10KW LENR demonstrator (new thread)

[Axil]

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.

In this last year of agony, Rossi has put all of us through these multiple ill designed demos. In these demos, the proof that you require has been put forth piecemeal either accidentally or intentionally; not all presented clearly and unambiguously in a single definitive test.

This boiling frog syndrome is used by the naysayers to prove that the Ni-H reaction is not possible; that no one test shows everything that is require to inspire their belief. In my opinion however, what Rossi has shown to the reasonable and open minded person is at a minimum that cold fusion is not impossible and even that its existence is probable.

[ScottL]

He hasn't shown anything yet but a rusty water boiler. We simply won't know until he opens his reactor and either shows radiation or shows something else. This says nothing to whether he is producing excess heat, but simply that whatever he's doing is not known.

[Maui]

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

Yes they have.

Not exactly. They had a flow-meter attached to the second loop, but not to the one that was going through the eCat.

If we can agree the temp differential measurements on the second loop are inaccurate and are not of any use, for all we know there may not have been any flow through the eCat itself.

[Skipjack]

Not exactly. They had a flow-meter attached to the second loop, but not to the one that was going through the eCat.

Ok, please explain to me why the flow through the ecat itself is relevant at all? For all we know it was a closed loop. The second loop however was open and that is where the temperature was measured too. The fact that the losses from the energy transfer of the first loop to the second loop were negated only makes the ecat look better, not worse.
The energy has to be in the water of the first loop after all in order to be transfered to the second loop. I dont really get what the problem is there.

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.

See, I interpreted this differently. I interpreted it as them measuring the total wateroutput at the end of the experiment (I supposed they collected it somewhere) and then calculating the average wateroutput per second, by dividing that through the time the experiment was running and I thought that they meant to show that this calculated average output was exactly basically confirming the flow measurements that they made from time to time by being right in the middle.
But maybe I am just misinterpreting what they wrote there?

All I wanted to illustrate is that the mass of water flowing through the secondary circuit means nothing.

Again, I absolutely dont get that. Why does that mean nothing?

[tomclarke]

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.

When it comes to probabilities of this sort, it is difficult to prove that any judgement is correct.

But your arguments are wrong. "One" is the single subaromic particle that can catalyse fusion. Count them - there are not that many with suitable properties.

The Coulomb barrier shows precisely why fusion is difficult. Your proposed ways round are SF. Thus, they have no coherent grounded theoretical justification - nor any experimental evidence.

You see, fusion energies are very high, and fusion products are recognisable. So if there were (even though it looks very implausible) some back door to fusion it would leave its fingerprints over known physics.

For the LENR hypothesis to be correct you need a combination of unlikely things:

Some mechanism to overcome Coulomb barrier

Said mechaism to have specific characteristics which prevent anomalous fusion products (high energy photons, electrons, transmutation products) from ever being seen.

Said mechanism to have charactesristics such that the heat output from its operation is never unambiuously detected.

For example, there was recently a CF experiment with anecdotal Q of 3 or more. (the one posted here measuring temperature in an evacuated bulb - I don't remember it well). But the heat output is calculated in a flakey way, so it is worth little.

If Q=3 were really possible from CF it would have ben detected in one of the many better set up experiments that can unambiguously detect +20%.

Whereas whenever experimental methodology is tightened up the measured Q goes down, to stay always tantalisingly within the limits of experimental error.

That says, to me, that the LENR collection of results is not a pointer towards a new nuclear reaction pathway.


Best wishes, Tom

[tomclarke]

Not exactly. They had a flow-meter attached to the second loop, but not to the one that was going through the eCat.

Ok, please explain to me why the flow through the ecat itself is relevant at all? For all we know it was a closed loop. The second loop however was open and that is where the temperature was measured too. The fact that the losses from the energy transfer of the first loop to the second loop were negated only makes the ecat look better, not worse.
The energy has to be in the water of the first loop after all in order to be transfered to the second loop. I dont really get what the problem is there.

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.

See, I interpreted this differently. I interpreted it as them measuring the total wateroutput at the end of the experiment (I supposed they collected it somewhere) and then calculating the average wateroutput per second, by dividing that through the time the experiment was running and I thought that they meant to show that this calculated average output was exactly basically confirming the flow measurements that they made from time to time by being right in the middle.
But maybe I am just misinterpreting what they wrote there?

All I wanted to illustrate is that the mass of water flowing through the secondary circuit means nothing.

Again, I absolutely dont get that. Why does that mean nothing?

The fact that they are measuring flow over a time of 54s means that they have no measurement of possible faster oscillation in speed, which could easily be induced by kettling effects, and which would make the average measured deltaT and average flow rate completely unreliable as an estimate of power out.

But why am I arguing? There are so many other loopholes the data is worthless...

[olivier]

I interpreted it as them measuring the total wateroutput at the end of the experiment (I supposed they collected it somewhere) and then calculating the average wateroutput per second, by dividing that through the time the experiment was running and I thought that they meant to show that this calculated average output was exactly basically confirming the flow measurements that they made from time to time by being right in the middle.

