Explanation of Real Thorium Molten Salt Reactors

There are beaches in India whose sands are so thorium-rich you could probably get a tan at night

So that is why... Now I know where to order my Coleman lantern mantles from next time.

While we are on that topic, how about using a stoichiometric hydrogen-oxygen flame within the framework of a thorium impregnated lantern mantle? Has anyone ever succeeded in doing that without violent disassembly of the entire setup?

I don't have much experience with using acetylene-oxygen flash arrestor with other gases, none in fact. The supposed plan could involve also several plastic bubble jars with short sections of tubing between to further prevent flash from going all the way back to source (and really hurt, maim, etc. me or my associate researcher).

My thinking right now, the flame velocity of any such mixture without diluents or with diluents is practically too high (> 10-20 m/sec) to work with.

I am almost scared to "pop" it in a strong bomb calorimeter for heat studies, but I know the specific energy is less than for a comparable molar quantity of gasoline vapor.

Coleman mantles come from Pandora. I thought everybody knew that.

Home....so far, and so long ago.

Tonight my wifey starts on intravenous antibiotics. The pills did not work for her UTI.

Hospital caused UTI's are apparently on the upswing due to poor protocol, and also ignorant people that have not one clue about what they doing, but they got their "tech" degree from some local technical college, or something like that.

They should be made to eat what they culture.

Hey, hope she feels better.

Well guys (JPool and Andrew), wifey did not go in (the heart hospital filled up suddenly), and she actually got better over the weekend. We went in this morning early, and her pee was all clean! Hurrah!

Now we can brace for impact with the next event - bowel re-section.

Ditto.

Don't think a stoichiometric mix or even a mix within the combustibility limits is a good idea inside mantle. Seems like a better idea would be H₂ inside the mantle, mixing through the mantle surface with atmospheric (or augmented) O₂ at the mantle as to maintain a steady flame front on the mantle.

Yes, that is most likely a prescription for blowing the mantle out of the lantern so to speak.

Actually the flame velocity is so doggone high for the SM(2H2,O2), that estimates of the flame velocity have gone as high as >100 m/s.

There should be a straightforward experimental way to measure that without serious damage to personnel and equipment. Wright Patterson Field research group reported in the late 1950's - early 1960's (as best I recall right now), that they could not stabilize a flame past about 9 bar total pressure for the SM. They kept blowing up the burner head and all the lead up tubing at 10 bar. That research was done in conjunction with a potential development of hydrogen fueled gas turbine engines for combat aviation (don't ask me why, but it might have to do with power/weight ratios.)

At this present time, LERTX will not conduct any burn tests on SM other than a few balloons to pop outside the barn. We will have plans for a bomb calorimeter within the week, but will need some of the heavier thread styles used by high pressure oilfield equipment (I suspect). I hate using the words pipe and bomb in the same sentence. We simply do have to know for sure how much heat the reactor gas contains in terms of combustion heat. The balloons are also for buoyancy confirmation tests. We surely expect the effective molecular weight of the gas in the balloon to be 18.02. It would be nice to have a balloon that is a perfect cube, but I don't happen to have any of those either.

Any ideas? Am I thinking backwards? Could be put a cube containing a heavy gas like SF6 into another container (gas tight except for inlet and outlet ports, one of which is also the stem of a sensitive microbalance), and then record the mass difference for various gases around the test "cube" (or test tube), plot versus known molecular weight of the sheath gas?

One run with dry pure hydrogen, one with nitrogen, one with oxygen, one with carbon dioxide, and one with Argon should just about cover the range of the plot, right? I should get started on that immediately.

I don't happen to own a fancy GC-MS machine for gas analysis. That is one issue here. Maybe I need to learn how to DIY one of those too, because I sure as heck can't put out the kind of dough it takes to get one. I need my buddy in the environmental business to come through for me on this one?

I think you should keep the gasses unmixed and force the burning to proceed in a controlled manner at a stable flame front.

Perhaps one gas in a balloon with a small nozzle, within the bomb calorimeter with the other gas filling the remainder of the calorimeter....

Or two balloons each with a small nozzel feeding a small combustion chamber arranged so that it won't pop the balloons within the calorimeter. The remaining space sho u ld be filled with a known amount of inert gas.

.

As for testing the VODeflagration of hydrogen oxygen mixtures, very thin hose or sheath material filled with the mixed gas and affixed over a known decently long distance would let a high speed camera (or if the tube/sheath is long enough,just a regular video camera) to measure VODeflagration pretty well.

