On Oct 4, 2009, at 7:37 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 09:11 PM 10/3/2009, Horace Heffner wrote:
What has been lacking is testing a (3rd particle) seeding concept as
an augmentation to a protocol that has already been shown to work for
CF fairly reliably, such as SPAWAR's codeposition methods.
Making this easy is part of what I'm trying to do. The Galileo
project documentation suggested this:
The minimum materials cost for this experiment is about $700
Expect that the initial setup of the experiment may take 15 to 30
hours. Add another 16 hours if you are going to use IC-based power
supply/limiters instead of a potentiostat.
Although the experiment can be done "on the (relative) cheap", it
can not be done "quick and dirty." Although minimal researcher
time is necessary during operation, the researcher must dedicate
enough time during the setup phase.
It is not the objective of Phase-1 to test the boundaries of the
parameter space, such explorations are for future phases.
From my examination of the actual materials, the cost for two cells
(one experimental, one control) would be way below $700, but part
of that might have to do with minimum purchase requirements and the
extra per-unit expense involved in buying in very small quantities.
I'm finding that some of the prices have risen substantially in the
two years or so since Galileo, but, still, I believe I'm looking at
well under $100 as a per-cell cost, including mark-up necessary to
make the operation self-supporting.
Supporting this is not my aim. I did not join your list. In fact, I
may mount a competing operation at some point if a good experiment
emerges. I suggested a similar effort about a year ago on another
list, with the difference being that I suggested a non-profit effort
aimed at classrooms. I think such an effort should be non-profit,
providing kits to classrooms at cost or less.
Once standard cells are available, with a standard protocol, there
is a baseline to work with, and "exploration" of the "parameter
space" should become much easier. Some of this exploration is
likely to further reduce the cell cost. For example, how much of an
effect would be seen from the usage of 99% D2O instead of 99.9%?
98%? The price goes down. Easy to test, and, in fact, one mice
little piece of work would be a study of the effect of D2O
percentage on measured effects. Taking it all the way down to
deuterium-depleted water. What other options are available for the
base electrodes? We can use gold for the cathode. What about gold
plated silver, say? Or platinum plated? What about the anode? It
seems a shame to spend so much for pure platinum wire if something
else will function as well!
I'm interested in recombination for a different reason than many of
the experimenters, who want to recombine for calorimetric issues. I
want to recombine because heavy water is expensive. I'm looking at
toy fuel cells, there is one on the market, retailing, the whole
kit, including a little car that operates from the generated power,
for $100, and a fuel cell would have the nice advantage of easily
instrumenting the recombination rate (current generated!).
The cheaper the cells, the easier it is to run many cells and thus
to explore the effects of even very small changes to parameters.
Such as the percentage of tritium in the D2O.
I have no interest in spending time on this kind of thing when the
basic science to pull this off cheaply and *convincingly* in a
classroom setting is not there yet. I would prefer to focus on the
fundamentals if I spend time on CF. However, I have a lot more on my
plate than CF. If I should find a way to do this my first step would
be to publish free instructions with suppliers for all parts listed.
No kit necessary. The next step would be to form a non-profit
corporation to distribute kits for educational institutions at cost
or less.
I think one of the most useful experimental techniques, not so much
for generating energy, but for diagnostic purposes, might be light
tritium doping.
Right. It might either reveal something or identify a blind alley.
Yes. It can tell, on a nearly instantaneous basis, the amount of
actual hydrogen fusion occurring, provided that fusion is principally
of the kind where a hydrogen nucleus tunnels to one of greater or
equal mass - which it should be in the majority of cases. It can
also tell much about the kinetics of the tritium reactions, providing
insights into the mechanism by which the Coulomb barrier is breached.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
