10KW LENR demonstrator (new thread)

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

MSimon wrote:
parallel wrote:tomclarke,
What we DO know, is that Kullander and Essen, professional scientist and skeptic, did not check very much, taking anything Rossi said to be true without checking. So how can we know anyone else involved will do a better job of checking?
Hanno Essén is an associate professor of theoretical physics and a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and former chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society

Their role in the Andrea Rossi affair began when they expressed an interest in the eCat and then attended a Bologna demo. During that demo, the eCat seemed to produce around 5kW of heat from a small sealed vessel (50 ccm) containing Hydrogen and Nickel. They were allowed to check for hidden conduits and examine the instruments and various elements of the system. They were not allowed access to the core but since it was small and the claimed energy large, it was reasonable to treat the device as a black box to determine its utility.
And remember this was just the 50cc version of the E-Cat and Essen was former chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society.
If you can't trust him, just who would you trust?
A professor of experimental physics.
In this case, you need first of all a good calorimetrist. Whether friendly or not with Rossi they would note issues in the setup. But it would also be wise to have a magician since many reckon Rossi to be duplicitous, and his behaviour has not exactly ruled that out.

The nearest we've had to that is Krivit. And look what happened to him...

CKay
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Post by CKay »

tomclarke wrote:In this case, you need first of all a good calorimetrist. Whether friendly or not with Rossi they would note issues in the setup. But it would also be wise to have a magician since many reckon Rossi to be duplicitous, and his behaviour has not exactly ruled that out
Or Rossi could provide an ecat for independent testing and allow the testers to set it up for themselves in their own lab, which could be carried out as a black box test under Rossi's supervision with no danger of him losing his IP.

That's the kind of thing one might expect if Rossi was really interested in proving that the ecat's work. And if he wasn't, why bother with any of his public performances at all?

parallel
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Post by parallel »

tomclarke,

As I wrote before, they were not "friends of Rossi." They met him there for the first time.
So they knew and trusted Levi & Focardi, Is that somehow bad?
You don't have a shred of evidence that they didn't look for tricks and were incompetent.

parallel
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Post by parallel »

MSimon,
A professor of experimental physics. Calorimetry to be exact.
You don't need a professor of calorimetry (if there is such a thing.)
Any competent engineer could do it. The academics tend to lack the practical skill themselves. It's getting to be that that even the new engineers lack such skills too.

CKay
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Post by CKay »

parallel wrote:So they knew and trusted Levi & Focardi, Is that somehow bad?
No, it's not morally bad.

It is, however, a problem if their trust led to a shortfall of the level of scientific rigour necessary to rule out error or fraud.
You don't have a shred of evidence that they didn't look for tricks and were incompetent.
It's for E&K to demonstrate that they applied the necessary rigour.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

parallel wrote:MSimon,
A professor of experimental physics. Calorimetry to be exact.
You don't need a professor of calorimetry (if there is such a thing.)
Any competent engineer could do it. The academics tend to lack the practical skill themselves. It's getting to be that that even the new engineers lack such skills too.
My son who is starting his EE career knows nothing about autos or auto repair. Where did I go wrong?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

parallel
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Post by parallel »

Defkalion list a number of theories for LENR here.
http://www.defkalion-energy.com/forum/s ... mit=Search
There is a strong possibility of a forthcoming "LENR theories war" between the members of the existing small community of LENR/CF researchers (possible conflicts closely related with government funding to be released in the area). Such "war" could turn out to be a new "War of Religion", similar to the 1562- 1598 war between the catholics (the strong force fans in this case) and the protestants (the weak force fans), where all involved parties will claim their "one faith" slogan against all the others.

We are following the orthodox approach, which is not to get involved in such conflicts, even though we already have a pretty good understanding on what really is going on during all faces of what we have called as a"dynamic multistage chemically assisted low energy nuclei reactions". Our decision is to do our job, which is to provide to the market safe and stable high performance products and to the scientific community with all the hard evidence from LENR phenomena measured with new type of specially designed instrumentation that we had to build to support our product's R&D.

parallel
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Post by parallel »

MSimon,
My son who is starting his EE career knows nothing about autos or auto repair. Where did I go wrong?
Not giving him an old broken down car that he would have to fix in order to use it?

