FP's experiments discussion

Shanahan is repeating his hypothesis of systematisk errors.

He also calls me a "CF grupie". Haha, that was a first timer! And he calls arguments against his view from the CF community for pure "silliness" . Sounds like a serious scientist? So I Wonder why he bother spending his time on a "silly forum" like this one ?

Anyhow, back to science: to further point out why his hypothesis is not possible:

1. Catching all the heat: My point here is that with closed cells all H2 & O2 is recombined and the heat from this part is also captured in the calorimetry. Which means excess heat is measured against total input power= V*I

And If you by this still have excess heat Events, then it indicates that also the open F&P cells had an unexplained phenomenon other than recombination. As simple as it sounds.

This is what Mckubre did, excess for power and total energy.

Note how the cell including recombination chamber is immersed in the calorimeter at SRI, Ref Mckubre paper:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHisothermala.pdf

Did they miss some systematic calibration errors in their hundreds of experiments during the 90's and later? Of course they could be completely incompetent like all the other CF researchers, but I doubt That's a likely explanation.

2. Systematisk errors vs power levels: My point here is that F&P research proved powerfull heat bursts occuring in their cells. It is an ongoing myth that the power gain was down in the few percent range, but that is a major misunderstanding. The power and energy density during these heat bursts where order of magnitude larger than any possible chemical explanation.

In the F&P paper from 1990 they proved 20x power gain (COP 20 !) during heat bursts. No possible recombination could explain this level of power gain.

And no "systematic calibration error" could possibly appear and dissapear and produce the graph as shown in the heat bursts.

Ref. Pages 11 -15:
http://coldfusionnow.org/wp-co…gelstein-Talk-09-2015.pdf

Ref. Also the referred F&P paper:
M. Fleischmann, S. Pons, M.W. Anderson, L.J. Li and M. Hawkins,``Calorimetry of the palladium-deuterium-heavy water system,'' J. Electroanal. Chem., 287, p. 293-348 (1990).

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetr.pdf

Oystla -

You seem to be claiming that recombination cannot generate heat bursts / heat events

It is however likely that recombination will not be a uniform process, so you have to consider the maximum energy stored and potentially released in a short time via recombination.

1. Total heat can only be measured relative to calibration. Whether that can be differentially affected by recombination depends on how the calibration is done. Would you care to work though this with specific results? Remember since large energy can be stored as unrecombined material total heat must be over the entire experiment from initial "clean" electrolye and electrodes.

"Events" and "bursts" are exactly what you expect from recombination.

2. Recombination can easily provide 20X power gain, since it comes from an energy store that can be released arbitrarily quickly. You need a careful analysis to eliminate this.

Systematic errors can easily appear and disappear - if due to recombination that is what you'd expect!

3. You need to consider how these error sources interact with known calorimetry problems in open cells due to thermal gradients. For example F&P (as you reference) use open cells and suffer this. These errors integrated over a long time can result in apparent high total enthalpy excesses.

To show that specific results cannot be explained by these artifacts you need a much less cavalier analysis, and an experiment for which all of the hypothesised error mechanisms can be ruled out.

Quote from oystla

1. Catching all the heat ... This is what Mckubre did, excess for power and total energy.

Note how the cell including recombination chamber is immersed in the calorimeter at SRI, Ref Mckubre paper:

lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHisothermala.pdf

This is a 1994 journal article published by by McKubre et al. in J. Electroanal. Chem., concerning a series of experiments conducted during 1990-1991. D2O and H2O cells were immersed in a mass flow calorimeter with a working fluid of either of silicone oil or air-saturated water. The results are summarized and little in the way of specific data are provided. Results are given in terms of excess power rather than excess energy. It's hard to identify the estimated error in the calorimetry, but I think it was +- 50 mW. The periods of endotherm (negative excess power) were observed only when the calorimeter departed from steady state, as when there was a change in input power.

Here is a graph comparing two cells, P13 (D2O) and P14 (H2O):

The units along the bottom are in hours, indicating a total operating time of around 25 days 8 days, and the range of calculated excess power on the order of 0-500 mW. The circled area shows the scatter. One can get a sense of the excess energy by calculating the area under the red line.

Kirk Shanahan, does the CCS conjecture apply in this case, in light of the fact that they had the cells immersed in a working fluid?

Thomas,

Wrt your "You seem to be claiming that recombination cannot generate heat bursts / heat eventsIt is however likely that recombination will not be a uniform process, so you have to consider the maximum energy stored and potentially released in a short time via recombination."

Recombination was the first thing that was brought up in 1989 and has been widely investigated. Like what would an excess heat event look like If all hydrogen in the cathode were degassed during the F&P excess heat event period and and recombined with oxygen (If the oxygen where theoretical available in the calorimeterwhich is was not).

