Rossi cold fusion device appearing less and less like a scam....

[Jim Wilkins]

On 8/31/11 4:39 PM, Jim Wilkins wrote:

There's only one way to know for sure and, because I already had a solar
project that's also a good mesh with a small reactor, I ordered up a pound
(~0.45kg) of filamentary nickel powder (and have sent a couple ounces off
to a friend in Belgium so he can do independent testing on his own).
...
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
http://www.iedu.com/Solar/

The CCD array in a camera makes a good cheap detector for ionizing radiation
such as gamma rays. Neutrons are more difficult. Possibly a night-vision
scope would work, but I'm not about to inflame the suspicions of Homeland
Security by researching it further on line. I already can hear office-noise
crosstalk on the dialup phone line.

I think sewage treatment plants have Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometers to
measure trace metal contamination. Do-it-yourself wet chemical techniques
aren't that difficult but perhaps not sensitive enough. The type of lab
weighing scale you might find surplus resolves down to micrograms.

Thermocouples:
http://www.omega.com/temperature/tsc.html

I've used glass-encapsulated thermistor probes to measure the temperature of
a liquid I couldn't afford to contaminate.

Home electroplating kits:
http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/index.html
The nickel deposit may not be chemically pure.

Good luck with it
jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...

-The second issue, is the claim that Ni+H fusion is endothermic been
-confirmed/debunked ? That could be a show stopper.

-It's important to notice that in recent weeks Rossi has made it public
-he doesn't use plain nickel, but instead nickel enriched with two
-isotopes that produce the best results for his reaction.

-Marcelo Pacheco - Not a physicist - Not a scientist - Want to believe
in Rossi - But doesn't believe yet

I have a Bachelor's in Chemistry. The field is so broad that a BS gives only
an overview and the ability to understand the detailed explanations when you
get a job. My research was focused on synthesis and spectroscopic and NMR
analysis of organic compounds, the only isotope I worked with was Deuterium.

Vietnam knocked me off that track but gave me a good education in
electronics. Since then I've worked in R&D on new inventions at small
startups plus a large government research lab, so I have a highly developed
sense for what will or won't work, the credibility and problem-solving
ability of scientists and what projects to join or avoid.

I learned machining and materials science after seeing that scientists and
engineers other than chemists had received a very narrow and specialized
education and often had no hands-on training, like how to solder. I think
the unexpectedly rapid advance of computers pressed hard on the already
packed curricula, since almost everyone learned to write programs.
Mechanical and electrical engineers know almost nothing of each others'
fields while I have considerable experience in both. This means that an
expert in one can easily be mislead in another, though they rarely admit it.
Thermodynamics is a specialty that hardly any of them understands unless
they concentrated on it. Even as chemists we skipped over much of the
intricacy of radioactive decay and quantum mechanics. Still, chemistry
probably came closest to a general education in all the sciences, since it
included a lot of physics such as Statics, Dynamics and electrical theory
and the biology incident to biochemistry.

I've been on the inside, creating lovely staged demos to wheedle more money
from investors to keep the company afloat for a few more months. In that
instance my parts of the machine really did work as well as we claimed, and
we all sincerely believed that the one remaining difficulty could be
resolved well enough to advance from lab to production. It wasn't.

But it was fun and let me add integrated circuit designer to my
accomplishments. I did a custom dynamic memory controller for the DSP
computer in a color scanner.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

Morris.....do not understand the copper plating of the reactor
tube....???

Rossi provided someone with a sample of his spent fuel. Subsequent
analysis found significant percentages of copper and iron along with the
remaining nickel.

The copper I understand - but there are several possibilities that might
explain the iron, and one of those is that the hydrogen might be "eating"
nickel from the inside of the stainless steel reactor tube from around the
iron, which shows up in the spent fuel residue.

