Let's call it foamgate? it does rather cut against the "infallible electrochemist" arguments Jed advances for taking their results as correct because they say so, without detailed supporting evidence.
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Let's call it foamgate?
Let's call it horseshit, since there was no foaming and no entrained water, as proven by every method you or anyone else could think of.
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You've done a great job at delineating why the F&P video method for computing excess heat is flawed. I suspect F&P figured that out eventually since they never used that method in a subsequent paper.
Who can say what they figured out? What is certain is that they didn't publicly admit these flaws and that the paper they presented at ICCF3 is still considered (after 25 years) the Fleischmann's "major paper" (1, pag.14).
After all, the "Four-cell Boil-off test" was performed after many years of research, when F&P had already developed a good control on their methods, as reported by Krivit in 2009 (2): "By 1993 [it's a typo, actually it was by 1992], Fleischmann and Pons had developed such control of their experiments, particularly the cathode material, that they had the confidence and ability to set up a row of four cells side by side and initiate anomalous-heat reactions on all four at will."
The 1992 test is and will remain the cornerstone of the F&P activity, the event that gave rise to two of the main myths of CF: the ability to generate an excess heat density in the order of 4 kW/cm3 and the so-called "heat after death".
(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanlettersfroa.pdf(2) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…ivit-S-ANewLookAtLENR.pdf
Let's call it foamgate?
Well chosen. Bubblegate would be more general, but foamgate sounds much better.
Quoteit does rather cut against the "infallible electrochemist" arguments Jed advances for taking their results as correct because they say so, without detailed supporting evidence.
I fully agree, but I also must admit that he was right in urging to read the literature very carefully.
On the contrary, Morrison was wrong in asking for "a cup of tea". He should have asked for "a foamy cappuccino"!
... there was no foaming and no entrained water, ...
Lonchampt, who tried to replicate the original F&P experiment as closely as possible, wrote in his 1996 paper presented at ICCF6 (3): "It is difficult to follow accurately the level of water during this period because of the formation of foam, so it is only at the end of the experiment, when the cell is dry that the excess heat can be calculated with precision."
The tendency to form foam in the calorimeter used in 1992 for the Four-cell experiment (probably the ICARUS 2 model) was confirmed by F&P themselves when they presented the ICARUS 9 model to the same ICCF6 (4):
"These calorimeters are much improved in thermal dissipation, sensitivity, precision, and accuracy compared to the original calorimeters used in these laboratories from 1992 to 1995. The present design incorporates better seals at all liquid/casing interfaces, and at the thermistor inlet ports. […] Foam rise in the calorimeter at the boiling temperature has been minimized."
Quote… as proven by every method you or anyone else could think of.
It should not be so difficult to carefully check the formation of foam and the liquid entrainment in a F&P cell. The imminent coming of the 30th anniversary of the F&P press conference, would be a the perfect opportunity to repeat their 1992 test and fully investigate these crucial issues.
(3) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LonchamptGreproducti.pdf
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Axial distribution of water during boil-off (Cell 1)
In analyzing the behavior of the F&P cells in the tests described in their ICCF3 paper (1), it is useful to take into account how the water modifies its axial distribution during the boil-off phase. For this purpose we need to go back to Cell 1, already examined in the previous comments, as for this cell many frames are available from the video of Pons presentation at the ICCF3 in 1992 (2).
The following jpeg summarizes the results of this analysis:
Seven views (A to G) of Cell 1, taken from as many frames of the video, are lined up along the time axis that spans a period of 3 hours, from 19:30 to 22:30 on the 16th test day. As already mentioned in (3), these frames show how the space inside the cell presents a clear separation between two regions:
- the lower region, here called region L (liquid), is still partially transparent and consists mainly of liquid water through which bubbles - due to vaporization and, to a lesser extent, to water electrolysis - rapidly rise;
- the upper region, here called region V (void), is almost uniformly bright due to the presence of many voids consisting of both the bubbles that occupy the entire cross section and the foam that builds up on the top and progressively thickens. It is impossible to distinguish the zone of intense boiling from that of the foam, so that this region will be considered as a whole, giving it an average value of void fraction, that is, the volume occupied by the bubbles and foam compared to the free space available.
That said, we want to estimate how the progressive loss of water by evaporation (the losses for electrolysis and for liquid entrainment are neglected for simplicity) affects the 2 regions, in particular the level of the L region and the void fraction of the V region.