And they found that the heat would be orders of magnitude lower than the observed heat bursts.

Thomas

wrt. Your "Total heat can only be measured relative to calibration. "

SRI used a flow calorimeter as described in the referenced paper above. If the fluid is heated by recombination or LENR does not matter. The fluid will be heated regardless of source.

in the SRI case the fluid was heated by both recombination and an unkown energy source,

let's call it UHS = Unidentified Heat Source

haha

Thomas,

wrt. Your "Recombination can easily provide 20X power gain, since it comes from an energy store that can be released arbitrarily quickly. You need a careful analysis to eliminate this."

For the F&P event it's easy to calculate and prove that there is not enough hydrogen cathode storage capacity available for the 20x power gain degassing during the long excess heat period they observed. And yes, it Has been calculated.

Thomas,

wrt. Your "You need to consider how these error sources interact with known calorimetry problems in open cells due to thermal gradients. For example F&P (as you reference) use open cells and suffer this. These errors integrated over a long time can result in apparent high total enthalpy excesses."

Potential error sources has been investigated numerous times, and the F&P excess heat burst Events where confirmed a mystery.

ref.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmantheinstrum.pdf

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

"In research relating to the Fleischmann-Pons effect, the number of criticisms that have been put forth over the years is verylarge. It has not been widely appreciated just how much effort has gone into addressing and responding to the technical criticisms, since one often sees issues that were addressed and
settled decades ago reappearing as criticisms. "

Ref.
http://www.rle.mit.edu/media/pr152/48_PR152.pdf

Has LENR been proven to exist? In the spectrum of LENR observers, experimenters, and theoreticians (basically everyone involved at all in LENR) there is also a spectrum of "evidence" that will be required to convince each that the effect exists.

As a thought experiment, consider another hard to believe proposition: the purported ET visitation of the Earth. Ask yourself what it would take for you to believe that UFOs are actual ET visitations. Would it take a preponderance of imperfect reports? Would it take only one credible report? Would it take a video [of course fake-able today]? Would it take an announcement by the government? Or, would you have to see it for yourself under conditions you could control? Second, ask yourself how much evidence it would take to make you seriously pursue a better answer.

Rob Duncan was a skeptic (but open minded) and saw excess heat for himself in the Energetics lab - enough for him to be convinced of the need to dig into the "anomalous heat effect" as he called it. He started an institute at U. of MO [SKINR] to pursue the effect. Sven Kullander, Swedish physicist, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, chairman of its energy committee, and member of the Swedish Skeptics Society, became convinced that there was a real effect at play after his interaction with Rossi (and perhaps other investigation). These scientists were convinced ENOUGH that there was a real effect at play, that they were willing to spend portions of their own career and available resources to learn more. I suspect the same is true for the bulk of the scientists who are working on LENR - they have seen something so compelling that they wanted to learn more - to pry the nut from the shell. Momentum seems to be building, and the need for an alternate energy source is high. Investors are becoming convinced enough to hedge their bets. How much evidence (and of what type) is necessary to get money allocated for critical mass investigations of the effect at universities?

LENR could turn out to be a supra-chemical effect - proposed for example by Naudts, Mills, Maly & Vavra, Paillet & Meulenberg - that energy can be extracted from electron orbital reduction below historical ground state of hydrogen. Perhaps the nuclear signatures barely detected are just a side effect. Whether anyone will be successful in harnessing LENR as it is believed to exist as a "nuclear effect" or "supra-chemical effect" remains to be seen. There will likely be serendipity along the way. Sometimes an anomalous effect proves to be real - as in the case of High TC superconductors - predicted to be impossible by prior theories and still not completely understood.

Personally, I think this path of discovery is going to be immensely fun and rewarding to pursue. I am happy to live with the hard core skeptics and hard core enthusiasts. Skeptics will keep us honest and enthusiasts will keep us motivated to continue. Hopefully the path of discovery will deliver a salve for the world's energy problems.

Out of curiosity, I thought it would be interesting to obtain a conservative estimate of the excess energy implied in the graph above, from McKubre et al. The purpose of the calculation is not to derive an accurate estimate but rather a lower bound. No assumptions are made about possible sources of error. I just want to get a general sense of the area in blue.

For the x-axis, there are 24 hours between each vertical line. Let's say A = 498, B = 526 and C = 610. That gives lengths |AB| = (526 - 498 = 28 h = 100,800) s and |BC| = (610 - 526 = 84 h = 302,400) s. For the y-axis, we have (0.3 - 0.1 = 0.2) W over [A,B), and (0.4 - 0.1 = 0.3) W over [B,C]. The area of the smaller rectangle is (|AB| * 0.2 W = 100,800 s * 0.2 W = 20,160) J and the area of the larger rectangle is (|BC| * 0.3 W = 302,400 s * 0.3 W = 90,720) J. The combined area, then, is (20,160 + 90,720 = 110,880) J, or ~ 110 kJ.

