10KW LENR demonstrator (new thread)

[Crawdaddy]

Do you know of one CF/LENR experiment showing excess heat that has been independently reproduced?

And before you say otherwise - yes, reproducibility is rather important.

The Storms 2010 review references several.

So which of these Storms reviewed experiments has claimed energy out:
(1) > possible chemical sources ?
(2) > calorimetry errors ?

I have not found any such, but would welcome education. Please post link to an original write-up clear enough to work out calorimetry errors in detail.

I HAVE seen a lot of (repeatable) CF experiments which use very flakey calorimetry - the claimed power out depends on massive assumptions about the thermal conductivity of the reaction vessel remaining constant after thermal cycling.

What chemical sources do you propose?

What thermal conductivity changes are possible?

Please explain the details of your argument.

As an example, what sources of error do you see in the replication of the Ni-H cold fusion reaction in Brian Ahearn's recent report?

Here is a link to his initial cold fusion result:
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@es ... 47437.html

Here is a link to his patent filing:
http://ecatsite.files.wordpress.com/201 ... 3338a1.pdf

Please include literature references to back up your remarks where possible.

[Ivy Matt]

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/cl/italy1.html

Title V
Working, Forfeiture, Waiver and Nullity of the Patent

(Working of the Invention)

Art. 54.-1. Where, after three years have elapsed from the date of grant of a patent, or four years from the filing date of the application if the latter period expires after the former, the owner of the patent or his successor in title has not worked the patented invention, either directly or through one or more licensees, by producing in the territory of the State or importing goods produced in a Member State of the European Union or of the World Trade Organization, or else has worked the said invention to an extent that is seriously disproportionate to the needs of the country, a compulsory license for the non-exclusive use of the invention may be granted to any person applying therefor.

"...if the latter period expires after the former,..."

The wording is making my head spin, but I think it's confirming Krivit's account. So, does anyone in Italy want to apply for a compulsory license after April 9th?

I do note, however, that according to this site (see "3 Licensing"), "[t]he granting of compulsory licence for lack of exploitation is not a common praxis in Italy."

[tomclarke]

The Storms 2010 review references several.

So which of these Storms reviewed experiments has claimed energy out:
(1) > possible chemical sources ?
(2) > calorimetry errors ?

I have not found any such, but would welcome education. Please post link to an original write-up clear enough to work out calorimetry errors in detail.

I HAVE seen a lot of (repeatable) CF experiments which use very flakey calorimetry - the claimed power out depends on massive assumptions about the thermal conductivity of the reaction vessel remaining constant after thermal cycling.

What chemical sources do you propose?

What thermal conductivity changes are possible?

Please explain the details of your argument.

As an example, what sources of error do you see in the replication of the Ni-H cold fusion reaction in Brian Ahearn's recent report?

Here is a link to his initial cold fusion result:
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@es ... 47437.html

Here is a link to his patent filing:
http://ecatsite.files.wordpress.com/201 ... 3338a1.pdf

Please include literature references to back up your remarks where possible.

What a good example. I'm surprised you need me to point the issues out to you!:

Ames National Laboratory processed metal alloy foils via arc melting
followed by melt spinning. This is the Yamaura process employed by Arata
and others. The foils were baked in ordinary air at 445C for 28 hours.

The brittle, oxidized foils were placed in a tumble mill for 24 hours.

This resulted in 30 grams of black powder with a median grain size of about
40 microns.Presumably, each grain has about one million nanoscale islands of
NiCu inside.

The 30 grams occupies about 7 ml inside the 50 ml dewar. The system was
vacuum baked at 220C for 24 hours and cooled to room temperature.

H2 gas was added at 200psi. The pressure dropped only to about 185 psi over
twenty minutes. In these replication experiments the exothermic reactions
have had peak temperatures above 220C with substantial loading above 3.0 H/M
ratios. This time the temperature only rose by 2 degrees C.

The system was heated with a band heater to high temperature. There was no
controller. A rheostat was set at an arbitrary position and the system comes
to a an arbitrary temperature.The average power input was 90 watts.

After several hours the hydrated system was evacuated overnight at a
constant high temperature at 530C. The next day H2 gas was again added at
100psi and the temperature rose by 40C to 570C and came back down to 530C
after two hours. At the end of the day the dewar was again evacuated while
still at 530C overnight.

The third day repeated the same procedure. H2 gas was added at 100psi and
the temperature rose by 44C to 574C. However, this time it did not come back
to the initial temperature. It remained at the elevated temperature
overnight.

