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More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2016 4:32 pm
by Richard Hull
I am expecting a full operational visit for my fusor this weekend. It has not be run seriously since last October. I have to bring it back to life for this weekend.

In doing so, I took lots of data which I will not hash through, as I have done this in giant listings in prior years before the HEAS gathering in October. This is the norm here in the past as I brought the system back from a long sleep.

What I do want to iterate is related to my recent FAQ about operation and the roles of voltage, current and deuterium pressure.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=10827

I wish to press on the issue of pressure in what follows.

Start up.......

I let my forepump run for about 30 minutes, pulling down the foreline, the diff pump and the chamber. (big gas load!) the foreline gauge near the forepump, which is a TC gauge, read 20 microns, while my capacitive manometer on the chamber read 15 microns. Needless to say, the manometer was the more accurate. I started the diff pump's fans and boiler and allowed it to run until the pressure on the manometer read 5e10-4 torr. (about another 20 minutes). I pinched off the chamber from the diff pump until the pressure rose only slightly (pretty close to complete shut off). I next opened the deuterium flow needle valve until the pressure leveled off at 12 microns. (flowing D2) I now opened the diff pump to fusor valve slightly until the pressure leveled off at 5 microns. (deuterium pressure)

The system was now ready for voltage. As I turned the voltage up, it lit off at about 15kv and 12ma. This is normal and one has to nurse the system from this point for a number of reasons. (Water load remaining and internal outgassing of the chamber, etc.) Slowly, the internal pressure drops as the gases other than deuterium are shuttled out via bombardment. After about one hour of this, I could put in a bit more gas and open the diff pump to fusor valve a bit more to maintain 5 microns and the process of measuring neutron number could begin. (second re-pressurization)

As the voltage crossed the 20kv range, the pressure continued to drop along with the current. Voltage could be raised to maintain the previous current. I tend to settle on maintaining a 10-12 ma current. Naturally, the neutron counts rose due to this effort. Stable operation can be achieved with this pressure fall, current fall and concommitent need for more voltage and higher neutron numbers.

The key thing is that I feel the pressure fall at this point is due to burying of deuterium in the chamber walls. At higher voltages and the same maintained current, (more power is placed into the system), I feel more and more deuterium is buried and this aids the fusion returns for many reasons I have posited in the past. This remains my theory. I have been doing this for years now, perhaps longer than anyone with a working fusor.

Setting my theory aside, here is a tiny fraction of the data I have taken.

Second repressurization to 5 microns of D2

29kv at a fallen pressure of 3.8 microns @ 9ma 2050 n/s
33kv at 3.7 microns @ 10 ma 3800 n/s
35.2 kv at 3.6 microns @ 11.5 ma 5106 n/s

Third repressurization to 5.4 microns of D2

22kv at 5.4 microns @ 10ma 1981 n/s
25kv at 5.0 microns @10.1 ma 4854 n/s
29kv at 4.9 microns @10 ma 10,161 n/s
35kv at 4.8 microns @9.5ma 24,732 n/s

We see a nearly 5 fold increase at 35kv @ 10ma between the two runs due to an increase in D2 pressure of only 1.2 microns!!!

Thanks are due to the larger, efficient 3He tube which allows for very fine data collection at low numbers due to its providing a torrent of counts over other neutron counting systems. All of this with no regard or need for any form of statistics. My background count over 3 ten minute runs was 9 cpm. At only 15kv 5microns @ 10ma I was getting 32 cpm. Doing real fusion outside of any statisitics and making about 600n/s.

Pressure is obviously king here at any givien voltage and current. Perhaps un-burying of what becomes deuterons at the shell's surface allow for full acceleration over the potential gradient. (this is a key proposition in my use of the phrase "fusor conditioning") In short, the shell seems to be acting as a grossly irregular and inefficient ion source operating over a huge surface area. Whats more, the ions are created at the ideal point, near the shell amidst a hail of infalling electrons!

There may be a balance point in fusor size! Get as much surface area as possible to take advantage of this process, but not so large in radius that there is little likelihood of the shell produced deuteron's mean free path increasing to the point that they fail to make the grid. There is much to consider here. Hydrogen loves to insinuate itself into metals...all metals. It can be stuffed in to the lattice any number of ways and re-released, also, in any number of ways.

Even the meanest intelligence can see what the same voltages and current can do at a pressure increase differential of only 1.6 to 2 microns!
So it is not all about voltage and current or even power! Arm yourself with 90kv @ 100ma and unless you can get a good deuterium atmosphere pressure in the chamber you are whistling in the wind. You will have impressive stuff, but might not do good fusion in your fusor. Can you have too much operational pressure in a fusor? All of the mega mark results have been at high pressure. (>10 microns+) It seems that if you can get the voltage and current into the fusor, pressure is the limiting factor.