I cannot find input power information for the P13/P14 run, but if it is on the same order as that for P12, its maximum is ~ 10 W. Over the period AC that means an integrated input energy of (|AC| * 10 W = [610 - 498 h] * 10 W = 112 h * 10 W = 403,200 s * 10 W = 4,032,000) J, or ~ 4050 kJ.

During the period AC, a lower bound on the COP, according to one definition, was ([4050 + 110]/4050 = 1.03), or 3 percent above input energy. The estimated conductive loss of energy out of (and into) the top of the calorimeter was k = 3-5 percent input power (not energy). (I believe this was captured in the excess power calculation.)

Please, Brandzell, keep it simple!

It is not a shame when you cannot understand certain scientific problems. We all have our limits and something that is easy for one, shows to be very difficult for another. So accept your limits!

Live don't stop when you cannot grasp LENR! You can get out with your wife and dog for a nice walk; or something like that. There are more than enough simple things in live that will satisfy you. Be glad that you have become an Intermediate, because not everyone will arrive at this high level!

I presume that you are considering to stop your study now. Of course it is sad to say farewell to all those that have become acquaintances or even friends. But that's live! So, I am very honoured that I have met you at the LENR-forum. And who knows? Maybe one of these days you suddenly can grasp all that theoretic that's beyond LENR. Anyway, we all will bid you welcome when you come back to the forum. You know, we all have our ups and downs...

Oystia, you are a groupie because you can only hear the CFers, not their critics. You haven’t grasped the most basic facts of my case yet, and you won’t because I’m not a member of the CF community, but somehow you feel certain I’m wrong, and qualified to ‘explain’ how that is, which is what a groupie does, repeat back what he/she hears from his/her ‘heroes’ without question or hesitation.

You claim I don’t take recombination into account. I explicitly mentioned it in the post of “Thursday, 9:43 pm” (that was on Feb. 4th). Also, if you had bothered to read either the actual paper or the original manuscript of my first paper (for which I gave you a link), you would have noted the first sentence of the “Experimental” section was: “The electrolysis cell used by Storms was closed and used a recombination catalyst.” Gasp! I do know about closed cells! And oystia, if the heat shifts around in a closed cell, you can get a calibration constant shift…(that means artificial excess heat peaks…)

“Did they miss some systematic calibration errors in their hundreds of experiments during the 90's and later? “

In short, “Yes”. In the long answer, they missed the fact that they need a more physically complex model of the calorimeter/cell to explain the effect noted without invoking unknown and inconsistent nuclear reactions. Because they missed it, of course they didn’t test for it. The problem is that once it was pointed out to them, they rejected it because of preconceived notions held too dearly.

“Of course they could be completely incompetent like all the other CF researchers, but I doubt that's a likely explanation.”

As I have said before, and which you didn’t hear, this is the problem with systematic errors, they go unnoticed for long time periods and induce errors in the data and the conclusions drawn from them. Just to clarify, which I shouldn’t have to do, the CCS only arises when the steady state present during calibration changes during experimental runs. But if the steady state does shift, then you will get an error from applying calibration equations derived from a different steady state.

Second oystia, you have repeated the proposition that I have not considered McKubre’s work.

Firstly, you have no idea what I have or have not considered, nor did you care to ask, so your proposition is essentially an ad hominem attack against my scientific credibility. You really should stop that, it just makes you look bad.

Second, I have considered most (and I don’t say ‘all’ because _I_ don’t know _everything_ McKubre has done) of McKubre’s CF work. So, you are just flat out wrong in your proposition.

“The power and energy density during these heat bursts where order of magnitude larger than any possible chemical explanation.”

Integrating an error just gives a really big error.

You also need to read Thomas’ post again and try to understand what he’s saying. (Hint: CCS can explain F&P’s result.)

The recognized ‘best’ publication by F&P on their calorimetry is in Phys. Lett. A 176 (1993) 118. That encompasses the 1990 paper. I address the weaknesses of the F&P method in my whitepaper where I conclude (Summation section):

“Regarding Fleischmann and Pons Lumped Parameter Model Calorimetry
(1) The basic equation used to represent the gas stream enthalpy has multiple flaws
(2) The model cannot be used for charging periods, or during or near boiling
(3) The model does not include entrainment
(4) The model cannot simulate the two-zone model that the CCS uses (at minimum) “

This is based on detailed comments in the document body in the section “Fleischmann and Pons Calorimetric Method”. So, I have looked in excruciating detail at the F&P results and have concluded a CCS is a possible explanation. (A real ‘heat burst’ is another, but since two alternative explanations of the same data exist, one needs other information to decide whether one is more valid than the other.)

