FP's experiments discussion

Shanahan: "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."

Haha, Shanahan is throwing out another possible tiny fractional error, that would not be able to change the conclusion

Anyhow: Mckubre state 50 mW as the uncertainty region, as indicated by the control run, which will include also the tiny fractional possible error mentioned by Shanahan.

And the 1000mW+ excess power measured in P12 experiment is far away from the uncertainty.

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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.

This sort of sociological meta-evidence I rate low. In this case, the evidence for any detectable radioactive products from LENR is very negative - if it existed given how easy it is to detect it should have been seen by now. Whereas the ability to get spurious counts fron any radioactive detector at very low levels is pretty high.

However, as always, a repeatable experiment showing any LENR effect would change things. 25 years of absence of this cannot disprove LENR, but it sure stacks the odds against it.

Shanahan again try to argument for his "CCS" hypothesis.

If there was any such phenomenon, it should also show up in the Hydrogen Runs of F&P cells (i.e not only deuterium Runs) , which it does not, as shown in the referred Mcubre paper.

SO:
1. Excess power only for deuterium (not hydrogen) proves something Else is going on than hypothetical "CCS" in F&P cells.
"For the thermodynamically closed and intentionally isothermal systems described here, excess power was observed to be as much as 28% above the electrochemical input power or 24% above the total input power. When excess power was present, it was more typically in the range 5%- 10%. "

Again: excess power values of 10-30% in this case is too high for any possible hypothetical "CCS".

2. In the F&P paper from 1990 they proved 20x power gain (COP 20 !) during heat bursts. F&P Measured
recombination and found maximum 1%.

Again: excess power values of 20 times input is too high for any possible hypothetical "CCS".

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

Let's see what Shanahan and CF scientists says of Calorimetry accuracy:

"Thus it would seem that cold fusion calorimetry is currently near or at its limits of accuracy and precision.

- K. L. Shanahan, J. Environ. Monit. 12 1756 (2010).

"The implied criticism here is that excess heat in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment is a small effect, and that those working in the field have not done a good job on their calorimetry. Hence, one should not expect others to accept measurements of excess heat because of inadequate calorimetry.

If excess power production were in fact a small effect, then it would be reasonable to worry about the accuracy of the calorimeter. For example, some of the calorimeters that have been used in the field are accurate between of 10-3 and 10-2 of the input power (Miles and Fleischmann have recently demonstrated power balance with a Pt cathode control at the level of 10-4 [21]), so that there might be reason for concern if the effect were near the percent level. Most of the scientific community still believes that the effect reported is small, so that the existence of the effect is still in question because per cent level effects are presumed hard to measure. This belief is encouraged by this author in what he has written.

This statement is inconsistent with the 10x or greater excess power observations of Fleischmann and Pons in their early experiments [1], and it is inconsistent with more recent work. There are a great many reports of subsequent observations of excess power bursts where the excess power is 50% to 300% of the input power, as well as a smaller number of reports of excess power events with very high power gain between 1000% and 3000%.

So, how do we understand what this author has written? Seemingly this author is of the opinion that researchers carrying out Fleischmann-Pons experiments are not able to develop and calibrate calorimeters that can get the right answer to within an order of magnitude. The great many control experiments that have been done presumably are to be disregarded, or else the random calibration constant shift proposed by the author must somehow know when a control experiment is done, and know to shift so as to give a positive excess power correlated properly with current density, loading, and whether to shift early if the experiment is a codeposition experiment or with a long delay in the case of a Fleischmann-Pons experiment"

Ref.

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

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If there was any such phenomenon, it should also show up in the Hydrogen Runs of F&P cells (i.e not only deuterium Runs) , which it does not, as shown in the referred Mcubre paper.

H2 and D2 have very different physical characteristics:
specific heat
diffusion rate

H+ and D+ have different diffusion rates within metals.

and even different chemical reaction rates.

So you can't view H as control for D or vice versa. You might also want to consider why some LENR experiments show larger effects with H than D, and some larger with D than H. this is expected if a variety of mechanisms act differentially due to different physical characteristics.

