Not sure what you mean by “full-blown calorimetry”, but I can tell you this (having been assisting Alan rather closely for the last several months).
Typically Alan would first characterize the GlowStick Cell by inserting a thermocouple dead center, on the active side with a dummy loaded fuel cartridge there, but in order to insert the thermocouple, the cell could not be sealed completely. Then a formal calibration would also be done after the experiment as well as before, and note any change. With this particular run (5.2), the cell had to be sealed to protect the fuel/charge and was done under Hydrogen Gas, so the previous calibration (with the center thermocouple data) had to be used as an estimation of the core temperature. A formal calibration was done without charge (dummy loads on each side) to a fairly high temperature. Then the dummy charge on the active side was removed and replaced with the fuel/charge for the actual run. The hope was to be able to remove the active fuel capsule after the run, replace it with a dummy loaded (Alumina Powder) cartridge/capsule, and perform a post calibration, but the active cartridge refused to exit once again, even with some elaborate tools Alan made to do it. We know that the calorimetry changes (it’s a moving target), but we had no dummy post calibration to check it against. Of course, a post calibration was done as best as possible with the active cartridge in there, with attempts made to kill any possible lingering reaction with Argon Gas... Alan can elaborate on this more if there are any further questions. - Mark Jurich From: Eric Walker Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 7:47 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:MFMP "crude calorimeter" I get the impression the Glowstick 5-2 test did not use full-blown calorimetry, and instead just used two thermocouples, one for the live tube and one for the blank. Eric