[ One of the other possibilities is that there may be secondary fission
reactions producing iron, but with the apparent lack of any other isotopes
I can't really see that as a probable source. ]

The copper plating on the interior of the reactor is intended as a
non-participating shield for the nickel component of the stainless steel.
It's probably silly of me to take the extra trouble for a limited-use test
apparatus, but I just don't like the idea of a containment vessel being
consumed by the reaction it's supposed to contain.

Any trace of carbon dioxide can be reduced to carbon monoxide by the
hydrogen. CO2 + H2 <> CO + H2O. Carbon monoxide forms a volatile carbonyl
with many metals and will transport them around the reaction vessel and
deposit them in seemingly impossible places.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_carbonyl
You might be better off learning how to fabricate your apparatus out of
Pyrex (borosilicate) glass. Soda (window etc) glass is easier to practice
on, but more likely to shatter on cooling unless carefully annealed. You can
find wires fused vacuum-tight into glass in the base of a light bulb.

FWIW, aluminum is very easy to machine on inexpensive import lathes and
desktop mills.
http://littlemachineshop.com/
Many of its alloys contain copper, which appears as a black residue if you
etch the aluminum with NaOH.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

I think that for my purposes beta and gamma ray detection would be
enough - and might be a worthwhile addition to the plan. Although the
physics-types might like more detail, it'd probably be adequate to be able
to show a difference between normal background counts and anything
attributable to a reaction. I need to learn more - but just offhand, could
anyone suggest a "normal" gamma background count range might be?

A simple unshielded detector will respond to all ionizing radiation that
passes into it, not just gamma. The strongest signal may come from the
potassium in your body, about 4-5000 decays/second, and some of them emit
antimatter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40

IIRC a Geiger counter ticks very roughly once a second from the natural
background. Here is the EPA RADNET website:
http://www.epa.gov/radnet/

If I have evidence of a sustainable fusion reaction, I'd guess that access
to really good equipment (and really skilled lab technicians) will become
a non-issue.

Don't risk overexposing yourself to get that evidence.

jsw

 

[sno]

Browsed around their site (and a number of others), but didn't find much
in the way of helpful specifics. :-(

I think I'm suffering from the problem that in order to ask a good
question, I would already need to know at least half of the answer...

I went ahead and ordered a GMC200 Geiger Muller Counter Nuclear
Radiation Detector on eBay, which I can connect to my little µC through
the audio input port.


I promise to do the best I can, given that I'm operating /way/ outside
my knowledge and experience - and that I'm building a prototype nuclear
reactor on a Social Security budget.

Keep a camera handy for when the NRC shows up at your door in nuclear
protective suits....<grin>

Also you can get some radiation signs here....<grin>

www.myradiationsign.com/

What you are doing reminds me of when I was into rockets and
explosives.....thanks for the memories....

have fun.....sno

--
Correct Scientific Terminology:
Hypothesis - a guess as to why or how something occurs
Theory - a hypothesis that has been checked by enough experiments
to be generally assumed to be true.
Law - a hypothesis that has been checked by enough experiments
in enough different ways that it is assumed to be truer then a theory.
Note: nothing is proven in science, things are assumed to be true.

 

[Jim Wilkins]

Browsed around their site (and a number of others), but didn't find much
in the way of helpful specifics. :-(

They suck 60m^3 / Hr of outdoor air through a particle filter and then
measure it, so there isn't a good correlation to the continuous background
radiation you might see indoors. One click each second is 3600 counts per
hour, pretty close to what they detect..

I went ahead and ordered a GMC200 Geiger Muller Counter Nuclear Radiation
Detector on eBay, which I can connect to my little µC through the audio
input port.

This may give you an idea of radiation shielding and energy level filtering
principles:
http://www.sprawls.org/ppmi2/RADPEN/
Gamma ray energies are a few orders of magnitude higher than medical X-rays.
I think a sheet of 1/16" aluminum will block almost everything that isn't a
gamma or cosmic ray. My only hands-on experience here is with incidental
X-rays from a high voltage diode tester I built.

...and that I'm building a prototype nuclear reactor on a Social Security
budget.

