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Oct 28th rossi 1 mw cold fusion test....

B

Bob F

Jan 1, 1970
0
amdx said:
Snips



Hey Morris, is there a reason you don't want to stick a thermocouple
in the tube for your temp measurements as others have suggested? It
would sure simplify this section, and, you could get lots of design
help on sci.electronics.design to raise the thermocouple output
voltage nearer 5v at 537*C.
Also I suspect you have thought that if the temp sustains itself or
starts to run away, your Ardiuno will sense this and start limiting
hydrogen input and/or pump more water.
Mikek

My concern if he is switching a relay on/off to control temp, is that the on/off
time will be large per cycle. Using a thermocouple controller operating an SCR
or other such switch gives significantly finer and quicker, more proportional
control to avoid overruns. But, it might cost a couple hundred $, and Morris is
operating on a tight budget. If this is really dealing with nuclear reactions,
maybe the control is important. He doesn't want a runaway reaction.
 
V

vaughn

Jan 1, 1970
0
Morris Dovey said:
That will resolve the fused contacts issue, but leads me to ask a related
question: If/when an SSR fails, does it fail open or does it fail closed?
The normal fail mode is closed. I have used literally thousands of these things
in traffic signals controllers. In practice, they seldom fail randomly and are
at least as reliable as a mechanical relay (which can fail open OR closed)..
High current from a short circuit or a zap of lightning were the usual culprits
that caused failure.

Vaughn
 
E

eric gisse

Jan 1, 1970
0
[...]
If this is really dealing with nuclear reactions, maybe the
control is important. He doesn't want a runaway reaction.

Fusion is not self sustaining without immense, directed, energy input.
 
A

amdx

Jan 1, 1970
0
I don't know if it will or won't start, but I've been unable to make any
sense of his catalyst claim.

In one public posting Rossi revealed that the catalyst was KaCO3 - which
I found amusing/interesting.

I decided to start with just nickel and hydrogen. If that won't work,
I'll try adding CaCO3, and if that doesn't work I'll try K2CO3.

Frankly, I do think the talk about catalyst /may/ be an attempt to muddy
the water. :)

Here's some history of Ni/H fusion systems you might find interesting.

http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=61

Mikek
 
A

amdx

Jan 1, 1970
0
Here's some history of Ni/H fusion systems you might find interesting.

http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=61

Mikek

From the blog above I gleaned this;
"....add a secret ingredient to break apart the molecular hydrogen (H2)
into atomic hydrogen (H1)."
I think that would be the catalyst.
Mikek
 
Y

Yousuf Khan

Jan 1, 1970
0
From the blog above I gleaned this;
"....add a secret ingredient to break apart the molecular hydrogen (H2)
into atomic hydrogen (H1)."
I think that would be the catalyst.
Mikek

This is not a chemical reaction, this is supposed to be a nuclear
reaction. There are no catalysts in nuclear reactions, it's just smash
things together and smash things apart.

Rossi is exploiting the lack of knowledge about nuclear reactions vs.
chemical reactions to lead people by their noses through a magic show.

Yousuf Khan
 
R

Richard Tobin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Yousuf Khan said:
This is not a chemical reaction, this is supposed to be a nuclear
reaction. There are no catalysts in nuclear reactions, it's just smash
things together and smash things apart.

Look up "muon-catalysed fusion".

-- Richard
 
E

eric gisse

Jan 1, 1970
0
From the blog above I gleaned this;
"....add a secret ingredient to break apart the molecular hydrogen
(H2) into atomic hydrogen (H1)."
I think that would be the catalyst.
Mikek

Bullshitanium?

It costs energy to break up H2.
 
R

Richard Tobin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Look up "muon-catalysed fusion".
[/QUOTE]
You need muons for that.

I was addressing only the quoted comment, claiming that catalysis
isn't a concept relevant to nuclear reactions.

-- Richard
 
E

eric gisse

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] (Richard Tobin) wrote in @matchbox.inf.ed.ac.uk:
You need muons for that.

