10KW LENR demonstrator (new thread)

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

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Crawdaddy
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Post by Crawdaddy »

tomclarke wrote:
Crawdaddy wrote:
Giorgio wrote: TallDave was not referring to Ni-H reactions, but to the highest-energy possible reaction that could be realized inside the reactor volume.

Mind you, we do not have any idea what is inside the reactor till now.
We discuss about Ni and H only because Rossi is stating it, but it could as well be that the reactor chamber is full of Iron Beads and Coca Cola for what we "really" know.
Because Rossi controls the data collection apparatus as well as the reactor itself, if the device is a fraud, then there is no need to actually generate output from a chemical reaction. Speculation of this kind is not useful or informative. Just faking the input and output data is much easier.

The point of my comment was that there is no possibility of honest error arising from an unknown chemical effect.

There is only the possibility of fraud or of legitimacy.
I don't think so.

Most of the experiments suffer from potential temoerature effects due to conduction from metal reactor to thermometer. These effects are always difficult to quantify, and easy for somone optimistic to dismiss as insignificant. But they could in princoiple produce an arbitrarily high misreading of energy out.

Rossi would have to be pretty ignorant not to be a fraud. But so he appears to be.
The reaction of 1.7g of hydrogen with nickel cannot generate more than a few 10s of KJs of heat under the conditions of the test. It is impossible to account for the excess heat by chemical means unless fraud is involved.

There is no way that a reactor of the observed geometry could put out the reported heat without fraud because the decay rate of the heat output does not follow the known decay rates for a metal liquid interface.

Honest error is therefore not possible for these two reasons.

Of course one need not even mention the 18 hour test where honest error is also obviously impossible.

Crawdaddy
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Post by Crawdaddy »

tomclarke wrote:
parallel wrote:Doubters should see this lecture by Mike McKubre of SRI, http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm
The first two videos cover the history and then McKubre goes on to explain why the early replications of Pons & Fleischmann failed.
He lists many later experiments that show generation of anomalous heat.

Pathological skeptics like Giorgio and cgray45 should probably give this one a miss as I would hate to spoil their day.
But all of the anomalous heat experimebts are all one of:

(a) within range of weird lattice chemical effects
(b) not replicatable
(c) done using methodologywhich is unclear, so that the claimed output has many other explanations.

Which is probably why they don't get published much. Just not very interesting.
I am not aware of these weird lattice chemical effects. Which effects are you talking about?

parallel
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Post by parallel »

tomclarke wrote:
parallel wrote:Doubters should see this lecture by Mike McKubre of SRI, http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm
The first two videos cover the history and then McKubre goes on to explain why the early replications of Pons & Fleischmann failed.
He lists many later experiments that show generation of anomalous heat.

Pathological skeptics like Giorgio and cgray45 should probably give this one a miss as I would hate to spoil their day.
But all of the anomalous heat experimebts are all one of:

(a) within range of weird lattice chemical effects
(b) not replicatable
(c) done using methodologywhich is unclear, so that the claimed output has many other explanations.

Which is probably why they don't get published much. Just not very interesting.
I can tell this is a serious response as you have taken all of four minutes to view what must be more than an hour of lectures.

Well done! I should have added you to the short list of pathological skeptics. In fact McKubre answered your comments above, if you'd bothered to look, and stated that the reaction had to be nuclear. But what does he know as a scientist for SRI who has been working in the field of cold fusion for 30 years?

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Crawdaddy wrote:
TallDave wrote:
parallel wrote:TallDave,

The best data showing the reaction is not chemical is from the earlier demo with the two Swedish professors, when the E-Cat was only 50cc. There aren't any chemicals that contain that much energy let alone nickel & a gram of H2.

On the BLP side, there were several chemistry professors involved in the replications. Unless you know more about chemistry than they do, it is probably safe to accept their verdict. They knew of the claims of it being a possible chemical reaction and went to extensive lengths too show it was not possible.

But again, this is just empiricism, not theory. You're saying we don't know of any chemical reactions that have the observed energy density. But if it's a novel reaction (which it would kind of have to be), expert chemists and their empirical knowledge are not going to be helpful.

