Hi all.
The Correa patent for Pulsed Abnormal Glow Discharge specifies an input source of around 640V DC.? Personally I have never achieved any discharges with 640V for a gap of 2cm.? In fact the lowest potential for which I have achieved a cold cathode discharge is 1.8kV.? Having the lowest possible input source is important because very high voltages greatly reduce the choice of capacitors that can be used.
I may need a higher vacuum or a different electrode material. But perheaps the Correas were kick-starting their equipment using an ionising source, or simple cathode pre-heating.
Has anyone in the group managed to observe PAGD with input sources less than 1.8kV?
Regards
Joseph Gatt
Ordinary neon discharge tubes work at 50v or less.
Vacuum fluorescent digital displays (the green ones) work at 30v
Cold cathode discharge does not require a high voltage in the right gas.
Ordinary neon discharge tubes have plenty of gas inside, at the relatively high pressure 0.3 bar. This gas is ionised on starting using pulses at several kV, turning the gas into a highly conductive medium.
Vacuum fluorescent displays may actually do without pre-ionisation, but the gaps between the electrodes are very small. The Correa patent specifies a minimum gap distance of 2cm.
Since posting my first comment, I have dug up more details about the Correa setup. Apparantly the threshold voltage for PAGD can be lowered by operating at higher vacuum. Their original setup, it turns out, included the use of a diffusion pump, which is probably outside the range of my budget. Still, I may be able to gain some experimental leverage by improving the vacuum slightly. To this end, I have constructed a thermistor vacuum gauge following the instructions at:
http://www.ee.ualberta.ca/~schmaus/vacf/thermis.html
This gauge should help me get the best vacuum obtainable from all the possible permutations for cascading all of my fridge-pumps.
I have as yet never heard of anyone successfully replicating the Correa claims of over-unity. And if the over-unity effect really does exist, I don't believe it's due to ZPE as is claimed on the aetherometry website. Rather I suspect that any excess energy would be due to transmutation effects. Unfortunately this would greatly reduce the scope and scalability of a practical reactor.
Regards
Joseph