10KW LENR demonstrator (new thread)

[KitemanSA]

Otherwise nothing has the right structure to shield protons in a way that negates Coulomb barrier. Electrons are too light.

So the Coulomb barrier remains.

The barrier is there. At least one method exists to get around it. Thus, no law needs to be changed. We just have to figure out how to make cheap muons or cheap slow neutrons, or effectively heavy electrons (Polariton?) or extra heavy oscillating protons (BEC?) or, or, or...

Nothing says it CAN'T work, just that it hasn't been proven to YET.

There is a saying that ONE is an improbable number. It is unlikely that there is only ONE of anything. So if there is ONE way, there are probably many ways. We just have to find them.

[KitemanSA]

I have not been following this thread much, at least partially because the enthusiasts are so entrenched. So, some of my comments may be inappropriate. First off adding a proton or a neutron to 62Ni will lose kinetic energy and increase the potential energy of the isotope. Several months ago I repeatedly tried to explain this.

And you repeatedly failed because you were repeatedly wrong.

THINK HYDROGEN

Dan, find ANYONE who agrees with you. Please. If you can't, please consider that you are just plain wrong. If you do find someone, introduce us, bring him (or her) into the discussion, and (s)he probably won't agree with you for long.

[Joseph Chikva]

My statement was that the laws of the universe don't necessarily need to be changed for LENR. At least one method exists to overcome the coulomb barrier at low energies.

Yes, we can not change laws of the universe.
Yes, we have not universal knowledge of those laws. And that is impossible in principle. As knowledge process is infinite, while our knowledge on the contrary always finite.
And mentioned above way to overcome the coulomb barrier at low energies (Muon catalysis) need much higher energies for creation and then keeping Muons (reast energy of Muon about 150MeV and process is extremely non-selective)

Rossi makes a circus cuz he doesn't care what you think or what I think, or what a bunch of other circus freaks on this board think. You make the circus because you insist on judging without valid data.
Let us put some meat into the issue. Do you promise to hang yourself until you are dead if Rossi's machine proves to be able to produce ANY LENR? If not, you are just shooting off your mouth.

Till now we heard from Rossi many mutually exclusive assertions (e.g. till now we do not know does his device produce radiation or not) and lack of his ability (Or his unwillingness) to conduct very simple calorimetry experiment that even medium school pupil able to conduct.

I am repeating you one more time: if you claim that you invented cancer medicine or philosophy stone or perpetuum mobile you should provide corresponding doubtless evidence regardless to fact does laws of univers allow such things.
And he did not or could not.
Good luck in your religion too.

[Axil]

The 10/7 demo is now history. What the 10/7 demo shows must be evaluated in parts. There are three levels of demonstration proof that can be derived from the recent Rossi show.

1- The Ni-H cold fusion reaction is a real nuclear reaction, feasible, and can provide the technological basis for a very low cost energy source.

2- The Rossi reactor has a positive Q on occasion.

3- The Rossi reactor is or can be a viable commercial product some day.

In my opinion (in the format that Rossi answers questions on his blog)
Yes to 1
Yes to 2
Not yet to 3.

The demo of the 1 MW cat herd will soon be upon us. I do not know what his demo will show but I hope nobody gets hurt.

Rossi is not a steam boiler qualified design engineer, the 1 MW reactor is large and dangerous, and the stability of the fat cat has not been proven. Furthermore, Rossi's gunslinger rapid prototyping design attitude does not inspire confidence in the primacy of safety above all else. The next demo of the 1 MW reactor might well explode, result in bodily injury to some unfortunate bystander(s) which most probably will include Rossi himself and make the world news as a human tragedy (if it bleeds, it leads).

[olivier]

No to 1. In the absence of neutrons or gamma radiations, the only way to say yes is to open and check the content of the secret box after and before the experiment, hoping to understand what may be happening there.
No to 2. Because of huge measurement uncertainties on important parameters such as water flows and temperatures.
No to 3. Because of the above, because the system is not easily controllable, because several safety issues would remain to be addressed.