What I'd really like to see is the calculated energy density of a test run and then a comparison with the highest-density chemical reactions known to Man. That would be a good starting point, then we could work back to assumptions about errors in the measurements, and maybe we'd be able to say some interesting things about the plausibility of such a chemical reaction.
Chemistry, which is really just the physics of electromagnetism, is not an empirical science. The energy of a chemical reaction is determined by changes in the distribution of electron density of a system. The energy limit of a chemical reactionis set by the energies available to the outermost electrons of the reactants, which are the only electrons available to form bonds. In the case of the rossi reactor, the reported data is easily 100 times any theoretically possible chemical reaction between nickel and hydrogen.

These calculations are easy to do.
Right, known reactions are empirical, but what we want to talk about is the chemical potential.

What I'd like to know is, irrespective of whether Rossi is engaging in fraud or mistake, what is the maximum possible chemical potential of an E-cat, assuming ignorance of its composition. (The nickel-hydrogen chemical potential isn't enough, imo, because we don't know what other side reactions or secret sauce there might be.)

There must be a point after hours or days or weeks or months of operation at which E-cats can be said to have exceeded any possible chemical potential, much as we could say about, say, an H-bomb. Regardless of what principle E-cats actually work on (and I think it's possible no one has yet glommed onto the true principle) we could then say with certainty there is something non-chemical (and therefore interesting) here, if the energy output calculations are correct within some error bound (hopefully a very large one).

If anyone could share such calculations, that would be very interesting imo.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...

cgray45
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Post by cgray45 »

That might be true-- but Rossi continually arranges matters so those who can make such measurements never can do so.

IE:

According to Francesco Celani, a physicist with the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Frascati, Rossi says he has sold his device and that he has no other unit available for independent testing.

Celani offered to perform the independent confirmation of Rossi’s energy claim. Celani’s offer, made on or about Nov. 10, included:

- Use of government equipment that is regularly tested and calibrated.
- A cost of only two percent of what Rossi has promised (since March 10, 2011) to pay to the physics department of the University of Bologna for testing.
- A rapid evaluation of 20 days (10 for the test and another 10 to write the report,) rather than the two-year duration of the proposed University of Bologna research.
- An offer of fulltime observation and control by Rossi.
- A promise of no attempts to reveal Rossi’s industrial secret.

According to an e-mail Celani sent to his colleagues, Rossi declined his offer.

“Rossi answered that my test, among others of very low cost…was too-late because the E-Cat [had been] sold,” Celani wrote.
From: http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/11/ ... ng-offers/

You can't test it because you ran out of them? Your entire lab is empty? There is one explination for that-- that Rossi is desperate to prevent anyone from examining his black box because such an examination will prove that said black box is a fraud. That's been the MO of fraudsters ever since the days of lead into gold.

Stick a fork in it folks--this turkey is done.
Check out my blog-- not just about fusion, but anything that attracts this 40 something historians interest.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

parallel wrote:MSimon,

Rossi reports he has now reached 450°C with 4 E-Cats in series.

I can understand why you have doubts, but not why you are so certain before the jury returns. You are the real believer.
Yep. I'm a believer. And I get those beliefs tested everyday. It is called engineering. So far all I have seen from Rossi is a fantastic art project. Kudos to him on that.

So let me see how 4 eCats in series would work. One can't get the temp of the output up to 450°C (reduced flow) but you put 4 in series and the temperatures add? Some how my Naval Nuke thermo didn't cover such a possibility. But if Rossi has made it work he has discovered the equivalent of a thermodynamic "battery". You put more in series and the voltage (temperature) goes up.

He should patent it.

This is the most fun we have had in these parts since faith in EEStor waned.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

ScottL
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Post by ScottL »

parallel wrote:I can tell this is a serious response as you have taken all of four minutes to view what must be more than an hour of lectures.

Well done! I should have added you to the short list of pathological skeptics. In fact McKubre answered your comments above, if you'd bothered to look, and stated that the reaction had to be nuclear. But what does he know as a scientist for SRI who has been working in the field of cold fusion for 30 years?
The only thing we can ascertain from McKubre is that he spent 30 years with no substantial result as of yet. There are so many potential errors in reported LENR experiments that filtering out the good from bad results is a lesson in futility at this point. What I think many of us would like to see is a paper with a theory, followed by experiment with numbers, followed by third-party verification and/or elimination of potential errors.