On the fourth day H2 gas was again added at 100psi and the system rose by
50C to 580C and again stayed at the elevated temperature indefinitely.

A rough calibration suggests that the 30 grams of hydrated nanopowder is
putting out 5 watts of excess power.

Yesterday Peter Gluck suggested that the relationship between loading and
excess power may be a myth. This seemed to be true for electrolysis with Pd
and heavy water where loading levels exceeding 0.9 D/M were a prerequisite
for observing excess power.

My loading level with this nanopowder sample as less than 0.1 H/M.

This 5 watt excess is very much less than Rossi, but it is a real and
repeatable experiment There was no radiation above the background level.

So he has a small container of magic stuff. Heats it up with an electric heater (90W) to an elevated temp of roughly 500C. Lets it cool down.

He repeates this process a few times. He notices that the equilibrium temperature of magic stuff, when heated in the same fashion, changes by a small amount (5/90 ~ 5%).

Now, you will see the above description is typical of LENR stuff. It does not give us a lot to go on. But let us put forward some hypotheses as to what could be causing the change in temperature:

(1) some change in the heater element, or the thermal conductivity around the heater, which would alter temperature and hence resistance for a given voltage. This would have the effect of modulating the input power which is only considered constant because a rheostat has the same setting, and is therefore sensitive to changes in heating element characteristics

(2) some change in the sample thermal conductivity, which alters overall thermal resistance from sample to ambient.

(3) a nuclear reaction providing excess heat.

Only in LENR bizarro-world will experimenters immediately jump on hypothesis (3).

So, suppose this is real, what do we expect?

We expect the power in measurements to be tightened up, with error less than 1%, this is trivial, a decent power meter will do it. or, at 90W, a stabilised DC supply, ammeter, and voltmeter. Get within 0.1% easily.

We expect the impossible to calibrate properly calorimetry used here to be replaced by flow calorimetry. Easy to do. Errors < 1% should be possible even with relatively unsophisticated equipment.

We also expect the flow calorimetry experiment to run with excess heat for 24 hours or so, providing:
24*3600*5J = 400kJ.

The heat of combustion from 2H2 + O2 is 280kJ/mol = 14kJ/g of reactants. Let us use this is an upper limit for chemical energy. We have 30g so 420kJ possible chemical energy.

OK, so you need to run the experiment with average 5W excess for say 48 hours to exclude chemical sources.

Now this stuff is not rocket science. Brian Ahern I'm sure knows how to do it. I'm equally sure he would like the Nobel Prize which would come from unambiguous detection of LENR excess heat.

More, if this is what is claimed, tightening up protocols as suggested above would be pretty easy.

So want to bet why it has not happenned? The e-m is 8 months old. Long enough for proper replication.

I hope the analysis above shows why very strong skepticism is the rational response to LENR claims. It just does not stack up, because if real these claims could relatively easily be turned into results that would rock the scoientific establishment. They have not been so. Not because scientists are prejudiced, but because the results just do not continue positive when everything is tightened up.

Best wishes, Tom

[Crawdaddy]

(1) some change in the heater element, or the thermal conductivity around the heater, which would alter temperature and hence resistance for a given voltage. This would have the effect of modulating the input power which is only considered constant because a rheostat has the same setting, and is therefore sensitive to changes in heating element characteristics

(2) some change in the sample thermal conductivity, which alters overall thermal resistance from sample to ambient.

(3) a nuclear reaction providing excess heat.

Only in LENR bizarro-world will experimenters immediately jump on hypothesis (3).

So, suppose this is real, what do we expect?

We expect the power in measurements to be tightened up, with error less than 1%, this is trivial, a decent power meter will do it. or, at 90W, a stabilised DC supply, ammeter, and voltmeter. Get within 0.1% easily.

We expect the impossible to calibrate properly calorimetry used here to be replaced by flow calorimetry. Easy to do. Errors < 1% should be possible even with relatively unsophisticated equipment.

We also expect the flow calorimetry experiment to run with excess heat for 24 hours or so, providing:
24*3600*5J = 400kJ.

The heat of combustion from 2H2 + O2 is 280kJ/mol = 14kJ/g of reactants. Let us use this is an upper limit for chemical energy. We have 30g so 420kJ possible chemical energy.

OK, so you need to run the experiment with average 5W excess for say 48 hours to exclude chemical sources.

Now this stuff is not rocket science. Brian Ahern I'm sure knows how to do it. I'm equally sure he would like the Nobel Prize which would come from unambiguous detection of LENR excess heat.

