On Aug 3, 2007, at 4:40 PM, Michel Jullian wrote:
Hi Horace,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Horace Heffner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 3:28 AM
On Aug 2, 2007, at 3:05 AM, Michel Jullian wrote:
1/ Fill the cell container e.g. a test tube made of the right
dielectric material (e.g. a clear plastic e.g. polycarbonate...
e.g. CR-39 !) with the electrolyte we will be using for normal
operation (that for PdD codeposition)
Some polycarbonate characteristics:
http://www.3d-cam.com/materials/polycarbonate.asp
Good resource, let me quote the most relevant data:
For direct electroplating:
"Electrical Resistivity 1E+14-1E+17 ohm-cm"
say 1E+17 ohm-cm = 1E+15 ohm-m (highest value = worst case)
For cathode electron density enhancement:
"Dielectric Constant 2.9-3.2"
say 3 (a typical value for plastics, 3 times that of vacuum or air)
"Dielectric Strength 399-1780 kV/in"
that's 15.7 to 70 kV/mm (quite good, 5 to 20 times that of air, the
test tube you mention below must be at least 1mm thick so it will
probably stand 25kV across its wall as projected)
So the maximum surface electron density on the cathode backside
will be 3x5=15 to 3*20=60 times that achievable by using air as a
dielectric, very nice.
Really good thermal properties, not so good on conductivity. I seem
to recall CETI had a process for plating plastic beads, by chemically
treating the surface first, but I don't know if that could be made to
work with polycarbonates.
I see Cole-Parmer sells some very nice polycarbonate test tubes at
$27.00 for a 10 pack.
http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/product_view.asp?sku=0632932
It seems an excellent choice indeed:
"Specifications:
Capacity (mL)15
Dimensions 16.1 mm OD x 114.3 mm H"
(cylinder of diameter 16.1mm and length 114.3-8=106.3mm terminated
by half sphere of diameter 16.1mm)
The above data should allow us to:
1/ Find external volume of test tube (cylinder+half sphere)
2/ Subtract capacity to find volume of polycarbonate
3/ Find area of outer surface of test tube (cylinder+half sphere)
4/ Deduce thickness t of polycarbonate (volume / area)
5/ Find electrical resistance of tube wall (from area, thickness
and resistivity see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistivity )
6/ Find leakage current at 25 kV (Ohm's law)
7/ Find how long it would take at this current to electroplate a
useful thickness say one micron of PdD (Faraday's law), if too long
some other way will have to be found.
The above are easy. I expect it will take some chemical processing
of the plastic. James Patterson sulfonated his plastic beads before
plating them chemically I think. If I recall the process was spelled
out in detail in one of his patents. Such treating will change the
insulating and dielectric characteristics though.
Also, I am not convinced there will not be charge neutralization at
the metal-plastic boundary. This can happen via formation of neutral
hydrogen. The expected high density charge on the metal side of the
dielectric can be neutralized by hydrogen desorbing and taking up the
excess electrons there. One of the problems with the Patterson beads
and follow-on bead versions was metal film separation. That will
only be made worse by a strong field and surface charge from the
dielectric.
8/ Find the average electron density in the cathode at 25kV
polarization (parallel plate capacitor equations)
Here it gets difficult. This is at minimum a multi-body Shrödinger
equation computation based on various assumptions about surface
loading and immediate subsurface loading. I don't know the
capability actually exists.
9/ Deduce the factor by which the device will enhance the natural
DD fusion rate in PdD (natural = that for an electron density equal
to the proton density)
10/ Deduce the resulting fusion power
This is never never land. Only experiment is a reasonable approach
to this.
How shall we proceed, you do the maths and I check them?
I'm not comfortable with the basic approach yet. I need time to
think but have many other things happening at the moment. This is
definitely very interesting though.
Are you thinking of doing an experiment? I definitely don't have the
resources here in my home to handle the chemicals involved. I also
have other unrelated experiments in the queue I am trying to get to.
I think more talking is the way to go for now. At least it is
inexpensive, and it might save a lot of time and money. I might be a
bit slow to respond though.
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
