Following on to this line of thought ... Given the temperatures that the reactor had been operating in actual operation, many of the constituents of the fuel powder would have either melted, vaporized, or sintered to the inside of the reactor core vessel. Thus, when removing the ash for test, the components that emerged may be completely unrepresentative of the active components which may have remained firmly attached to the inside of the reactor vessel. Perhaps only more benign and refractory components could have been extracted after the experiment. Thus, the analysis of this ash material should not necessarily be directly compared with the powder input at the beginning of the experiment as a before and after reaction analysis.
Given this, the question arises, did the starting powder that was supplied by Rossi as "about 1 g" actually represent the active powder of the reaction? If the reactor had been used before, its ceramic core may not have been virgin. There could remain remnants, perhaps intentionally active remnants, sintered to the inside of the reaction tube. In which case, Rossi may have supplied only the consumables - perhaps mostly hydride. This would make analysis of the input powder of less value because it is not the whole fuel for his reaction. My question is, "Had the reactor used in this experiment ever been used by anyone for an active LENR test prior to the test conducted by your group? Conversely, was the reactor virgin in the respect of having never before been used for a LENR reaction?" Of course, this will still not entirely answer the question of whether the input powder was actually representative of the entire active LENR material. It could be that the active Ni portion had already been sintered onto the inside of the reactor vessel as part of preparing the apparatus. Then Rossi would only have added the consumable portion at the beginning of the experiment. Even if this active material had been sintered onto the inside of the reactor, it would not have been active in the dummy experiment without the consumable portion having been added. I can imagine Rossi essentially thick film coating his active Ni powder onto the inside of the central alumina tube as part of creating the reactor. Perhaps this would also include an alpha alumina washcoat that would render the alumina impermeable to hydrogen. Bob Higgins On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Bob Higgins <rj.bob.higg...@gmail.com> wrote: > In a recent email, Ed Storms observed that the sample of the Lugano ash > that was tested was probably not at all representative of the material that > was active in the reactor core. At the temperatures measured, many of the > materials would have melted (or vaporized), and those that did not melt > were sintered; probably sintering themselves to the walls of the inner > alumina shell. Because of this, anything that could have emerged as a > powder after the test when the vessel was opened would not be a > representative sample of the true active ash which would have remained > inside firmly attached to the walls of the reactor vessel. What was tested > as ash is likely inert or random left-over inert slag in the reactor. > > Bob Higgins > > On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Robert Ellefson <vortex-h...@e2ke.com> > wrote: > >> Recall that the bulk results show 57% Li-6 enrichment, vs. 92% surface >> enrichment. I believe the higher fraction of Li-6 on the surface is the >> result of starvation of the reaction cycle resulting in an excess of Li-6 >> as >> compared to the steady-state balance during operation, which is reflected >> in >> the bulk composition. >> >> Read these messages for further details: >> http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98020.html (msg has >> an >> error, should read ni62, not ni68) >> http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98350.html >> http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98422.html >> >> -Bob >> >>
