See inline below ... On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:53 AM, Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote:
> *From:* Bob Higgins > > Ø I think the heater is a heater; and Kanthal as the heater wire > has nothing to do with it. We now believe that Rossi may have used a SiC > heater element and that also has no Ni. > > The SiC is nonsense. You have no basis for the belief that kanthal has > nothing to do with it, and in fact the evidence may now indicate that > kanthal is the major problem. > > To the extent that SPP is an important factor, then nickel contact with > hydrogen in the presence of SPP could be the critical factor. > Jones, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I think you are wrong. The only possibility for the wire to be involved would mean that there is proton conduction through the alumina tube and that somehow any conducted H doesn't all combine with the readily available oxygen existing at the wire. At that temperature, the wire and the silicates in the alumina cement are constantly releasing oxygen and then chemically re-combining with it in a cycle. The small amount of conducted H2 would instantly burn before it could provide any useful LENR effects at the wire. >From Bob Grenyer's excellent research in heater technologies for the market that Rossi is trying to serve with his hotCat, and from the sequencing of the power carefully in the heat-up portion of the cycle in the Lugano test, and from the temperatures that the hotCat operated at in the Lugano test, either moly silicide or SiC were the likely heating elements being used. Nichrome is too low temperature. Inconel is too low temperature as a heating element but could have been part of the heater leads. Rossi stated a negative temperature coefficient for the heater and it fits with the other evidence for the heater type (neither nichrome or inconel have significant resistance variation with temperature). Where is your evidence that Rossi used a nickel alloy heater wire? Ø I also don't believe that the H2 just comes out through the 99.8% > high purity alumina reactor tube. > > Then you are mistaken. The purity is immaterial – the porosity is > everything. Of course, if MFMP used a fused tube then that is another > design flaw. > The tube MFMP used is a high purity, high (near theoretical) density alumina tube. Alumina is polycrystalline sapphire. Sapphire is not a proton conductor, so the sapphire crystallites don't conduct. Proton conduction in alumina comes via the grain boundaries and the glassy impurities found in the grain boundaries, usually silicates. So the tube MFMP used would have the smallest proton conduction of any available alumina - save sapphire. Parkhomov used an alumina tube of unspecified purity. Parkhomov believed that the reaction was taking place inside the tube, not at the heater. This is somewhat supported in his experiment by the fact that LENR continued in self-sustaining mode for 8 minutes after the heater had burned out. During that time, the conditions at the wire changed significantly, yet the LENR persisted. Even a "high alumina" cement coating that is used to coat over the heater coil is only about 85% alumina and the rest is various other metal oxide glasses depending on the manufacturer's formulation. The result is not dense and will breathe air at a non-negligible rate providing O2 at the wire. Ø The tubes MFMP bought were formed with one end closed, so a seal > was needed only on one end. > > That was a good choice, but the evidence now, based on a history of Ni-H > reactions going back to Thermacore in 1993 - is that high nickel content > is required. > The fuel is 90% Ni according to the Parkhomov experiment. That was also the ratio in the fuel for the MFMP initial test. Bob, you are to be greatly commended for a great effort here but please do > not let your ego get in the way, if you are the one who made the choice > for kanthal. > It is not an ego thing, my ego is not in the way. With the technology developed for making the dogbones, there is nothing to prevent Ryan from winding one with nichrome wire and one with inconel. At this point, none of the MFMP contributors believe that the wire type is a factor in success or failure. If we are unsuccessful in replication, having determined that we don't have a leak, we could still try changing the wire; it is just not in the current priority based on the group opinion. Everything we know about this type of reaction indicates that nickel is > active – and the sub-gram of nickel inside is simply insufficient for > proper reactivity. > This is an unsupported supposition on your part. I agree that 0.9g of Ni sounds like a small amount, but if it were 9g of Ni, that would be only 1 order of magnitude different power density (and you wouldn't be making that argument if it were 9g) and the variation that is seen in Ni-H LENR power density reports varies by many orders of magnitude. I am not ready to believe that the 0.9g is too little nickel. What puzzles me the most is why such a small amount of nickel is not completely vaporized by an emission of that much heat. Again, this suggests the possibility that the LENR output is low energy photons, which like a microwave oven, could heat the surroundings more than the source. Jones > >