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Again: excess power values of 10-30% in this case is too high for any possible hypothetical "CCS".

Many people have remarked (like me, as above) the difference between excess power and excess total heat. Recombination which happens at a variable rate can store power and release it quickly making an arbitrarily large "power burst".

So:
CCS gives the total excess heat error
Variable recombination rates give high power bursts.

Thus the phenomena are all expected from standard physics. That does not prove that they are caused by this, but it makes nuclear reaction mechanisms completely unnecessary to explain the observations.

"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?"

You make a mistake when you say "all heat from recombination, ..., will have been thermalized into the working fluid". _All_ heat will NOT be captured by the working fluid, ever. You still have power input lines going into the cell, even if you've moved you temperature measurement devices into the fluid. Those lines will also have an associated heat loss, how big I don't know. Perhaps a calorimeter designer would. It's probably very small, but 2% produced a 780 mW excess heat signal in Storms' work.

However, to be a problem, there must be a mechanism to turn that heat loss into a big enough inaccuracy to notice. In the vast majority of cases there probably isn't such a mechanism. In other cases, the changes you observe in your experiment are well above that potential noise level (S/N ratio), so you can ignore it. But in the F&P electrolysis cell there is a way, as it turns out. That was shown by the simple mathematical fact that it only took minor tweaks of the cal constants to zero out the apparent excess heats in Storms' work. Even further, there was the systematic nature of those tweaks, which clearly indicate a real process in operation. F&P did discover a case where the normally ignored errors turned around to bite them. But they didn't have to assume nuclear reactions to explain them as my publications show.

What is important to seeing these excess heat signals is the specific design feature common to all electrochemical cells used so far (AFAIK), namely that all penetration into the cell are collected in one physical area. This produces an asymmetry in the heat flows that can then be impacted through physically moving heat sources around, especially when you throw in the fact that two phases are present. The lower thermal conductivity region is the gas phase region and that's where all the penetrations go through.

So, if you heat the electrolyte with a Joule heater, the only heat getting into the gas phase is from transfer from the liquid phase. But if you heat it with electrolysis (consider a closed cell with recomb. catalyst for a moment) you get the 'excess' electrolysis power heating the electrolyte and the fraction of the input power that went into the water splitting showing up at the recombiner. That heat is detected less efficiently (or perhaps, less accurately) because of the losses through the penetrations are overall larger since more heat is generated closer to them than with just the electrolyte being heated. But now if you start getting recombination at the electrode, that is essentially just like the ohmic heating you get from the power above the water splitting power, so you count more of it, since the transfer path to the outside through the penetrations is longer and cuts the % lost for that 'new' heat at the electrode.

So to answer your question, you have to have heat losses or you're not being real, but they are only important if the steady state can change and 'take advantage' of them.

(As an aside, also remember that it's not clear what % of the electrolyzed gases recombine at the catalyst and what % at the electrode. McK's second set of experimentation only produced one significant excess heat event of max intensity = 380 mW. His earlier work that you are looking at appeared to have produced ~4X that if I remember correctly. But you always also have to know the % of the recomb. heat that moved to the electrode to understand all that was occurring in any given run. I've seen data that suggests it takes about 15-20% of the recombination to move before people start calling 'excess heat'.))

Both an open cell and a closed cell calibrations will tweak up the lost heat, but because there is a mass flow out of the cell in an open cell, they normally see no recombination heat. Thus their calibration 'bump-up' to get Pout = Pin will be larger. Now if recombination starts to happen, the heat it deposits will be bumped up by that extra amount over what it would be registered as in a closed cell. So I think open cells have a bigger potential to give larger excess heat signals.

So the shortest answer to your last question is "Yes".

Oystia brings up a point I haven't mentioned before, isotope effects. Thomas Clarke notes that there are differences in specific heata and diffusion rates. As well, the viscosity of heavy water is different from light water, and the thermoneutral voltages are different as well (1.45V for H2O and 1.54V for D2O if my memory is working today).

Key Point: H is NEVER a "control" for D.

They have _similar" chemistries, but they are noticeably different.

You could reasonably expect almost any relation between experiments in light water vs. heavy water. But what has been observed however is that on Pd, H2O doesn't seem to give the FPHE. But on nickel, it does.