[Axil]

No to 1. In the absence of neutrons or gamma radiations, the only way to say yes is to open and check the content of the secret box after and before the experiment, hoping to understand what may be happening there.
No to 2. Because of huge measurement uncertainties on important parameters such as water flows and temperatures.
No to 3. Because of the above, because the system is not easily controllable, because several safety issues would remain to be addressed.

In reference to 1, tell us how a box of this size with input power cut off can boil water for 3 hours and remain at the consistently high boiling temperature while it it is cooled with 1.8 tons of water.


Try to do that with a tea pot.

After the demo, the box was taken apart, stripped down, weighed and inspected by 30 expert observers who looked for scam technology. They found none.

I make two conclusions from this behavior.

1. The amount of energy produced was far in excess of any possible chemical source.

2. The energy-producing reaction is unstable and difficult to control. It also slowly becomes less productive unless the temperature is increased by an external source of power that can increase the temperature of the Ni, thereby causing a greater output of energy. This means the energy-producing reaction has a limited life-time, which is what Rossi has indicated.

[ladajo]

After the demo, the box was taken apart, stripped down, weighed and inspected by 30 expert observers who looked for scam technology. They found none.

My understanding is that this is not exactly true. As I understand, they opened the heat exchanger side cover, and not the remaining unit underneath (The secret black box). There have been many comments elsewhere about its volume and contents. None is acutally known for sure. Yes it was weighed, with a bathroom scale, apparently calibration checked by having two blokes who "knew" their weight stand on it to see what it said. Now that said, a digital bathroom scale is not "inaccurate", but it is hardly a controlled calibrated device for science.

Beh.

[KitemanSA]

No to 1. In the absence of neutrons or gamma radiations, the only way to say yes is to open and check the content of the secret box after and before the experiment, hoping to understand what may be happening there.

Sorry, there are other ways to release energy such that no neutrons and no "gamma" rays are detectable. Check out "internal conversion".

Internal conversion is a radioactive decay process where an excited nucleus interacts with an electron in one of the lower atomic orbitals, causing the electron to be emitted from the atom. Thus, in an internal conversion process, a high-energy electron is emitted from the radioactive atom, but without beta decay taking place. For this reason, the high-speed electrons from internal conversion are not beta particles (β particles), since the latter come from beta decay. Since no beta decay takes place in internal conversion, the element atomic number does not change, and thus (as is the case with gamma decay) no transmutation of one element to another is seen. Also, no neutrino is emitted in internal conversion.

Internally converted electrons do not have the characteristic energetically-spread spectrum of β particles, which results from varying amounts of decay-energy being carried off by the neutrino (or antineutrino) in beta decay. Internally converted electrons, which carry a fixed fraction of the characteristic decay energy, have a well-specified discrete energy. The energy spectrum of a β particle is thus a broad hump, extending to a maximum decay energy value, while the spectrum of internally converted electrons is a sharp peak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_conversion

After internal conversion, the residual energy remaining is "technically" released by gamma decay, but since the energy is quite low, the photons are easily blocked.

The "absence of neutrons or gamma" does not preclude LENR in Rossi's Box.

[olivier]

In reference to 1, tell us how a box of this size with input power cut off can boil water for 3 hours and remain at the consistently high boiling temperature while it it is cooled with 1.8 tons of water.

You cannot base a claim that a nuclear reaction has occured based on the presence of heat alone. Had the secret box (the small one, not the big one) been opened you might have observed nuclear transmutation in its secret content. Since it has not, all you may expect to observe coming out of the box are gamma rays or neutrons. None to my knowledge.

Try to do that with a tea pot.

Make two holes in a tea pot, plug a pipe through the holes across the tea pot, fill the tea pot with water, bring to a boil under mild fire, inject as much water at room temperature as the wall of the pipe can stand. I would be quite surprised if this prevented the water from boiling in the tea pot.

In reference to 2, size of box, duration of boiling and mass of cooling water are not evidence of anything. We need a measurement of the quantity of heat transmitted to the secondary circuit, practically speaking the integral of dT times the mass flow rate. This was not measured with a reasonable accuracy, hence no proof. QED.
Maybe next time.

[KitemanSA]

Since it has not, all you may expect to observe coming out of the box are gamma rays or neutrons. None to my knowledge.

See my comment re "absense of neutrons or gamma" above. "Absense" does not preclude LENR.