You hope you are. I mentioned that chemical engineers have been passing
hydrogen through nickel etc catalysts and carefully measuring the results
for 100+ years without noticing this, and you probably already own hydrogen
mixed with nickel in NiMH batteries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-metal_hydride_battery
I've posted simple explanatiions for the heated water and the supposedly
excess copper and iron found in the nickel afterwards.

An example from 1909:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

This discovery stimulated the search for practical room temperature fusion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion
Hydrogen does dissociate and adsorb onto the atoms of many metals.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...
A really large part of my effort (and expense) with this project is to
avoid hazard - and, quite frankly, I'm not particularly enjoying the
prospect of having even a small hydrogen tank in the shop.

Morris Dovey

You can generate hydrogen reasonably safely and cheaply from aluminum foil
or machining chips and Drano (NaOH). The bubbles release an aerosol
containing NaOH so you need to at least filter and probably dry the gas. The
reaction is quite exothermic and will boil the water if the lye solution is
too concentrated.

This is the end product if you neutralize the caustic with excess aluminum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_aluminate
http://www.deltachemical.com/PDFS/DeltaSodiumAluminate.pdf

I wish it had led me to a practical aluminum battery.

jsw

 

[sno]

You can generate hydrogen reasonably safely and cheaply from aluminum foil
or machining chips and Drano (NaOH). The bubbles release an aerosol
containing NaOH so you need to at least filter and probably dry the gas. The
reaction is quite exothermic and will boil the water if the lye solution is
too concentrated.

This is the end product if you neutralize the caustic with excess aluminum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_aluminate
http://www.deltachemical.com/PDFS/DeltaSodiumAluminate.pdf

I wish it had led me to a practical aluminum battery.

jsw

Morris....another possibility for the iron in the residue is that it is
the catalyst that he uses to speed up the reaction....

have fun...sno

--
Correct Scientific Terminology:
Hypothesis - a guess as to why or how something occurs
Theory - a hypothesis that has been checked by enough experiments
to be generally assumed to be true.
Law - a hypothesis that has been checked by enough experiments
in enough different ways that it is assumed to be truer then a theory.
Note: nothing is proven in science, things are assumed to be true.

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...> (While I was writing this UPS brought the control computer. It looks
just like the photos at www.sparkfun.com/products/9444 and it's hard for
me to imagine that it only needs 2W)
Morris Dovey

Impressively powerful!
What are you using for control and data acquisition?

I've been looking into the slower, cheaper end of the ARM family:
http://www.futurlec.com/ET-ARM_Stamp.shtml

The lab test setups I've inherited with temp R&D jobs generally used an
older desktop or laptop and controlled the external hardware with either
direct connections to the parallel port or a CAN, SMBus or I2C converter.
It's really nice to be able to record CSV-format data to a huge disk and
port it into Excel, or step through the control program or watch variable
values change in a Windows or Unix GUI.

Even DOS is adequate and it and QBASIC scream on a multiGHz processor. DOS
gives you full low-level control of the machine's legacy hardware, with only
timer interrupts to avoid. The DOS7 on a Win98 boot disk is good enough. I
hacked a Dell hidden utility partition (with Knoppix) to not just autorun
the diagnostics and then exit, and put my DOS stuff there, so F12 boots to
it. Full hardware control is necessary to use all the parallel port bits,
but not the others.

jsw

 

[you]

If the audience is a bunch of non-technical people, maybe. But if the
audience is composed mainly by scientists that understand calorimetry
and thermodynamics really well, not so much.

My main issue with Rossi's demos is that most of them were not open to
journalists. However I understand he's in this for the money, and that
the competition will be fierce once his device is available
commercially.

The second issue, is the claim that Ni+H fusion is endothermic been
confirmed/debunked ? That could be a show stopper.

It's important to notice that in recent weeks Rossi has made it public
he doesn't use plain nickel, but instead nickel enriched with two
isotopes that produce the best results for his reaction.

