Calorimetric Measurement of Underwater Sparks
Scott R. Little, EarthTech International
Introduction
Several phenomena have been attributed to or associated with underwater sparking. Hal Fox and Patrick Bailey discuss these issues in a paper entitled "High-Density Charge Clusters and Energy Conversion Results" available from Fusion Information Center, Box 58639, SLC, UT 84158. The Neal-Gleeson (aka the Cincinatti Group) process, reported to cause nuclear transmutations, involves such underwater sparking. Such sparking may also involve the formation of the "charge clusters" reported by Ken Shoulders in US Patent 5,018,180 "Energy Conversion Using High Charge Density".
Because of the possibility of nuclear reactions in such experiments it is reasonable to expect that an overall energy excess would be produced by the reaction. This excess should be observable as an excess heat signal.
In the EarthTech laboratory we have succeeded in reproducing this underwater sparking phenomena and in making a calorimetric measurement of a cell in which steady, constant-power sparking was underway.
Apparatus
The cell consists of a glass vessel filled with about 150 mL of a 0.15 gram/liter LiOH - distilled water solution. The electrodes are 3/16" diameter 6061 alloy Al rods. Importantly, the rods are sleeved with tight-fitting TFE tubing which extends from the top of the cell down about 1 cm under the electrolyte surface.
The first version of this cell did not have the TFE tubing. About 30 minutes after the cell was placed in operation it exploded due to ignition of the H2 &O2 atmosphere in the head space by the sparks. Fortunately, no one was injured.
The cell is closed with a machined G-10 cap which is O-ring sealed into the glass vessel and has O-ring seals on the Al rods and the glass-jacketed temperature probe (visible between the two Al rod electrodes).
A gas vent connection conveys the electrolysis gases out of the cell.
The action is started by gradually applying 60Hz AC voltage. At first the current is high but it rapidly declines and the voltage can be raised further. Presumably, an oxide coating is being developed on the electrodes.
At about 400 volts, the sparking begins. It is quite intense at around 500 volts and, at that voltage, our cell consumes 15-25 watts of power.
This photo shows the general appearance of the sparking. All exposed electrode surfaces are uniformly covered with tiny sparks that appear to dance around at random. Upon microscopic examination they are observed to originate from relatively stable pits in the electrode surface and to flash off and on at different locations thus creating the dancing effect.
To make the calorimetric measurement, the cell was encased in a water-flow heat-exchanger made from 1/4" OD Cu tubing. This heat exchanger was housed in a thick Styrofoam enclosure as shown to the left.
To measure the inlet and outlet water temperatures, the heat exchanger is equipped with temperature measurement stations as seen in the lower right corner of this photo. Note that the station is embedded in the Styrofoam insulation, thus insulating it both from the outside and from the experiment itself.
Precision thermistors are used for the temperature measurement. They are located in thin-walled stainless steel thermal wells that extend well into the mainstream flow to ensure representative sampling.
The rest of the calorimeter system is shown in this photo. The Styrofoam enclosure has been buttoned up and you can see the small viewport that was provided to allow visual confirmation of the sparking phenomena during the multi-hour calorimeter runs.
Water is circulated through the heat exchanger at a constant rate (about 5 ml/sec) by an FMI metering pump near the center of the black board. The water entering the experiment chamber is maintained at a constant 40C by a water bath which is actively heated and cooled and is controlled by the system computer (not shown).
In the extreme bottom right corner of this photo is a dark lump that is a vital part of this experiment (see next photo for detail).
Because the effective impedance of the cell is rather variable, the power consumption is also rather variable when a constant voltage supply is used. Accurate calorimetry is most easily accomplished with a steady input power so an automatic power regulator was devised.
The device consists of a small Variac coupled to a DC gear motor. A pair of PNP transistors and a couple of resistors serve to interface the device directly to the digital I/O lines of the data acquisition board in the system computer.
A simple control algorithm drives the motor as needed to maintain the cell input power at the desired level.
Results
This graph shows a number of parameters plotted vs time. The time span is 9 hours and there are vertical dotted lines every hour. The input power is plotted on a 0-50 watt vertical scale. The measured heat output power is plotted on the same vertical scale. Cell temperature is plotted on a 0-100C vertical scale. Cell voltage is plotted on a 400-900 volt scale. Cell current is plotted on a 30-130 mA scale. Room temperature is plotted on a 22-32 C scale. Inlet water temperature is plotted in orange on a 35-45 C scale and is presented mainly to show that the temperature regulating bath was functioning properly.
Cell input power was regulated at about 22.0 watts during the 5 hour active period of the run. As can be seen from the graph, it took approximately two hours of steady operation to reach thermal equilibrium. During the last hour of sparking, the average input power was 22.0 watts and the average output power was 22.3 watts...a Pout/Pin ratio of 1.014. Because of inherent inaccuracies in this calorimeter, this small departure from a unity power balance is not likely to be significant. In a number of calibration runs performed previously with resistor cells, this calorimeter system has typically achieved an out/in ratio between 0.98-1.02.
Thus we can conclude only that this experiment produced less than a few percent excess heat. It is likely that it did not produce any excess heat at all.
To pursue the possibility that a small amount of excess heat was produced, we need to enhance the signal somehow. Perhaps a more dilute electrolyte and larger area electrodes would produce smaller, more numerous sparks for the same input power. If an energy gain is associated directly with each spark, this should increase the signal/background ratio.
Any suggestions for further improvements would be greatly appreciated. Send them to little@eden.com.