For this purpose, frames B and C, which are 1.5 hours apart, are considered. The lower transparent portion of the cell makes it possible to estimate that during this period of time the height of the L region drops by about 2 cm, ie - taking into account that the average free section is 5 cm2 (4) - the volume of water in this area decreases by about 10 cm3 in 1.5 hours. This accounts for a vaporization power of about 5 W, not enough to dissipate all the available input power.
In fact, by positioning the instants B and C on an expanded portion of the diagram of Fig.6A (1), we can see that, in the meanwhile, the electric input power increases from 20 W to 30 W. Subtracting the 11 W which, at the boiling temperature , are dissipated by radiation (1), the power available for vaporization is much greater than the 5 W corresponding to the lowering of region L. As detailed in the jpeg, assuming that between B and C the power input has an average value of 25 W, a quote of 14 W would be available for vaporization and this would result in the vaporization of 28 cm3 of liquid water. Since 10 cm3 are attributable to the shortening of L region, the remaining 18 cm3 must be attributed to the reduction of the liquid fraction of V region, ie to the increase in its void fraction. Given that 18 cm3 corresponds to 3.6 cm of liquid column and that the average height of region V between B and C is about 15 cm, this means that the void fraction increases by 24%.
Then, recapitulating, the extra power available for vaporization from B to C leads to a loss of 28 cm3 of water, equivalent to 31% of the initial content of 90 cm3 (5 moles). This loss determines a lowering of the L region by 2 cm and a further increase of the void fraction in the V region by 24%. These effects are caused by the portion of input energy represented on the graph by the intersection between the yellow area (heat available for vaporization during the entire boil-off phase) and the dotted contour (heat input during the 1.5 hours examined). It is thus possible to visually estimate that already at the instant C the cell has lost most of the initial inventory of water, that had been restored during the last refill. This refill happened just before the power input exceeded the value of 11 W.
Although very approximate, as based on rough and ready data, this analysis shows how impossible it is that half of the initial water content vaporizes in the final 10 minutes of the boil-off phase, as F&P assumed. This wrong assumption lead to a huge overestimation the heat produced by their cells, and in consequence to the erroneous conclusion that they were able to generate excess heat of nuclear origin.
(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf
(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88YdKYv8sw
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Although very approximate, as based on rough and ready data, this analysis shows
wrong assumption l...huge overestimation ..in consequence to the erroneous conclusion
I admire your chutzbah ..perhaps you would like to submit a refutation to a scientific journal?
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I admire your chutzbah ..
But I admire your quickness in understanding why F&P were wrong. You replied in just 8 minutes!
Quoteperhaps you would like to submit a refutation to a scientific journal?
Real scientific journals have since long dropped the argument. This forum is the only place in which this refutation can be understood and be somehow useful for someone.
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be somehow useful for someone.
The experts and the counter- experts can both be amiss... its always good to have as many checkers as possible.
great work with simple tools... organised scrutiny is useful
"In 1942 Robert Merton described CUDOS, the prevailing Norms of Science. In this acronym,
C is for communalism (discoveries are not private property, they belong to all scientists),
U is for universalism (principles of validation of claims are universal, not subject-specific),
D is for disinterestedness (primary motivation for scientists is not money; it is love of truth), and
OS is for organized scrutiny (skepticism is very useful)" -
Axial distribution of water during boil-off (2nd part)
The following jpeg aims to complete the analysis initiated in (*) regarding the evolution of the water content in Cell 1 during the boil-off phase of the F&P experiments described in (1).
In the first part, the variations between the B and C frames of the video (2) of the height of the liquid region (L) and of the vacuum fraction of the void region (V) were analyzed. Frame B and C were 1h30 m apart in the middle of the boil-off transient. In order to get an idea, even if approximate, of the behavior of Cell 1 during the whole boil-off phase, it is also necessary to consider the initial and final instants of the relative transient.
The final instant is the F frame already shown in (*). This frame is the first of the video sequence in which the dark part, which indicates the presence of a transparent liquid region at the bottom of the cell, disappears completely. This frame is positioned 45 minutes after frame C. After this frame time, the region V occupies the entire free volume of the cell and further reductions in the water content can only be achieved by further reducing the liquid fraction of this region.