This goes back to my postings saying it is operational experience, years of it, that can tell the tale and make the difference in resultant fusor performance.

Can a discussion begin here relating to pressure by old hands who read this? I have put forth data and a few theoretical musings related to "conditioning".

Richard Hull

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 2:14 am
by Steven Sesselmann
Richard,

Nice report on the start up procedure, your method is quite typical and you clearly have a good hermetic chamber if you are able to get your rotary pump down into the 15-20 micron range, I am able to get mine to around 32 micron, but I still have a tiny leak somewhere (around 1 micron every 5 seconds) which I hope to find and fix.

The pressure drop correlating to voltage increase is interesting, it may be ions embedding themselves into the shell as you suggest, but I doubt it, because the ions won't have enough energy to reach the shell unless they are fusion products but if you are only doing 10^4 fusions per second these wouldn't be numerous enough to cause a pressure differential. My guess is the pressure drop is caused by a large number of ions arranging themselves along eliptical paths through the grid which upsets the maxwellian particle distribution leaving fewer particles to interact with the TC gauge.

Keep us posted on how the fusion rate improves with each run since the long shutdown, very intereating to see how long it takes to get the impurities out of the chamber.

Steven

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 2:27 pm
by Richard Hull
I do not believe ions strike the shell!! No deuterons should, in theory, ever strike the shell. It is the 99.9999% of the non-ionic yet fast moving deuterium neutrals which can only stike the shell!! They have no other option!! They all strike the shell and can embed. Ebedment is not warranted, but since the vast and incalculable number of fast moving neutral deuterium atoms in any fusor will hit the shell, a very large number could embed. In general, the short term depth of lattice embedment is extremely shallow. All of this has been well known by chemists and physicists for many years. Hydrogen embrittlement plagues many scientific efforts and played a major role in the efforts in the old cold fusion efforts. Continued, unrelenting, forced or directed embedment drives the hydrogen embedment layer deeper and deeper into the metal. I posit that this is why future runs, day-to-day, of a "conditioned fusor is easy and fusion starts immediately at a good level. In reality, hydrogen seeking even casual, non directed embedment does occur even at atmospheric and osmotic pressure levels. Electro-chemistry did it in the cold fusion efforts and our fusors do it with fast neutrals. Manufactured tritiated and deuterated accelerator targets for neutron generators are a prime example.

The hail of electrons bombarding the shell and heating it to finger burning temperatures can dislodge and ionize many of these embeded deuterium atoms turning them into deuterons which can only head for the grid, suffering a full potential gradient acceleration. We know few will make it, But fusion chances are boosted significantly with full potential fall deuterons. Many of these in later post conditioning embedments show a boost in fusion at higher voltages (increased input energy). This later increase in fusion and energy buries yet more deuterium neutrals until a possible stasis point is reached when the embedment rate equals the rate of shell expulsion of the buried gas.

Low fusion numbers with dropping pressures during "conditioning" do not correlate to fewer embedments, but support the possible evidence of more of it, as we are applying power to the gas and not much of it is doing fusion, but ending up as failed, now fast, neutrals that are doomed to be shell bound and possible embedment.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

Richard Hull

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 4:59 pm
by Richard Hull
The second day of "bringing out the dead". (Monty Python)

Today the fusor came up in about 20 minutes from dead cold and off to full data run operations.

Here is the first pass data. Compare to yesterday's best runs at the same voltage with today's slight pressure improvement.

29kv @ 9.6ma and 4.9 microns pressure 22,780 n/s
36kv @ 9.3 ma and 4.5 microns 46,881 n/s
40kv @ 9 ma and 4.4 microns 83,709 n/s

boosted the pressure to 5.4 microns

35kv @ 10.2 ma 5.4 microns 61,922 n/s
39.2kv @ 11.1 ma 5.6 microns 122,701 n/s
This last number is about the limit at the very low pressure of 5.6 microns near 40kv

A final single run was done at 6.2 microns 29.8kv @ 10.5 ma 43,806 n/s ....we see the difference a pressure boost of only 1.3 microns makes over the very first run at 29kv today! The output doubled.

Pressure is it! Notice in the first run I was still burying deuterium as the pressure dropped over different runs. The walls retained a lot of the D2 I buried yesterday. Sure, some of the weakest held bubbled out overnight, but so many remained that it was an easy start and run as more were buried over that first run.
many hours of continued operation, (4-5 continuous), will see the loading increase and running pressures of 12-16 microns are possible along with one million plus numbers.

Richard Hull

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 8:38 pm
by Steven Sesselmann
Richard Hull wrote:It is the 99.9999% of the non-ionic yet fast moving deuterium neutrals which can only stike the shell!!
Richard, I concede, the neutrals can and will hit the shell, and it has been documented that fusors do indeed produce fast neutrals, what percentage of the gas are fast neutrals is anyones guess, however in star mode there is clearly some kind of organised recirculation of the gas and any kind of Maxwellian distribution model might fail.

