Merged Cold Fusion Claims

[Aepervius]

Ben,
It would be good to carefully define the terms. Given that there are many claiming that Rossi is a fraud and the effect is not real, how about "Rossi is a fraud/not a fraud" or "the effect is real/is an artifact?"

He is a known fraud. Petrodragon for one. The attempt to defraud with gold smuggling for two. And the mystery heater for three.

You may swallow the excuse he gave for all those, that's your problem.

 

[tsig]

Ben,
It would be good to carefully define the terms. Given that there are many claiming that Rossi is a fraud and the effect is not real, how about "Rossi is a fraud/not a fraud" or "the effect is real/is an artifact?"

The fact that Rossi is a convicted fraud can't even be contested.

 

[pteridine]

You mean pteridine is utterly wrong in his pontifications and slanderous implications? How strange........


Shades of his posts in the 'TWA 800' thread.

OK, cat smate, Garwin was not at U Rochester and I have confused him with someone else.
Lewis did arbitrarily set a Lewis number for the LENR effect.

 

[pteridine]

Which is telling. You are confident about a closed box you never checked for yourself. We are confident about an open box (open research) we checked ourself (for those of us which experimented in the domain or read the report of those which experimented there).

Now I wonder who is the more arrogant.

How do you know what I have checked or not checked?

 

[Craig B]

How do you know what I have checked or not checked?

Well, if you have checked, be so good as to tell us what you found in the box.

 

[pteridine]

In 1989 Garwin was a staff member at the IBM Watson Research Center (not in Rochester) and an adjunct professor at Columbia (also not in Rochester).

I checked my notes and had named Garwin instead of John Huizinga, professor emeritus of chemistry and physics at the University of Rochester, who selected and directed a cold fusion panel for DOE. He also wrote a book, Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century.

 

[pteridine]

Well, if you have checked, be so good as to tell us what you found in the box.

Excess heat.

 

[ben m]

Excess heat.

The original device output a small amount of steam. *Rossi* looked at his own controls and claimed that they showed little input power. *Rossi* looked at the steam puff and claimed it showed a lot of output power. Did you check the input? Did you check the output? No, you're just taking Rossi's word for it.

The HotCat device got hot. *Rossi* provided instrumentation into a secret box. The instruments displayed a small amount of power. *Rossi* claimed that the display on the box was the power input to the HotCat. Did you check the wiring? Did you check the input? No, you're just taking Rossi's word for it.

How is this "checking" that there is excess heat? Watching Rossi's little show and repeating what he tells you to repeat---that is not "checking".

I repeat: what have you *actually* checked? How have you checked it?

 

[Aepervius]

Excess heat.

Excess heat is not something you see from an *open box* what you see is the resulting and initial powder inside.

Rossi never openned the box where the powder are, to *anybody* except IIRC once. There was an initial attempt to look at the isotopic ratio of the resulting powder, and after it was found it it was , if i recall correctely, natural isotopic ratio (which apparentely rossi was not aware of initially) he changed his tune and starting stating that his machine need special isotopes. And never again he let anybody test any resulting powder.

So when you say you saw the box openned, and you are not called andrea rossi, then you are a liar, or you jsut saw something you did not understand and could not test. Which is the same as a closed box.

 

[Dr.Sid]

Come on guys .. the story is dead, let it rest ..

 

[leonAzul]

Excess heat.

Compared to what?

 

[Craig B]

Come on guys .. the story is dead, let it rest ..

Maybe intellectually. In fact it was stillborn. But Rossi and Defkalion and Brouillon are still collecting, or intend to collect, "investments". So keeping such things in the public consciousness may be a valuable undertaking.

 

[Horatius]

Maybe intellectually. In fact it was stillborn. But Rossi and Defkalion and Brouillon are still collecting, or intend to collect, "investments". So keeping such things in the public consciousness may be a valuable undertaking.

This is a good point to keep mentioning. Lots of people ask why we keep beating this dead horse of cold fusion.


Well, we have to keep beating this dead horse, because the fraudsters keep beating it.

We can stop the first time some scammer comes up with a new "Free Energy!" scam, and absolutely no one believes him, or invests in his ********.

 

[ben m]

We can stop the first time some scammer comes up with a new "Free Energy!" scam, and absolutely no one believes him, or invests in his ********.

Unfortunately, while we may get through to the current batch of suckers, there's a new sucker born every minute.

