Re: [Vo]:Electron capture acceleration via NMR ?
On 2021-12-03 02:51, Robin wrote: If you put your detector in a well grounded Faraday cage, it may eliminate most radio interference produced by sparking. Use metal (not nylon) fly wire for the Faraday cage (or at least for a window if you prefer the whole cage be made of metal sheet). The space between the wires is small enough to shield most EM below about 150 GHz, but alpha, beta, or gamma should get through easily. I suggest you add a little credit card sized microprocessor to the detector, that can run on batteries for a few hours, and can easily be included in the Faraday cage, with no protruding wires. The microprocessor can log the counts, and the time, and store it on a microSD card for later use. (Protruding wires would act as an antenna, for the EM, defeating the purpose of the Faraday cage.) BTW to eliminate the Radon, just make the experiment portable, and take it elsewhere. Also let the detector run for a while before the experiment starts, so that you get a good indication of average background radiation. My Geiger detector was apparently immune to the sparking and it never showed anything that could be attributed to that. On the other hand, it seemed sensitive to radioactive dust and one time I managed increase the already somewhat high background signal by 3 times by just putting it in front of a 120mm fan in a closed room. I never saw anything with it during the tests after enclosing it in a sealed plastic box. I don't have the Geiger counter anymore, in any case. The CMOS/CCD webcam detector could possibly benefit from being put in a sealed box inside a Faraday cage; whether it would be able to see much more than background radiation is the question. The low sensitivity (counts per unit of time) is a problem. Variations due to temperature are also an issue. When it did not malfunction, proximity to the plasma electrolysis cell increased the amount of false detections due to sensor noise). I thought in the past about using a Faraday cage, but in the end also due to the very low budget nature of the tests I just "embraced" such emissions and tried finding conditions that maximized them. Generally this simply meant using higher voltages (typically up to 72V in my case, which is unsustainable for more than short periods with KOH at or close to saturation at room temperature due to the violent reaction), although other parameters also have an effect as mentioned earlier. It seems for example that the hotter the cathode, the higher the emissions, which appears to make sense on an intuitive level (stronger thermionic emission). Cathode materials that do not oxidize easily also seemed to work better. Some authors have suggested that the electromagnetic emission itself is the result of novel processes occurring in the plasma/spark reaction, so just measuring the EMI seemed like it would be a very simple strategy to maximize them. Thus my tests were mostly focused on lowering the voltage from which the plasma reaction could start and increasing the amount of EMI generated. I never tried seriously measuring excess heat. Evaporation calorimetry is not straightforward because much of the electrolyte is efficiently aerosolized from the cathode region, which may give the impression of much larger heat generated than in reality. Measuring the temperature in one single point may also give false results due to heat stratification or heat gradients in the electrolyte (highly likely for cathodic plasma electrolysis). Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:Electron capture acceleration via NMR ?
On 2021-12-03 01:18, Robin wrote: If a measurable amount of energy is produced by the cell, and is of nuclear origin, then even an insensitive detector should pick up multiple counts / second. To test your detector, you can use an Americium based smoke detector. That's only about 1 micro Curie, and any significant energy production should produce much more than that. At the time I tried putting the webcam detector close to a KOH canister (slightly radioactive), and there was a slight increase in the number of events (mainly "spots"). The Geiger counter I had earlier on also responded to the KOH canister at close distance. I don't think measurable gamma radiation is going to get directly emitted by experiments like the ones I toyed with, but I find likely that the strong EMI occasionally produced could affect the electronics of more sensitive radiation detectors and potentially give artifacts. If there is more behind that (perhaps even novel forms of radiation), it might require different detector types than used conventionally. Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:Electron capture acceleration via NMR ?
