Merged Cold Fusion Claims

[davefoc]

One thing I noticed was that they used an AC power source. I would have preferred a DC power source. With an AC power source a true RMS current meter and voltage measurement is required and how reliable those calculations are depends on the calculations done in the meters or on calculations done in the software if the current and voltage measurements sampling rate is fast enough to allow this.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't have used a DC source except perhaps they didn't want to expend the money to buy or rent one.

Secondly have I missed something or does the Russian replication experiment contain no information about the reactants that exist after the experiment is run? So presumably the Russian replication makes no claim about the production of any copper?

 

[Kid Eager]

One thing I noticed was that they used an AC power source. I would have preferred a DC power source. With an AC power source a true RMS current meter and voltage measurement is required and how reliable those calculations are depends on the calculations done in the meters or on calculations done in the software if the current and voltage measurements sampling rate is fast enough to allow this.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't have used a DC source except perhaps they didn't want to expend the money to buy or rent one.

Secondly have I missed something or does the Russian replication experiment contain no information about the reactants that exist after the experiment is run? So presumably the Russian replication makes no claim about the production of any copper?

Given the looseness of the experimental setup and measurement, I don't understand how the experiment could actually be replicated.

Is is the replication of the *claimed* conditions?

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

I'm not sure how they differ by agreeing with me. The link you provided says: – 200 to 1250°C

And if you read the table, it gives values to 1373 C.

1/20th of a volt is 0.050 millivolts. The sheet you linked to says 0.051 millivolts. Thank goodness you corrected that.

Greater than is not less than. And I did say slightly. And please get your decimal points under control.

Okay, we can discuss this further. Your melting point for common nichrome is accurate. But, I should mention something else. There is a common reaction that occurs when you have nickel and aluminum together. Aluminum melts at 660 C. When you get to about 800 C, the aluminum will begin reacting with the nickel, forming Ni3Al. This gives off so much heat that it will melt the nickel and can even reach temperatures over 1600 C. This test uses Lithium Aluminum Hydride but I would suspect that something similar is occurring. For example, perhaps it is forming Ni3Al and Lithium Hydride.

Oh, please. This is getting embarrassing.

Enthalpy of formation for Ni3Al is about - 41 kJ/mol. A sample containing 100 mg of LiAlH4 contains ~.07 g of aluminum, or .0026 mol. This sets the upper limit on Ni3Al formation of .0026 mol, for an excess energy of .108 kJ. This is, of course, more than 3 orders of magnitude too small to account for the ~250 kJ apparently provided by the anomalous 8 minutes, let alone the 3 MJ claimed for the entire experimental run on slide 13, "Determination of the Generated Heat".

And, since you seem to prefer your interpretation of a conceptual diagram over explicitly stated, measured quantities, let's just for fun assume that the fuel load was 10 times that stated. Then the energy liberated by Ni3Al formation rises to 1.08 kJ. With all due respect, that's not even in the ballpark.

If you want to do a complete energy budget for the reactions you so blithely invoke, knock yourself out. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to come up with another 3 MJ. I'm not holding my breath.

And yet the paper itself says: For the initiation of the process the tube must be heated to temperatures of 1200-1400°C.

1) And yet, the excess heat calculations indicate a near-100% heat excess for temperatures of 1150 C. Do you see the problem? Since I can't be sure you do, let me spell it out. If the "process" requires tube temperatures in excess of 1200 C, the excess heat calculations for tube temperatures of 1150 must be in error by nearly 100%. In that case, there is simply no reason to trust the calculations for 1290, either. Which does rather discredit the entire conclusion.

2) What process? Are you really buying in to the existence of a process which produces no obvious temperature rise in the test article, when it ought to produce a 4-500 C rise? And, just as a side note, you can't invoke neutron production to heat the water jacket without substantially raising the interior temperature. No neutrons detected, remember?

Clearly synthetic? The only thing I noticed is that for some reason they changed the scale from watts to kilowatts between the charts.

Clearly synthetic. Or faked, if you prefer.

If you will be so kind as to examine the "power input" trace on slide 14, "Temperature Change versus Heating" (as I referenced in my original post), do you notice anything? Like noise? Like variations in power level? These are the hallmarks of real data. Now look at the power input trace on slide 12. Do you notice anything? Like perfectly smooth and level segments of the curve, connected by linear ramps? Do you really think that this curve shows real experimental data? Or does it look like somebody plotting constant values with assumed transition rates?

Clearly synthetic.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

One thing I noticed was that they used an AC power source. I would have preferred a DC power source. With an AC power source a true RMS current meter and voltage measurement is required and how reliable those calculations are depends on the calculations done in the meters or on calculations done in the software if the current and voltage measurements sampling rate is fast enough to allow this.

