It will be interesting to see how well the stainless steel holds up. I tried a stainless steel spoon as an electrode and it worked fairly well but eventually began to rust. Perhaps the quality of steel makes a difference.
I have spend most of the last two days calibrating my system and testing a control nickel. A function has been obtained that charts the power input as a function of the electrolyte bath temperature increase. If you take the difference in temperature between the bath at power and ambient and use the following relationship, you arrive at the nominal power inputted to my system. This assumes that there is no excess power and that is pretty well proven with a new nickel. The formula is Power = .0181*Delta Temp*Delta Temp + .4204*Delta Temp. This is a second order relationship which includes the point 0,0 by definition. My electrolysis bath measures 9.8425 cm by 15.875 cm with a depth of approximately 1/2 the diameter of a nickel. The area is 156.25 square cm. The bottom and all four sides are insulated by Styrofoam while the top is open to the air. My main test region is centered upon a power input of 20 watts with 2 amps of current. I performed a quick calculation of the radiation losses and it is apparent that most of the heat is escaping elsewhere. At the moment I am torn between wanting to treat my copper colored heat treated nickel with acid or continuing to look for excess heat before that step. I will make that decision tomorrow. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jack Cole <jcol...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Sun, Oct 14, 2012 5:22 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:New Experiment Started Better results today, but still under-unity. I replaced the anode with 4 stainless steel washers soldered directly to the wire. Starting temp of the surrounding bath was 69.4F and last measure was 85.2F (for 1 gallon of water + 5 oz in the electrolytic cell). Average ambient temp 70.2F. Average input voltage is 12.1 and current is .69. Average COP .66 (low=.52 high=.80). Of course there is energy loss with power going into the electrolysis, which has not been included in the calculations. I'll keep it running and see how hot it can get or if anything changes. Jack On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 6:20 AM, Jack Cole <jcol...@gmail.com> wrote: After running all night with my new setup, I observe no excess heat. The current dropped throughout the run. The COP values start at .43 and trail off to .12 at the end. Back to the drawing board. Thanks for your write-up Jeff. I have definitely seen significant heating in my experiments using a higher current level than you are using, but does not approach unity based on my last experiment. On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 11:33 PM, Jeff Berkowitz <pdx...@gmail.com> wrote: A couple of us tried electrolysis with nickels in Borax today. No excess heat was observed. There are details here: http://pdxlenr.blogspot.com/2012/10/no-heating-observed-while-electrolyzing.html Jeff On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Axil Axil <janap...@gmail.com> wrote: You might try to erode the copper extrusions that erupt from the center of the coin. These copper eruptions have been produced by repeated heating. Remove this copper by etching the heat treated nickel in acid. This etching should produce the micro holes that we are interested in. Cheers: Axil On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 10:54 PM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: Hi Jack, I am likewise interested in your results. The circulation pump might be an idea that I should incorporate since I am very carefully placing my temperature probe at the same location for readings. On occasions I get data that seems out of place by a couple of degrees C which might be due to the lack of mixing. Most of the time my data falls within a degree of the trend line using Excel. Today, I can definitely tell that I am not getting excess heat from my heat treated nickel. I substitute a fresh one as a control with the same current and placement. Today, the data from both samples are very close together within 1 watt out of 20 watts of heating. In my control run, the untreated nickel actually displays the slightly higher reading. My experimental setup consists of a medium sized salad container from Kroger food market surrounded by Styrofoam bottom and walls with the top open. The electrolyte is maintained at approximately one half the height of my sample nickels. I use small alligator clips and leads to connect to the supply which is a laboratory quality one that can output up to 60 volts DC if required. The sodium carbonate electrolyte typically allows me to drive 2 amps of current into the device with a voltage drop of 10 to 11 volts. My electrolyte bath is operating at 45 C at that current level. I generally make a calibration run by varying the current from 1 amp to 2.5 amps and accurately measuring the supply voltage. This gives me a range of temperatures versus power input points that form a curve. I can detect whether or not a point is out of line fairly easily by its deviation from the curve. When the calibration is acting up, I make several additional test runs of an hour each to determine the most likely value. I allow the setup to run for approximately 1 hour for each point to ensure that the system has stabilized. My plans are to continue to test the heat treated sample for a number of additional hours before I try an alternate technique to modify the surface of this nickel or others. One interesting observation is that my torched and quenched nickel now looks very much like a copper penny in appearance. The surface coloration can not be wiped off with vigorous rubbing of a paper towel. The raised letters have a shiny copper look that does not exhibit any of the standard nickel shine. You would think that this is a large sized weathered penny by appearance although the normal nickel features are intact. As always, my test nickel is connected with leads to the negative terminal of the supply. A second nickel acts as my positive supply electrode. This is the configuration that should expose the test nickel to hydrogen by electrolysis. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jack Cole <jcol...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Sat, Oct 13, 2012 8:52 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:New Experiment Started Hi Dave, I will be interested to know your results. This evening, I started an experiment using my repeatedly-treated nickels (8) on a small thoriated tungsten rod. I'm using a penny connected to a chrome plated alligator clip for my anode (+). My last few runs seemed to show excess heat, but like you, I'm hesitant to make that claim without better measures and further experimenting. I was estimating heat loss by taking heat measurements of the bath after removing the electrodes to get the rate that the temperature of the bath was dropping. My current setup involves submerging the electrolytic cell in 1 gallon of water in a styrofoam minnow bucket. I have another 1 gallon of water in an identical minnow bucket to test temperature changes due to heat loss/gain from the environment. I will be taking measurements of voltage, current, temp of the water bath surrounding the electrolytic cell, and control cell for the next couple of hours. Tomorrow, I'll run all day and see what it can do over a longer period. I'm using borax for the electrolyte, and tracking the data in excel. The nickels have been treated at low current for 3 days as the cathode (after repeated heating with a torch and multiple prior experiments with the same set of nickels/tungsten). Monday, I should have a small submersible pump that I'll try in future experiments to keep the water surrounding the cell circulating. Jack On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 8:02 PM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote: I have completed my electrolysis experiment using a standard issue nickel with a second one at the positive electrode. My electrolyte is sodium carbonate (Arm & Hammer washing soda) which does not foul up the positive electrode as much as borax. For a short time it looked as though I was observing excess heat after my test nickel had been loaded with hydrogen for 40 plus hours. I performed a control and calibration run which seemed to indicate that I could not prove any excess heating. My test fixture does not appear to be capable of precise temperature measurement since it does not have a good stirring process and the control of the electrolyte level is difficult to maintain. A positive result would be too important of a determination for me to announce without better proof. For these reasons I decided to try another experiment. First, I took the 40 plus hour nickel and heated it to red heat with a gas torch. The nickel rapidly cooled off once the torch was removed so it was apparent that a lot of excess heat was not being generated as a result of elevated temperature. No flames appeared that could suggest that hydrogen was being released so I decided to begin another procedure. I took the test nickel and heated it to a red hot state and immediately dropped it into a water bath. This was repeated a total of 5 times in an effort to generate surface cracks due to the stress of rapid cooling. The main observation I noticed was that an oxide had formed upon the surface which could not be removed by wiping. One side seemed to have a thick brown oxide while the other exhibited less. I am not able to test for the actual materials present, but that does not prevent me from proceeded with my electrolysis of the nickel. The heat treated nickel is now undergoing electrolysis along with one that is not so treated acting as the positive supply electrode. My first observations are that the brown oxide deposits have flaked off to a degree, but not completely. This material is floating upon the bath and I also found that the resistance associated with this coating does not appear too large to prevent me from driving the current to 1 or 2 amps as desired. I was surprised that it did not exhibit much if any additional resistance as compared to the original sample. I did note that green flakes of material have shown up in the electrolyte that I have not seen before when using sodium carbonate. This is an interesting consequence of the heat treating as far as can be determined. The experiment has now been running for around 6 hours and the bath temperature has been recorded as well as the input power applied at several times. I have been registering the results within an Excel file and chart in an effort to reveal anything of interest. I have collected a fair amount of data associated with the other experimental procedure using a untreated set of nickels that is also charted. I will continue to run the experiment looking for any unusual behavior or heating. Dave