It seems to me that in practical terms, if one is to take the CCS conjecture seriously, one must subtract a certain percentage from any calculated excess heat. Or, more likely, one must have excess heat that is at minimum several multiples of the integrated input power. Are these incorrect inferences? Do you feel that if the excess heat is on the same order as the integrated input power that it is impossible, in principle, to discern a non-chemical FPHE signal simply by increasing the accuracy of the calorimetry?

Eric,

You did an interesting calculation, and I agree with your results.

My own calculation showed 153 KJ excess energy in the P14 test ( a little higher than Yours, but I Used the 50mW of uncertainty according to Mckubre)

Now then, let us take this one step further. Note that SRI used a few million USD to develop an accurate closed cell with flow calorimetry. And they succeeded, i.e They did NOT focus on high power levels.

OK:

Note the cathode dimensions in the Mckubre paper
"experiments were performed using 0.3 cm diameter × 5 cm length Engelhard palladium cathodes of 99.9% purity. "

This equals 0,35 ml cathode volume, (as known Cathode is where LENR occur)

Power density: 1 watt (ca. Max excess Value) gives 2,9 KW/liter cathode.

So 153 KJ divided by 0,35 mL gives 437142 KJ/L, i.e. 11,7 times your Value for Kerosene energy content.

So we have an energy source of almost 12 times higher than one of the densest chemical fuels.

Or we may use Palladium density of 12 g/cm3 and get 4,2 gram cathode:

Energy density will then be 36428 KJ/kg or 10100 WattHrs/kg

Power density will be 0,24 KW/kg or 240 watt/kg

And now you may check the Lugano report and put these values into the Ragone plots they show in the report

These discussions have very little value because nothing being said is believed or accepted. If you want to know what is real in Nature, ask Nature. When F-P made their announcement, several people asked Nature if what F-P claimed were true or not. Only a few people, including myself got an affirmative answer. I was not convinced, so I kept asking and also asked the people who got an affirmative answer what they found. We found we were are all getting the same answer. Hundreds of questions by different prople were getting the same answer, which meant F-P were right. In contrast, the skeptics never bothered to ask Nature anything. They just imagined an answer. They made up all kinds of explanations for the observed behavior. They imagined only they were qualified to talk to Nature even when they made no effort to do so. Their imagined answers eventually became the myth they now keep repeating.

Meanwhile, the answers keep getting better and better. The understanding is growing. The effect is now too complicated for the skeptical myth to explain, so they just keep repeating the same mantra. An equal discussion between believers and skeptics is not happening. We now witness competition between reality and a dying myth. The debate is over. Now we only need to find out HOW LENR works. Is anyone interested in that subject for discussion?

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Meanwhile, the answers keep getting better and better. The understanding is growing.

The topic here is how the published results in electrolytic cells, open and closed, can be explained. Shanahan has argued for a mundane mechanism (CCS) and defended this so far against all arguments here. Perhaps you could address his specific points? Until that happens from my POV the growing understanding is how one class of LENR results can result from known mundane mechanisms.

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The effect is now too complicated for the skeptical myth to explain, so they just keep repeating the same mantra.

Shanahan's critique here may be a repetition of his original published comment, but as he has said that seems to be because his criticism has not been addressed by researchers doing these experiments, which is a pity. I may be wrong, but if it has been addressed a detailed rebuttal here, which could be answered by him, would be possible.

I question whether in this context a "complicated" effect is stronger, and therefore more difficult to refute. Real physics becomes clearer, with simpler demonstrations, as time goes on. Artifacts tend to get more complex as they are checked more carefully so ruling out simple ones.

Thomas, the critique by Shanahan can not be answered. This is like proving to a Christian that God does not exist . No matter what is said, a distortion will be provided to deflect the argument in a different direction. Shanahan is certain that errors have been made only he can identify correctly. The fact that I and many other people have made hundreds of measurements using a variety of methods and fail to detect a critical error means nothing to him. Yes, error exists in ALL measurements made by man. Yes, they can cause confusion and bad conclusions. Eventually, when enough people see the same behavior after years of study, the claim has to be accepted as real regardless of a few errors, either real or imagined.