More, if this is what is claimed, tightening up protocols as suggested above would be pretty easy.

So want to bet why it has not happenned? The e-m is 8 months old. Long enough for proper replication.

I hope the analysis above shows why very strong skepticism is the rational response to LENR claims. It just does not stack up, because if real these claims could relatively easily be turned into results that would rock the scoientific establishment. They have not been so. Not because scientists are prejudiced, but because the results just do not continue positive when everything is tightened up.

Best wishes, Tom

1) As someone who uses Variacs on a daily basis I challenge you to set the voltage on a resistive heater and measure the output temperature after repeated cycling. I use heaters regularly that have maintained their properties for years. This hypothesis is absurd and not supported by any evidence. Please provide some evidence to back up your claim.

2) What change in thermal conductivity are you talking about? Please provide an example where thermal conductivity changes that you suggest have occurred.

3) That is Dr. Ahearn's assertion.

Your assessment of the possible chemical sources is ludicrous. What reaction are you referencing? What reaction between Nickel and Hydrogen generates the required energy? In case you have trouble understanding the procedure: If you repeatedly heat nickel oxide in a reducing environment it is reduced to nickel metal. The pretreatment of the powdered reactant removes virtually all the oxygen from the system. In short the H2 + 1/2O2 reaction has nothing to do with this experiment.

Incidentally, the excess heat was observed for more than 48 hours.

Your handwaving arguments are not worthy of the label skeptical and betray a deep ignorance of the procedures, materials, and physical pricinples involved in the experiment.

[stefanbanev]

.....
Your handwaving arguments are not worthy of the label skeptical and betray a deep ignorance of the procedures, materials, and physical pricinples involved in the experiment.

TC is inclined to see the reasons excluding the nuclear interactions and he has a good reasons for that from his perspective - the energies differences are so huge that even unlikely materials property modifications/altering during the experiment looks more probable (for TC) then to assume the nuclear interactions to be involved...

Btw, the last paragraph you wrote was unnecessary; it adds no objective information - jut a personal feeling toward someone' performance... (the same is true about this last paragraph as well ;o))))




LENR , cold fusion

[Crawdaddy]

.....
Your handwaving arguments are not worthy of the label skeptical and betray a deep ignorance of the procedures, materials, and physical pricinples involved in the experiment.

TC is inclined to see the reasons excluding the nuclear interactions and he has a good reasons for that from his perspective - the energies differences are so huge that even unlikely materials property modifications/altering during the experiment looks more probable then to assume the nuclear interactions to be involved...

Btw, the last paragraph you wrote was unnecessary; it adds no objective information - jut a personal feeling toward someone performance... (the same is true about this last paragraph as well ;o)

I would love to see the reaction mechanism that would account for the observed heat. It would be as revolutionary as a nuclear effect.

I disagree that my final paragraph is unnecessary. True skeptical arguments are based on facts and evidence. Making claims about the stability of laboratory equipment and the chemical sources of excess heat with zero facts or evidence is an affront to skepticism and insulting to skeptics. It is important to point out that a valid criticism of the Ahern report should be more than what was presented. Personally, I would welcome such evidence, since if cold fusion is legitimate I will lose my job in short order.

[Torulf2]

The hypothecs that Rossi lies abut the e-cat
is easy to make because he lie abut everything else.
But there is really lots of experiments by others how
seems to show extraordinary results. However its can
depends on extra ordinary mistakes. But there seems
to be some system in the results so maybe, maybe there
are real LENR. Remember for no long time ago there was
showed with mathematical assurance that there
never, ever should be crystals with five fold symmetry.

So if there are LENR and Mr. Rossi real have something I'm
sure watt he is saying about the e-cat is false because of he
want to hide it from competitors. From reading about the
experiments by Celani, Franko et. al. I get an idea about
how it works.
There are no Ni+xp>Cu reactions. The Cu is not either the secret catalyst, it is the fuel.
There is two possible reactions with stabile products. Cu63+p>Zn64
and Cu65+p>Zn66.
The isotopes Cu63,and Zn64 occur in approximately same abundance and so also for Cu65 and Zn66.

[stefanbanev]

.....

[tomclarke]

(1) some change in the heater element, or the thermal conductivity around the heater, which would alter temperature and hence resistance for a given voltage. This would have the effect of modulating the input power which is only considered constant because a rheostat has the same setting, and is therefore sensitive to changes in heating element characteristics

(2) some change in the sample thermal conductivity, which alters overall thermal resistance from sample to ambient.