Ah, but Rossi used AC. Actually, he used line voltage on heaters controlled by triacs with a "proprietory waveform".

I'm not sure why they wouldn't have used a DC source except perhaps they didn't want to expend the money to buy or rent one.

Got it in one. This is very much a homebrew experiment. It's not terribly accurate, but it's not aiming for high accuracy, but more proof-of-concept. It's actually not half-bad, as far as it goes. At least he apparently doesn't have a hose running into a hole in the floor. With more description, like details of his insulation and water-jacket geometry, you might get some decent results.

But my guess is that he messed up on his water loss measurements.

Secondly have I missed something or does the Russian replication experiment contain no information about the reactants that exist after the experiment is run? So presumably the Russian replication makes no claim about the production of any copper?

Again, got it in one. He did what he could with what he had.

 

[ben m]

Clearly synthetic. Or faked, if you prefer.

If you will be so kind as to examine the "power input" trace on slide 14, "Temperature Change versus Heating" (as I referenced in my original post), do you notice anything? Like noise? Like variations in power level? These are the hallmarks of real data. Now look at the power input trace on slide 12. Do you notice anything? Like perfectly smooth and level segments of the curve, connected by linear ramps? Do you really think that this curve shows real experimental data? Or does it look like somebody plotting constant values with assumed transition rates?

Clearly synthetic.

Good catch. It's worth noting that the slides at least attempt to describe the power-supply control. It looks like the supply can be either temperature-feedback regulated or voltage regulated. A constant voltage power supply, connected to a resistor whose temperature is varying by hundreds of degrees, would output wildly varying power. The equipment described could not produce a power graph like that.

Here's a "not deliberate fraud" interpretation, which maybe gives insight into the whole thing.

The "power" trace is not "this is the power we read out on instruments". The power trace comes from "I wrote down the voltage-setting in my lab notebook each time I changed it, and translated that into power." So when the graph says "800W", that might not mean "measured V x measured I = 800", it might mean "my experimental knob-setting implies that the power is 800W".

With that in mind, isn't it interesting that the "miracle extra power" didn't appear in a controlled experiment ("I turned off the input power, and---yep, the temperature stayed high.") It happened in some sort of event which is reported to us as "the heater broke" such that "the input power stopped". But maybe that's the experimenters misinterpretation. Maybe what happened is that the ammeter cut out by accident, or due to some wacky oscillations (maybe the already-visible ones) in the sparking, intermittent load.

Maybe the author convinced himself, erroneously, that there was no power being delivered; he sat there watching the high temperature on his computer readout and writing "the power input seems to be zero" in his notebook. And (misleadingly) it's the notebook-entry interpretation, not an actual power readout, that's getting graphed. Like Rossi, he hasn't actually disconnected his heater.

(Remember that it's an operating setup---he can't have checked the "crack" in the source, or the connectivity of the power cables, etc.., until later. We have only his guess to go on in support of, e..g., the claim that the crack in the tube coincided with the "no input power" period. He only opened the calorimeter afterwards, right?)

So there's your innocent interpretation. We're looking at cheap electrical heater that shorted out in two stages. First it shorted out and blew a circuit in its power-monitoring circuit. A few minutes later it broke in half entirely. During those few minutes, it was still drawing electrical power but its operator thought it was not. Voila, the operator reports on the "anomalous heat production."

 

[Craig B]

Secondly have I missed something or does the Russian replication experiment contain no information about the reactants that exist after the experiment is run? So presumably the Russian replication makes no claim about the production of any copper?

Reactants in Rossi's various contraptions have always been the subject of weird machinations. Have a look at this.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

ben_m - I may, perhaps, be over-nice in my language. When I say that the data is "faked, if you prefer" I am distinguishing between faked and fraudulent. The power levels which I object to may well be produced from observations made during the experiment, as you suggest. It's just that they are obviously not made on second-by-second basis the way the temperature curve is.

It is clear that, for this run, the experimental setup is NOT that shown on slide 9, "Power Supply and Control System", which used a direct connection from the power meter to the logging PC. Actually, it's entertaining to note that the "Mercury 201" power meter specified is not actually a power meter at all. A description can be found at http://www.incotex.bg/product/incotex-201-mercury-201/ and it's an electromechanical energy meter. It is clearly the source of energy totals for each power segment used in calculating the energy coefficients. And note that it measures incremental total energy, rather than instantaneous power. Although, to be fair, the diagram does refer to "KW-h"

So the assumption has to be that the power levels shown on the December test were derived from ammeter and voltmeter readings (1 per power setting), while for the January test some sort of unspecified power meter was used in addition to the energy meter.

