Merged Cold Fusion Claims

[Reality Check]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3913

Wow - a pre-print that tries to duplicate Rossi and his debunked E-Cat "experiments"!
Sorry Crawdaddy, you are showing signs of being as gullible as these authors. This is the insanity of thinking that there is some magic happening that causes Ni to turn into Cu.

Look at
"As in the original E-Cat, the reaction is fueled by a mixture of nickel, hydrogen, and a catalyst, which is kept as an industrial trade secret. The charge sets off the production of thermal energy".
We all know what that catalyst is - fairy dust !

One actual scientific error is that they call assigning an emissivity of 1 (a black body) to the apparatus "conservative" when this maximizes the power measured via the radiation. So it is an extreme assumption. A value of 1 applies to dull, black surfaces. They have a fairly dull grey surface. The emissivity is less than 1. In fact I suspect it is about 0.1 accounting for the "extra" power that they claim.

 

[Farsight]

I was reading what Tommaso Dorigo said about this. Like him I'm sceptical about Rossi. But like him, I'm also somewhat taken aback. Maybe not as much as some, because I understand pressure and temperature. In metalwork an arc welder employs blue heat and no pressure, a blacksmith employs red heat and pressure via hammering, and cold welding is no heat and all pressure. And I know a guy who's worked in "LENR" and gave me the lowdown on tricking your way past the Coulomb barrier.

Anyway, when I looked at the paper I was reminded of Doug Coulter, who's involved in a "fusor" group. Fusors are no big deal, fusion is dead easy. Making a fusion device give out more energy than it consumes is tricky. Doug is a great bloke, with a great sense of humour. Cop this:

If I get to gain, I can call, say, Babcock and Wilcox (a firm that makes coal and nuclear plants) and say, hey guys, I have this piece of pipe that stays yellow hot no matter how I try to cool it off, can you help? They'll be here hours later on the private jet to "help".

 

[The Man]

I was reading what Tommaso Dorigo said about this. Like him I'm sceptical about Rossi. But like him, I'm also somewhat taken aback. Maybe not as much as some, because I understand pressure and temperature. In metalwork an arc welder employs blue heat and no pressure, a blacksmith employs red heat and pressure via hammering, and cold welding is no heat and all pressure.

That’s actually a different type of “fusion”.

And I know a guy who's worked in "LENR" and gave me the lowdown on tricking your way past the Coulomb barrier.

Low-down might be a more applicable term for “tricking your way past the Coulomb barrier” particularly if it involves examples of welding for the type of fusion being considered.

Anyway, when I looked at the paper I was reminded of Doug Coulter, who's involved in a "fusor" group. Fusors are no big deal, fusion is dead easy. Making a fusion device give out more energy than it consumes is tricky. Doug is a great bloke, with a great sense of humour. Cop this:


If I get to gain, I can call, say, Babcock and Wilcox (a firm that makes coal and nuclear plants) and say, hey guys, I have this piece of pipe that stays yellow hot no matter how I try to cool it off, can you help? They'll be here hours later on the private jet to "help".

He shouldn't quit his day job.

 

[ben m]

They were fed by a TRIAC power regulator device which interrupted each phase periodically, in order to modulate power input with an industrial trade secret waveform. This procedure, needed to properly activate the E-Cat HT charge, had no bearing whatsoever on the power consumption of the device ...

Pay no attention to the undocumented secret power supply box behind the curtain.

A "secret waveform" is needed to "activate" mystery powder? By doing extra-super-special resistive heating? Wow.

Also:

Upon completion of the test, the E-Cat HT2 was opened, and the innermost cylinder, sealed by caps and containing the powder charges, was extracted. It was then weighed (1537.6 g) and subsequently cut open in the middle on a lathe. Before removal of the powder charges, the cylinder was weighed once again (1522.9 g), to compensate for the steel machine shavings lost. Lastly, the inner powders were extracted by the manufacturer (in separate premises we did not have access to), and the empty cylinder was weighed once again (1522.6 g). The weight that may be assigned to the powder charges is therefore on the order of 0.3 g; here it shall be conservatively assumed to have value of 1 g, in order to take into account any possible source of error linked to the measurement.