The initial instant will be called time O, to indicate the onset of evaporation, ie the moment when the electric power input (Ptot) exceeds the 11 W estimated as the heat dissipated by radiation, so that an extra power is available for water evaporation (Pvap). From the central diagram of the jpeg in (*), it is possible to estimate that time O occurs about 5 hours before frame B. At this time, Cell 1 could appear in the state of Cell 2 in frame B, ie almost completely transparent: a column of liquid water, with an inner column of raising droplets, due to the gases released by electrolysis, and whose overall volume is negligible. At time O, therefore, the region L occupies the entire volume of the cell and the region V has yet to start forming.
With the aforementioned times, the overall duration of the transient from O to F is 7h15m.
Simple calculations make it possible to derive the values listed in the first table of the above jpeg. From the values of Pvap and of the frame times, we get the vaporization energy of each period (Evap) and subsequently the volume of water vaporized in each period (Wvap), calculated on the basis of the volumetric enthalpy of vaporization (2676 J/cm3). It is to notice that in each of the 3 periods, a quantity of water of about one third of the initial content of 90 cm3 (5 moles) is vaporized. Therefore the amount of residual water (Wres) at the end of the transient is only a few percent of the initial value.
The calculated trend of Wres is represented in the first diagram by the green line, where it is compared with what should have been its trend according to the evaluations made by F&P in (1), where they stated that the last half of the initial content of water (2.5 moles, equal to 45 cm3) vaporized in just 10 minutes. The diagram clearly shows that this assumption made by F&P - represented by a red segment - is incompatible with the Wres trend estimated on the basis of the real power input. The excess slope of the red segment turns into the alleged excess heat calculated at page 16 of (1).
To complete this analysis, the values of the height of the L region and of the average liquid fraction in the V region are shown in a second table and plotted in the adjacent diagram.
(*) FP's experiments discussion
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Wow!.. topmarks for persistence.. Ascoli
Perhaps Brian Josephson would be interested ..He's got Chutzpah too...
Cold fusion: Fleischmann denied due credit
Philip Ball's obituary of Martin Fleischmann
like many others, ignores the experimental evidence contradicting the view that cold fusion is 'pathological science' (sewww.lenr.org
I gave an alternative perspective in my obituary of Fleischmann ...
describing what I believe to be the true nature of what Ball calls a “Shakespearean tragedy”.
The situation at the time of the announcement of cold fusion was confused because of errors in the nuclear measurements (neither Fleischmann nor his co-worker Stanley Pons had expertise in this area) and because of the difficulty researchers had with replication. Such problems are not unusual in materials science. Some were able, I contend, to get the experiment to work (for example, M. C. H. McKubre et al. J. Electroanal. Chem. 368, 55–56; 1994; E. Storms and C. L. Talcott Fusion Technol. 17, 680; 1990) and, in my view, to confirm both excess heat and nuclear products.
Scepticism also arose because the amount of nuclear radiation observed was very low compared with that expected from the claimed levels of excess heat. But it could be argued that the experiments never excluded the possibility that the liberated energy might be taken up directly by the metal lattice within which the hydrogen molecules were absorbed.
In my opinion, none of this would have mattered had journal editors not responded to this scepticism, or to emotive condemnation of the experimenters, by setting an unusually high bar for publication of papers on cold fusion. This meant that most scientists were denied a view of the accumulating positive evidence.
The result? Fleischmann was effectively denied the credit due to him, and doomed to become the tragic figure in Ball's account.
© B D Josephson 2012
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May be Ascoli should once explain what he would like to tell us!
There was no total evaporation for days. How can his (Ascolis) model explain a sudden evaporation...
Does he want to tell us that max excess heat was only 40W instead of 50W ? (based on a few video frames & with no access to laboratory journals...)
May be he is not aware that within 6 weeks of the 1989 PF-anouncement 4 different (US) LAB could reproduce the initial effect! One being a military LAB.
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Toyota supported MFs research for several years.
Perhaps MF made some errors early on but I doubt if Toyota would continue the support
if MF made repetitious errors.
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So Ascoli tries to question the F&P papers on open cell electrolysis, but he is not very clear in what he claims
1. Total input power to the F&P cell is easy to calculate by the current and voltage, as shown in the papers
2. Total evaporated water is easy to measure before and after the experiment as shown in F&P papers
Total excess heat is therefore easy to calculate, and was something like 4 in the F&P paper.
But heat power bursts was in the 20* excess range.
Anyhow: The later closed cells confirmed the F&P excess heat calculations, so why anyone still bother to question this beats me.