On 2021-12-02 22:00, Jones Beene wrote: Do you by any chance have a radiation monitor capable of seeing a signal from your cell when unpowered ? It would be significant if there was an increase in counts which tracked the onset of a visible plasma (assuming the plasma itself is below the threshold for detection) I used to have a cheap Geiger counter, but since my background radiation level is too high with daily variations attributable due to radon gas, I've never been able to get useful measurements out of it, so eventually I gave it away. A more sensitive detector similar to one described by Holmlid in a few publications (the "muon detector") would likely work, but it would require a budget of at least 1000-1500$ (with used parts from Ebay or similar) which I cannot justify spending. I tried a webcam/CCD/CMOS detector and while it seems to work for cosmic muons, on the long term (unpowered cell) it appears to work like a very insensitive Geiger counter (giving only a few hundred "events" per day), also tracking daily local radon variations. Furthermore, when the plasma reaction is ongoing, the camera may be affected by heat (increasing background/thermal noise) and electromagnetic emissions from the cell (causing random camera malfunctions) if it's too close, so overall I haven't had much luck with it. I have more successfully measured RF emissions with a 30$ USB-SDR receiver. Measuring signal amplitude in real-time gives a good idea of how intense the reaction is and how it changes with experimental conditions. Curiously, RF emissions increase to a moderately high level just before a visible plasma starts appearing (apparently reflecting current instabilities), then drop to a low level as it appears, and finally progressively increase as voltage is further increased, up to intense levels. Supposedly, it is possible to optimize the reaction with this real-time information. No way of detecting a signal with the cell powered off without some sort of heavy shielding though, due to background RF emissions. Judging by RF emissions, the same plasma reaction appears to emit significantly stronger emissions (keeping other variables about the same) when an acidic electrolyte like 10% HCl is used instead of KOH. Higher concentration HCl or sulfuric acid solution could probably give interesting results in this regard but I never dared trying: the fumes need to be vented away safely and droplet formation is an issue (after a period of operation, most surfaces surrounding the cell become covered by tiny electrolyte droplets, which can be a serious hazard at high electrolyte concentration). With an acidic electrolyte (10% HCl, that I tried) if you drop a thin cathode wire very slowly into the liquid it is also possible to observe a weak plasma from the nano-sized dendrites formed by electroplating from as low as 15V or less (slightly higher values preferred), but no strong RF emissions occur compared to the "true" plasma electrolysis reaction at higher voltages. I hope this helps, Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:Electron capture acceleration via NMR ?
On 2021-12-02 19:35, Jones Beene wrote: This doesn't give us much of a clue about what could be the cause of excess hydrogen... unless Holmlid's muons are carrying away heat somehow while splitting off protons in the process. The authors suggested that thermolysis was occurring, i.e. that water was being split by the heat of the plasma reaction. My supposition is that excess hydrogen was observed when at least part of it was not "consumed" inside the cell (producing excess heat there). Possibly the heat of formation of Hydrinos could be involved instead? Admittedly, this does not have much to do with the initial NMR idea of this thread and I was not trying to link it to that. It was more in relation to Robin's suggestion of using a saturated KOH solution in an electrolytic cell, which I found interesting because that is something I personally explored a while back in crude experiments, as it can significantly lower the voltage from which a visible plasma can be observed (about 25-30V). Other electrolytes at saturation concentration are instead more likely to accumulate on the cathode and dissociate there, producing larger amounts of metallic K which might actually be more useful for Robin's proposal. Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:Electron capture acceleration via NMR ?
On 2021-12-01 19:33, Jones Beene wrote: [...] "IF" (big if) *unusually high hydrogen output* from an RF electrolysis cell can be demonstrated, then good evidence of what is happening to account for the gain - whether it is Millsean/Holmlid or instead is related to nuclear beta decay, can be as simple and foolproof as the detection of anomalous argon. FWIW, excess hydrogen output (relative to Faraday efficiency) has been measured in plasma electrolysis cells in the early 2000s by Mizuno et al., but they found it to be correlated with negative heat (endothermic reaction). When excess heat was present, there was no excess hydrogen. Furthermore, in their case the overall energetic efficiency was low due to the high voltages required (hundreds of volts). See Mizuno's papers here: - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239053742_Hydrogen_Evolution_by_Plasma_Electrolysis_in_Aqueous_Solution - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237284616_Generation_of_Heat_and_Products_During_Plasma_Electrolysis_in_Liquid Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:Electron capture acceleration via NMR ?