The testers observed the heat output of a 1500g cylinder. The cylinder was taken away and something 0.3g lighter was returned. The authors calculate all their crazy-high power densities assuming that the power-density is attributed to this "conservative" gram of missing "charge". Um, how about if the power-density is attributed to the kilogram of stuff that Rossi took into his back room before bringing you an empty cylinder?

Finally, let's look at the supposed 0.3 gram "charge"---suppose that was a 5 millimoles of nickel, of 3e21 atoms. They claim to have gotten 60 kWh, or 216MJ, out of this, amounting to 400 keV per atom. Assuming a nuclear-scale energy source, they're claiming to have burned most of the nickel atoms into something else, and that the missing "3 grams" is not a pile of nickel with some trace elements in it, but is rather entirely different (transformed to copper or something) and easily verified as such. If it were real.

This also contradicts their claim that the reaction runs with due to a "special catalyst". First, if your reaction runs in 3g of "special nickel", then by the end of your experiment your reaction was running in an alloy of half-nickel, half-copper with virtually nothing in common chemically with the original catalyst. So much for "special secret ingredients".

Also, you have a cylinder whose external surface was at 700 degrees and cooling radiatively. Try to get that much heat to flow out of a nickel powder. It won't, the powder will melt first. So much for "special nanocrystalline nickel" or whatever it was.

 

[Horatius]

It's even simpler than that, guys:

An experimental investigation of possible anomalous heat production in a special type of reactor tube named E-Cat HT is carried out.

They have indications of "possible" heat production - in a device that was claimed to be a commercial-ready 10 kilowatt reactor a few years ago. Claim decay == fake.

 

[Craig B]

Cogent objections have been raised in a comment in another blog. The questions and objections listed here need to be answered.

http://pesn.com/2013/05/20/9602320_VINDICATION–3rd-Party-E-Cat_Test-Results-show-at-least-10x-gain/ Comment by Mark Euthanasius:

It is unfortunately a very poor quality report that is unlikely to find general acceptance. One of the ‘elephant in the room’ questions the report leaves unanswered is how it is possible to have a process that is supposed to generate tremendous heat once started, but that cannot keep itself going with that tremendous heat, yet can be stimulated to restart after it has cooled down with modest heat. Disturbing parts of the report with respect to the lack of control by the investigators include statements that the device was already running when tests began denying the investigators even the opportunity to inspect the device prior to the experiments. Further serious data quality questions arise from the statements that the input power was the result of proprietary power waveforms that the investigators assumed were processed accurately by the test instrumentation.

We seem to have the perennial issue of devices allegedly capable of generating vast quantities of energy, but requiring to be kept continuously attached to an external power source.

 

[Craig B]

See aso the sober comments by Vincent at http://coldfusionnow.org/andrea-rossis-third-party-report-released/

 

[Kid Eager]

See aso the sober comments by Vincent at http://coldfusionnow.org/andrea-rossis-third-party-report-released/

... and the credulous comments thereafter. Disappointing - people *want* it to be true, so suspend all disbelief and ignore the problems with the experiment.

 

[Aepervius]

It is unfortunately a very poor quality report that is unlikely to find general acceptance. One of the ‘elephant in the room’ questions the report leaves unanswered is how it is possible to have a process that is supposed to generate tremendous heat once started, but that cannot keep itself going with that tremendous heat, yet can be stimulated to restart after it has cooled down with modest heat. Disturbing parts of the report with respect to the lack of control by the investigators include statements that the device was already running when tests began denying the investigators even the opportunity to inspect the device prior to the experiments. Further serious data quality questions arise from the statements that the input power was the result of proprietary power waveforms that the investigators assumed were processed accurately by the test instrumentation.

My solution to that is very simple : make sure you got big enough cable to heat the things, feed it enough electricity to go red hot, then cheat out and fake that it is not feeding so many energy, make sure you get the cylinder back to hide the resistance inside get gullible people and make bad energy measurement.

SSDD in Rossi land.

Et voila.

ETA: And the objection about how the process would not be a run away reaction once it reaches the temperature of reaction, since it pretends to produce more heat than provided, has always been there from starts, I can remember when I was on Rossi own blog/forums I stated the question never to be answered. I am pretty sure I can see why it was not answered (I wasn#t alone a horde of people asked the same question). The reality is that Rossi more or less ingeniously heat the stuff 100% , he jsut fake out how much is going "in". He was even caught suspiciously near the voltage regulator FFS, years ago in the first photo/video of his e-nothing.