I interpreted it the same way, sorry if I was not clear enough. The flow measurement was not precise enough, it could have been.
The temp measurement is even more open to doubt. All we have are the following 41 measurement points with possibly errors of several degrees:

Sorry for the lousy graph (abscissa: meas. number - ordinate = deltaT in °C), I made it fast.
Sum up all uncertainties, and I am not sure you can conclude anything.

[Axil]

A good depiction of the fat cat developed from various photos of the reactor.

http://lenr.qumbu.com/111010_pics/Rossi ... ram_lg.png

Here is analysis and review of Rossi 6 Oct 2011 Experiment Data by
Horace Heffner 12 October 2011 with associated plots.

http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/Ross ... Review.pdf

[ScottL]

A good depiction of the fat cat developed from various photos of the reactor.

http://lenr.qumbu.com/111010_pics/Rossi ... ram_lg.png

Here is analysis and review of Rossi 6 Oct 2011 Experiment Data by
Horace Heffner 12 October 2011 with associated plots.

http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/Ross ... Review.pdf

The thermocouplers were attached to the heat exchanger, one area of contention. Where's the "device that produces frequencies?" Either way thanks for the links, they're helpful.

[tomclarke]

A good depiction of the fat cat developed from various photos of the reactor.

http://lenr.qumbu.com/111010_pics/Rossi ... ram_lg.png

Here is analysis and review of Rossi 6 Oct 2011 Experiment Data by
Horace Heffner 12 October 2011 with associated plots.

http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/Ross ... Review.pdf

The thermocouplers were attached to the heat exchanger, one area of contention. Where's the "device that produces frequencies?" Either way thanks for the links, they're helpful.

So, some possible errors are:

(1) output (secondary) flow variability. Averaged over 50 min or so the flow rates are measures varring by 50% or more. We have no idea how they vary on shorter timescale. Clearly, since they vary, the secondary pump is no guarantee of fixed flow. Flow rate was not measured other than at these times. Similarly temp was highly varialbe but measured at only sparse time points.

Variable flow rate combined with variable temp can give larger apparent than actual power.

(2) output thermocouple mounted in thermal contact with heat exchanger, which means output temperature will measure higher than real. This and the low deltaT makes for a very significant, and unknowable, error.

(3) "Device producing waves" appears to affect output temp directly. RF can easily corrupt instrumentation due to partial rectification in low voltage sense lines, so we have here another potentially large unknowable error.

Of course, these are just the errors apparent from the limited information we have. We should expect other sources of error as well.

I just don't see how axil/parallel/etc can see this test as adding to Rossi credibility...

[parallel]

tomclarke,
I don't find your arguments about flow rate variability convincing. The nature of the pump is that of constant flow, the flow meter has a dial that would show fast variations even if they were not recorded. The flow was checked manually and if it pulsed one would think that would be noticed.

There is something that seems to have been ignored, possibly because it doesn't effect the results. I suspect that Rossi sets up the water flow to the E-Cat just above the amount that will be turned to steam. Without a control loop he would have to in order to avoid it boiling dry. I think this means that solid slugs of water will enter the heat exchanger with the steam. (much as it did with the earlier experiments where the heat measurement was suspect for that reason.)

So the variations in output heat are a result of altering the amount of unvaporized water in the E-Cat exit steam/water. The exit temperature from the E-Cat can then stay fairly constant - as it does.

In the Oct 6th demo the cooling water from the E-Cat was dumped after going through the heat exchanger. It would be much better to close the loop and circulate it, as Rossi was going to do. I wonder what the problem was. Avoiding high pressure? You can see how the fins in the Fat Cat had already furred up. I see this as a major problem with the 1 MW unit unless he uses treated water.

[KitemanSA]

"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.

Ok, I guess I mis-read ytour statement. It sounded like you were saying that it couldn't be true because there were no neutrons or gamma detected.

[KitemanSA]

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?

The point I am making is that when a proton gets into a nucleus, transmutation happens and the binding energy MUST be released in some manner. I suspect that most of the time the proton (or a different proton) just gets kicked out again taking the binding energy with it, net change, zero. When it stays however, the energy must be released another way. Most folks assume that the energy release must be by alpha, beta, or gamma decay. Alternatively, the energy release MAY be by internal conversion which leaves the transmuted nucleus where it is without FURTHER transmutation. Depending on the initial isotope, the whole process may result in a stable new isotope with no residual radioactivity.

So, transmutation from proton absorption, energy release by internal conversion without FURTHER transmutation. Got it?

[KitemanSA]

He hasn't shown anything yet but a rusty water boiler. We simply won't know until he opens his reactor and either shows radiation or shows something else. This says nothing to whether he is producing excess heat, but simply that whatever he's doing is not known.

Itis possible to do a definitive demo with low tech systems in a fairly scam proof manner. The fact thast he hasn't pushes my "nnah" button harder and harder.

[Axil]

"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.

Transmutation is very unlikely to be detectable in a test of a new reactor core lasting only a few hours. Rossi supplied the ash from an earlier version of his reactor that had been in operation for a few months and transmutation from nickel to copper was found in that ash by a reliable third party.

Intense gamma ray bursts have been detected to have originated from an older version of a Rossi reactor core when its lead shielding failed.