Marcelo Pacheco - Not a physicist - Not a scientist - Want to believe
in Rossi - But doesn't believe yet

ALL this is just so much BULLSHIT, unless Rossi can show Neutron
Production, or explain where those Neutrons are going, that they are not
detectable..... Duh... to have FUSION, you have to produce Neutrons....

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...
...and I'm not sure that his catalyst _speeds up_ the reaction. In his
earlier efforts Rossi reportedly produced explosions and experienced
instability at higher temperatures. It might be that his "catalyst" is an
damping/buffering agent...
Morris Dovey

Or it might be that a little air slipped into the hydrogen, or was pushed.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...
ALL this is just so much BULLSHIT, unless Rossi can show Neutron
Production, or explain where those Neutrons are going, that they are not
detectable..... Duh... to have FUSION, you have to produce Neutrons....

This is the abstract:
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=211
I got no response to Direct Download.

According to their claim, to the extent I can read it, the intermediate
state with the absorbed proton (hydrogen nucleus) is either stable or decays
by beta+ emission to the next heavier nickel isotope (A proton becomes a
neutron, the charge escapes as a positron).
http://www.wolframalpha.com/entities/isotopes/copper_61/1a/l5/es/

Fig 1 in their claim suggests almost all of the gamma radiation should pass
through the stainless steel vessel wall.

Morris, notice that they put 40cm (~16") of lead shielding around the ~3/4"
diameter x 40" long reactor. You'll have the EPA and BATFE after you, not
just DHS.

I still think someone could have done all that "research" in a library and
fudged the experiment to fit it. Thermal as opposed to highly energetic
proton capture is unverified, the conclusion is a SWAG.

I'm particularly suspicious because the stepped outlet temperature profile
looks like a water heater running out of stored hot water and switching to
quick-recovery backup.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

On 9/2/11 6:17 PM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
...
I had no difficulty downloading
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Nuclear signatures - Jacques Dufour.pdf
and can e-mail it to you if if you'd like.

Forbidden.
Anyway I'm not really qualified to analyze their claims because I don't know
enough about nuclear physics to extrapolate beyond their statements to catch
whatever they missed. A quick look suggests their arguments are internally
consistent as long as you accept their underlying assumptions, which you
intend to test.

...
Too much talk and not enough testing!
Morris Dovey

Here is a source of fittings. Grainger may have a store near you.
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/stainless-steel-tube-fittings/fittings/plumbing/ecatalog/N-by6

If you don't trust your TIG welding or brazing skills, you can make vacuum
and pressure tight seals with soft copper / nickel / aluminum washers in
flanged or threaded joints.

This lathe has a 1" spindle bore and should be enough to adequately
duplicate Rossi's reactor vessel:
http://www.grizzly.com/products/10-x-22-Bench-Top-Metal-Lathe/G0602
A used South Bend Heavy 10 lathe with 5C collets would be ideal, if you can
find a good one. Unlike other industrial lathes they don't require a level
concrete floor as they have a built-in adjustment for bed twist.

The cost of having apparatus made and especially modified several times soon
exceeds the price of entry-level machine tools, which unlike the apparatus
have decent resale or even investment value. Your apparatus is
dollar-a-pound scrap metal.

I'd offer to help if your project had no possible risk of personal injury.
Unfortunately alternative power is all about concentrated stored energy.

Do you have a good vacuum pump to remove air, moisture and oils from the
reactor, and a gauge to measure it?
http://www.aliasaerospace.com/GOES-RTP190(Bakeout).pdf
http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/product_index.asp?cls=683
I used "semiconductor grade" 91% isopropanol for critical cleaning. Drug
stores carry 91% isopropyl alcohol which might be good enough. You could let
some evaporate on a polished surface to check for residues.

The reason for baking it out is because any volatiles may contaminate the
surface of the nickel. There are many subtle errors to trick a theoretician
without hands-on experience in experimental physics and chemistry.

jsw

 

[Neon John]

That's what I was looking for, and I suppose I shouldn't be dazzled by
seeing live data at this point, but I am.

