Historical research guide · 0897 · 2016
Research into Heat Generators Similar to High-temperature Rossi Reactor
A.G. Parkhomov · E.O. Belousova
In one minute
Andrea Rossi never published the inside of his high-temperature reactor, so Alexander Parkhomov and E.O. Belousova built their own from the description in the Lugano test report: a sealed ceramic tube holding a gram of nickel powder with lithium aluminium hydride, wound with a heater, taken above eleven hundred degrees. This paper is the measurement log. The first design was calorimetered the old-fashioned way, by weighing the water it boiled away; at 1150 degrees it returned nearly twice the electrical energy put in, and at 1290 degrees nearly three times. Identical runs with an empty tube returned about one, which is the control that gives the number meaning. The second design traded that calorimetry for a longer life and ran continuously for more than three days at twelve hundred degrees, producing over forty kilowatt-hours of heat beyond the electricity drawn. Geiger counters, an ionization dosimeter and indium neutron-activation plates registered nothing above background throughout.
Connection
Chapter twelve asks whether a metal lattice loaded with hydrogen can be driven to release nuclear-scale energy, and this is one of the most-replicated benchtop attempts to answer it — Rossi’s architecture rebuilt from public information, with the fuel-free control run alongside. It matters to chapter one for the same reason: the excess appears only with fuel and only above a threshold temperature, which is the shape a real effect has.
From the source
In the first design — a sealed alumina tube holding one gram of nickel powder with 0.1 gram of lithium aluminium hydride, with heat measured by the mass of water boiled away — the ratio of heat produced to electricity consumed was 0.99 at 970 degrees Celsius, 1.92 at 1150 degrees and 2.74 at 1290 degrees.Sects. 3 and 6, Table 1 (experiment of 20-12-2014)
The control is the load-bearing part: runs with an identical mock-up reactor carrying no fuel returned ratios of about one at every temperature up to 1200 degrees, and fuelled runs below about 1000 degrees did the same — significant excess heat appeared only with the nickel and lithium aluminium hydride charge held above roughly 1100 degrees.Sect. 6, Tables 2 and 3
During one high-temperature run the electrical heater burned out and the reactor held 1200 degrees Celsius for a further eight minutes before beginning to cool, with no electrical input at all — heat production at kilowatt level from the fuel alone.Sect. 5, final two paragraphs; Fig. 6
The second design, built for endurance rather than for water calorimetry, ran continuously for more than three days at 1200 degrees and produced more than twice the electrical energy applied — over 40 kilowatt-hours, more than 150 megajoules, in excess of the electricity consumed. The comparison method is the fuel-free reactor: about 1100 watts were needed to hold 1200 degrees without fuel, against 300 to 330 watts with it.Sects. 12 and 14, Fig. 15; Sect. 17, conclusion 2
Radiation was monitored throughout with an SI-8B Geiger counter sensitive to alpha particles and soft X-rays as well as beta and gamma rays, a DK-02 ionization-chamber dosimeter, and indium plates of 18 square centimetres able to register slow-neutron fluxes above 0.2 per square centimetre per second; no level significantly above background was recorded while excess heat was being produced.Sects. 4 and 13; Sect. 17, conclusion 4
Analysis of the spent fuel found only minor changes in isotope ratios together with the emergence of new elements, and a marked rise in iron, chromium, silicon, sodium, potassium and titanium in the nickel-bearing fraction; the authors attribute the small isotopic signal to run length, noting the Lugano test ran ten times longer at higher power.Sects. 15 and 16; Sect. 17, conclusion 5
The way in
https://doi.org/10.70923/001c.72394How to cite it
A.G. Parkhomov, E.O. Belousova (2016) Research into Heat Generators Similar to High-temperature Rossi Reactor doi:10.70923/001c.72394