I have sent a number of questions to Songsheng Jiang who recently submitted the report titled “New Result of Anomalous Heat Production in Hydrogen-loaded Metals at High Temperature”. Here are some comments and responses.
1 – Can you provide information about nickel powder and LiAlH4 used? For example, the manufacturer, purity, particle size, surface morphology, etc.
The nickel powder and LiAlH4 was all commercial products, produced in Beijing and Tianjin respectively. The size of metal nickel powder is from a few microns to tens of microns. We not used carbonyl nickel powder in this experiment. The purity is higher than 99.9%. Surface morphology is unknown.
2 – Do you have any SEM (scanning electron microscope) images of the nickel, LiAlH4, the mixed fuel, and the ash or used fuel?
We not do any SEM images in this experiment. We don’t think it is important for judging excess heat production. The surface structure may have changes at high temperature and loading hydrogen into nickel, but it cannot give a direct evidence of excess heat production.
3 – How did you process the nickel and LiAlH4 before placing it in the reactor? Can you detail how the fuel was loaded into the nickel reactor cell? Was the powder tightly packed or loose?
Original LiAlH4 is in a sealed metal bag, and the bag is in a sealed metal can. When we prepare the fuel, open the can and bag, then take out a certain amount of LiAlH4 by small chemical spoon and then weight nickel powder and LiAlH4separately. The both were mixed homogeneously by the spoon on a clear paper. Then the mixed powders was put into the fuel cell and compressed by spoon tightly. For safety, the person working at the nickel and LiAlH4 powders was wearing masks and gloves
5 – Do you think having low pressure in the cell is important in producing excess heat? If so, why?
I do not think having low pressure in the cell is important in producing excess heat. After first hydrogen-loaded process, excess heat has no significant correlation with pressure in our experiment (see fig. 6, yellow line).
6 – How much free space was in the reactor chamber compared to the fuel volume?
The total space volume of the reactor chamber was about 220 ml and the fuel volume was less than 35 ml.
7 – A hydrogen tank is mentioned in the report. Did you add hydrogen to the reactor from the tank?
Yes, the hydrogen bottle was used for sometime, for example, increasing pressure as test
8 – The report states that the reactor operated in self sustain mode for 20 minutes. However, the graph on page 11 seems to show the voltage (blue line) did not go to zero until 10:50 which would make the period of self sustain only about 10 minutes. Can you explain this?
The report does not show how much self sustaining time around 10:50 on 8 May. The self sustain mode for 20 minutes is in the first self sustain period on 5 May. This self sustaining process is not shown in Fig. 7a and 7b.
9 – When you examined the nickel cell afterwards, what condition was it and the fuel in? Was the nickel cell melted?
After experiment, the fuels were melted in the cell, but nickel box was not melted, it was well.
10 – Can you provide the raw data from this experiment?
Fig.7a is an automatic plot of data logger (recorder), in other words, it was raw data. The excel data can be exported for making other figures. I do not think it is necessary to provide raw data information.
11 – Did you control the experiment manually, or did you use any kind of controller?
We control the experiment manually right now.
12 – T1 is always constant in Fig 7b, but it would seem that because of heat transfer from T2 to T1, the T1 cannot be constant. Could T1 be damaged?
T1 was not constant in the whole experiment (see Fig. 6, red and green curves ). T1 temperature may change while tuning input power. The constant T1 temperature may be correlated with very low pressure (much lower than 1 atmospheric pressure in the chamber). In this case, thermal conductivity in the chamber was very low. Also, the heat capacity of fuel cell was much small than the reaction chamber. The low thermal conductivity and large different heat capacity between a small fuel cell and large reaction chamber may make heat transfer from core cell to the T1 very slowly and lose a lot in the way, no reason to doubt T1 damaged.
13. On the cooling down … T2 is far below T1. But they should go together to an equilibrium due to the setup of the experiment. If there is no added heat, delta T1-T2 must lead to 0. But T2 is below T1 at ~11:30. Could T2 be damaged?
T1 was near the heater, T2 was on the cell wall, both were separated by reaction chamber. When no excess heat source, the T2 temperature is lower than T1. If enough excess heat is produced, T2 may be higher than T1 ( also see Fig. 6, red and green curves).
14. What kind of calibration was done for this experiment?
We was used the method similar to Focardi et al work in 1998 to calibrate factor of W/0C, it is about 1.5-2.5.
16. – What are your plans for your next experiment?
We have not made final plan how to do the next experiment, hope to improve the temperature measurement.