(3) a nuclear reaction providing excess heat.

Only in LENR bizarro-world will experimenters immediately jump on hypothesis (3).

So, suppose this is real, what do we expect?

We expect the power in measurements to be tightened up, with error less than 1%, this is trivial, a decent power meter will do it. or, at 90W, a stabilised DC supply, ammeter, and voltmeter. Get within 0.1% easily.

We expect the impossible to calibrate properly calorimetry used here to be replaced by flow calorimetry. Easy to do. Errors < 1% should be possible even with relatively unsophisticated equipment.

We also expect the flow calorimetry experiment to run with excess heat for 24 hours or so, providing:
24*3600*5J = 400kJ.

The heat of combustion from 2H2 + O2 is 280kJ/mol = 14kJ/g of reactants. Let us use this is an upper limit for chemical energy. We have 30g so 420kJ possible chemical energy.

OK, so you need to run the experiment with average 5W excess for say 48 hours to exclude chemical sources.

Now this stuff is not rocket science. Brian Ahern I'm sure knows how to do it. I'm equally sure he would like the Nobel Prize which would come from unambiguous detection of LENR excess heat.

More, if this is what is claimed, tightening up protocols as suggested above would be pretty easy.

So want to bet why it has not happenned? The e-m is 8 months old. Long enough for proper replication.

I hope the analysis above shows why very strong skepticism is the rational response to LENR claims. It just does not stack up, because if real these claims could relatively easily be turned into results that would rock the scoientific establishment. They have not been so. Not because scientists are prejudiced, but because the results just do not continue positive when everything is tightened up.

Best wishes, Tom

1) As someone who uses Variacs on a daily basis I challenge you to set the voltage on a resistive heater and measure the output temperature after repeated cycling. I use heaters regularly that have maintained their properties for years. This hypothesis is absurd and not supported by any evidence. Please provide some evidence to back up your claim.

2) What change in thermal conductivity are you talking about? Please provide an example where thermal conductivity changes that you suggest have occurred.

3) That is Dr. Ahearn's assertion.

Your assessment of the possible chemical sources is ludicrous. What reaction are you referencing? What reaction between Nickel and Hydrogen generates the required energy? In case you have trouble understanding the procedure: If you repeatedly heat nickel oxide in a reducing environment it is reduced to nickel metal. The pretreatment of the powdered reactant removes virtually all the oxygen from the system. In short the H2 + 1/2O2 reaction has nothing to do with this experiment.

Incidentally, the excess heat was observed for more than 48 hours.

Your handwaving arguments are not worthy of the label skeptical and betray a deep ignorance of the procedures, materials, and physical pricinples involved in the experiment.

The above tirade does not deserve to be on this site.

Your presumption is that when somone makes an extraordinary claim, with flakey evidence, the precise errors in the evidence must be proven or the claim stands. How can this be done? Often bad experiments are never fully debugged by anyone, and remain with a whole load of unquantified errors.

You can perhaps see the logical disconnect here.

Of course I cannot prove that (1) or (2) are true. Indeed, given the available information, perhaps there is some other cause of error I have not thought of.

But YOU can't prove (1) and (2) are false (you need to do both, and a bit more, for (3) to be a rational conclusion).

If you give me the type of heater used by Ahern (not, I guess, the ones you have used for years) we could perhaps investigate (1) further? But the conditions will be different: maybe the reactants react with the metal of the band heater, for example. I don't see what variacs have to do with this. The output impedance of a Variac is low - typically 5% output change between zero and nominal load. The output impedance of a rheostat is by definition high: typically 100% change between zero load and nominal load (I'll give you the equations if you like - half the people here can do them). So small deltaR changes would affect the rheostat case 20X more than the Variac case. And incidentally I use both Variacs and rheostats regularly, if that helps, but would never use a rheostat as described here - it is inherently flakey, and not necessary when regulated PSUs are so easy to buy or make.

If we had details of the experimental setup we could perhaps investigate (2) but frankly the type of calorimetry is known flakey - it is almost impossible to rule out some change in thermal resistance due to reactant changes as a result of heating.

As for chemical heat sources: are you an expert on nanoscale chemical effects on the surface of metal lattices? I am not, which is why I take a decent upper estimate. I am not talking about any specific reaction. If 5W average excess heat was observed for more than 48 hours from a sealed system that certainly removes this issue. I think this very possible, but the e-mail you posted above does not make this clear.

