Let's see shall we? (quotes not in order)
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Bob Park!
Mr. Park, are you ready to start apologizing for your many years of claiming cold fusion is simply pseudo-science, voodoo science, and snake oil? You better crawl back into the hole you came out of, because a lot of folks are going to be demanding apologies soon!
(Go ahead and continue faking your, "cold fusion amnesia." We realize you have been avoiding talking about the topic over the past few months!)
Dumbstream Media Still Not Paying Attention
Well, it certainly seems to be a very professional report.
We had free access to the heater electric supply, to the inlet water hose, to the outlet steam valve and water hose, and to the hydrogen gas feed pipe. The total weight of the device was estimated to be around 4 kg.
So, they didn't have free access to the important parts, and don't even know how much it weighed. Given that the most obvious concern with claims like this is hidden batteries or other energy sources, that really is the most fundamental thing to check first - what's actually inside and how much does it weigh compared to how much it should weigh.
The result was that the fresh nickel powder was almost totally pure nickel, but the nickel powder that had been in an E-Cat contained 10% copper and 11% iron
...
copper pipe and the steel reactor vessel
Hmm, 6 hours of heating and water flow in a copper and steel apparatus. Yep, must be fusion, because there's certainly no way copper or iron could have come from anywhere else.
This output was less than the 10 to 15 kW produced by the previous version of the E-Cat, but this is very impressive for a device 1/20th the volume!
In what way is the volume relevant? What matters is the amount of material reacted. Given that their reactants are claimed to be 50g of metal powder and some hydrogen gas, there's no reason a much smaller device shouldn't be able to produce the same output. After all, the entire thing is claimed to be nothing more than a pressurised heater. In fact, this is exactly the result you'd expect to see if it's either a deliberate fake or they're fooling themselves in the way Yevgen has already explained, but exactly what you would not expect to see if their claims are actually correct.
Kullander and Essen also ruled out that the energy could be coming from a chemical source. They stated, "Any chemical process for producing 25 kWh from any fuel in a 50 cm3 container can be ruled out.
Interestingly, here's the part from their report immediately preceding that statement:
For comparison, 3 liters of oil or 0.6 kg of hydrogen
would give 25 kWh through chemical burning.
In other words, that amount of energy could easily be provided by a relatively small and easily hidden chemical reaction. The only way you can rule out a chemical reaction is if you have complete access to the entire device throughout the whole experiment. You could very easily hide a small hydrogen tank, or even just a can of butane, and get that much energy out.
That said, I'm still leaning towards simply bad experimental design and total failure to measure actual energy output as opposed to theoretical output assuming everything remains unchanged from the start. It all just looks too sloppy and unprofessional to be a deliberate fraud.
The next one will be the James Randi Skeptic's Society
No it won't. Even assuming the claims of cold fusions were completely correct, they appear far more interested in getting tests at relatively nearby universities than travelling across the world to engage with random skeptical societies that they probably haven't even heard of. Regardless of what happens next, I guarantee the JREF will not be next.
Edit:
Only those ones who do not know what is a calorimeter can believe that a difference between 400W in and 15KW out can be credited to an error in calorimeter
And only those who don't know what calorimetry is would confuse it with a calorimeter. Just in case there's one of those people around here, calorimetry is simply the field of measuring the heat of reactions. A calorimeter is a specific type of device that can be used to do calorimetry in some situations, but is not necessary for calorimetry to take place. In this particular case, no calorimeter was used. There is no mention of any calorimeter by any of the participants. What was actually measured was simply the temperature of water exiting the device, and the energy involved calculated from that. It's calorimetry, but not a calorimeter.
Edit2:
Gah, while looking at the
actual report I just noticed even more problems.
Calibrations. The flow of the inlet water was calibrated in the following way. The time for
filling up 0.5 liters of water in a carafe was measured to be 278 seconds. Visual checks
showed that the water flow was free from bubbles. Scaled to flow per hour resulted in a flow
of 6.47 kg/hour (Density 1 kg/liter assumed). The water temperature was 18 °C. The specific
heat of water, 4.18 joule/gram/ °C which is equal to 1.16 Wh/kg/ °C is used to calculate the
energy needed to bring 1 kg of water from 18 to 100 °C. The result is 1.16 (100-18)=95
Wh/kg. The heat of vaporization is 630 Wh/kg. Assuming that all water will be vaporized, the
energy required to bring 1 kg water of 18 °C to vapor is 95+630=725 Wh/kg. To heat up the
adjusted water flow of 6.47 kg/hour from 18 °C to vapor will require 725 6.47=4.69 kWh/hour.
Bolding mine. They measured water flow by filling up a small jug once and looking at it. They made a bunch of unsupported assumptions, then extrapolated the answers to a six hour test. That's just plain terrible. Turn the tap a little differently, touch a pipe, assume pure water when it's actually quite hard, any number of things could totally change the results before you even start looking at the device itself.