The background that you see is totally and entirely dependent on the
GM tube that you have. If you're using a thick walled tubular tube
such as were used in the old CDV-700 civil defense counters, you'll be
lucky to get 2 or 3 CPM. OTOH, if you have a thin window pancake
probe

http://www.neon-john.com/Nuke/pancakeGM.jpg

You should see somewhere in the range of 40 to 60 CPM, depending on
where you are, what radon activity is extant and what the weather is
doing.

You need to acquire a check source to ensure that the detector is
actually detecting external radiation. One of the easiest sources to
obtain is a lantern mantle. Coleman mantles used to be treated with
thorium to enhance the light output. Radiophobia drove them to use
inferior but non-radioactive coatings. But other manufacturers still
use thorium such as this one:

http://www.neon-john.com/Nuke/century_mantle.jpg

A package of mantles will generate a couple thousand CPM on a pancake
detector.

Another great source is old (not the new line) bright orange
FiestaWare. The orange glaze is uranium based. They made so much of
the stuff that it is very easy to find in antique stores. Only the
bright orange stuff is radioactive.

That said, as a retired nuclear engineer who specialized in nuclear
instrumentation, I feel obligated to state some cautions. I'm not
going to comment on the viability of this purported fusion reaction
because I don't know enough to do so.

However

If it happens to work and generates enough fusion reactions to produce
detectable heat then the radiation field around the reactor is going
to be intense. Life threatening intense. And you can't rely on your
little Geiger counter toy to protect you.

When GM tubes are exposed to sufficiently intense radiation they go
into a continuous conduction mode known as "jamming". The tube quits
producing pulses and conducts current continuously.

Unless your unit has an anti-jam circuit (non of the cheap ones
catering to radiophobes that I've looked have one), in the intense
field the count rate goes to 0 and you think there is no radiation.

I strongly recommend that you get an ion chamber-based area radiation
monitor. There is usually a plentiful supply of them on sleazebay and
though Fukushima has driven up the prices, most are still under $100.

If you're serious about building this reactor, drop me an email and
I'll be happy to survey sleazebay and make some recommendations.

John
jgd(at)neon-john.com

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...
You need to acquire a check source to ensure that the detector is
actually detecting external radiation. ...

When GM tubes are exposed to sufficiently intense radiation they go
into a continuous conduction mode known as "jamming". The tube quits
producing pulses and conducts current continuously. ...

John
jgd(at)neon-john.com

Are thoriated tungsten TIG electrodes sufficiently active?
http://www.amazon.com/Welding-Thoriated-Tungsten-16x7-Pack/dp/B004QORWUC

Could one use a solar cell (a large-area diode) and a current meter as a
backup wide-range detector? On the voltage ranges a typical DVM can measure
nanoAmps.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...
I found a video of Rossi's demonstration for Ny Teknik at

- the reactor was wrapped in
insulation and lead foil only, and Rossi appeared unconcerned. There's a
lot here I don't understand but expect to learn.
...
Morris Dovey

I downloaded (dialup) and watched it and there's something I don't
understand either--the significance. He has 236V at 1.6A (377.6W) heating
water to produce about half the steam that's coming out of my teakettle
(725W on a KAW) right now. NOT 2.5KW worth!

The visible surfaces of the reactors are brazed copper water pipe fittings.
BTDT, but I sanded off the oxide to make it look nice for the customer
afterwards. The inner surface would likely also be coated with dark brown
copper oxide which the hydrogen can reduce to fine metal dust.
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCESoft/CCA/CCA3/MAIN/REDOXCU/PAGE1.HTM

This is a reasonable source for the excess copper found in the nickel after
running the reactor.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

...He has 236V at 1.6A (377.6W) heating water ...
jsw

Before you put the nickel and hydrogen in, see how accurately you can
account for the measured electrical input power. I suspect you will have a
lot of difficulty finding as much as 70% of it in the heated water at first.