Is it really that hard to understand the skepticism in this field since every single new potential device has either been a fraud, open scam, or failure by incorrect measurement? Scientists and this forum are skeptical and rightly so as a long line of LENR hopefuls have come before and many will likely come after. This is not pathological skeptiscism, this is rational thought.

With Rossi, we simply have no data, just a lot of hear-say, and that doesn't cut it in the scientific world. Until he becomes more open, this view simply will not change. Does he have to become open? Of course not, but don't expect the forum view to change on his word. The only aspects we have argued are of the presented facts.

Rossi has:
1. a claim of LENR
2. poor demonstrations from a scientific point of view
3. no third-party independent verification
4. unfulfilled agreement with UoB

These are the facts right now so we have very little to go on. You have to ask yourself how much you'd be willing to bet on his accuracy. Personally I'm not willing to bet anything on it based on his known background and lack of education, but then again Einstein was a patent clerk with little formal education as well.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

ladajo wrote:Krivit has posted an interesting exchange with Tom Blakeslee. Worth a read if you'all get a chance.

I also took a look at Rossi's January Patent app from Italy today. Another insteresting read. Made me wonder again about his curious ideas on shielding.
http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/11/ ... blakeslee/
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 »

ScottL
These are the facts right now so we have very little to go on. You have to ask yourself how much you'd be willing to bet on his accuracy. Personally I'm not willing to bet anything on it based on his known background and lack of education, but then again Einstein was a patent cleric with little formal education as well.
Against my better judgement I'm responding to your troll.

I will bet you that the E-Cat works well enough to be acceptable. How much are you prepared to back your contrary conviction?

As I don't trust you 1 mm, the bets should be held in escrow by some third party like MSimon.

icarus
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Post by icarus »

You septic sceptics are a sad, sad lot. :(

For all his faults, (most of them trumped it seems to me) it is possible Rossi has discovered an earth-changing technology for the good of mankind and you have had the knives out from day one.

There are thousands of fringe inventors out there on the web, any one of them you could go after as "frauds", yet you reserve special hate an vitriol for this one guy, Rossi. There are a thousand others inside the official halls of fusion power who also practice a special kind of sanctioned hopium selling (lets call it plasma research and not fusion shall we?), yet nothing about them either. The noise about Rossi is hypocritically loud against the silence on these other.

How are you going to live with yourselves if Rossi is right, and is doing what he believes to be right?

You will look like small-minded, petty, jealous, vicious snipes. Snapping at the boot heels of greatness. Time to take a look at yourselves in the mirror guys.

Crawdaddy
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Post by Crawdaddy »

TallDave wrote:
Right, known reactions are empirical, but what we want to talk about is the chemical potential.

What I'd like to know is, irrespective of whether Rossi is engaging in fraud or mistake, what is the maximum possible chemical potential of an E-cat, assuming ignorance of its composition. (The nickel-hydrogen chemical potential isn't enough, imo, because we don't know what other side reactions or secret sauce there might be.)

There must be a point after hours or days or weeks or months of operation at which E-cats can be said to have exceeded any possible chemical potential, much as we could say about, say, an H-bomb. Regardless of what principle E-cats actually work on (and I think it's possible no one has yet glommed onto the true principle) we could then say with certainty there is something non-chemical (and therefore interesting) here, if the energy output calculations are correct within some error bound (hopefully a very large one).

If anyone could share such calculations, that would be very interesting imo.
The point of my comment is that known reactions are not empirical they agree with theory and can be predicted by calculation from first principles using quantum theory.

There are theoretical bounds on the limits of chemically derived energies.

Another misconception engendered by your post is the notion that chemical reactions can be controlled to release large amounts of energy at a slow steady rate. this in and of itself is a difficult engineering problem, since the reactions that produce the most energy are usually the most difficult to control.

In short the probability that the rossi device is the result of a serendipitous chemical reaction is zero.

If you are interested in the possible chemical mechanisms of fraud in the rossi demonstrations, the vortex mailing list has addressed these issues ad nauseum. You can easily find all the data you require there.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

parallel wrote:ScottL
These are the facts right now so we have very little to go on. You have to ask yourself how much you'd be willing to bet on his accuracy. Personally I'm not willing to bet anything on it based on his known background and lack of education, but then again Einstein was a patent cleric with little formal education as well.
Against my better judgement I'm responding to your troll.

