FP's experiments discussion

Robert Bryant:

The K'r number is Ascolis calculation, not mine or Fleischmanns.

So Yes, Ascoli is in error by a factor of 10

Quote from oystla

"The only experimenter, that is considered to have been successful in replicating the F&P boil-off test was Lonchampt."

Really? I mean - REALLY?

This is what Biberian wrote in 2016 [bold added]:

Quote

Until 2009 there was 152 Peer-Reviewed papers with successful Excess Heat Events.

After 2009 there number has grown further.

See if you can a find a "few" more than Lonchampt below

I looked for the F&P article "Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity" and I found it. It is at the 38th position of the alpha-chronologic list, but it should have been at the first position in a list based on the importance with respect to the CF/LENR field. Anyway, this peer-reviewed article (1) - published by the prestigious Physics Letters A – contains a lot of errors. To mention one, the first formula in the "Calculation" section at page 128 - the most important section in the article – is dimensionally wrong. This error could have been detected even by a secondary school student, who knows nothing about electrochemistry. Just to say that the peer-reviewed status of an article doesn't guarantee its correctness, not even the formal one.

As for the other 151 peer reviewed articles, and the others issued after 2009, before taking them into consideration, let's first conclude the examination of the most important work in the CF/LENR history. It's very likely, IMO, that the further examinations will be restricted to the much shorter list of the articles that don't mention F&P at all.

Quote

“We have been skeptical about this [discovery] for five years” - M. Fleischmann 23.March 1989

IMO, they should have kept their skepticism even after the first 5 years.

(1) http://coldfusioncommunity.net…n-Pons-PLA-Simplicity.pdf

Quote from oystla

The Shanahan critisism[s] where also answerred,

No, they weren't, not intelligently anyway.

Quote from oystla

but he claims some ghostly errors, and as you know, ghosts can neither be proven or disproven.

So clearly you are wrong in what you say because my claimed errors can easily be proven by people with the equipment to do so and the willpower to do so.

Quote

I guess you should once ask Boing what they think about possible LENR runaways of Li-ion batteries during a flight.

What does Boeing have to say about LENR and Li-ion batteries? Can we see this in print or at a link somewhere? I don't recall anyone from the company officially ever attributing battery fires to LENR or even considering the possibility? Reference? Link? (thanks)

Quote from oystla

OK, Try to invert the relationship one more time and see if you get another number

Thanks. It was a typo. I got this result: 9.09 x 10^-10. Writing it on the post, I used the exponent -9 to conform it to the format used in the F&P paper (1), but I forgot to modify the first part.

For sure, it's not the only error I made, and I appreciate any correction to my posts and jpegs. It could happen if you are debating in a web forum, especially if much of your attention is spent to do it in a foreign language.

It's much less expected, instead, that in a paper that should have revolutionized the science, written by two world class scientists, the same coefficient appears with and without the exponential part:

0.7280 × 10^-9WK^-4 (at page 4)

0.7264WK^-4 (at page 5)

0.728 × 10^-9WK^-4 (at page 7)

0.747WK^-4 (at page 7)

0.892 × 10^-9WK^-4 (at page 11)

Moreover, the first two numbers are also reported in two consecutive pages (121 and 122) of the peer-reviewed (sic) article on Physics Letter A (2), published 8 months after the ICCF3 paper!

Quote

And then you may look for the K value in the paper.....and find it....as I did

I didn't find 0.909 x 10^-9 WK^-4. I found instead 0.892 x 10^-9 WK^-4. Well not a big difference, less than 2%, but at this point I wonder why F&P reported some k values with 3 or even 4 significant figures. Just to enchant the most naïve readers?

And look at what F&P said about this k value (bold added):

"As for the case of dissolution of H+ in Pd, this phenomenon decays with the diffusional relaxation time so that (k'_R)₁₁ increases towards the true value for this cell, 0.892 × 10^-9WK^-4. However, (k'_R)₁₁ never reaches this final value because a second exothermic process develops namely, the generation of excess enthalpy in the lattice."

Is this kind of accuracy, which you were referring to, when you wrote:

Quote from oystla

Firstly Fleischmann did a thorough investigation in identifying the heat transfer coefficient to the surroundings. So his calculation of the losses the last 10 minutes is most likely very accurate at reported 6700 joules.

Quote from oystla

The K'r number is Ascolis calculation, not mine or Fleischmanns.

So Yes, Ascoli is in error by a factor of 10

Yes, I was in error, it was a typo. But as I showed you, I'm still 8 (1 to 9) orders of magnitude behind F&P!

(1) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) http://coldfusioncommunity.net…n-Pons-PLA-Simplicity.pdf

Quote from oystla

Anyhow as Fleischmann explained, he did calculate and consider recombination

Quote from Ascoli65

Anyway, this peer-reviewed article (1) - published by the prestigious Physics Letters A – contains a lot of errors.