Interesting. We might just try some experiments like that, some time later, as a means of comparison of text mixtures against hydrolysis gas to see if there is a measurable difference. I suspect the deflagration shock wave might produce some light along the pressure wave. A couple of cheap, fast PIN diodes as detectors, and a 100 ft transparent vinyl hose? I wonder if the hose might contaminate the shock wave, and perturb the measurement badly? One can always use small diameter stainless steel, and install some cheap plastic windows on fittings in an attempt to reduce that.

I have been looking at improving the reactor design to separate the gases and prevent mixing. A polycarbonate partition in the head space between liquid level and dome top would be most convenient, as long as CelGard or other battery separator is added below the water line to the reactor bottom is added. That is the plan.

I further suppose that most or all of any LENR will take place at only one of the electrodes anyway, strangely, in our scheme there is evidence of tiny craters being formed in lead anodes when those were used. This obviously has little or nothing to do with hydrogen evolution. At first, we were concerned that Pb(D-D)→²¹⁰Po could be taking place, so that we would think we were seeing fusion. Not to mention the very high level of concern for associated health risks. The mechanistic aspects of that were not clear, but one of our associates pointed out early on the near resonance of binding energies required. The decay of ²¹⁰Po time constant is completely and thoroughly inconsistent with our observed very short duration radiation after a local heat excess event (throws the matrix out of the reactor for open topped systems).

Where did you source you Pb anodes? Automotive batteries?

shhh....confidential source. Most of the guys in our group use lead sheeting that is available at some hardware stores where you can still find it, as was formerly used in roof flashing, I think. All the lead I have came from a friend who had a large "biscuit" tin sized round (short cylinder), approximate mass 10-15 Kg.

I only use mine to make "standard" weight canisters by melting some down in a tuna can, drilling a central hole, and mounting on a counter ballast shaft, or on a bolt as a handle. A couple of them I use add up to precisely 3317 g, as the standard for calibrating my 5 Kg load cell. With the load cell tared, I see usually between -0.09 to +0.1 or so grams, then I will see something like 3316.9 (actually with two decimals rather than just one), drifting around a small amount, so I think I have a "workable" calibration factor loaded into the program. Then I remove those standards, and place a smaller lead slug of 42 g mass, and last night it read 41.9-42.1, so that was acceptable within the framework of my experiment. This was only after killing load cell mount vibration, but also the setup was resting on a rickety metal wire legged stand, so it can probably do better resting on concrete floor at the "farm".

That load cell setup is for measurement of gas flow by water displacement in the range of about 50-500 mL/min, expected during CC-LENR runs, corresponding to approximately 3.5 to 15 amps current, roughly. We are also working out the kinks as to removing all or nearly water vapor from the reactor gas line upstream of the flow meter. Heat removal is important due to our calorimetry setup, and water vapor throws off the gas reading as a large systematic error when the reactor is hot, thus further disqualifying our attempted heat balance measurements. We fully expect to arrive at Heat in = 1.0000 Heat out (unless something other than classical physics and chemistry is taking place.) Anything over that, especially if the Geiger counter reading is statistically above background, and we have something.

Back to the Lead anodes: We have been running off calcined anthracite carbon for the last several months. We are using a lead clip/contact above the water line for the anode, and a steel clip/contact for the cathode. Others in our group (that were doing only open vessel electrolysis) used lead electrodes, and I have directly (in person) witnessed the very small "craters" on the parts of the anode only that were not oxidized, and resembled high velocity impact craters, complete with a raised "lip" of "ejecta" around the edges.

I do not suspect much problem with using automotive battery electrodes, but I would probably shy away from using wheel weights, without some analysis on the metal.

The plates you witnessed the crater on, if they came from automotive (or other starting or hybrid) batteries are made in a sponge form. Spalling is not unusual. Build up of spalled material sometimes shorts out cells on starting or hybrid batteries.

Yes, it is much easier to design a diffusion burner head than a pre-mix one for hydrogen - oxygen.

Single shot calorimetry will be based on a known sample of gas (volume) at room conditions, compressed by hand to whatever pressure we can manage using crude tools, but far below any 5-10 bar test. The bomb calorimeter will need to be thick, so 3/8" wall is not sufficient. It will need to be a minimum of 0.5" wall, but obviously more wall thickness is required as the diameter increases.

It is not the size of the "bang", but it is the precision and accuracy of measuring heat released by the "bang" when we release it.