I will bet you that the E-Cat works well enough to be acceptable. How much are you prepared to back your contrary conviction?

As I don't trust you 1 mm, the bets should be held in escrow by some third party like MSimon.
You shouldn't trust me even a femtometer. I don't consider myself an impartial observer.

BTW your criteria are nebulous. You need to specify a power output (for one eCat). A run time length. Observers. Testers. Margins of error. Measurement method. etc.

====

The end is nigh. But just as in the EEStor saga the level of faith INCREASED as the likelihood of the collapse of the whole venture increased. Some one needs to study the psychology of this as they did for the psychology of resurrection claims (see Rabbi Mendel Schneerson - I hope I got the spelling right). That is a fascinating case. Some people were so attached to him that the claim of his death was unacceptable. So he "came back".
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

cgray45
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Post by cgray45 »

No, we're those who remember the ancient wisdom-- there's a sucker born every minute.

As for vitrol, you bet-- because every time a lunatic fraudster runs about and screams about his new energy device/sooper fusion system/pixy dust powered unit and the advocates on the internet grab it, with a healthy serving of oil company black helicopter paranoia, it makes it harder and harder to get serious scientists to look at non traditional energy technologies, because much like the mayor of a town, they have better things to do than listen to the ratty types holding up an end of the world sign and muttering into their beards.

And yet-- scientists (real ones, not ones like Rossi with fake degrees) *have* offered to test this system, with verifiable instruments and safeguards in place to ensure the protection of his IP.

protip-- they have not been the ones roadblocking such tests. It's been rossi.

Which again gets us back to the traditional requirement of a fraud and scam artist-- you never, EVER let anyone get a look at your miracle cure for cancer/psionics machine (anyone remember that), save when you are standing right by and and control every aspect of the test.
Check out my blog-- not just about fusion, but anything that attracts this 40 something historians interest.

D Tibbets
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Post by D Tibbets »

ScottL wrote:....
...These are the facts right now so we have very little to go on. You have to ask yourself how much you'd be willing to bet on his accuracy. Personally I'm not willing to bet anything on it based on his known background and lack of education, but then again Einstein was a patent clerk with little formal education as well.
Actually Einstein had completed his PhD just before his remarkable 1905 publications. He probably was developing his ideas in the prevous years, but he did then have the credentials to submit his papers for publication in prominent journals. And he had completed his undergraduate degree in physics before he got the patent office job. He was a reviewer for electromagnetic based patent applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
In 1901, Einstein had a paper on the capillary forces of a straw published in the prestigious Annalen der Physik.[36] On 30 April 1905, he completed his thesis, with Alfred Kleiner, Professor of Experimental Physics, serving as pro-forma advisor. Einstein was awarded a PhD by the University of Zurich. His dissertation was entitled "A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions".[37][38] That same year, which has been called Einstein's annus mirabilis or "miracle year", he published four groundbreaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of matter and energy, which were to bring him to the notice of the academic world.
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rcain
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Post by rcain »

cg66 wrote:Apprently Defkalion got their hands on spectroscopy made by the University of Siena and was able to figure out Rossi's "formula"...

http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_m ... 353181.ece

...this story gets jucier and jucier.
... snigger .... :twisted:

although it's not an especially well written piece, i loved the following quotes::
Alexandros Xanthoulis wrote:I know what he’s got in the reactor, I know everything.

and
Alexandros Xanthoulis wrote:...
Because we believe that his reactor cannot operate more than 24 hours.

When we requested 48 it was a problem.

But my scientists found out the problems.
...
... also contradicting Rossi's earliest claims that he had a unit running for 12 months (?!) continuously heating some office.

Any non-disclosure agreements he (ever?) had with Defaklion, seem in danger of becoming 'ineffective'; I'm surprised there isn't already a court injunction on them in effect.

Rossi really isn't any good at this 'business stuff' is he; neither science, nor engineering.

perhaps he will have better luck writing a book about his adventures.

plenty of time for that sort of thing in prison.

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