I hope you taught him how to solder properly at least. I have found several EEs who couldn't.

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

parallel wrote:tomclarke,

As I wrote before, they were not "friends of Rossi." They met him there for the first time.
So they knew and trusted Levi & Focardi, Is that somehow bad?
You don't have a shred of evidence that they didn't look for tricks and were incompetent.
Parallel - do you ever back up assumptions with evidence?

Since you insist:
Essén: Then it will become science. When this comes out it there will be a lot of research done, and then I think we’ll understand it too, within a year or so.

NyT: How credible do you consider the information presented is?

Essén: It’s very hard to guard against someone who is lying in this context. It’s almost impossible for us to know. You try to evaluate the physics and then you assume that the data is presented as honestly as possible.

As a physicist you do this. Then as a human you can always have all sorts of sociological and psychological reflections on what lies behind it all.

But if Rossi’s information is valid, it is sensational.

Kullander: Well, I think they used a fairly scientific approach. But above all that they have heated a building and have done so for one year (according to Rossi), and have run the experiment for ten hours without any electricity other than 80 watts to power the instruments (the most recent experiment in Bologna on 10-11 February).
Note:
(1) They assume Rossi is both reliable and telling the truth.

(2) Kullander is strongly influenced by Rossi's statement that he has heated a building for one year using an e-cat. Obviously, if this is true and simply interpreted, it is worth more than any 8 hour experiment. Kullander accepts it as true.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

parallel wrote:MSimon,
My son who is starting his EE career knows nothing about autos or auto repair. Where did I go wrong?
Not giving him an old broken down car that he would have to fix in order to use it?

I hope you taught him how to solder properly at least. I have found several EEs who couldn't.
He can solder.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

"Experimental test of a mini-Rossi device at the Leonardocorp, Bologna 29 March 2011."
Well there are several possibilities here.
1. Language barrier problem. E&K are not native English speakers.
2. They could be referring to themselves merely vitnessing a test conducted by Rossi and the others, not actually themselves performing the test. That is a big difference!
After a quick read over, I cant find them referring to themselves having brought the equipment or performed the actual measurements. I might have missed it dhough.

I also want to point out that they nowhere said that they checked the table for manipulation (e.g. a hidden cable entering the device through the metal rods holding it in place).
They also dont mention anywhere that they checked for a hidden induction heater or something like that (that could also be easily hidden in the table, if nobody bothers to check for that). You claim to be such a great engineer. I am sure you can think of plenty of other ways for manipulation, when even I can.

the scientific establishment
Ohhh please. I get violent outbursts every time I hear this phrase. Anyone that has been involved with academic work in some way and has vitnessed the constant bickering, jealousy and rudeness among the protagonists there, I dont think that something like a "scientific establishment" exists. Really it is more an "everyone against everyone" and "everyone for themselves". If there is a consensus on anything, it is hard earned and well deserved and not the result of some "establishment" determining it to be the truth by whatever means you imagine this is happening (maybe the freemacons or something).
Just look at the standard model and how it is still under constant attack by things like string-, M- theory etc. Scientists are currently spending billions trying to experimentally proof it (find the Higgs) or disprove it (dont find the Higgs) and they are obviously just as excited at either possibility (just look at the recent buzz about the Higgs' failure to materialize).

tomclarke
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Post by tomclarke »

Here we go again. parallel - your memory is very selective.

Re: "evidence Essen and Kullander are not competent calorimetrists".

here is their original report of the test

They assume all the output water is vaporised (and does not recondense on any surface in thermal contact with the reactor).

They note the output temperature as always staying within a small range of 100C.

They describe the probe used to test water in the output steam.

This analysis of the experiment is flawed, and shows that they have no expertise in required area.

