You performed some interesting experiments Chuck. I am always amazed at what can be done with minimum equipment when someone is curious and inventive. You seem to have run into a lot of the issues that I am facing, but that is the way to learn.
The P&F effect leaves me asking similar questions. Why the long time period before LENR is demonstrated; I hope it is not just to discourage researchers. Anyhow, when Celani found that a wire with a large proportion of copper to nickel demonstrated LENR activity, then the US nickel became a natural substitute. Who would have guessed that anyone within the government was thinking that far ahead? :-) Last evening my pencil lead carbon electrode tip took a turn for the worse. For some reason it either burned up under cover of the electrolyte or reacted with released oxygen to disappear. I initially assumed that the table was jarred and caused it to break off so I moved the connection further to expose new carbon. This arrangement seemed to work for a long time so I let it continue to operate. A bit later, the tip was gone again and I started to wonder why. The lead was fed further and the burn out came quicker until it was time to quit for the evening. Today, I put a new pencil lead into position, added additional water to the electrolyte and also increased the amount of sodium carbonate to the solution until some of the crystals were left un dissolved. My operational theory is that the electrolysis depleted the solution and left a reactive mix that eats carbon. The new addition of material should eliminate this behavior if my theory is correct and the experiment is in progress. Does anyone have actual knowledge of the situation? Chuck your discussion of the surface pressure is quite interesting and I am hoping that it will cause the copper-nickel alloy to develop surface cracks that might behave as NAE after enough time has elapsed. Thus far the nickel surface appears shiny and smooth to the "nuked" (naked) eyes. I am not aware of the appearance of a metallic surface which has nano sized blemishes. I am using a laboratory quality power supply for my experiments. Many years ago I used one of these exact supplies to design radio components and bought it at auction when the company where I once worked decided to eliminate excess old equipment. It has short circuit current setting ability as well as open circuit voltage adjustment so I have excellent control over the current being drawn by my experiment. You could have used something such as this when you were destroying materials and transformers. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Sites <cbsit...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Mon, Sep 24, 2012 4:37 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Good Alloy for Celani type reaction costs 5 cents : Chuck Sites Yeah, and remember I was trying to achieve Boron-Hydrogen fusion. At the beginning of the P&F announcement, Pons' and Flieshman suggested that the electrolysis over potential could induce pressures at the surface of the metal that are literally astronomical. I don't recall exactly, but it was huge! 10-23 PSI? Something like that. That was the track I followed theory wise to design this experiment. You know, at the atomic level, that scale of pressure is typical, so what if? So question one; does that over potential exist on the cathode only, or does it exist on both? Cathode vs anode is one of the most confusing terminologies I've run into. Cathode should be negative, anode should be positive. However, the direction of flow for electrons is weird. At the time, no one knew if it was a surface effect or a deep metal effect. Based on the period of time for the P&F effect (quite questionable effect) to come on, the Pd+D sounded like it was a deep metal effect. But their discusion suggested over potentials at the surface. If it was surface, then a B11 + p fusion (pB11) might be possible. At the time surface vs volume effect was a huge debate. So being the curious and cheap college student I was, this is the end result. I did tried a lot of common metals and combinations, Al, stainless steel, zinc, all stunk, and borax corroded the alligator clips (eventually). Copper wire did OK, but would break down and color the electrolyte (co-deposition is possible there, but the Ni, never changed color from the copper deposits). Ni was awesome. I eventually settled on graphite from a pencil. although a hobby shop would have been better. Just carefully shave off the wood with a razor or exacto knife. I selected graphite for several reasons, but mainly I didn't wan't it participating in reaction. It should be inert for most of the chemistry that was happening. It also has some resistance so it acts kind of like a current limiter ( I had burned up a DC transformer with a copper electrode ). The effect is very robust (which is what CF needed from the beginning). It is fascinating and the physics behind it is not trivial! Best Regards, Chuck On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com> wrote: At 08:29 PM 9/23/2012, Eric Walker wrote: On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 6:00 PM, David Roberson <<mailto:dlrober...@aol.com>dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: 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. I'm enjoying the crazy tabletop experiment a little more than I should. Let's see -- a nickel coin, pencil lead, borax ...  Maybe you can work out and document a simple protocol for others, and then do large run of the experiments, and, using statistical analysis, show that there's a significant difference in the integrated temperature series in the cell with the nickel versus the cell with the pencil lead.  Just for fun, you could use a simple mercury thermometer rather than something fancy; there would be no end to the amusement if LENR could be convincingly established using stuff that can be found in one's home. Sure. It's not very likely, though. Still, trying stuff is fun, and you never can tell what you will find. Be careful. You are evolving hydrogen, which is, of course, flammable. I don't think that nickel loads much hydrogen, but I do suggest treating it as flammable. So if you heat it, be prepared for it to start to burn furiously. That would definitely happen with palladium.