And in thinking about it, I'm increasingly convinced that the (undescribed) measurement of the water levels in his water jacket, and hence the water loss, are at fault. He must have had to open up the insulation and tried to measure the level of vigorously boiling water, which can't have been much fun.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

ben_m - I may, perhaps, be over-nice in my language. When I say that the data is "faked, if you prefer" I am distinguishing between faked and fraudulent. The power levels which I object to may well be produced from observations made during the experiment, as you suggest. It's just that they are obviously not made on second-by-second basis the way the temperature curve is.

It is clear that, for this run, the experimental setup is NOT that shown on slide 9, "Power Supply and Control System", which used a direct connection from the power meter to the logging PC. Actually, it's entertaining to note that the "Mercury 201" power meter specified is not actually a power meter at all. A description can be found at http://www.incotex.bg/product/incotex-201-mercury-201/ and it's an electromechanical energy meter. It is clearly the source of energy totals for each power segment used in calculating the energy coefficients. And note that it measures incremental total energy, rather than instantaneous power. Although, to be fair, the diagram does refer to "KW-h"

So the assumption has to be that the power levels shown on the December test were derived from ammeter and voltmeter readings (1 per power setting), while for the January test some sort of unspecified power meter was used in addition to the energy meter.

And in thinking about it, I'm increasingly convinced that the (undescribed) measurement of the water levels in his water jacket, and hence the water loss, are at fault. He must have had to open up the insulation and tried to measure the level of vigorously boiling water, which can't have been much fun.

 

[marplots]

Has the author engaged with any of the critics? I'm thinking a kind of peer review here - what you'd expect from honest research, even if informally done.

 

[Darwin123]

So the assumption has to be that the power levels shown on the December test were derived from ammeter and voltmeter readings (1 per power setting), while for the January test some sort of unspecified power meter was used in addition to the energy meter.

They should have determined the phase of the power source. Maybe they have a large AC component where the current and the voltage drop are out of phase.

They could have also calculate the time average power by digital means. If the power was delivered as a series of electrical pulses, then the relative delay between voltage pulses and current pulses is important. For instance, the voltage may be nonzero only where the current is zero. The current may be zero only when the voltage is zero.

My guess is that the voltage drop and the current drop are largely out of phase. What some of these 'inventors' do is build a complex apparatus with a huge reactive load. I believe that it is usually inadvertent, though I can't be sure. They inadvertently add large inductor impedance or large capacitance impedance into the circuit. Then, they measure the rms voltage and the rms current separately without determining the phase angle between current and voltage.

Look for a apparatus with huge coils and high frequency. This will automatically have a large inductance impedance. Or a circuit with low capacitance and low frequency.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Has the author engaged with any of the critics? I'm thinking a kind of peer review here - what you'd expect from honest research, even if informally done.

Too early to tell. The latest experimental run is identified as Jan 28 of this year.

 

[marplots]

Too early to tell. The latest experimental run is identified as Jan 28 of this year.

Fingers crossed. I think I learned more from that report than years (literally) of second-guessing Rossi.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Fingers crossed. I think I learned more from that report than years (literally) of second-guessing Rossi.

That can't be saying much. This paper blows.

Consider the data from a run taken on 18 Jan. shown in various aspects on page 16, 17 and 18.

At about 2045, alumina powder was added to the setup to increase insulation around the test article. Subsequent behavior is described as "At a constant power of 160 W the temperature increased from 600°C to 1000°C. After this the reactor worked for 38 minutes at a temperature near to 1080°C. "

Now actually look at the data presented on page 16. The power jumps between about 150 and 220 watts. This is clearly caused by the temperature control loop switching heater voltage between two taps of the power transformer as shown in the diagram on page 11. This is hardly "constant power". And the description fails to mention that the second, 38-minute period at 1080 is using an input power of ~220 watts.

OK, that's sloppy. Now look at the analysis on page 17. Input power is claimed to be 144 watts, which is not even the power claimed in the description of the previous, lower-power interval. And computing the total energy of 144 watts for 38 minutes gives 328 kJ, not the 323 listed. And using the 220 watts indicated on the data trace gives a total input energy of 502 kJ, for an output/input ratio of 1.11, which is probably (given the sources of error possible in the setup) about as close to 1 as you'd want.

And then, let's go to the first summary table on page 17. There we see the last entry, with a date of 18 Jan, a duration of 38 minutes, and a temperature of 1080. We also see a claimed input power of 78 watts and an output of 135 watts, with a ratio of 1.73. And you'll notice that neither the input nor the output powers match the previous numbers.

So what, exactly, did you learn from this paper?

 

[Agatha]

This thread has become long and unwieldy, so I have opened a continuation thread HERE. The split point was arbitrary, and please feel free to quote from this thread into the new one.

Posted By: Agatha