(1) It is well known that phase change calorimetry is extremely diffciult to make reliable, because of problems ensuring that all the water in steam is water vapour.

(2) The fact that output temperature sticks at 100C would indicate to any thinking person the strong likelihood that water remains in the output - otherwise very small increments of power would increase the temperature well abouve 100C.

(3) The instrument used to measure water content is not suited to the purpose of determining the percentage of output that is actually water vapour.

This one paragraph from their report demonstrates their lack of relevant expertise:
The temperature at the outlet was controlled continually to be above 100°C. According to the electronic log-book it remained always between 100.1 and 100.2 °C during the operation from 10:45 to 16:30 as can be seen in figure 7. Between 11:00 and 12:00 o’clock, control measurements were done on how much water that had not evaporated. The system to measure the non-evaporated water was a certified Testo System, Testo 650, with a probe guaranteed to resist up to 550°C. The measurements showed that at 11:15 1.4% of the water was non-vaporized, at 11:30 1.3% and at 11:45 1.2% of the water was non-vaporized. The energy produced inside the device is calculated to be (1.000-0.013)(16:30-10:45)4.39 =25 kWh.
Let us just work out what is the chance temperature can be kept to witin 0.2C of 100C without water in the output stream (so that there is never enough power to vaporise all the water).

The phase change energy is roughly 2000kJ/kg. The specific heat capacity of stem is roughly 2kJ/kgK. So a 1% excess of power of that needed for 100% vaporisation would give temp of 110C. Thus with temperature stable to withn 0.2C we can be sure that power is NEVER equal to that estimated by Kullander. Given that the power fluctuates you would expect average power to be considerably under this.

This analysis is not rocket science, and is what informed opinion would think. But not Kullander.

There is then whether the specified instrument is capable reliably of measuring the liquid phase water content of steam...

We know it can't, because the chances of this variable reaction being stable to within 1% over the experiment are zero, and this would be needed to ensure that 98.5% of water is always vaporised, when we know 100% is never vaporaised (or the temp wiuld rise).

No, I think Kullander is maybe better at theoretical then exprimental physics.

Best wishes, Tom

parallel
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Post by parallel »

tomclarke,
As Rossi was right in saying the only thing that would convince pathological skeptics like you would be sale of commercial units, there is no point in wasting time with a point by point rebuttal.

At the start, the thermocouple was calibrated (if I recall correctly) with boiling water showing less than 100C. The flow rate was adjusted to keep the temperature just above 100C to ensure the steam was not unduly wet. All things considered, the data indicates significant anomalous heat, even if less than the 5 kW when considering possible errors.

That you are not really convinced that LENR/Rossi/DGT are frauds is proven by your reluctance to take me up on the proposed $100 bet.

deane
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Post by deane »

parallel wrote:MSimon,
My son who is starting his EE career knows nothing about autos or auto repair. Where did I go wrong?
Not giving him an old broken down car that he would have to fix in order to use it?

I hope you taught him how to solder properly at least. I have found several EEs who couldn't.
Did you really not get the point MSimon was making? Or do you just ignore any input which does not accord with your own world view?

Skipjack
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Post by Skipjack »

As Rossi was right in saying the only thing that would convince pathological skeptics like you would be sale of commercial units, there is no point in wasting time with a point by point rebuttal.
Ohhh, please! This is the typical Rossi talk that turned me from someone enthusiastic about the thing in the beginning, over an agnostic almost right after into someone who has serious doubts in the last few months.
Tom and others have stated repeatedly that all they would like to see a conclusive test that was done by people that actually know what they are doing. That is a long shot from "sale of commercial units", which by itself, btw is NOT proof of anything. Homeopathy sells like crazy and its users claim that it works and it clearly is fraud, or at least self dillusion ;)
That you are not really convinced that LENR/Rossi/DGT are frauds is proven by your reluctance to take me up on the proposed $100 bet.
Well this is not quite true either. The conditions for your bet were such that you could basically not loose and he would be at quite a disadvantage. That is why he did not take you up on it. Not because of the fact that he believes Rossi is right.

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