Another error in the paper being discussed is in the energy balance equation they use to compute power out and therefrom excess power (equation (1) in http://coldfusioncommunity.net…n-Pons-PLA-Simplicity.pdf). The term for the enthalpy lost via the electrolysis gases ("entha;py content of the gas stream") omits a multiplicative term originally in the equation, as it was published in 1990 by Pons and Fleischmann in Fusion Technology, vol 17, page 669 (the correct equation term is given on page 671 under section II.F, point 2.). It includes the gamma variable, which is the fraction not recombined, i.e. gamma = 1 => no recomb. So no, F did NOT consider recombination effects in the paper Ascoli is discussing. F had already concluded gamma was always 1*, but this is just an assertion on his part, which I find unlikely.

(*)Actually, based on his 2004 publication with Szpak, and various other comments, he actually admitted to an up to 2% electrochemical recombination possibility, but that was 'within the experimental noise' for him and thus not important. This does however clearly indicate his results are no better than that level (i.e. +/- 2%), irregardless of how good a mathemetician he was...

Quote from Shane D.

Have you ever approached the Electrochemical Society here in the US ( https://www.electrochem.org/ ), or maybe even submitted a paper to them about your CCS/ATER hypothesis

No I have not, nor is it likely that I will, since the whole thesis is present in my 2002 publication. I will not be attempting to replicate the experiment because (a) I don't think it is worth the time, given the lack of reproducibility of the effect, and (b) if I did I would face a monumental task to gain approval to run the experiment given that it generates an explosive mix of gases that in other experiments has killed and injured researchers. The safety concerns alone would make it almost impossible for me to do, meanng extensive effort to convince the 'overseers' I have to say yes. It isn't worth the time to me.

As I have said many times, the people with the equipment now should try to examine the veracity of my claims, either through running more experiments or by finding experiments they already have run that clearly cannot arise due to the proposed mundane CCS/ATER thing. Talk to them...

Quote from Shane D.

if real it would have some major implications for the science.

Not really. JR likes to hyperventilate and claim my proposal violates laws of thermodynamics and was proven wrong hundreds of years ago, but he's incorrect on that. What we are seeing are the problems that arise when you don't accurately calculate your error bars. The CF community routinely ignores the fact that the calibration constant is an experimentally determined number. As such it has natural variation in it, and that will impact the variation of anything calculated with it. The size of that variation needs to be checked, which is what I did (apparently for the first time) with my 2002 publication. I found that the impact was much larger than people realized. That's why I wrote the words that Hagelstein quoted in his first few moments of his 2015 'MIT' course on CF, where I said the technique was at its limit of error. It is, the errors from calibration constant variation are of the size of the signals. That means people are 'working in the noise'. Continuing to do so and claiming great success is a classic sign of pathological science.

Quote from kirkshanahan

The latter heat, near boiling, however was claimed to be a 'Heat-After-Death' event, which is distinguished from excess heat during the run by the fact that current flow was stopped.

Not exactly. Considering also the supposed HAD, the number of XH (excess heat) types are in total 3, each resulting from a different source of error. As explained in (1), HXH (Higher eXcess Heat) - relative to boil-off phase - and HAD (Heat After Death) are two different types of XH claimed by F&P, and are caused by errors that are still different from those originating the LXH (Lower eXcess Heat) reported during the run of the test.

Quote

But the bottom line was that the method was never used again. In fact Pons later reported on an 'improved' calorimeter system where "Foam rise in the calorimeter at the boiling temperature has been minimized." (http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RouletteTresultsofi.pdf) I don't know why they would do that if it was a better method to detect excess heat.

Closed cell calorimetry didn't lead to results comparable to those claimed in the 1992 paper for the boil-off experiment using open cells. Knowing how these HXH results were obtained allows us to easily understand the reasons.
After 1992, the CF/LENR field continued to exploit those mythic results to date.

Anyway, I would like to know your opinion on the distinction in 3 XH types proposed in (1), and if you agree to keep the debates about this different XH types as separate as possible, in order to simplify the analysis of each of them.

(1) FP's experiments discussion

Ascoli;

Many researchers replicated the most Significant claim of F&P, which was not the boil of period, and probably why many focused on the more important claims.

And the most significant claim in the early publications by Fleischmann and Pons was of excess energy production in palladium cathodes electrochemically loaded with deuterium.

Experiments were described in which “bursts” of excess energy were generated in palladium rod electrodes after several weeks or months of electrolysis. Excess energy produced at high current densities (500–1000 mA cm−2) was tens of watts over many days and reached a cumulative total of MJ cm−3 of palladium and often caused the electrolyte temperature to reach the boiling point.

Quote from kirkshanahan

claiming great success is a classic sign of pathological science

"1992, the CF/LENR field continued to exploit those mythic results to date.