Compared to the days of Keely (when major investors and newspapers fell for the scam) or Pons and Fleischmann (which was on the cover of every magazine) we're actually in pretty good shape. Rossi has only generated publicity and excitement in this wacky conspiracy-minded subculture---I bet there is hardly one Rossi fan who was not (assuming the appropriate age) a P&F fan before that, and I suspect there's a good number of Steorn believers in there too. His funders/investors (unless he's fleecing a bunch of elderly shutins with no internet access) are doing so after having *chosen* to disregard warning signs, rather than because of skeptics' failure to put up warning signs.

If there are people like this willing to fall for Rossi, there will be people like this for the next scam, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Not that we should stop harping on Rossi, but I don't view it as a means to an triumph-of-skepticism goal. It's more like weeding. You don't weed your garden in the hope of eventually eradicating weeds once and for all. You pull up this weed today, and that makes the garden better tomorrow, but you expect a new weed to pop up the next day.

 

[Reality Check]

Garwin's study for ....

I write:

Originally Posted by Reality Check
You forgot that ultimate egomaniac, pteridine: Rossi !

You also forgot to back up your insult about Nathan Lewis and Richard Garwin with actual evidence or even citations to their "error". Are you just insulting random people in the world, pteridine? Can we expect you to label Winnie the Pooh an egomaniac next ?

And you reply with no actual evidence or citations, pteridine .
So I guess you will be insulting Winnie the Pooh next!

You cannot even get your unsupported assertions abut Richard Garwin right as ben m noted.

 

[Reality Check]

OK, cat smate, Garwin was not at U Rochester and I have confused him with someone else.

So, pteridine, what exactly about the 1989 Nature editorial shows that Richard Grawin is an egomaniac as you assert?

Lewis did arbitrarily set a Lewis number for the LENR effect.

Citation for Lewis coming up with a number out of thin air ("arbitrarily") please, pteridine?
Why does coming up with a (hopefully) scientific criteria for the existence of the LENR effect make Nathan Lewis an egomaniac as you assert, pteridine?

Nathan Lewis did analyze and try to replicate the Fleischmann–Pons experiment and failed.

Nathan Lewis, professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, led one of the most ambitious validation efforts, trying many variations on the experiment without success, while CERN physicist Douglas R. O. Morrison said that "essentially all" attempts in Western Europe had failed.[6]
...
Researcher Nathan Lewis discovered that the excess heat in Fleischmann and Pons's original paper was not measured, but estimated from measurements that didn't have any excess heat.[129]

 

[Horatius]

I write:

And you reply with no actual evidence or citations, pteridine .

pteridine, failing to cite actual evidence? That's unpossible!


But seriously, pteridine, at this point it should be obvious even to you that we're not going to accept that cold fusion is real until you come back with some sort of actual evidence of the sort we've extensively described in this thread. So any more evidence-free bumps are just useless. Until you can cite such evidence, just stop trying.


Please.

Pretty Please!

 

[Reality Check]

But seriously, pteridine, at this point it should be obvious even to you that we're not going to accept that cold fusion is real until you come back with some sort of actual evidence of the sort we've extensively described in this thread. So any more evidence-free bumps are just useless. Until you can cite such evidence, just stop trying.

If we want to be serious then pteridine needs to realize just how bad his bumps are actually are. What he is actually doing is besmirching any possible legitimate LENR research by associating it with the invalid, non-replicated Fleischmann–Pons experiment and the main subject of this thread - Rossi's probably fraudulent scam:

• "not even an experiment" E-cat Rossi demonstrations that have failed over several years to back up Rossi's claims.
• repeated claims of actual buyers of e-cat systems.
• stupid mechanism behind Rossi's demonstrations.
• quite incompetent "black box" test of one of Rossi's apparatus.

 

[icebear]

Seen on the FreeRepublic forum recently:

Second Cold Fusion Goes Commercial – Big Money Standing By

September 17, 2013 | 2 Comments

Brillouin Energy has entered into its first international licensing agreement covering three nations. The firm is involved in on-going negotiations for other potential international partners. This makes the second Cold Fusion or Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reaction (LANR) and Brillouin’s Controlled Electron Capture Reaction (CECR) idea to attract commercial interest. The other being the Rossi led effort.

For a first person view of the news pull the YouTube up to 30 minutes and listen to the Robert Godes and Robert George interview.