On 2021-12-01 01:57, Robin wrote: In an electrolytic cell both H and K will form at the cathode, though the K will only be short lived because it combines with water to form KOH & H. However if a K atom and an H atom form in close proximity to one another at the same time, then the possibility exists that the K will catalyze a shrinkage reaction of the H (m=3), before it combines with water. To facilitate this process, the KOH should be a saturated solution, and the cathode atoms as close together as possible. This is interesting. In a saturated KOH aqueous solution, if the voltage is high enough (you shouldn't be afraid to use tens of volts if necessary) and the cathode thin enough (in the form of wires), solid KOH will likely accumulate on the cathode and start dissociating into K metal beneath it. When that happens, it is possible to see small sparks and explosions as it reacts with water and presumably hydrogen. This is much simpler (and safer) to observe with potassium carbonate and possibly bicarbonate, however. With KOH close to saturation, plasma electrolysis starts occurring first; you have to add more KOH than saturation at room temperature to make it accumulate when it is operating. Unsafe and wasteful. I think something similar to molten salt electrolysis starts occurring under these conditions, with the difference that hydrogen from water dissociation is also present (interesting for LENR?). The gallery linked below shows short animations from tests with mainly K2CO3 and some NaHCO3 (which seemed to make accumulation easier) at various concentrations and conditions that I made months ago. https://imgur.com/a/7OsftYm Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:The "hero" LENR experiment ?
On 2021-11-23 17:44, Jones Beene wrote: Thanks for remembering this experiment from Simon Brink ! The effect is surprisingly large and my bet is that it only works well with 316 grade SS. If so - that would be good evidence for Mills' theory and the importance of the lowest energy catalyst. Nickel alone should not work as well. As you suggest, eliminating color change should be attempted but for those who follow Holmlid, another wrinkle would be using a laser pointer To clarify, I've personally often observed plain steel turning black with cathodic electrolysis at relatively high currents with alkaline electrolytes like potassium hydroxide or carbonate, which should rule out oxidation, but I haven't tested SS316. I think this is more likely to occur if according to Simon Brink's diagram the applied voltage is 24V (it should generate large amounts of gas and heat), although the experiment description in the same page says 6V or a bit more. I don't think an ordinary constant wave (CW) laser pointer will work well for Holmlid-type experiments; a Q-switched pulse laser might be required. Nowadays relatively affordable entry level models exist for cosmetic tattoo-removal and similar applications, which could be adapted for these experiments, but still they require close to 1000$ at the least. Perhaps, as for a Holmlid-type suggestion that might be useful here, the plates could be coated with soot or fine graphite after drying. Not only this will make surface conditions roughly even, but carbon might be able to increase the chances of ultra-dense hydrogen formation from the hydrogen-loaded plate (which should slowly release hydrogen after electrolysis). Look for the keyword "carbon" in this open-access paper for more details: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2021.02.221 Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:The "hero" LENR experiment ?
On 2021-11-23 15:39, Jones Beene wrote: It is hard to separate Mills' theory from Holmlid's work. They are likely to be complementary with both offering important details. One early experiment for a "critical volume" validation could involve the catalytic propensity of reactor itself. IOW - a large volume with NO added catalyst other than the reactor onterior surface - that, in itself, could produce a thermal or photon emission anomaly. The main detail to keep in mind - the type of stainless steel used. Stainless steel contains nickel and iron - both catalysts according to Mills but requiring high ionization. Perhaps a dedicated catalyst is unnecessary if the reactor composition is optimum. The best reactor choice to investigate would be grade 316 stainless. [...] On a related note, Simon Brink proposed a good while back an experiment with electrolytically H-loaded SS316 plates exposed to infrared light; he suggested that excess heat would be generated with high repeatability, using thermometry. http://subtleatomics.com/excess-heat I'm not entirely convinced by this approach as electrolysis could affect surface emissivity (the cathode can turn dark or black after prolonged electrolysis), but it could be a starting point under simpler experimental conditions. Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:The "hero" LENR experiment ?