""Some weirdness here from you or them"

There seems to be a tribal socio-linguistic pattern emerging

Ascoli, wrt your - "I looked for the F&P article "Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity" and I found it. It is at the 38th position of the alpha-chronologic list, but it should have been at the first position in a list based on the importance with respect to the CF/LENR field."

F&P published several papers of importance. This one is just one of the continued papers in a row of important papers that must be understood to get the full picture. That is why they include references in their papers.

Like the references in the paper you prefer to analyse;

1. Martin Fleischmann, Stanley Pons, Mark W. Anderson, Liang Jun Li and Marvin Hawkins, J. Electroanal. Chem., 287 (1990) 293.

2. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, Fusion Technology, 17 (1990) 669.

3. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A. (28-31 March, 1990).

4. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in T. Bressani, E. Del Guidice and G. Preparata (Eds), The Science of Cold Fusion: Proceedings of the II Annual Confer ence on Cold Fusion, Como, Italy, (29 June-4 July 1991), Vol. 33 of the Conference Proceedings, The Italian Physical Society, Bologna, (1992) 349, ISBN 887794-045-X.

5. M. Fleischmann and S. Pons, J. Electroanal. Chem., 332 (1992) 33.

Ascoli,

Wrt your "I didn't find 0.909 x 10^-9 WK^-4. I found instead 0.892 x 10^-9 WK^-4. Well not a big difference, less than 2%, but......"

Oh dear, did you understand the paper at all?

OK, they stated "To Ambient ≈ k ́R [(374.5°)4 - (293.15°)4] × 600s = 6,700J "

The K'R heat transfer coefficient is dependent on several factors and they proved the range in the paper.

Next, you may notice the formula above is an approximation of the heat loss, but more IMPORTANTLY, it is conservative rounded up to 6700 Joule.

Approximate 6700 means mathematically it may be from 6651 to 6749 Jôule

In this case you will find your 0,892 number when you get closer to 6651, but they chose a conservative approach, i.e. Excess heat was actually higher.

Anything more you wondered about?

Sigh

Quote from kirkshanahan

Not really. JR likes to hyperventilate and claim my proposal violates laws of thermodynamics and was proven wrong hundreds of years ago, but he's incorrect on that.

Not me. Every expert who has looked at your work concluded it is nonsense. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf

Your work is so bad, you should feel grateful these people took the time to show you the mistakes you made. However, because you are crackpot, you assume that hundreds of the world's top experts in calorimetry are wrong, and you are right. You resemble the many amateur physicists who are sure that Einstein was wrong, and their version of relativity is right.

Your other assertions, such as that a bucket of water will evaporate overnight in room temperature conditions, are also proof that that you are a crackpot. The readers here should be thankful you have made such claims here so often. That leaves doubt that you either believe crazy nonsense or you are a troll. (I cannot tell which.)

Quote from JedRothwell

Every expert who has looked at your work concluded it is nonsense. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf

RobertB talks about tribal language. How about tribal behavior, specifically of the ostrich variety? JR shows it when he says the above once again. It has been pointed out to him probably about 100 times now that the paper he cites is the one that uses the fallacious strawman argument ("the random Shanahan CCSH") in an attempt to discredit the CCS/ATER theory. Strawman arguments do not prove the point. But JR pulls the 'ostrich behavior', as do many others in the field, and "THUNK", his head goes into the sand. That way he can't hear the facts that disagree with his pathological belief.

Edit: Oh, and if the 10 authors of the field are 'every expert' I think at least 4 of them have disqualifies themselves by their past actions:

Storms, by his behavior around his comment on my paper and my rebuttal

Miles, by his admission in 2017 that he never read any of my paper,

McKubre, by his posts here that completely miss the point (and all of my explanations and answers to his questions. implied or otherwise)

and Hagelstein, who had to go look up what I said when asked about it in his 2015 'MIT' course.

Ascoli;

One question I forgot to ask you:

Where did you get the idea that the 1992 paper is the most important paper by F&P ?

Well let me inform you: it is Absolutely not!

The most important F&P paper is their detailed 58-page seminal paper "Calorimetry of the Palladium-Deuterium-Heavy Water System," published in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry In 1990.

To this day, Fleischmann and Pons' seminal paper has never been successfully refuted in the scientific literature.

Douglas R.O. Morrison performed a critical review in 1994, which was "rebutted strongly to the point of dismissal" by Fleischmann and Pons. Morrison did not respond to the rebuttal.

No other serious challenge to -- and no published refutation of -- the 1990 Fleischmann-Pons paper has been made in the scientific literature. By default, the Fleischmann-Pons work is now part of the formal body of scientific knowledge, despite the informal negative remarks by critics in the popular press.

Quote from kirkshanahan

Not really. JR likes to hyperventilate and claim my proposal violates laws of thermodynamics and was proven wrong hundreds of years ago, but he's incorrect on that.

I think you're confusing F&P with your Mizuno Bucket fiasco.