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Continuation Part II - Cold Fusion Claims

marplots

Penultimate Amazing
Joined
Feb 12, 2006
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This is a continuation thread, the first part of which can be found HERE. This action was taken due to the length of the thread. The split point was arbitrary, and please feel free to quote from the previous thread into this one.
Posted By: Agatha


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

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

That you can put stuff in a tube, heat the bejezus out of it, and BY GOD, I'm doing SCIENCE!!!
 
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That you can put stuff in a tube, heat the bejezus out of it, and BY GOD, I'm doing SCIENCE!!!
Science is different coloured liquids in test tubes with green smoke coming out when you mix them.
 
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?

On one hand we have a known con artist on the other the laws of physics.

Where do I put my money?
 
Link.
marplots said:
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.
Nope. Rossi created a fake "journal" complete with faked review panel to push his nonsense.
 
So we have a "paper" (actually a report) called Study of the Replica of Rossi’s High Temperature Generator. New results which immediately has an enormous problem - AFAIK Rossi has been keeping the actual contents of his reactor a secret. So how does this author know that it contains just Ni powder and LiAlH4 (10% by mass)?

The next question is: Who is Alexander Georgevici Parkhomov and what is his area of expertise?
Research Gate suggests this Alexander G Parkhomov at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute for Time Problem Researchers. He looks like an astrophysicist.

What I see is
  • Confirmation that this is not cold fusion because there are no detected fusion products.
  • The temperature is not directly related to the input power: "At the final segment of the highest temperature, an oscillation of the temperature appears." while input power is constant.
  • An expectation that when a heater burns out then temperature will change immediately.
    This is not totally correct. There is an electric heater surrounding a ceramic plug. The heater burns out and we see a small immediate drop in temperature. But there is still a hot ceramic plug. That should sustain the temperature for a while. And we see that happening. Or vice versa - the immediate temperature drop is due to the plug cooling while the heater remains hot.
What is surprising to me is the sudden drop in temperature after 8 minutes.
 
The next question is: Who is Alexander Georgevici Parkhomov and what is his area of expertise?
Research Gate suggests this Alexander G Parkhomov at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute for Time Problem Researchers. He looks like an astrophysicist.

Good lord, he's one of the Ephraim Fischbach collaborators.

(There are bunch of nuclear physicists who keep claiming that they see time-variations in nuclear decay rates. Their experiemental claims are all contradicted by independent data.)

OK: I had been reading this as though it was the work of a fairly-competent garage tinkerer, trying his hand at science for the first time. I revise this belief: the author is a nominal full-time scientist, affiliated with a strange and contrarian-friendly institution, and whose record shows a decade's experience fooling himself into believing erroneous results.
 
So we have a "paper" (actually a report) called Study of the Replica of Rossi’s High Temperature Generator. New results which immediately has an enormous problem - AFAIK Rossi has been keeping the actual contents of his reactor a secret. So how does this author know that it contains just Ni powder and LiAlH4 (10% by mass)?

But we already know this. Rossi's amended patent application makes no claim of a catalyst. Since any patent granted on the basis of this application would not have protected the use of a patent (and would have been invalid if such a catalyst were actually required), it is clear that Rossi's good-faith application grants that no such catalyst is required.

Or are you suggesting that Rossi is lying? Shame on you!

[*]Confirmation that this is not cold fusion because there are no detected fusion products.

But we already know this. Rossi's good-faith response to the Florida Bureau of Radiation Control clearly indicates that no fusion products (radiation) is produced by his process.

Or are you suggesting that Rossi is lying? Shame on you!

[*]The temperature is not directly related to the input power: "At the final segment of the highest temperature, an oscillation of the temperature appears." while input power is constant.

But we already know this. It is the heart of Rossi's claim. And Rossi has noted stability issues with his process.

Or are you suggesting that Rossi is lying? Shame on you!

[*]An expectation that when a heater burns out then temperature will change immediately.
This is not totally correct. There is an electric heater surrounding a ceramic plug. The heater burns out and we see a small immediate drop in temperature. But there is still a hot ceramic plug. That should sustain the temperature for a while. And we see that happening. Or vice versa - the immediate temperature drop is due to the plug cooling while the heater remains hot.