Hi Bob, The "critical volume" idea I proposed was mostly based on the simple observation that in loosely similar experiments using much lower amounts of catalyst material (perhaps a few hundred milligrams at most in the experiments for example reported by Holmlid and sometimes cited here by Jones Beene; he uses commercially-available iron oxide catalyst that about anybody can craft or purchase) only a very small fraction of the admitted hydrogen over the catalyst seemingly transitions to a denser state. It has to be so, otherwise the excess heat generated by even just the condensation energy of the H atoms to the dense state would be quite evident and there would be extensive reports not only about reproducible LENR but also about meltdowns in the chemical industry where the same catalysts are used in practice. (thermal runaways in industrial reactors have been occasionally reported, but for chemical reactions that are already exothermic in the first place, so attributing them to LENR like some have done seems like a stretch) So, if this transition or compression of H atoms is a rare event, it would be desirable to find a way to either increase the event rate by "brute force", or to find local conditions that make these events more probable. I think using a large amount of ordinary/commercially-available catalyst material would fall in the former scenario, while most LENR experiments using small amounts of specially-crafted nanomaterials would be fall in the latter. That's all; there was not too much thought into the idea. Cheers, BA On 2021-11-23 00:06, bobcook39...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Bill and others— Ideas on LENR theory: HYPOTHIS: 1. Some/Most of the Ni powder were individual crystals of Ni which were a QM (entangled) systems of nucleons and atomic electrons coupled by a magnagentic "B"| field. 2. The QM systems of my first assumption could be characterized by equations (Hamiltonians) that characterize differing phases of the pertinent QM system. 3. Angular momentum ands energy are conserved in the possible phases of any QM system. 4. Positrons, electrons and neutrinos make up the elementary particles of the assumed QM systems proposed in 1 above. (A nucleon model proposed by William Stubbs is a key basis for this assumption.) 5. H or H2 when added tp the Ni powder become part to the QM system as an additional lattice nucleons(s). 6. A fast LEMNR reaction involving a phonic increase in lattice energy and angular momentum, an electron/positrons annihilations and a nuclear transmutation with lower, total angular momentum and energy equal to the respective increases of the lattice electrons. 7. Relatively slow cooling of the "hot" Ni crystals follows per accepted theory. NOTES: 1. AM is quantized at in increments pf h/2-pi. 2 Magnetic moments are associated with the AM of primary particles. 3. Toradol shaped rotating magnetic field may produce what is commonly- called electric charge. So(4) physics may be applicable to quantification. ( Jurg may have better ideas about this.) Bob Cook Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows *From: *Bill Antoni <mailto:bantoni...@gmail.com> *Sent: *Monday, November 22, 2021 1:18 PM *To: *vortex-l@eskimo.com *Subject: *Re: [Vo]:The "hero" LENR experiment ? If hydrogen adsorbed on suitable catalysts can be made to desorb for example with UV light, and if then a transition of the H atoms to a compressed state in desorption also in turn causes the emission of UV light (without focus on any theory in particular, although R. Mills has studied such emissions with his Hydrinos) in a positive feedback loop, one such laser might be possible, but it all depends on how probable such transitions are. They are likely to be very rare with ordinary, untreated hydrogen-active metals (Ni, Pd, Pt, etc) or also more complex catalysts as used in commercial chemical reactors, causing them to go unnoticed most of the time. So, it's unknown whether such laser would be actually feasible in practice. Although it will not work for a laser, with these mechanisms in mind, perhaps a reactor composed of a very long coiled tube with the active material coated on its internal walls could work more efficiently than a big chamber with loose powder, while still being in principle overall relatively simple to craft. The tube could be coiled around a heater of some sort, and tube geometry and gas admission would have to be such as to maximize repeated hydrogen contact with the catalyst coated on the internal walls (e.g. a straight tube might not work well and a free-flowing system could be better than one where hydrogen only very slowly diffuses through the material) instead of just absorption into the lattice as done in many gas-loaded LENR experiments. I'm aware that one ex
Re: [Vo]:The "hero" LENR experiment ?
