I have " ...attempted to estimate how fast the filament will heat up".
From the description on JLN's web page, I estimate the filament has a
mass of about 1.2g, and would require about 200 Joules to heat from an
average temperature of ~700K to the "operating" temperature of 2000K.
The input during the short pulses is much less than this. I posted this
calculation to JLN about 10 days back, but have no reply as yet.
Mike Carrell wrote:
This is getting most interesting. Moller threads together some ideas derived
[perhaps not correctly] from Langmuir and builds a cell. Naudin runs tests
on the cell and finds interesting apparently OU heat anomalies. The cell is
an ideal black box and we don't get to peek inside to see what is going on,
or to test our speculations about what is going on.
Also, reading Moller's notes and speculations are one thing, reading the
Langmuir paper is another, and Naudin's tests are still another thing, all
loosely connected. It can be difficult to keep track of the pea under the
moving shells.
So far there are several candidates, to wit:
1) Dissociation-recombination, loosely related to the performance of plasma
torches.
2) ZPE as the primary energy source for 1)
3) LENR reactions based on creation of a nuclear reactive sites on the
filament
4) BLP reactions based on autocatalysis of H as in 2H+H, production of
hydrinos, and further catalysis cascades
Peter Gluck has made calculations of the total Wh of energy realized from
the charge of H with BLP reactions, which are less than claimed by some of
Naudin's runs. However, Peter's calculations were first based on H(1/2) as
the end product, whereas H(1/11), even H(1/16) have been seen in BLP
spectra. In none of these cases was the gas as dense as MAHG, nor were the
BLP observations for closed cells. So we may safely speculate that with
hydrogen only, in a closed cell, a very large amount of energy could be
released by BLP reactions already observed and reported.
Yes, these reactions could go to completion, as Peter and Jones have
observed, but none of Naudin's runs have gone on long enough to test this.
Two hours just isn't enough.
Nor are two hours enough to rule out LENR reactions,. which are more
energetic than BLP reactions on a per-atom basis. Ed's conjecture assumes
the existence of an electrically accelerated plasma.
Moller's notes discuss the establishment of a plasma with the shell as anode
and the tungsten wire cage as cathode. However, the Naudin experimental
setups show no trace of a high voltage supply, only low voltage pulses to
the filament from half-wave-rectified 50 Hz or a 12 V battery through a
semiconductor switch.
BLP has reported intense plasmas from cells using tungsten heaters to
dissociate H with the presence K+ ions from dissociated catalysts; these
experiments did not show the 2H+H reaction discussed by Phillips in later
papers. I am not aware of any BLP paper testing the MAHG conditions. Mills'
work has been distant in 'parameter space', but the atomic reactions have
been shown. Tungsten at the cited temperatures is a rich electron emitter.
Naudin's flow calorimetry is in the right direction, but the energy
calculations are based on quite small temperature differentials across the
cell. Naudin makes no statement or claim for the accuracy of the temperature
differential. His tests for "efficiency" show a large spread for different
runs. Thus none of his data are reliable enough, or runs long enough, to
test either the LENR or BLP conjectures above.
The most recent tests have been with a slower coolant flow and higher delta
T, which is good. He has also plotted the delta T with time. The system has
significant thermal mass and thermal delays, so when the temperature-time
plots show many irregularities, as they do, they point to very large
fluctuations going on inside the cell.
The Langmuir 1912 paper is based on the observations of the conduction of
heat away from heated tungsten wires in various gases. This general subject
is of interest in designing incandescent lamps, whose life is extended by
inhibiting evaporation of the tungsten wire by a gas fill, but that fill may
also cool the wire by conduction, requiring more power to reach
incandescence. Above a certain temperature, the conduction of hydrogen
increases very rapidly, and Langmuir investigated. Langmuir attributes the
increased energy loss to dissociation of the hydrogen at or near the
filament surface, convection/conduction away from the surface, and
recombination at some greater distance. He lays out a mathematical
derivation of the rate of dissociation as a function of temperature, which
is plotted in Moller's paper on Langmuir.
According to the Langmuir equations, the dissociation rate in the vicinity
of 1-2000K is very low, yet the heater in the BLP plasma cells operates in
this range. It should be noted that the BLP thermally driven cell is
intended only to show the catalysis plasma and was built using available
laboratory 'quartzware' as much as possible. Langmuir's calculation does not
take into account any catalytic properties of the hot tungsten surface
itself, which may have a profound effect on the actual behavior.
Naudin shows an increase in efficiency with decreasing drive pulse width. I
haven't attempted to estimate how fast the filament will heat up, but it
could reach a useful temperature very quickly. So you get a burst of
dissociation of H2 molecules at or near the filament surface. The
dissociation event is effectively instant, and the dissociated atoms move
away. Langmuir poses the question of ionization of the dissociated H atoms,
and comes down firmly on the side of no ionization, no plasma. [the BLP
plasmas come from different reactions altogether].
Thus there is no merit in investing heating energy beyond a certain point.
*IF* recombination yields *excess* energy, then it can occur at the
tungsten surface between heating pulses. If this is true, then increasing
the repetition rate of short pulses should show changes in the thermal
performance of the cell. So far, Naudin has not made such tests to my
knowledge.
The heat pulses could also launch cascades of BLP H/hydrino catalysis
reactions.
Such are my thoughts to date.
Mike Carrell