Beating a dead horse is no longer productive. So, I do not waste my time that way. Once we understand how LENR works, we will be able to control and apply it. That is my goal. Once this goal is accomplished, no unproductive arguments will be required because the reality will be obvious to everyone. If a person is not willing to accept what is now claimed, I suggest they look elsewhere for their amusement until they can buy a LENR generator at Wal Mart. Or they can help promote the claim with the goal of raising money to achieve a better understanding. Meanwhile, they can educate themselves by reading many of the excellent books and reviews rather than wasting time in unproductive argument.

H-G Branzell

There is no observed radiation because the generated radiation does not have enough energy to leave the apparatus. When efforts are made to remove the intervening material between the source and detector, radiation is detected. So far, the efforts have not found a relationship between the intensity and the amount of energy produced because I propose the proper detectors have not been used. Generation of photon radiation as the carrier of excess mass-energy during slow fusion is not within the framework of QM as we know it. I propose this unique process is the hidden magic behind LENR and will be the focus of a future Nobel Prize. I offer this possibility as having the least conflict with what QM and basic science teaches. The W-L theory gets the prize for having the greatest conflict with what is known.

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Thomas, the critique by Shanahan can not be answered. This is like proving to a Christian that God does not exist . No matter what is said, a distortion will be provided to deflect the argument in a different direction. Shanahan is certain that errors have been made only he can identify correctly. The fact that I and many other people have made hundreds of measurements using a variety of methods and fail to detect a critical error means nothing to him. Yes, error exists in ALL measurements made by man. Yes, they can cause confusion and bad conclusions. Eventually, when enough people see the same behavior after years of study, the claim has to be accepted as real regardless of a few errors, either real or imagined.

Forgive me, but I believe you have not read Shanahan's comments above, or else you are calling him (for no reason I can see) a liar: perhaps you'd like to explain that.

He has said specifically that he does not know (how could he) whether the heat bursts observed are from CCS + variable recombination, or from some unknown heat source. That seems correct to me.

People have indeed made hundreds of measurements and it must surely remain a matter to be resolved by scientific argument whether the observations from these have mundane or exotic causes. Your argument that a reproducible result must therefore be exotic and not due to systematic error is clearly untrue - Shanahan points out that systematic errors are pernicious and often go undetected for a long time.

Surely, more to the point, is that Shanahan has suggested a systematic error here that could contaminate a whole class of observations. The correct response must be to tighten instrumentation to determine whether this is possible. All errors can be controlled and measured, but only if the error class if accepted as possible and investigated by those doing the experiments. Alternatively, a quantitative physical argument could be made showing why this error must be significantly lower than the claimed results.

It is also surely an unjustified assumption that these 100s of measurements have only one possible error, as you imply. There are, with marginal signals of this type, many possible errors, and whilst I am sure many such have been considered it is always possible that some new systematic error class, or in isolated cases specific error, exists. The job of experimenters claiming new physics is to knock any such class on the head when it is proposed and also defend individual results against proposals for isolated error.

I remain unclear whether that has happened in this case. Perhaps you could say, referencing a detailed rebuttal?

@Storms

On theory. I agree with you that WL does not work - there are major gaps. However your phenomenological suggestion, that "slow fusion" can be mediated via a large number of nuclear state transitions over a longish time appears equally flawed. You are suggesting the existence of a whole thus far undiscovered set of new meta-stable nuclear states - pretty well a continuum of such states since the released energies are so low on transition. That raises two broad issues:

Theoretical - what are then the new particles making up nuclei, and why have these never been observed in particle accelerator experiments?
Experimental - why have these metastable states never been observed?

Thomas,

A more precise question in relation with CF should be

What new conditions may occur in deuterated condensed matter and that may produce interesting new physics, that we have not yet observed happening in gaseous phases, plasma or high energy accelerators?

Well,

Let's Ask mother Nature, shall we?

@Branzell

The Chart of the Nuclides is a very small subset of the known isotopic states and paths. Look at the Firestone compendia, for example.