From: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Subject: Status #9 Cell 4A3
Reply-To: DROEGE@fnald.fnal.gov
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 22:27:26 GMT

Status #9 Cell 4A3

Well, here we are 480+ hours into the run and last night there was a clear cut 
180 joule pulse.  Most of the energy appeared in 1/2 hour, so with the time 
constant of my apparatus, it is not possible to distinguish the heat from an 
impulse.  Peak (one minute) heat measurements were 115 mw.  The rms noise on 
the one minute samples over the last several days has been 15 mw.  So as a 
"noise" event it is 7.6 sigma.  But it did not look as noise looks.  The 15 mw 
background "noise" looks like noise i.e. +/- wanderings from a mean, with a 
very occasional 30 or 40 mw deviation.  This was 30 or so successive 100+ mw 
measurements all in the direction of anomalous heat.  With a "time constant" 
profile, i.e. large deviations from the balance point at first, with the 
deviations slowly returning to the base line.  Everything makes sense.  
Various thermometers and the servos all reacted as if there was some real heat 
deposited in the calorimeter. 

Prior to the pulse there had been two additions of one ml of electrolyte to 
which Boric acid had been added to give a Boron concentration in the 
electrolyte of 200 ppm.  The last addition about a day before the event (from 
memory). 

Note that over the 480 running hours, the peak to peak wanderings of the 
calorimeter have been of order 60 mw (stated without looking at actual data - 
so I could be off as much as a factor of two - also eliminating data around 
cell current changes when it takes a few hours for the calorimeter to 
stabilize).  I think this is consistent with the quoted 0.035 watts that 
Dieter Britz has so faithfully recorded. 

Everything that you all worry about seemed normal.  Power supply voltages, 
temperature, barometric pressure, furnace cycles, etc..  There was a small 
increase in gas volume, but it was reabsorbed by the end of the heat pulse, 
and seemed to come as a result of the heat pulse.  My old "something gets hot 
and blows out some gas" theory.  Other equally large gas pulses have not 
generated a heat pulse.  

Of course it could be chemistry.  In the cell are the 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 mm 
cathode, 50 cc of gas (started with argon), 32 cc of electrolyte, several 
grams of teflon, a soft glass center tube, eight soft glass catalyst holders, 
120 or so pieces of catalyst, a gram or so of Platinum, and it is all in a 
polypropylene test tube.  
                          
The following is the corrected table from the last status report:

JSUM        Gas         D/Pd        G*26.34     Diff/G      K 
    0       0           0             0          0
    +.6     0.02        0.000        -0.53    -28.2
  -16.0     0.59        0.009       -15.54      0.4          2
  -33.4     1.18        0.018       -31.08      1.0          5
  -56.2     1.89        0.030       -49.78      1.7          9
  -45.1     3.05        0.048       -80.34      5.8         31
  -52.5     4.41        0.070      -116.16      7.2         39
  -71.1     6.27        0.099      -165.15      7.5         45
  -85.1     8.61        0.136      -226.79      8.2         45
 -130.1    11.31        0.178      -297.91      7.4         40
 -197.4    14.66        0.231      -386.14      6.4         35
 -283.2    18.41        0.290      -484.92      5.5         30
 -375.2    22.41        0.353      -590.28      4.8         26
 -479.8    26.73        0.422      -704.07      4.2         23
 -597.9    31.43        0.496      -827.87      3.7         20
 -714.6    36.41        0.574      -959.04      3.4         19
 -859.5    41.84        0.660     -1102.07      2.9         16
-1003.1    46.53        0.734     -1225.60      2.4         13
-1129.9    49.41        0.779     -1301.46      1.7          9
-1216.1    50.66        0.799     -1334.38      1.2
-1279.7    50.37        0.794     -1326.75      0.5
-1332.2    50.40        0.795     -1327.54     -0.0

The first two columns are raw data.  JSUM is the integrated balance in 
joules.  The minus sign means that extra heat had to be added to keep the 
calorimeter in balance.  Gas is the cc of gas accumulated in the syringe.  The 
rest of the columns are my computations and (still) subject to horrible 
errors.  
         
What we would like to get from this data, is a measure of heat of absorption 
of Palladium/Deuterium as a function of the gas loading.  
                                                          
The G*26.34 column is the joules lost per cc because the measured oxygen did 
not recombine to form water.  This is derived from the 1.53*I energy for dis-
association, 96,484 coulombs per mole, two atoms per D2, and the fact that we 
are measuring O2 not D2 giving another factor of two.  Someone please check as 
I always worry that I will mis-count charges or something. 

The Diff/G column is the difference between the joules per cc of un recombined 
oxygen and the calorimeter balance, divided by the absorbed D (2*observed 
oxygen) to get the average joules per cc of D absorbed integrated up to the 
indicated D/Pd loading.  The plus sign for most of this data indicates that 
the absorption of D by Palladium releases heat.  

The K column converts the Diff/G column to kilocalories per mole D2 absorbed 
at the indicated D/Pd loading.  I have not computed all the entries in this 
column where the error limits make the measurement meaningless.   

It seems to me that there is a hint in this data that much of the heat of 
absorption comes from the first 0.13 or so of D/Pd (or 0.23 if this sample 
started at the suspected 0.1).  After that, less and less heat is released per 
unit absorbed.  Is there a thermodynamic reason for this?  I have F. A. Lewis, 
"The Palladium Hydrogen System", can someone point me to the right curve for 
comparison?
                            
Tom Droege

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