I was addressing only the quoted comment, claiming that catalysis
isn't a concept relevant to nuclear reactions.

-- Richard
[/QUOTE]

A catalyst is something that assists with chemical reactions. There are no
known catalysts for nuclear reactions, and muons don't count because the
element in question isn't the same anymore once all its' electrons have
been replaced with muons.
 
A

amdx

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] (Richard Tobin) wrote in @matchbox.inf.ed.ac.uk:


A catalyst is something that assists with chemical reactions. There are no
known catalysts for nuclear reactions, and muons don't count because the
element in question isn't the same anymore once all its' electrons have
been replaced with muons.

I'll admit to little knowledge here, but couldn't there be some
chemistry used to get H1 from H2, and then the H1 is available for the
nuclear reaction?
Mikek
 
A

amdx

Jan 1, 1970
0
Following up - I just ordered a 100' spool of NiCr wire on eBay and
picked up a piece of 3/8"OD (1/4"ID) copper tubing and piece of
HardyBoard (work surface for brazing this stuff together) from Home Depot.

According to my calculations, a 12" length of #40 NiCr wire should
provide about 250W of heating and draw about 2A at 115VAC.

I'm going build /two/ heaters so I can try both the DPDT relay with an
op-amp circuit and the SSR/thermocouple/TC amp approaches. I'm
interested in learning how many cycles a relay can switch 2A before it
welds the contacts together; and I'm interested to see how much
crosstalk there will be between 115VAC and 5VDC pairs inside a 1/4" cavity.

When the wire arrives I'll connect a 12" length to the mains and see how
it behaves.

Thanks to all for sharing ideas and suggestions!
Sorry, I need to ask, Will the NiCr handle 250 watts per 12".
Just thinking about my toaster and I know the NiCr is longer than
12". I know it is different wire, but still want to ask.
Thanks, Mikek
 
A

amdx

Jan 1, 1970
0
Nothing to be sorry about - it's a good question.

I think so, but won't really know until I try it out. I suspect it'll
require a fairly low duty cycle to avoid melting the wire.

I worked from the formulas at

http://www.wiretron.com/design.html

and the tables at

http://www.wiretron.com/nicrdat.html

Note that the second table specifies ohms/ft for the wire sizes listed.
I see a 1.5% resistance change from 400C to 600C. Is that right?
If so that's like 50 ohms at 400C and 53.75 ohms at 500C. If I'm
close with my numbers, that will be tough to use as a thermometer.
I hope my quick check is wrong.
Mikek
 
J

Jim Wilkins

Jan 1, 1970
0
Morris Dovey said:
Morris Dovey

I don't lack interest in your project, only power and phone lines thanks to
our little snowstorm.

This laptop is finally operating off a very marginal Harbor Freight solar
panel kit and Virgin Mobile wireless "broadband". If you want I could mail
you a few feet of thermocouple wire, and I picked up considerable experience
with op amp measurement circuits working as an analog test engineer.

jsw
 
V

vaughn

Jan 1, 1970
0
Morris Dovey said:
AFAICT, the "real time" aspect would pretty much require turning off the
heater power briefly at intervals long enough (1 msec?) to capture the heater
resistance to determine the temperature.

Morris, (On the huge assumption that I understand what you are trying to do).
Any time you heat a mass with a point temerature source, you end up with a
temperature gradient. The heater temperature will be significantly hotter than
the material you are heating. The short interval approach you mention will give
you the temperature of the heater, not the temperature of the mass you are
heating. Is that what you really want? To accurately measure the temperature
of the mass using the heater as a sensor, you will need to have a longish time
delay so that your sensor can cool down and finally match the temperature of the
mass.

Vaughn
 
B

Bob F

Jan 1, 1970
0
Morris said:
AFAICT, the "real time" aspect would pretty much require turning off
the heater power briefly at intervals long enough (1 msec?) to
capture the heater resistance to determine the temperature.

I don't think relays will be able to attain anywhere near that 1ms sample rate,
FWIW.
 