 

[Farsight]

That’s actually a different type of “fusion”.

That it is. My point was that fusion is portrayed as something very difficult and futuristic, when actually it's rather straightforward and has been around for fifty years. See the Farsnsworth fusor.

Low-down might be a more applicable term for “tricking your way past the Coulomb barrier” particularly if it involves examples of welding for the type of fusion being considered.

It is. You sneak under the barrier rather than trying to climb over it.

He shouldn't quit his day job.

Doug's a good bloke, and his physics is good too. Don't knock it.

... and the credulous comments thereafter. Disappointing - people *want* it to be true, so suspend all disbelief and ignore the problems with the experiment.

There's people who *want* it to be untrue too.

Like I said, I'm sceptical of Rossi but not so sceptical of LENR. This should sort itself soon and we'll know one way or another. Until then I'll examine the evidence, and I will not allow my scepticism to cause me to disregard that evidence. One thing that interests me is that the cylinder was glowing red-hot. You could achieve that with say a big current or inductive heating or thermite. But if you were faking it, why go so far as to make it red hot?

 

[Kid Eager]

That it is. My point was that fusion is portrayed as something very difficult and futuristic, when actually it's rather straightforward and has been around for fifty years. See the Farsnsworth fusor.

It is. You sneak under the barrier rather than trying to climb over it.

Doug's a good bloke, and his physics is good too. Don't knock it.


There's people who *want* it to be untrue too.

Like I said, I'm sceptical of Rossi but not so sceptical of LENR. This should sort itself soon and we'll know one way or another. Until then I'll examine the evidence, and I will not allow my scepticism to cause me to disregard that evidence. One thing that interests me is that the cylinder was glowing red-hot. You could achieve that with say a big current or inductive heating or thermite. But if you were faking it, why go so far as to make it red hot?

The corollary equally applies - if you were faking it, why would you *not* make it red hot? "Look! It's RED HOT! Therefore, fusion!"

I am skeptical that the experimental controls were adequate, and the report is my reference point.

 

[Farsight]

Me too. And I have to say I don't quite trust the impartiality here. But I'm not so sceptical that I'm going to dismiss scientific evidence. I think there's too much of that sort of thing on JREF. At times guys here come across like creationists. You show them the fossils, the strata, the radiocarbon and other dating, and they dismiss it all saying that's not evidence. I think they call it hyperskepticism. There was a similar sort of irony going on in the Dawkins Forum before the plug got pulled. People were behaving just like the people they mock. Dawkins too.

 

[Aepervius]

Me too. And I have to say I don't quite trust the impartiality here. But I'm not so sceptical that I'm going to dismiss scientific evidence. I think there's too much of that sort of thing on JREF. At times guys here come across like creationists. You show them the fossils, the strata, the radiocarbon and other dating, and they dismiss it all saying that's not evidence. I think they call it hyperskepticism. There was a similar sort of irony going on in the Dawkins Forum before the plug got pulled. People were behaving just like the people they mock. Dawkins too.

It get dismissed because scientific evidence require a certain standard. That report do not meet that standard. It is not hyper-skepticism or whatever, it is just applying the same standard to everything.

 

[Farsight]

Scientific evidence gets dismissed on specious grounds by people with convictions, Aepervius. Sadly people who consider themselves to rational and scientific are not immune to this.

By the way, I don't know if anybody here has mentioned it, but as a guy mentioned on Tommaso Dorigo's blog, using an infra-red camera to measure temperature seems a bit odd.

 

[TjW]

Scientific evidence gets dismissed on specious grounds by people with convictions, Aepervius. Sadly people who consider themselves to rational and scientific are not immune to this.

By the way, I don't know if anybody here has mentioned it, but as a guy mentioned on Tommaso Dorigo's blog, using an infra-red camera to measure temperature seems a bit odd.

The difference being that there are methods of calorimetry that people would accept. Which are studiously avoided in favor of demonstrations.

 

[Aepervius]

Scientific evidence gets dismissed on specious grounds by people with convictions, Aepervius. Sadly people who consider themselves to rational and scientific are not immune to this.

By the way, I don't know if anybody here has mentioned it, but as a guy mentioned on Tommaso Dorigo's blog, using an infra-red camera to measure temperature seems a bit odd.

