At 6:51 AM 12/2/4, Jones Beene wrote: >----- Original Message ----- >From: "P.J van Noorden" > >> It was very interesting to see that during evaporation a >significant amount >> (25%) of the radioactive Thallium could be found in the >second vessel, >> where you only would expect destillated water. So I >suspect that during >> violent boiling of the electrolyte a significant amount of >small dropplets >> liquid water ( with radioactive Tl ) was transported >through the condensor [snip] >.... but as to the unusual "transport mechanism" (if it did >indeed cross a metal boundary) [snip]
Jones, there is no metal boundary indicated. The suggestion is that water droplets (carrying thallium) were entrained with the steam by violent boiling. When the steam was condensed in a condenser the water droplets, like fog into dew, condensed out too. This is a very important comment. It means that boiloff calorimetry can be very suspect without proper controls. The water droplets constitute missing water which was not boiled, i.e. vaporized. If the heat of vaporization is applied to the total water missing in the reactor vessel (and/or condensed into the second vessel) then an over unity condition might be indicated where none exists. Proper controls might mean placing a tracer in the electrolyte and condensing out the vapor, doing dual calorimetry, and including a barrier to water droplets. A radioactive tracer would be good in labs equipped to handle them. Measuring the conductivity of the condensate, as compared to distilled water, would be a minimum level of required check. An accurate pH check might be useful too. Some kind of non-volatile tracer in the elecrolyte should be looked for in the condensate. Regards, Horace Heffner