Note that if this result is real it would be easy to remove all my quibbles:

Good flow calorimetry - not difficult - removes (2)
Accurate power measurement (very easy) removes (1)
Running for enough time sealed removes any possibility of chemical effects

The motivation for Ahern to do this is that if he did he would have an experimental paper publishable which would, in time, secure him a Nobel Prize.

One thing I note is that people who are so easily convinced by LENR claims have remarkably little curiosity. Are you not interested in all the ways experimental data can be contaminated, and how to rule them out one by one till you have an exciting result that stands? Or not. I am - it is fun. It seems the LENR community - with a few praiseworthy exceptions - is not.

PS - if I had to guess - I would say most likely issue here is the calorimetry - Ahern uses a type which can easily have 5% errors, and the observed result would be exactly as described - permanent change in temperature for given power in. But note this is a guess, no substitute for proper checking. Piantelli's work uses similar (though more sophisticated) calorimetry and suffers from similar potential problems.

[tomclarke]

True skeptical arguments are based on facts and evidence. Making claims about the stability of laboratory equipment and the chemical sources of excess heat with zero facts or evidence is an affront to skepticism and insulting to skeptics. It is important to point out that a valid criticism of the Ahern report should be more than what was presented. Personally, I would welcome such evidence, since if cold fusion is legitimate I will lose my job in short order.

True skeptical arguments can indeed be based on evidence - but more often are just pointing out the lack of (claimed) evidence. Does a skeptic pointing out that evidence for ghosts is not good have to prove no paranormal emanation existed? And how could he do this, when paranormal emanations are so badly defined?

It is an affront to scientists to make such extraordinary claims with zero facts and evidence - as is done here.

But let us not be precious. Science needs to accept all challenges equally. The proper response to a rubbish paper (which this would be if written up with a claim that excess heat had been proven) is to show the errors in experimental technique that make its conclusions unsafe.

[tomclarke]

TC is inclined to see the reasons excluding the nuclear interactions and he has a good reasons for that from his perspective - the energies differences are so huge that even unlikely materials property modifications/altering during the experiment looks more probable (for TC) then to assume the nuclear interactions to be involved...

You are right that I view (3) as a priori a lot less likley than the others. But based on what we know of this experiment, quoted above, I'd disagree that (1) or (2) are particularly unlikely.

We do not have a good description of the experiment. But as I understand it the 30g sample + a band heater (I guess a strip of high resistance alloy) are contained in a sealed vessel and heated from the inside (by the band heater). The temperature of the sample is measured. You have to assume that the sample + heater + thermocouple thermal charactistics don't change permanently during the cycling up to 500C and back down to have any reliance on the initial calibration? A 5% change would generate the result.

I know it is meta-info but in this case I also see the 8 month silence as somewhat negative. If it were me, with this result, I would want to check it as above, and that would not be so difficult. So why has Ahern not done this? Most likely because he tried to, and discovered some errors.

[ladajo]

http://ecatnews.com/?p=2156

Nope, no factory in Florida...

That fish smell gets stronger.

Rossi staggers from yet another upper-cut. Will he go down???

[MSimon]

Dear Matthew:
Patents pending are like divisions of an army in movement: the less the enemy knows of them, the better.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

Uh. Who is "the enemy"?

[MSimon]

1) As someone who uses Variacs on a daily basis I challenge you to set the voltage on a resistive heater and measure the output temperature after repeated cycling. I use heaters regularly that have maintained their properties for years. This hypothesis is absurd and not supported by any evidence. Please provide some evidence to back up your claim.

Uh. And line voltage is constant for periods of several days where you do your experiments?

Variacs will deliver a reliable % of input voltage. Now is the input voltage from the line a constant?

Unless the AC is a requirement for the experiment (it is not) DC is a better way to deliver the power needed. It can be measured to higher accuracy with common eqpt.

This is beginner stuff.

A 2% voltage change gives roughly about a 4% power change. There is no place in the world where the AC line is regulated to better than 2% most places are nominal +/- 5%. Sometimes worse.

The 5% represents a power change of roughly 10%. At 90 watts that is around 9 watts.

[Kahuna]

"Liar Rossi Tells Florida Bureau He Has No U.S. Factory, No Nuclear Reactions" By Sterling D. Allan

http://pesn.com/2012/03/11/9602054_Ross ... Reactions/

Looks like Sterling Allan (once a big Rossi fanboy) has now joined Krivit in denouncing him over his lies about the U.S. factory.