If hydrogen adsorbed on suitable catalysts can be made to desorb for example with UV light, and if then a transition of the H atoms to a compressed state in desorption also in turn causes the emission of UV light (without focus on any theory in particular, although R. Mills has studied such emissions with his Hydrinos) in a positive feedback loop, one such laser might be possible, but it all depends on how probable such transitions are. They are likely to be very rare with ordinary, untreated hydrogen-active metals (Ni, Pd, Pt, etc) or also more complex catalysts as used in commercial chemical reactors, causing them to go unnoticed most of the time. So, it's unknown whether such laser would be actually feasible in practice. Although it will not work for a laser, with these mechanisms in mind, perhaps a reactor composed of a very long coiled tube with the active material coated on its internal walls could work more efficiently than a big chamber with loose powder, while still being in principle overall relatively simple to craft. The tube could be coiled around a heater of some sort, and tube geometry and gas admission would have to be such as to maximize repeated hydrogen contact with the catalyst coated on the internal walls (e.g. a straight tube might not work well and a free-flowing system could be better than one where hydrogen only very slowly diffuses through the material) instead of just absorption into the lattice as done in many gas-loaded LENR experiments. I'm aware that one experiment by Mills or somebody else to verify his theories used a long nickel tube in an electrolytic cell, but that would be different than what I am thinking about here. Cheers, BA On 2021-11-22 19:54, Jones Beene wrote: Hi Bill, Your thought about "critical volume" is intriguing and brings up the possibility of efficient self-lasing due to adsorption/desorption and catalysis. Of interest would be the violet H line at 410 nm for which there is already a secret US Navy weapon in this category. Coincidence? This could involve the possibility of a self-generating two-gas laser where one gas is hydrogen and the other is hydrogen in the collapsed state, formed in situ and making the device efficient due to a UV emission cascade. This might explain why a hemispherical reactor is useful (assuming reflectivity is enhanced) In this regard, this old patent https://patents.google.com/patent/US4159453A/en and this article https://www.hindawi.com/journals/lc/2008/839873/ seem to suggest that something like this possibility has been considered before... and might explain why the Thermacore project (with the Navy) was "apparently" canceled, despite the energy anomaly. Probably worth a deeper look... Bill Antoni wrote: Jones Beene wrote: One further thought about the Thermacore runaway - is there a potential lesson there, for experiment design ? There could be one lesson which can be called - GO BIG... but also BEWARE if you go big. Perhaps there is something akin to critical mass, which is important for maximum gain, as in nuclear fission? If there is a very small but non-zero chance for hydrogen to undergo certain transitions as it's adsorbed-desorbed from the catalyst material, then more than critical mass it could be a matter of critical volume of catalyst through which hydrogen travels before something occurs. Perhaps that could explain why resonating systems are sometimes suggested to work well. They might be able to maximize hydrogen interaction events (defined as adsorption-desorption cycles) per unit of time with the catalyst. Just a simple thought. Cheers, BA
Re: [Vo]:The "hero" LENR experiment ?
Jones Beene wrote: One further thought about the Thermacore runaway - is there a potential lesson there, for experiment design ? There could be one lesson which can be called - GO BIG... but also BEWARE if you go big. Perhaps there is something akin to critical mass, which is important for maximum gain, as in nuclear fission? If there is a very small but non-zero chance for hydrogen to undergo certain transitions as it's adsorbed-desorbed from the catalyst material, then more than critical mass it could be a matter of critical volume of catalyst through which hydrogen travels before something occurs. Perhaps that could explain why resonating systems are sometimes suggested to work well. They might be able to maximize hydrogen interaction events (defined as adsorption-desorption cycles) per unit of time with the catalyst. Just a simple thought. Cheers, BA
