Labor Day Section Technical Meeting

                                             The E-CAT

Last year we had an October technical meeting in which the E-Cat was discussed.  This year we discussed the progress on the E-Cat since then. Official information on the E-Cat is at www.ecat.com.

Changes since Last Year’s Talk

1. Size Change. The 1MW E-Cat from a year ago was the size of a shipping container. The new design on the drawing boards is a drum of measuring 1.2 x 0.4 meters.  There are 100 reactors inside, each of one having about 1,200 sq. cm of surface area.
2. Temperature.  The output temperature of the unit last year was only enough to make dry steam. The new prototype reactor has operated up to 1200° C which is close to limit possible with nickel.

The E-Cat’s Design

1. The nuclear catalytic powder.   Micron sized particles of nickel enriched with the heavier isotopes, viz., Ni-62 and Ni-64 are used.  They are heated to a high enough temperature to sinter and become denser forming tubules.   A pseudo magnetic field is generated in the tubules.   The Debye Temperature is 179° C for nickel.  The catalyst interface works even above the Fermi temperature of nickel where ferromagnetism disappears.
2. Containment vessel.  A containment vessel is constructed from stainless steel with lead and boron shielding.  Inside is a heating element. The powder must be heated to at least 125° C to activate it. A dilute hydrogen atomic dipole quantum gas is diffused through the tubules.  The pseudo magnetic field polarizes the gas. The dipoles are regenerated at a certain frequency.  This frequency is used to control the temperature in self sustaining mode.  Above 125 degrees, the electrical resistance of the powder decreases with increasing temperature and energy is produced.  The lead and boron provide shielding against possible bursts of gamma rays when the device is activated and deactivated.
3. Mesoscopic Catalysts.  Mono metals with oxide surface layers, such as, ZnO, MgO, and zirconium dioxide helps to keep the Rydberg gas from ionizing before it enters the tubules.
4. Secret Catalyst. A secret catalyst may be involved, such as, graphane/graphene hydrogen delamination.

Exercise: Solve the Hubbard Hamiltonian for short-lived Rydberg hydrogen atoms with long range dipole interaction ~ R^(-3.5).  

Hint: Since the Rydberg state is short-lived, interaction is not really long range.  Taking into account the propagation time of the interaction, one ignores the interaction with points more than a specific distance away on the lattice.  Convert to spherical coordinates. Use a basis which is adiabatically connected to the zero field.  The Wannier function overlaps can be used to yield the Hubbard parameters.

About the Test Depicted in the Photograph

First, the E-Cat tested was constructed using two steel tubes or cylinders of equal length. The tube with a smaller diameter was placed inside of the tube with a larger diameter. In the gap between the two cylinders (the outer surface of the inner cylinder and the inner surface of the outer cylinder) a resistive heating element was placed, along with the "charge" consisting of nickel powder, catalysts, and a tablet that would release hydrogen when heated. The ends of the cylinder were then covered with putty that could withstand high temperatures. As can be seen in the picture, the central "hole" was not covered.

The outer and inner surface of the module was coated with a black paint that would resist high temperatures. The black surface would make the device a more efficient black body radiator. 

Next, the device was positioned several feet above the floor on a metal framework. A thermal camera was positioned below the E-Cat module, looking upwards. This camera would be used to record the surface temperature of the bottom half of the module. By being positioned below the module instead of above, the thermal camera would not be exposed to hot rising air that could artificially inflate the temperature data acquired. Due to the air currents providing some amount of cooling to the bottom of the reactor, the camera was in the position that would allow for the lowest temperatures to be recorded. This makes the resulting measurements the most conservative possible.

Power was applied to the resistors inside of the E-Cat and the temperature of the module, as recorded by the thermal camera, increased over a period of several hours. The thermal camera was connected to a computer so all of the data could be recorded for analysis. A handheld laser thermometer was used to determine the temperature of the inner surface of the inner cylinder (the glowing hole in the image).

At the time of the photo, the average temperature of the outer surface was 801° C with local peak of 873 ° C. The inner surface temperature ranged from 1100 ° C to over 1200° C. Two parallel resistors were used for heating (the 4 wires you see). The value in parallel was 6 Ohm. The voltage of alternating current power (50 Hz) was 147v. The current was 24.25 amps. The power consumption was 3.56 kW. The power radiated by the two internal and external walls was estimated to equal to a total of 13.39 kW in excess of average ambient temperature of 35 ° C.  The internal wall was white-hot and unapproachable within a meter. The outer wall measured by thermal imager with an accuracy of 2%. The inner wall measured with a laser thermometer from 1.2 meters away.  The conservative values and the deficet  because heat removal convective motion estimated in at least 8% of the outer wall and inner wall cosine irradiation down to cause high angle of irradiation toward thermometer laser (pointing almost aligned with the inner cylinder)  The reaction was stable.