[NewCandle] aluminum holiday

[Keith Nagel]

Hi Nick,

Very little hard information was available regarding those Al/Ag xmutation
experiments. That said, the basic system is very robust and was/is
used commercially to extract Ag from nitric acid leached ore solutions.
This is essentially a displacement reaction: the Al is dissolved and
goes into solution forming a more basic Al nitrate, and the Ag is
plated out forming the characteristic "christmas tree" dendritic
structure. The more Ag in solution, the faster will be the displacement
reaction. The aluminum nitrate acts to reduce the rate of displacement,
so you can conceivably have a fairly rich concentration of Ag
and still have the slow displacement necessary to (hopefully)
see the effect.

I was able to find some more info from my old notes when I went
looking for the work I did on that spark gap oscillator. Using
1/4 gram of silver nitrate in 10 ml of water, I would see
a substantial reaction for about a week. This was done in a
cold basement during winter, so the temps were quite low
( probably 50-60 degrees F ). You should try that first,
and look at the resulting dendrites and substrate under
the microscope to get a feel for what a "normal" reaction
would be.

The challenge then is to quantify the results. You
have better scales than I have/had access to, so if
you can make accurate milligram measures and achieve
consistant rates of recovery of the silver from the
resulting solutions, perhaps 100mg of silver per experiment
would be a good target quantity.    

Alternately, one could try to redissolve the silver with
more nitric acid, and measure concentration of silver
ion before and after displacement. This appeals to me
for several reasons, but I'm unsure how to do this
accurately. Any suggestions or product recommendations?

K. 

-----Original Message-----
From: newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com
[mailto:newcandle-bounces at ipdiscover.com]On Behalf Of Nick Reiter
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 7:57 AM
To: New energy for the new world.
Subject: [NewCandle] aluminum holiday


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.


      

_______________________________________________
NewCandle mailing list
NewCandle at ipdiscover.com
http://ipdiscover.com/mailman/listinfo/newcandle_ipdiscover.com