J

Jim Wilkins

Jan 1, 1970
0
Morris Dovey said:
... My thinking is that I can use the heat transfer information along with
predictive logic to project what temperatures /should/ result from the
heating so that significant variances from the predicted values
(signalling ignition) can be identified fairly quickly. Knowing the heat
transfer rate should allow me to shorten the delay between powering down
the heater and capturing the heater resistance, and to use that value in
context to accurately /infer/ the temperature in the reaction chamber.

Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar

If I were doing this I would scare up a surplus PID temperature controller,
Omron is a good name, a thermowell for the temperature sensor and a vacuum
oven feedthru for the heater power leads. The rest can be fabricated,
including the thermowell if you have a decent thread-cutting lathe (almost
essential for physics experiments). The feedthru on my vacuum oven was a
pipe plug with Glyptal sealing the wires. It leaked and thus I bought the
oven cheap, but making a new one fixed it fine.

If you attempt to measure temperature from heater wire resistance you will
have to wait many seconds for it to cool down exponentially to the internal
temperature. You could sacrifice one to find the input power that damages it
and stay below that with the second one.

Usually we keep the heater and sensor separate, with the heater upstream and
the sensor in a location that better averages the temperature of the
contents. Applications that measure and control the heater resistance
generally keep its temperature constant and read out the necessary power,
for instance the hot-wire detector in a mass spectrometer or the mass air
flow sensor in a car engine. Otherwise PID control which avoids temperature
overshoot is much better.

The two accessible controls on your A/D converter are gain and offset. Use
the offset to get your zero and the gain, the reference voltage, for full
scale.

jsw
 
J

Jim Wilkins

Jan 1, 1970
0
Morris Dovey said:

I misunderstood your intention.

Heater resistance is the voltage across it divided by the current through
it. You can easily measure both while the power is on with a four-terminal
(Kelvin sense) current sense resistor. You wouldn't need a separate
resistance measuring circuit protected from full heater power.

The simpler approach puts the resistor in the return leg to reduce common
mode voltage. The heater voltage should also be sensed as close as practical
to both ends of the Nichrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-terminal_sensing
http://www.ohmite.com/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?product=10_series#four

There are also inexpensive isolated Hall-effect current sensors. I haven't
tested the samples I have and don't know it they are accurate enough to
measure the small resistance change in hot Nichrome.

Inductances in the heater circuit will give you false readings immediately
after current changes. I've measured the settling time for a machine that
performed automated tests on memory chips and saw low-level effects like
dielectric absorption in wiring and relay insulation that lasted up to 5mS.
The worst case was a transistor tester that needed 15 Seconds to settle
because the engineer neglected relay coil diodes.

jsw
 
D

daestrom

Jan 1, 1970
0
I misunderstood your intention.

Heater resistance is the voltage across it divided by the current through
it. You can easily measure both while the power is on with a four-terminal
(Kelvin sense) current sense resistor. You wouldn't need a separate
resistance measuring circuit protected from full heater power.

The simpler approach puts the resistor in the return leg to reduce common
mode voltage. The heater voltage should also be sensed as close as practical
to both ends of the Nichrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-terminal_sensing
http://www.ohmite.com/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?product=10_series#four

There are also inexpensive isolated Hall-effect current sensors. I haven't
tested the samples I have and don't know it they are accurate enough to
measure the small resistance change in hot Nichrome.

Inductances in the heater circuit will give you false readings immediately
after current changes. I've measured the settling time for a machine that
performed automated tests on memory chips and saw low-level effects like
dielectric absorption in wiring and relay insulation that lasted up to 5mS.
The worst case was a transistor tester that needed 15 Seconds to settle
because the engineer neglected relay coil diodes.

jsw

In large commercial AC generators, that is exactly how they measure the
rotor winding temperature. Measure the applied voltage and resulting
current. As far back as the 1940's (maybe even earlier), companies like
GE and Westinghouse built a sort of analog computer that was just wired
into the circuit that applies power to the rotor slip-rings and provided
continuous rotor winding temperature indication on a servo-driven pen
recorder.

daestrom
 
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