[Skipjack]

My understanding is that this is not exactly true. As I understand, they opened the heat exchanger side cover, and not the remaining unit underneath (The secret black box). There have been many comments elsewhere about its volume and contents. None is acutally known for sure. Yes it was weighed, with a bathroom scale, apparently calibration checked by having two blokes who "knew" their weight stand on it to see what it said. Now that said, a digital bathroom scale is not "inaccurate", but it is hardly a controlled calibrated device for science.

From what I understand, the black box is quite small. There were 3 of them. The biggest part is the heat exchanger. The non inspectable parts were to small to contain sufficient batteries or other means of providing the energy.
That does not mean that there are no other means of fraud, e.g via wireless energy transfer of some means (e.g via induction like the stoves do), or a hidden wire, etc.

On the bathroom scale- thing. You can consider that most peoples weight changes by up to one kg throughout the day (full blader, empty bladder, full colon, empty colon, etc). Then you can also loose a kg rather quickly, if you have changed your diet and had some exercise (you can gain it just as quickly too). This can go within a couple of days.
So you can assume 2kg tolerance. The device was 99 kg (?) so 2kg up and down would be roughly 2% difference.
The question is what is the signifficance of these 2%? Could one assume a hidden depot of 2 kg of hydrogen somewhere in the device maybe?
Would those 2kg have been enough to keep the device running in self sustaining mode for that long?
I have no idea. Maybe someone with more time could calculate that.

Make two holes in a tea pot, plug a pipe through the holes across the tea pot, fill the tea pot with water, bring to a boil under mild fire, inject as much water at room temperature as the wall of the pipe can stand.

Well not quite.
You have to turn off the stove after the water has been boiling, then inject the water.

We need a measurement of the quantity of heat transmitted to the secondary circuit, practically speaking the integral of dT times the mass flow rate. This was not measured with a reasonable accuracy, hence no proof. QED.
Maybe next time.

I might have missed it, but I thought they had a flowmeter attached ot the output, no?

[olivier]

"Absense" does not preclude LENR.

You are absolutely right. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. I never said that anything precluded LENR in this experiment. I said that heat could not prove LENR. Nuclear radiation or transmutation could, but none was observed.

[ScottL]

After the demo, the box was taken apart, stripped down, weighed and inspected by 30 expert observers who looked for scam technology. They found none.

Please get your facts straight on this one. They did not open the reactor, just the external casing and heat exchanger. At this point he hasn't shown a nuclear reaction as there has been no measure of radiation aside from his early experiments which showed background radiation and nothing more.

[quixote]

KitemanSA,

In the internal conversion process, no transmutation is supposed to occur, according to the wiki page you linked and excerpted. However, we've seen claims that Rossi's reactor is transmuting nickel into copper, so it doesn't appear consistent with that observation unless I've misunderstood something (which is more than possible).

Also, if it were internal conversion, wouldn't that offer the possibility of direct conversion to electricity by way of the emitted electrons?

[olivier]

I thought they had a flowmeter attached ot the output, no?

Yes they have. Nyteknik's report states:

Using the flow meter attached to the heat exchanger the time for 10 liters was measured several times during the test and found to be between 58.1 and 54.4 seconds, giving a flow between 183 and 172 g/s. The total flow from 11:57 until 19:03 was 4554.3 liters, giving an average flow of 178 g/s or 641 liters/h.

So the flow was measured several times, then averaged over the whole experiment. This is too imprecise. tomclarke's explained why in his provocative but enlightening Gedankenexperiment. As for the temperature, posts from Giorgio and others suggested several possible sources of huge measurement errors, making the total quantity of heat impossible to estimate with sufficient accuracy.

The non inspectable parts were to small to contain sufficient batteries or other means of providing the energy.

How much energy, that is the question? We cannot say yet.

That does not mean that there are no other means of fraud.

Yes, that is always an option.

You have to turn off the stove after the water has been boiling, then inject the water.

I know.
All I wanted to illustrate is that the mass of water flowing through the secondary circuit means nothing. By the way, notice that an electric stove would stay warm for quite a while and that an induction stove could be turned back on without showing heat outside the tea pot.