Jones, SiC is a brittle super-hard ceramic and I don't believe Penon could have mistaken a SiC carbide tube for stainless - and he specifically says it is painted stainless. Paint is easy to detect - you just scratch it. SiC would not have scratched. I think Penon is correct about the tubes in the devices of his report being painted stainless. The stainless could have been painted black for better thermal emissivity and/or to prevent corrosion at high temperatures.
Yes, I have pointed out to Rossi that stainless leaks hydrogen rapidly above 600C, but at 400C, the H2 loss is much less. Stainless is cold weld-able at the ends and SiC is not - making a SiC end seal problematic for high temperature operation. The concentric SiC tube end seals would need some kind of intervening metal to seal SiC to SiC. Hydrides have a saturated pressure at high temperature of about 30 atmospheres, and I don't know how well a ceramic tube would hold up with tubes as large as shown in the Penon report and at that pressure (30 Atm). While SiC is extremely hard in compression, it is subject to fracture like any ceramic in shear and would be dangerous as the outer pressure tube. SiC would be difficult to machine to make a space for the active ingredients in the concentric tube. SS would be easy. If the active powder and hydride are not inside the concentric, cold welded stainless tubes, where are they? In the original hotCat, the tube is straight through, not plugged. There would be no other place for the powders and evolved hydrogen in the original hotCat like the one Penon disassembled. That doesn't mean Rossi doesn't use SiC in some of his devices, only there is no evidence for it the Penon report or in what I have seen exposed to the public. Note that the mean free path of atomic H is very short at a pressure of 30 atmospheres (re-forming H2 with a MFP of microns). Normally the stainless would have to catalytically split the H2 at its surface to conduct the neutral H through its grain boundaries. At higher temperatures, this is more effective. By coating the inner surface (between the concentric tubes) with a film that doesn't catalytically split the H2 at the stainless surface, the permeation of the stainless would be much less. Tom Claytor suggested that a thin gold film would be effective for this. I believe that the active LENR mechanism may well be what Dr. Storms describes. Reports of macro-scale micro-explosions and even macro meltdowns (which Rossi describes) are evidence that the output energy from the LENR reaction is photonic which would be absorbed at a distance from the NAE. Low energy gamma would be absorbed outside of the nanoscale NAE, allowing the NAE to keep producing output even as the macro temperature climbed. If the output was phonons, the NAE would be at the highest temperature and the temperature would fall off the farther you got away from the NAE - the NAE would burn itself out at the nanoscale before elevating the macro-scale temperature to melting. I believe the NAE LENR output is low energy photons in the 1-20keV range which gets thermalized in the surrounding powder and the stainless in a thick vessel like in the Penon report. I am setting up to detect this emission in my own experiments by using a small diameter reaction vessel so that the walls can be thin enough to let a reasonable fraction of this low energy gamma escape to be measured while supporting an operating pressure of up to 30 atmospheres. I have made my own powder and will be using H2 instead of hydride for better control in a lab device, as Rossi originally did. Bob On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote: > Bob, all. > > I realize that there are many opinions on how the HotCat operates, and some > of them are dramatically different for others. > > We have discussed this several times but few observers have been convinced > that any of the alternative views are accurate - so there is no consensus > on > Vortex. > > In looking back over prior posts, the version of HotCat which seems most > likely to me is that there is a stainless capsule located inside the SiC > tube. That is the black tube shown in your image which is SiC and not > stainless. The active surface for the plasmon reaction is the inner > interface of the SiC with the stainless, which is a close fit. > > Hydrogen migrates outward from inside the SS capsule (mouse) to that > surface > interface, once it has attained a lower ground state. The purpose of the > mouse is to produce factional hydrogen - probably in the DDL (deep Dirac > level). Stainless steel cannot hold hydrogen in the reduced diameter and it > migrates through the tube as quickly as it forms. The DDL reaction does not > have to be gainful in its own right - and probably is not very robust. This > is the departure from Mills. The gain occurs when dense hydrogen clusters > in > the interfacial zone undergoes LENR - in that interfacial zone. > > IOW - the DDL (f/H or fractional hydrogen) which forms dense hydrogen > clusters in the interface zone between the stainless capsule and the SiC, > which are now to be labeled as plasmons or polaritons, can then be > stimulated by the monochromatic IR which is radiated from the tube. LENR > then occurs. We do not need to be specific about the kind of LENR now, but > for me it is RPF - reversible proton fusion. For others, it will be another > type of LENR possibly going to deuterium or tritium. > > That's my story and I'm sticking to it :-) > > If you want to continue this analysis - please counter with your own > understanding of the precise dynamics of the HotCat reaction, based on this > tube being painted stainless, and not SiC. > > Not that we will have any converts from this exercise, but it can be > helpful > to update our various understanding of the mechanism periodically based on > new information. > > Jones > > From: Jones Beene > > Hi Bob, > > I think we have had this discussion before. > > The tube seen in your picture from the Penon report is SiC > - > not stainless. > > There were a number of mislabeled pictures in the Penon > report - which was never authorized to be released. > > For one thing the black color is the important clue to the > type of tube. There would be absolutely no reason to paint a stainless tube > black since it is internal and must maintain tolerance, which paint would > ruin. The color is uniform with sharp edges and clearly not painted. > > There was even a description in Rossi's JoNP site about how > he and Focardi came to use this silicon carbide tube, based on a visit to > one of the Labs run by the Italian government. > > Not sure, but that page may still be there. > > > From: Bob Higgins > > I believe you have a misconception about > what the hotCat is. In the hotCat, both the metal hydride and Rossi's > magic > nickel powder are encased entirely in stainless steel. I am near 100% > certain he does this by using 2 concentric stainless tubes machined with an > interior space for his ingredients. Then ends of the stainless steel > tubing > are then cold welded together and the result looks like just a stainless > pipe that is empty. When he added the "Mouse", he then put something > (probably his original eCat recipe) inside the composite pipe and he > stoppered the ends closed. This can be clearly seen in the Penon report. > I > have diagrams of this, and I have put them in my public folder on my Google > drive at: > > > > https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5Pc25a4cOM2ZjRKUmZUZlRXNzA&usp=shar > ing > > Nowhere in this does the active LENR powder > components get exposed to SiC. The ceramic coil form wrapped around the > stainless pipe is just a resistor coil form like any wire-wound resistor > you > buy off the shelf. These outer things are only resistive heaters that are > outside the stainless pipe. > > Speculation about SiC being involved would > need separate evidence from what is inside the stainless assembly, because > any SiC potentially in the resistive heaters does not participate in the > LENR reaction as anything but a resistive heater. > > Bob > >