One thing I can say with reasonable certainty is, fast deuterons don't participate in the fusion process, it is a complete misunderstanding that speed is required to overcome a Coulomb force. The ions fusing are the ones that lose their electron inside the grid, I refer to these as the slow ions. The fast ions serve no other purpose than to make the slow ions.

These slow ions become stuck in the centre of the fusor because they don't have the energy to climb the gradient, and the only means of escape is to steal some potential energy by fusing with another deuteron, which in turn changes their kinetic energy and provides a clean escape.

Elementary isn't it?

Steven

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:18 pm
by Dan Knapp
Steven
If you are correct, there are a very large number of people in the fusion business who have a "complete misunderstanding." Do you have any evidence to support your idea? How do you propose that the Coulomb barrier is overcome if not with fast deuterons having sufficient energy to climb up the hill to a point where tunneling probability is sufficient to get two nuclei together?

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2016 11:41 pm
by Steven Sesselmann
Dan Knapp wrote:Steven
If you are correct, there are a VERY large number of people in the fusion business who have a "complete misunderstanding." Do you have any evidence to support your idea? How do you propose that the Coulomb barrier is overcome if not with fast deuterons having sufficient energy to climb up the hill to a point where tunneling probability is sufficient to get two nuclei together?
Dan, you are right, there is a very large number of confused scientists, all thanks to some well respected theoretical physicists who filled in the blanks with assumptions. I have arrived at this conclusion using pure logic and without proposing or relying any new unicorns. https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _Potential

The good news for fusion is "No Coulomb Force", both Newton and Coulomb cheated, they invented unicorns and called them "force" because they couldn't explain what was happening.

It turns out what we thought was a force is nothing more than relative velocity with respect to the observer, and it's all governed by electric potential and one very simple law ∆v = c(∆U/Ø) where Phi is the proton potential (930 million volts). So when you put the numbers in you see that a deuteron ionised at ground potential has a huge velocity and buzzes around in the fusor like an angry bee, but when you ionise it at -62 kV it stands almost still.

If you can understand how this works, you will see how my new fusor is designed to overcome this problem.

Steven

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 3:44 pm
by Dan Knapp
Steven
With all due respect, I must conclude that you are the one who is confused here. You are confusing rest mass energy with potential energy. The rest mass mass energy of the proton is the amount of energy you would get if you converted the mass of a proton at rest to energy. You then no longer have a proton; you have a photon of that amount of energy. I read your paper. I have no problem if you want to call ground 930 MV. You can reference a potential energy to whatever reference you choose. Potential energy is a relative entity. Ground potential being called zero volts is just for convenience. We say that earth is at ground because on our size scale, the earth is "infinite" with respect to its ability to sink charge, either plus or minus charge. Earth ground potential is not always constant, however. If you have a large current of charge entering the earth at a particular point, the potential of that point can significantly change due to current into the earth impedance (E=IR). This can be a significant issue for the power industry, but is not an issue for the discussion at hand.
The problem with your paper begins with equation 1. For some reason you seem to think that an electron cannot be accelerated through a potential greater than its rest mass energy, and likewise for the proton. The rest mass energy of the particle has no relation to the potential through which a particle can be accelerated. If it did, neither the Large Hadron Collider nor the electron accelerator in your local hospital would exist. Potential energy and rest mass energy are two completely separate concepts.
I admire your efforts to explain some difficult issues in physics. Few people would have the ability or, further yet, the drive to do this. I admire even more your experimental efforts. Still very far fewer people would have the ability and drive to design, build, and test by experiment their ideas. Keep at it! Some very significant discoveries have been made based upon theory that was not quite correct. For example, in my other life I worked in the field of chemistry of drug action. Some of the most successful drugs were designed to work by a certain mechanism and found to perform very well, only later to be discovered that they don't work by the designed mechanism but by a completely different mechanism. Stated differently, the drugs cured the disease by virtue of a "side effect" rather than the effect they were designed to achieve. Physics can work the same way. With a prepared mind, your experiments could yield very significant unexpected results. At the very least they will be fun, which is why I think all of us who follow fusor.net are here.
Dan

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2016 5:41 pm
by Steven Sesselmann
Dan, with respect to Richards thread on fusor conditioning we should continue any discussion on GPT here: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=10443

Steven

Re: More on operation - conditioning - data!

Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2016 2:19 am
by Richard Hull
My company arrived today to see the fusor in action. This was day three and I did not run the system long enough to hit the mega mark due to time constraints. From past runs, my mega mark demands 12 microns or more pressure. Best run ever was at 16 microns.

The best run was 7.2 microns, 39.5kv @ 12ma and we got 274,000 n/s. Activated silver to about 2X background. Now it goes dormant until October. (most likely).

Richard Hull