I would like to suggest and experimental modification as follows: Instead of using an internal sheath heater, generate heat by applying a high frequency square wave alternating current directly to the nickel mesh.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 6:15 PM Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: > > >> A molten salt coolant in a flow calorimeter with an inlet temperature of >> e.g. >> 300 C and an outlet temperature of 300+ C, would allow both accurate >> measurement >> and high power operation concurrently. The whole should be well insulated >> to >> ensure low losses. >> > > That would hold the entire cell at a high temperature, both inside and > outside. I have a feeling the reaction wants to see temperature gradients. > It wants to see heat flowing through the top mesh, to the next, to the next > and out the stainless steel wall. I don't know why, and I do not have > rigorous proof of that, but that's what the data seems to indicate. > > Mizuno probably has a stronger grasp of this. There are a zillion details > he knows that I do not. He also has quite a lot of conventional material > science theory that explains why low loading probably works better. This > started off as a 23-page paper that would have ended up 50 pages if we had > put in everything interesting. For the last several weeks I have been > ruthlessly cutting out everything that does not directly tell the reader: > "How To Do This, Hands-on." Focus, focus, focus. > > We can always write another paper. > > > >> Such an arrangement would not only allow for accurate measurement, it >> would also >> constitute a prototype power reactor. >> > > I don't think we will have any trouble making this into a power reactor! > It gets hot in a hurry. We have estimates of the amount of Ni that was > activated, and projections of how high the power will go when more of it is > activated. We are far below the limit. I am sure of that. The question is: > can it be controlled at high heat, with a high output to input ratio? I > sure hope so. But I sure hope Mizuno does not try to test that himself in > the lab. Because the place is a dump, and a fire trap, and severely damaged > by the earthquake. His SEM and other instruments were never fixed. The > GoFundMe kept him in business, but just barely. I hate to think of him by > himself doing high temperature experiments in such dangerous conditions. I > am hoping that other people replicate and then run with this. Frankly, I am > hoping thousands of people replicate. > > I hope many people try to replicate, because based on my experience, most > who try to replicate will screw up. Typically, you find out years later > they did their own version which was nothing like the original. I am just > making up a pretend example here . . . but the paper says keep the pressure > between 100 and 300 Pa. Some know-it-all guy will say: "This is gas > loading, so we need high pressure. Make it 30 atm!" Which is 3 million Pa. > It won't work. He'll tell the world, "This is a fraud! It doesn't work" but > he won't reveal any details of his experiment, so we will never find out he > got a critical parameter wrong by a factor of 10,000. > > I can *feel* that happening! Right now! Some nitwit out there is getting > ready to do this wrong, despite weeks and weeks of our efforts to provide > clear instructions. So I hope enough people do it according to the > instructions that some of them will succeed. But you never know. > > One person did it already, and it seems to work. > > - Jed > >
