Historical research guide · 0667 · 2020
Mass and Heat Flow Calorimetry in Brillouin’s Reactor
Francis Tanzella · Robert Godes · Jin Liu · Robert George
In one minute
Francis Tanzella of the Energy Research Center, with Robert Godes, Jin Liu and Robert George of Brillouin Energy, report calorimetry on Brillouin’s hydrogen reactor. The reactive part is a ceramic tube coated with a hydrogen-absorbing metal such as nickel and with copper, sitting in hydrogen gas, and driven by pulses of a few hundred volts lasting tens of nanoseconds. Because the pulses are so fast, the current crowds onto the outer metal-ceramic interface — the skin effect — and returns through the bulk copper. The clever part is the control. Long low-voltage pulses, which are not thought to stimulate the reaction, are matched in input power against short high-voltage pulses, which are; any extra heat in the second case is not resistive heating. Measured two independent ways, by mass flow and by a heat-flow model of the calorimeter, the ratio of output to input runs from about 1.26 to above 1.5. Tanzella’s group has been checking Brillouin’s calorimetry for over eighteen months.
Connection
Chapter 12 argues that a metal lattice loaded with hydrogen is a place where nuclear reactions become reachable at ordinary temperatures, and this is one of the few programmes with an outside verifier, a named calorimeter design and a run count in the hundreds. Chapter 1 cares about exactly that: what makes a heat measurement believable is the null condition, and this paper’s matched-power comparison is the whole argument.
From the source
Mass flow calorimetry, run on two identical reactors and comparing an active catalyst against an inactive one, gives ratios of output to input power of 1.30, 1.41, 1.46, 1.26 and 1.40 at 200, 220, 260, 270 and 275 degrees Celsius, drawn from 65 separate calculations; the authors describe the comparison as falling between 1.26 and 1.41 with no obvious temperature dependence, at output powers from under 10 watts to about 30 watts.Section 3.1 and Table 1
A second and independent analysis, the heat-flow method — solving a system-identification model of the calorimeter for the power reaching five temperature sensors — yields a ratio of up to 1.5 at higher temperatures and power, and above 1.5 in a different reactor with a different catalyst when the pulse power was scanned from zero to 43 watts as a sine-squared ramp.Section 3.2, Figs. 10 and 11; Tables 2 and 3
The null condition is the core of the method: less frequent, longer, low-voltage pulses are set equal in input power to more frequent, shorter, high-voltage pulses, the low-voltage condition is not thought to stimulate the reaction while the high-voltage one is, and a separate direct-current joule-heating calibration along the outer coating gives a further reference — so heat seen only under high-voltage pulsing is attributed to the reaction rather than to resistive heating.Abstract, final four sentences; Section 2.4.1
The stimulation is engineered rather than incidental: pulses of several hundred volts and tens of nanoseconds concentrate the current at the outer metal-ceramic interface by the skin effect while it returns through the bulk copper, and the pulse power is measured directly with fast oscilloscopes across the catalyst and a series shunt resistor whose resistance is characterized under both direct-current and pulse conditions, recorded every ten seconds.Abstract; Section 2.2
The campaign behind these numbers is large and has been checked from outside: over 600 runs on over 100 different catalysts in four isoperibolic reactors using several calorimetric methods, with the Energy Research Center examining and verifying Brillouin’s calorimetry for over eighteen months since two calorimeters were moved from SRI International to Brillouin’s laboratory. Reproducibility is reported as considerably better than in earlier work, and catalysts have been carried between laboratories and different reactors to give similar positive results.Section 1; Section 4, second paragraph
The measurement the authors name next is the one that would settle the accounting: calibrations and active runs comparing all thermal output against all electrical power input have recently been performed, with results to be presented in future. The study deliberately did not set out to test Brillouin’s own Controlled Electron Capture Reaction hypothesis for why the heat appears, which stays open.Section 1, first paragraph; Section 4, final paragraph
The way in
https://doi.org/10.70923/001c.72547How to cite it
Francis Tanzella, Robert Godes, Jin Liu, Robert George (2020) Mass and Heat Flow Calorimetry in Brillouin’s Reactor doi:10.70923/001c.72547