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So Ascoli tries to question the F&P papers on open cell electrolysis, but he is not very clear in what he claims
There are two sides to every story but in LENR there are at least four dimensions
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Perhaps Brian Josephson would be interested ..
I don’t think so. He probably will reject my refutation about F&P results wondering why "people are putting so much effort into […] these criticisms", as he did in 2011 (1) about the refutation of the results of the first Ecat public demo.
Josephson regrets that many "ignore the experimental evidence contradicting the view that cold fusion is 'pathological science'", but has also ignored criticisms about these presumed experimental evidence, so that he concluded his obituary of Fleischmann (2) with a reference to Rossi: "… progress seems to be occurring towards the application of cold fusion as a practical energy source. It may well transpire that, in the words of one cold fusion entrepreneur: "The market will decide.""
Meanwhile, waiting for the decisions of the market, most people here on L-F have realized that the Nobel laureate for physics was wrong about the Ecat. No wonder if many others will soon realize that he was also wrong about Fleischmann and his extraordinary claims.
(1) http://www.physicsforums.com/s…hp?p=3219729&postcount=85
(2) https://www.theguardian.com/sc…aug/31/martin-fleischmann
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"The market will decide.
The going rate for comments on L-F is a small fraction of a ZWD
and this comment is worth even less -
May be Ascoli should once explain what he would like to tell us!
Only that the conclusions of the "major paper" of Fleischmann were, IMO, badly wrong.
QuoteThere was no total evaporation for days. How can his (Ascolis) model explain a sudden evaporation...
There is no Ascoli model. I'm applying the F&P model to the F&P experimental data, but, IMO, in the correct way.
The difference is in the timing. The authors of (1) wrote that "The last day of operation is characterised by a rapid rise of temperature up to the boiling point of the electrolyte leading to a short period of intense evaporation/boiling Fig 8. […] the cell would have become half empty 11 minutes before dryness, as observed from the video recordings (see the next section) and this in turn requires a period of intense boiling during the last 11 minutes." In the calculation on page 16, they reduced further this time to 10 minutes (600 s) during which they erroneously hypothesized that the evaporation of half of the initial water mass (equivalent to 2.5 moles, that is 45 cm3 of liquid water) was concentrated.
In the calculation on page 16, F&P calculated that the heat lost to ambient, essentially by radiation, was 11 W and that the rest of the heat generated inside the cell was lost by evaporation.
That's exactly what I did in my calculation, but, differently from them, I considered that the input power exceeded the radiated heat of 11 W many hours before the total dry out of the cell, as everyone can easily see expanding the portion of Fig.6A (as well as B-C-D) around the voltage peak. The total electric energy dissipated in excess of 11 W during this much longer period was available for vaporization, and this quantity was sufficient to vaporize almost all the initial water content. So it was physically impossible that half of the water content vaporized in the last 10 minutes, as stated by F&P in their paper.
QuoteDoes he want to tell us that max excess heat was only 40W instead of 50W ?
Nope. My intentios would be to SHOW that the max excess heat actually was ZERO.
QuoteMay be he is not aware that within 6 weeks of the 1989 PF-anouncement 4 different (US) LAB could reproduce the initial effect! One being a military LAB.
For the moment, I'm talking about the experiment described in (1), which was carried out in the spring of 1992.
I'm aware that this 1992 experiment was also reproduced by others, for instance by Lonchampt (2). But if the reproduction is accurate enough, assuming the same wrong hypotheses lead to the same wrong conclusions.
(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf
(2) FP's experiments discussion -
So Ascoli tries to question the F&P papers on open cell electrolysis, but he is not very clear in what he claims
I simply claim that, IMO and on the basis of the evidence explained in the previous comments containing the illustrative jpegs, the conclusions of the paper presented by F&P at the ICCF3 (1) are completely wrong.
Quote1. Total input power to the F&P cell is easy to calculate by the current and voltage, as shown in the papers
It's true, if you have the actual data of voltage and current, as F&P had at their disposition. But hard for others, because F&P didn't provide the information needed to verify the value of voltage used to calculate the Enthalpy Input by Electrolysis on page 16 of (1). From the subsequent calculation of the Rate of Enthalpy Output by Electrolysis, it would seem that the average voltage in the 10 minute period was 75 V (37.5 W / 0.5 A). But nowhere in their paper they explained where this value came from. The problem is that they omitted to include in figure 8, in addition to the trend of the cell temperature, also the that of the voltage. If they had done so, letting the readers know which was the actual trend of the voltage during the few hours around the dry out of the cell, it would have been obvious to everyone that the input electric energy would have been sufficient to account for the evaporation of all the water.
