrex glass:
eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/24735/1/9%281%29_P42-54.pdf
Even if you managed a good visible cleaning, there still remains a invisible trace of copper on the glass which throws all of you calibration curves off, because the IR transparency is affected.
You are right. Celani himself said he things there's a small reaction from the untreated wire (as I recall)
As a result, there may be some excess heat coming from the control wire during calibrations. It sounds good, but this will result in a low value of P_xs causing low S/N.
If the control were truly inert, it would shift the calibration plot downwards, making P_Xs higher and so a better signal. Anyway I guess the effect in control wire must be very less, but I'm not sure.
I'm sure you will find a way to clean up the glass, there must be some liquid cleaner etc or hard acid, like Chuck suggested.
May be you are trying to do too much at once. Why not get a Celani wire which is known to work at a particular temperature and pressure and try to reproduce the effect. You will need to calibrate only once for that temperature and pressure.
After that there will be a lot of time to improvise and there will be a long line of investors with sacks full of $ at your door. Just my simplistic thinking, not trying to deviate from the plans...
"Milda makaroner" - Mild macaroni
(curse uttered by a super strong cartoon bear who is sometimes accused of being a communist)
It's at times like this we really need guys like you, who have a documented path to restore everything!
gifnet.org/.../...
Here's one possibly relevant quote:
"moisture poisons the catalytic
activity of the dry glass surfaces that otherwise converts atomic into molecular hydrogen. Thus with
moist hydrogen the tube becomes filled with nearly pure atomic hydrogen and the diffusion of this to the
catalytically active tungsten wire causes the heating of the latter. ."
Since the reaction we're studying may involve atomic hydrogen, this is a possible factor in thermal measurements. Deposition of evaporated metal ions on the glass even in small (invisible) quantity would likely complicate things in more unknown ways. Think of the unexplained state transitions we appear to be occasionally seeing.
I could have been much worse. It could have been the active wire that glowed red hot and got damaged. That would have been a real swearing event.
could you please send me a PM to my e-mail account.
I have an idea of using another new type of detector to your cells.
I want to discuss this first by mail before putting this to the public domain.
At least getting to practice your cell making skills, right?
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