Try again, oystia.

"Kirk Shanahan, does the CCS conjecture apply in this case, in light of the fact that they had the cells immersed in a working fluid?"

Of course. There are still electrical power lines to run the electrolysis and lines from sensors to data display and recording devices aren't there? Heat loss pathways. Very small, but my original analysis was done on Storms' calorimeter/cell setup that was 98% efficient. McKubre's may have been a little better (or not), but _no_ calorimeter is 100% efficient because they _all_ need sensor output lines to be of any value.

As you noted, the publication doesn't present enough to really analyze the case. In 1998 McK put out a 400+ page report on subsequent work ('93-'94 timeframe) that had a CD of data with it. Unfortunately, while he supplied experimental run data he did not supply any calibration data, so it was still difficult to use. The biggest apparent excess heat peak was a 380 mW bump in the "M4" run. I asked McK for his calibration equations in 1999 when I was looking at this, but he said he didn't have time to go back and find the numbers. So, I did what others dis, and used the two null runs in the "M" series and created a simple linear cal. eq. I applied it to the M4 raw data and then played with the constants and observed the same things I eventually did with Storms' data, as far as changes to the excess power curve. But, to be sure, one really needs all the data, not the predetermined conclusions.

"Of course. There are still electrical power lines to run the electrolysis and lines from sensors to data display and recording devices aren't there? Heat loss pathways."

In the case of the 1994 McKubre article, where closed cells were immersed in a working fluid, all heat from recombination, gas phase and on-cathode, will have been thermalized into the working fluid before any temperature will have been recorded. Above you are pointing out that there are still heat loss pathways in the calorimeter. Is the primary issue, then, that there are heat loss pathways in calorimeters, rather than a potential difference in the measurement of heat from gas phase and on-cathode recombination? Or are both of these details integral and primary to CCS?

@Mary Yugo
Yes, Dr. Kullander may not have been "convinced" there was a real effect, yet what he found obviously provided sufficient impetus for him to continue to investigate at the expense of his valuable time. If you read Lewan's book, you will see that what they got to measure in Rossi's apparatus was never what they hoped. Rossi used tricks, like requiring Lewan to run the experiment at the last minute instead of preparing the experiment himself as was expected. I don't blame Kullander, Essen, or Lewan for not getting from Rossi what the world wanted Rossi to share - Rossi is his own world and will only share what he wishes. That's his right. Still, what has been shown is interesting enough to invest in replication/back-engineering.

Rob Duncan created a funded island of LENR research in a university world that will generally not recognize the field as being valuable. That lab has been continuously investigating and replicating LENR experiments with an objective eye and with some of the best equipment that a university can supply. Have they seen excess heat? I am almost certain. Have they identified its source - I am almost certain they have not. But, the point is, they have seen enough to warrant continued investigation - and that is the most important part.

I have met Piantelli. He is a scientist's scientist - a devout follower of Galileo's scientific method. He spends a great deal of time in calibration of his system measurements, and is able to reproduce his LENR results. He is convinced that there is excess heat - a great deal of it - as are his backers, Nichenergy. They have built a first class lab in Tuscany, and have leveraged it for years to try to develop data that can elucidate the nature and origin of the excess heat. I have seen his cloud chamber that he used for particle detection occurring after the excess heat has occurred. He measured protons with nuclear class energy (>1MeV) coming from Ni rods after they produced excess heat. He is working on in-situ particle detectors to see what is emitted during the reaction. This is a big investment in time & equipment and it is commensurate with their confidence that there is a real and valuable effect that has been demonstrated in his lab.

Quote

Looks like an impasse to me. LENRers will keep on producing small effects, and the mainstream will keep on ignoring them.

That is exactly why the mainstream does not think LENR is real. How could it generate all these marginal results (repeatable) and never a large repeatable result? Nuclear reactions, whether detected through excess heat, transmutation, or radioactive intermediates, are awfully easy to detect, and allow the X10 method.

"X10 method"? If one Celani wire gives marginal but interesting results do the same experiment with 10 wires. 10X the output. Etc.

So, if there were a real effect it is very difficult to understand why by now it has not generated real results. As has been pointed out there are some competent LENR researchers with good equipment. Note that this has nothing to do with theory or not seeing how LENR could work, it is purely a reflection on the experimental results.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to compare the amount of excess energy calculated in connection with the 1994 article by McKubre et al. in the post above with the energy that would be released by burning an amount of kerosene (energy density 37,400 kJ/L) that would fit into the volume of the cells they used. Unfortunately I was not able to find the cell volume in the article. If we work backwards from the 110 kJ of excess energy calculated above, a volume of (110 kJ * [1 L/37,400 kJ] = 0.0029 L = 2.9 mL) of kerosene would have been needed. The cells are likely to have been larger than this.