At 01:50 PM 9/11/2009, you wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I do have a serious question about sealed vs. open. If we aren't
worried about calorimetry, we could recombine very simply to keep
the pressure down. Sealed is nice for lots of reasons, including
possible helium analysis later. Sealed is a factory cell, ready to
go, just add current and see what happens.
If you are not worried about calorimetry why would you close the
cell? I don't get it. I believe Boss's cells are all open. Closing a
cell is a pain in the butt because the recombiner pollutes the cell
and can stop working for various reasons.
Closed cells have some obvious problems. Open cells have different problems.
Refilling the heavy water is something we don't want the experimenter
doing, in the basic idiot-proof configuration. However, I don't see
any sign that the Galileo experimenters had to refill their cells.
Broadly speaking there are simple closed cells, and tightly closed
precision-made cells. Only the latter can be used in helium studies.
Mass-produced closed cells may be possible. Safety relief is easy.
A simple closed cell might be a Pyrex cell with a tight fitting lid
(like a cork). It might have an emergency valve consisting of two
holes in the lid, with a plastic drinking straw bent into a U shape
with both ends in the holes. If the recombiner fails and pressure
builds up, the straw pops out. I saw this configuration at Texas A&M
and also Hokkaido U., which is probably not a coincidence come to
think of it. This is very safe.
A really tightly closed cell suitable for a helium study is the sort
of thing they used at China Lake and SRI. It is precision made of
stainless steel with Swagelok connectors and lots of expensive stuff
to keep air out and to send a small sample of gas from the cell into
a specially made flask, or directly into a mass spectrometer.
If we use a plastic closed cell, with pressure relief, and with
samples from controls, if there is enough helium generated, we could
still come up with significant results, even if there is helium
leakage. That's the issue, how much helium? The cells with helium
results rising above ambient were probably higher-output cells than
we will see in these codep experiments. (Jed, you described a kludged
pressure relief. Did the kludge make the results less believable?
Poke.... :-) "Proof" experiments will be better with tightly sealed
or protected containers, as described, but, remember, these are
demonstrations that should produce significant results, but not
necessarily "proof." Remember, as well, the critics dismissed those
beautiful Miles cells and the results as not significant because they
were below ambient, even though the excess heat correlation blows the
contamination argument out of the water.
In our case we might be correlating with rhip pitting or some other
measure that should be independent of the helium.
Note that the China Lake cells were open in the electrochemical
sense. They had no recombiners, and effluent gas left the cell in a
steady stream. However, the cell was rigorously closed off from the
atmosphere, with a bubbler, Swagelok connectors and other means. The
configuration is shown here:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJintroducti.pdf
Miles showed me one of the collection flasks, but he would not allow
me to touch it because the oil from a fingerprint might contaminate
the results. He knew how to hold the thing, and he packed it away
carefully in airtight plastic.
bubblers wouldn't be expensive. Really, I'm more concerned about
helium escaping than I am about it leaking in. The helium issue,
though, may be down the road.