Put all your temperature sensors in a water or steam bath to see how closely
they track, and how little disturbance or mis-placement it takes to throw
off their readings. Mine all agree to <0.5C in the steam inside the teapot.
In an open pot of boiling water they can be 2C apart.

The thermocouple that senses the cover of a soup kettle reads 91-92C when
the water is boiling strongly. It's pressed into an aluminum disk that fits
under the knob. Insulation over it made little difference and was a nuisance
to remove when hot. I have a remote temperature readout above the computer
to monitor pots cooking on the wood stove downstairs.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

I've been a bit short on time to work on this, but have posted a first
rough draft of some of the test control code at

http://www.iedu.com/Solar/Electricity/Fusion/

Not yet present is the code to monitor gamma radiation, and the code to
watch for thermal deviations from a standard (no fusion) heating curve.
Morris Dovey

I examined it to see how you coded open-sensor detection and PID temperature
control. Here's a PID sample to build on:
http://www.embeddedheaven.com/pid-control-algorithm-c-language.htm

My temperature monitor shows 18C with an open input. For a critical
application I'd bias it to indicate an impossibly low temperature if a
sensor or connection failed.

Can you recommend a reasonably good freeware C development system for
Windows? I've hit a few dead ends looking for one to replace DOS QBasic
without losing much of its low-level PC hardware access. I've written a fair
amount of Pascal on a VAX and PDP-11 and a whole lot of 8080 assembly
(including the editor/assembler itself) but have little experience with C or
x86 assembly and need beginner tutorials.

So far I use the serial ports to read analog values from the DI-194 and
Radio Shack multimeter, and the parallel port for digital I/O. I wrote
polling (vs looping) QBasic port drivers to operate them all simultaneously.
The PC runs Win2000 on a FAT32 drive which both DOS and W2K can see. However
I can't add newer USB hardware.

FYI, I found these $10 isolated current sensors to use with my voltage-only
data logger:
http://www.gmw.com/magnetic_sensors/asahi/current-sensors-HA.html

They would confirm that your heater is actually working and give you a more
accurate measurement of its power than just a voltage reading.

jsw

 

[Jim Wilkins]

On 9/6/11 7:53 AM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
...
Since I've had absolutely no desire to develop anything to run under
Windows, I ended up using the Vim editor (in windows gui mode) to write
MSDOS code that I compiled in a command window using TurboC, and later
lcc. ... Morris Dovey

I've had to learn and use whatever the engineer or the company preferred,
from VMS through HP1000, Apollo, Novell, MacOS to Solaris. Usually the cost
and frustration of avoiding Microsoft came to exceed that of using them and
DOS or Windows would slowly and quietly creep onto PCs. Perhaps I could
write physical and data link layer device drivers, but my time was too
valuable cleaning up and detailing rough schematics, laying out and
assembling high-speed SMT circuit boards, and debugging and testing them, a
combination of skills that's rare even in large electronic engineering
firms. They didn't let me play programmer until all that was completed.

The main problem is that Windows, like English, is the defacto common
language that everyone who seriously wants to do business must accommodate,
before and maybe instead of writing for other operating systems. I can't
even find unix drivers for the Winmodems in my PCs.

The customized lab setups I had to maintain when I took a contract R&D job
were generally built around a surplus front-office machine with Windows
already installed. The added hardware and software kept IT from touching
them so I had to be the administrator, and stay relatively current at it,
not wander off into some variant of Debian for my home projects.

As one extreme example an Apple Certified Programmer quoted me three months
to write a "proper" Mac Nubus driver for a custom A/D board I built. Then he
left. I made it do all it really needed to with four lines of assembly code
generated in LabVIEW.

jsw

 

[sno]

Rossi biography's and other stuff....new...5 sep...

Looks like there is a race starting...other companies trying to be the
first...

http://ecatfusion.com/andrea-rossi-2

have fun....sno