[NewCandle] aluminum holiday

[Nick Reiter]

Good morning, all,

A couple of random field notes here, as well as some
questions for the Keith.  Hope all who celebrate such
had a good turkey day.

Keith, I am about to set up a long term test-tube run
of the aluminum strip - aluminum nitrate / silver
nitrate testing.  My plan right now is this -

I will divide the aluminum strip you sent into four
samples.  One will be kept as control.  One will go
into a tube with a dilute solution of aluminum nitrate
in water, no silver nitrate added.  Another will be
the same, but with some small seed amount of the
silver nitrate added.  And the last tube will be like
#3, but with say 10% D2O added.

I will take an EDS scan using best practice of the
control to establish baseline.  All samples will go
into their corrosion tubes (borosilicate).  I will
then do an EDS on a tiny piece of each after 2 weeks,
then following that, the tubes will sit for a long
time, say 6 months, or until some surprising visible
change is noticed.

My questions would be thus:  do you have any data that
would suggest a starting solution strength?  What
molarity AlNO3 and what amount seed silver nitrate? 
DI or distilled water?

In other news, I've had a bucket of aluminum foil
rolls going in KCl brine with 10 ml D2O now for about
a week and a half.  One interesting aspect I see
again... and this is consistent with every time I use
a D2O enriched hydrolysis solution... the time needed
at RT for the bucket to take off and begin corroding
and evolving H2 is enhanced by a factor or 2 or 3. 
What is it with D2O that even at concentrations like 1
to 4% slows down reactions of this sort, all other
parameters being equal?

I took some foil samples before the bubbling began,
but after the foil took on its blackish hue.  I also
sampled a white salty formation that occured well
above the water line, that I had not seen with the
full normal water version.  I presumed it was KCl
deposited from the brine wicking up the plastic. 
However when I EDS'ed it, I found some wicked high
boron signal already, as well as another
"un-assignable" peak - maybe a Cl artifact- at 1.56keV
 All rather odd, as the bucket had not even started to
take off yet in its hydrolysis and corrosion
lifecycle.

The KCl with heavy water version did take off finally,
and its coming down on the other side now, being at a
full boil and working through about 3 liters of water
in 24 hours.  Impressive.

I'll be hitting EDS with it later this next week, and
will report more then...

Best to all,

nr

The Holy Grail 'neath ancient Roslin waits.
The blade and chalice guarding o'er Her gates. 
Adorned in the masters' loving art, She lies;
She rests at last beneath the starry skies.