Ah yes, the ceramic plug. As you well know, having read and understood the paper you are discussing, the plug is made of alumina with a diameter of 5 mm and a total length of no more than 120 mm. As such, its mass is ~.75 g. Given the specific heat capacity of alumina (.88 J/g-deg), and the fact that the temperature is consistent with a power of 400 watts, to produce this much power the plug must cool at a rate of ~600 degrees/sec. There is no phase change involved to produce energy without temperature change.

Of course, it makes much more sense to consider the tube/plug assembly, since the nickel/LAH is in much greater contact with the tube than with the plug. Since the assembly has a diameter of 10 mm, the implied cooling rate is 150 degrees/sec.

What is surprising to me is the sudden drop in temperature after 8 minutes.

As well it should be (surprising, that is), since the plug is incapable of maintaining a temperature plateau for any length of time at all.

Note to Reality Check: How about learning to check reality?
 
Good lord, he's one of the Ephraim Fischbach collaborators.

(There are bunch of nuclear physicists who keep claiming that they see time-variations in nuclear decay rates. Their experimental claims are all contradicted by independent data.)

OK: I had been reading this as though it was the work of a fairly-competent garage tinkerer, trying his hand at science for the first time. I revise this belief: the author is a nominal full-time scientist, affiliated with a strange and contrarian-friendly institution, and whose record shows a decade's experience fooling himself into believing erroneous results.

A. G. Parkhomov, of Lomonosov Moscow State University is a fully-fledged nutcase.

"Remote mental influence on biological and physical systems."

http://www.researchgate.net/publica..._influence_on_biological_and_physical_systems

Rossi is a fully-fledged fraud.

Parkhomov is probably just a nutcase and not trying to profit from Rossi's fraud; there is no chance that Rossi is just deluded. He is a serial scammer and liar.

There is no such thing as "the ecat"; every iteration varies, even the purported "fuel" and the supposed reactions vary, not just the physical form of the apparatus. Originally Rossi claimed 62Ni transmuted to copper. Now he claims everything converted to 62Ni.

Rossi is a lying scumbag. Scads of examples of Rossi's lies in the link below.

http://freeenergyscams.com/page/6/
 
...snipped bit of a rant...
Note to Reality Check: How about learning to check reality?
Note to WhatRoughBeast:
The reality to be checked is that
* Rossi has shown signs of being a fraud by continuously promising and getting money for devices that have never been shown to work.
* this probable fraud (Rossi) is being supported by a crank scientist (Parkhomov) with no expertise in calorimetry or fusion who is not confident enough to publish his experiment in a peer-reviewed journal.
* Rossi is lying :eek:!
We know this because as you state "Rossi's good-faith response to the Florida Bureau of Radiation Control clearly indicates that no fusion products (radiation) is produced by his process" makes his claim of Ni turning into Cu a lie.

Thanks for the numbers, WhatRoughBeast - so what we have is some other source of incompetency from Parkhomov causing the reactor temperature to stay high after the heater self-destructs. I wonder if he switched off the power to the heater?
 
* Rossi is lying :eek:!
We know this because as you state "Rossi's good-faith response to the Florida Bureau of Radiation Control clearly indicates that no fusion products (radiation) is produced by his process" makes his claim of Ni turning into Cu a lie.

RC - Whenever you run across 3 successive, identical responses "Are you suggesting..."), you might give thought to the possibility that irony is on display.

And while I was, I grant, being snippy, my point was that the possibility that a bit of ceramic that size could provide the energy needed was so obviously impossible that it shouldn't have even been mentioned, at least not without doing a bit of preliminary checking. I had been primed on this subject by barehl's suggestion just before the thread split, and admit that I may have been hasty in your case. I apologize if I came on too strong.
 
Yet another badly calibrated, unpublished experiment, pteridine :eek:!
This is Alexander Parkhomov who has been fooled by the Rossi scams into trying to duplicate them.


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And what looks like another person fooled by Rossi: a George Miley who though may have his own recipe for cold fusion.
Still looks like the idiocy of Ni + H fusion that has been addressed before.


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A rise and then drop in pressure suggests to me some kind of chemical reaction between the solids and whatever gas is in there resulting in net reduction of gas volume within the vessel, assuming the reported results are accurate.
 

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