Quote2. Total evaporated water is easy to measure before and after the experiment as shown in F&P papers
This is true only for the two moments "before and after the experiments" and for those which immediately followed the daily refills. But F&P claimed in (1) to have noticed that "the cell would have become half empty 11 minutes before dryness" and this is not at all easy to measure with their experimental setup, unless they meant that the cell was half full of foam! But in this case, in their calculation on page 16, they should have multiplied the apparent 2.5 moles of water by the relative density of the foam, in order to calculate the water mass effectively evaporated in the last 10 minutes.
QuoteTotal excess heat is therefore easy to calculate, and was something like 4 in the F&P paper.
This result derives from their calculation at page 16 of (1), which is based on incorrect assumptions and unexplained data, as in the case of the cell voltage.
QuoteBut heat power bursts was in the 20* excess range.
No burst is mentioned in the ICCF3 paper, I'm talking about.
QuoteAnyhow: The later closed cells confirmed the F&P excess heat calculations, so why anyone still bother to question this beats me.
Because, as already said (2), the test and the paper we are talking about are very special. F&P confirmed and defended the test results and the conclusion contained in their ICCF3 paper (1) until the end of their activity in the field. The same was done by all the main promoters of CF/LENR. Besides JR and Krivit, already cited in (2), we can also mention Abd UlRahman Lomax, who recently promoted an articulated and ambitious project (3) aimed at analyzing specifically that paper and the relative controversy between Fleischmann and Morrison.
If F&P were so sloppy in reporting the experimental data and so wrong in deriving their conclusion for this paper (1) - the best documented and deepest scrutinized of any other former or later document they published - it's very hard to support the reliability of any other "extraordinary claims" made by them about cold fusion.
(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf
(2) FP's experiments discussion
(3) http://coldfusioncommunity.net/morrison-fleischmann-debate/
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Ascoli, You claim F & P to do some of the most obvious and simple errors possible
Really ?SO your final actual claim in all of this is " If they had done so, letting the readers know which was the actual trend of the voltage during the few hours around the dry out of the cell, it would have been obvious to everyone that the input electric energy would have been sufficient to account for the evaporation of all the water."
So you believe either
- They didn't thoroughly log the voltage and current during their experiment, which was used to calculate actual excess energy - or even worse
- They did not do the excess energy calculations right - or even even worse
- They build a big hoax just to try to get millions in funding from the government
Well, luckily Science work by replication of papers and checking for errors. And this was done by several laboratories several times, which proves something is worthy of further study.
Like this - one of the many many papers confirming the results , which even have a drawing of their logging equipment
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Ascoli, You claim F & P to do some of the most obvious and simple errors possible
Really ?SO your final actual claim in all of this is " If they had done so, letting the readers know which was the actual trend of the voltage during the few hours around the dry out of the cell, it would have been obvious to everyone that the input electric energy would have been sufficient to account for the evaporation of all the water."
Oystla; those "claims are in fact the logical consequence of a well laid-out set of arguments and factual premises. Can I suggest that if you disagree you identify:
(1) The logical error (or assumptions underlying a logical connection which you think do not apply)
or
(2) the facts used by Astolfi in his argument above that are wrong?
So you believe either
- They didn't thoroughly log the voltage and current during their experiment, which was used to calculate actual excess energy - or even worse
- They did not do the excess energy calculations right - or even even worse
- They build a big hoax just to try to get millions in funding from the government
Well, luckily Science work by replication of papers and checking for errors. And this was done by several laboratories several times, which proves something is worthy of further study.
Like this - one of the many many papers confirming the results , which even have a drawing of their logging equipment
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LonchamptGreproducti.pdf
This argument, of yours, in no way addresses ascoli's conclusions. The first part is blatent speculation and I ignore. The second part is saying: well - whatever the errors in F&P's paper does not matter, because the same results have been found by others.
That is a good argument, and would lead to all those who see F&P type experiments as providing clear evidence moving to the later and (you imply) better evidence from Longchampt's paper.
I'd like that to happen. We could then look at the strengths and deficiencies of the other work and not spend time on this one early and flawed work of F&P, which for reasons i do not understand is held out by some as the best option when people ask for published evidence of LENR.
Are you happy for us to do that?