Except that the lot of objection above make sense.

heck even the very important one like that one "why the reaction stops when you stop providing heat, when it generate more heat supposedly than the one initially provided"
those never got a proper answer.

If you decide to see that as dismissing on specious ground, well sorry. Those are important objection which would have needed an answer years ago, but was never given. that and the absence of non EM radiation.

You may decide to give the benefit of doubt. But that's your choice. Science does not work by giving the benefit of doubt.

 

[Aepervius]

The difference being that there are methods of calorimetry that people would accept. Which are studiously avoided in favor of demonstrations.

I think demonstration is the important word.

Obviously , other nuclear scientist using calorimetry are not the targeted audience.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me the targeted audience are actually those which already accept Rossi's word.

If the targeted audience were other scientist, then proper calorimetry and explanation, as well as transparency would be provided. Instead we get stalling and wafting about patent and secret ingredient (that one was very funny).

And where are we years after the initial wave ?

No where. No reactors place can be named. No commercially available to all gizmo. no truly independent verification. Always the man behind the curtain directing the show and refusing to let anybody too near the circus.

I predict that in 2 years it will be the same.

 

[The Man]

That it is. My point was that fusion is portrayed as something very difficult and futuristic, when actually it's rather straightforward and has been around for fifty years. See the Farsnsworth fusor.

See, it is much easier to make your point when you say it directly rather then just mentioning different welding techniques.

So "it's rather straightforward and has been around for fifty years"? Certainly someone or something has gotten lost along the way for something "rather straightforward" after "fifty years" as there are still major difficulties (like just the break even point and a self sustaining reaction) the solutions for which are still, well, "futuristic" to say the least.

It is. You sneak under the barrier rather than trying to climb over it.

So sneaky apparently that they can't even do it reliably and effectively after fifty years of something you have claimed to be "rather straightforward". It seems the Coulomb barrier isn't the only thing that some may be trying to sneak under by being low-down.

Doug's a good bloke, and his physics is good too. Don't knock it.

"a great bloke, with a great sense of humour", as you posted. You may find that "Don't quit your day job." is a common humorous response to one pining for their big break as perhaps a singer, actor, writer, artist and now even "Fusor".

 

[Reality Check]

Farsight, how did this some guy trick his way past the Coulomb barrier

That it is. My point was that fusion is portrayed as something very difficult and futuristic, when actually it's rather straightforward and has been around for fifty years. See the Farsnsworth fusor.

You are almost right, Farsight: It is sustainable fusion that is portrayed correctly as something very difficult and futuristic. You mentioned this before.
Fusion itself has been going on for billions of years. It is simple - all you need is a lot of hydrogen.

It is. You sneak under the barrier rather than trying to climb over it.

That is impossible - it is a barrier so you cannot go under it .
But you can tunnel through some potential barriers in QM which would be a mechanism for cold fusion if it was unknown science. However it is well-known science that rules out cold fusion.

However you know "know a guy who's worked in "LENR" and gave me the lowdown on tricking your way past the Coulomb barrier". SO you can explain this and give citations:
Farsight,
how did this some guy trick his way past the Coulomb barrier?

Doug's a good bloke, and his physics is good too. Don't knock it.

What evidence have you that Doug of Coulter's Smithing is a good or evil bloke, Farsight ?
You have not cited any of his physics.
His fusor physics is probably good because this is standard physics. As you have noted fusors have been around for decades.

You seem to think that he is working on cold fusion - citations please.

 

[Kid Eager]

Me too. And I have to say I don't quite trust the impartiality here. But I'm not so sceptical that I'm going to dismiss scientific evidence. I think there's too much of that sort of thing on JREF. At times guys here come across like creationists. You show them the fossils, the strata, the radiocarbon and other dating, and they dismiss it all saying that's not evidence. I think they call it hyperskepticism. There was a similar sort of irony going on in the Dawkins Forum before the plug got pulled. People were behaving just like the people they mock. Dawkins too.

Neither is anybody else here - it's a moot point. When there is *scientific evidence* supporting the claim, rather than "we looked at a bunch of stuff", I will be happy and delighted that something new has arrived.

Labelling something "hyperskepticism", because others don't subscribe to your beliefs, is not furthering the discussion. Bring evidence.