Eric, I chose the nickel since it has a composition that resembles the wire used by Celani in his recent demonstration. This was recommended by someone else and I thought the idea was great. Nickels are easy to come by.
Today I picked up some pencil lead of .9 mm size #2 and replaced my stainless steel electrode. By this time the stainless has some serious stains and rust appears to be in my electrolyte. Meanwhile I located some sodium carbonate by Arm & Hammer to use instead of the borax. I just began the experiment about an hour ago and one thing stands out already. Thus far I have a clean electrolyte instead of one loaded with all kinds of oxides. Initially I was worried about the 1 amp flowing through the pencil lead but it does not seem to get hot and should last under this condition. It just appears so tiny when I am used to large diameter wires. This is a learning experience for me and I notice something rather interesting that I am sure is common knowledge among experienced platers. I measure a voltage drop of approximately 2.5 volts from the nickel electrode to the very close by electrolyte. I noted about the same drop when using the stainless steel electrode. This represents a power dissipation of 2.5 watts that seems to be within the electrolyte active region surrounding the electrodes. Most of my wasted power is merely heating the electrolyte directly due to ohmic loss. Perhaps I should delay heating of a hydrogen loaded nickel as it might be risky. I will attempt that when I am feeling lucky. At the moment my hydrogen loading system is taking 1 amp at about 20 volts. The voltage reading varies greatly depending upon the spacing between the electrodes as expected with a resistive electrolyte. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Sun, Sep 23, 2012 12:10 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Good Alloy for Celani type reaction costs 5 cents : Chuck Sites On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 12:36 AM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: I read that carbon rods could be obtained at craft stores so I might take a trip to find one if my stainless is a problem. Did someone mention that iron might be a catalyst in Rossi's device? I guess I might get some for this experiment by default. Wikipedia says that US nickels are 75 percent copper. If you don't want copper increasing resistivity (and Joule heating) you might need to look for something other than US nickels. Pure nickel in natural abundances will not be expected to do anything under hydrogen-1 capture, by the way, although short-lived isotopes of it will. Nearby isotopes, such as copper and cobalt, can participate. So if proton or deuteron capture are what are happening, this suggests that Andrea Rossi really does need a catalyst, or he needs nickel with impurities, and it gives support to the idea that constantan would be better than pure nickel. I had a mischievous thought of heating the hydrogen loaded nickel in some manner to see if that started a reaction. I personally like this idea, although it does sound dangerous. It's hard to imagine what people are thinking when they take vessels of hydrogen and some material and then pressurize them to many atmospheres and heat them to high temperatures. That sounds like a death wish. From what I've seen with transitions in carbon under deuteron capture, oxygen will evolve, so if there are any carbon-based impurities, you will have a nice combination of: oxygen, deuterium, heat, high pressure. Given the possibility of the electrolyte participating in the reaction as well as all of the challenges of electrolysis, I wonder whether gas phase systems might do a better job at controlling some of the important variables. The gas phase systems eliminate questions about the electrolyte and, in some setups, the question of input power. As Jed has mentioned, in some gas phase systems you can simply expose the active material to ambient, unheated hydrogen and you'll see an effect -- these are the zeolite experiments, I think. I kind of like Nick Reiter's approach, here. He's getting around the difficulty of working with pressurized hydrogen by using a KH slurry that releases hydrogen. One unknown here is what happens to the potassium, since it will transition to argon under proton capture. I believe he is heating his setup. Nothing I say here should discourage you from using electrolysis or otherwise affect how you do your experiment! I'm part of the peanut gallery. Eric