Brillouin’s CECR starts by introducing hydrogen into a suitable piece of nickel (or other metal with the correct internal geometry). A proprietary electronic pulse generator then creates stress points in the metal where the applied energy is focused into very small spaces. This concentrated energy allows some of the protons in the hydrogen to capture an electron, and thus become a neutron. This step converts a small amount of energy into mass in the neutron.

More pulses both create more neutrons and allow neutrons to combine with some of the hydrogen to form deuterium (a form of hydrogen with both a proton and a neutron in the nucleus). This ‘combination’ step releases energy. The process continues, again, with some neutrons combining with deuterium to form tritium (hydrogen with one proton and two neutrons). This step releases still more energy. The process continues with some neutrons combining with the tritium to form quadrium (hydrogen with one proton and three neutrons). Since quadrium is not stable, it quickly turns into helium in a process that releases more energy than it took to create all the preceding steps.

Brillouin’s power equation is 2.4 units of energy going in and 24 units coming out.

The Brillouin CECR is thought to be quite versatile. The released energy is initially absorbed by the metal element, and then made available as heat. At lower temperatures, this generated heat can be used directly for space heating, hot water and similar applications. Further refinements of the Brillouin Energy system will produce the higher temperatures needed for electrical generation, dry industrial stream and industrial processes.

Using CECR is very light on hydrogen resource demands. The amount of hydrogen in a 8-oz (237 ml) glass of water holds the energy equivalent of the gasoline needed to fill up 7903 Ford Explorers or to power 3279 average homes for a month. The nickel or other metal element acts only as a host and catalyst, and is not consumed.

The CECR is different than the Rossi device that reportedly needs a “catalyst” switch out at about six months of operation.

Big investment money is lining up. Brillouin has raised about $3 million in funding. A “second stage” $20M investment conditional agreement from Sunrise Securities of New York for $20 million is now in place.

The Sunrise deal offers to purchase 15% of Brillouin post-money, conditional on Brillouin moving ahead with and completing successful testing of its CECR at SRI.

The Sunrise folks are also linking the investment to Brillouin striking preliminary agreement to acquire at least one “stranded asset” conventional fuel source small scale (5-10MW) power plant, with existing conventional co-generation equipment, and replacing (retrofitting) the old fuel source with Brillouin’s CECR, together with renewal of an operating power purchase or steam heat contract with an industrial or a utility.

The $20M Sunrise offer would fund full commercial launch of this merchant power supply retrofit business model after successful testing of the CECR called NHB™ at SRI.

Brillouin's Hot Tube Commercial Scale Boiler Brillouin’s Hot Tube Commercial Scale Boiler

Chances are the Brillouin team will get to commercial scale. Key expert affiliates of Sunrise includes a former director of the California Public Utilities Commission independent power division who has already provided potential acquisition candidates, available for negligible cost, with power contracts already in place.

Looks like a done deal. Cold Fusion is almost here. If Brillouin can scale up.

Your humble writer suspects the Brillouin team will scale up and do it in a successful and classy fashion.

Rah! Brillouin!

 

[Reality Check]

Seen on the FreeRepublic forum recently:

Yes we have seen this bunch of scammers before, icebear !
Brillouin’s CECR is a bunch of nonsense as anyone can see from the earlier posts about it.

ETA:
p+e->n requires energy input on nuclear scales or conditions similar to a neutron star.
You then have a free neutron that decays with a half life of 881.5(15) seconds with characteristic products, including some gamma rays.
Then as ben m stated :

Well, all of those reactions are routinely studied by real nuclear physicists. p+n --> d releases a 2.2 MeV gamma ray. d+n --> t releases a 6.25 MeV gamma ray. t+n --> "quadrium" is known not to occur. Seriously. An extra neutron is *repelled* from tritium, not captured; if you force a neutron in (using a high-energy n beam on a T target), the extremely-short-lived "4H resonance" simply falls apart, it does NOT beta-decay to 4He.

If you're creating neutrons in an environment with a mix of H and Ni, the result is *almost entirely* captures on nickel nuclei (4.5 barns on 58Ni) rather than on H (0.3 barns). Capture on *trace* deuterium is almost nil (0.0005) in this environment. Neutron capture on nickel has an easily-identified gamma ray spectrum, and produces the long-lived radioactive isotopes 59Ni and 63Ni.

And, neutrons don't capture right where they are created. Make a neutron in a bit of nickel powder in a steel tube, you will neutron-irradiate everything in the room.

IOW: All of the Brillouin "scientists" must be glowing in the dark by now !