The Playground

Quote from maryyugo

No data can be trusted in ANY experiment in which Rossi is involved. You could only trust tests of Rossi-made devices if they were presented to a highly qualified and equipped team as a black box with input wires and a thermal output of some sort. ALL measuring devices and ALL input power supplies and metering MUST HAVE COME from the TEAM and Rossi can not be within touching distance of the device or the instruments during the ENTIRE experimental run. Measurement methods must be entirely and freshly chosen by the measurement team. These criteria have never been met. Essentially none of them. Thus none of the data from the Swedish scientists is trustworthy. NONE! IMHO, of course.

I am not sure why this comment has not been acknowledged. Mary this is spot on. This fellow did not have independent tests and that should be very clear to all by now.

Which one of us after all these years together does not see that?

Funny thing is I am more upset at IH for not stopping it completely--- but chickening out. Hence my joking with Dewey. I chocked it up to just being business. But that never covers the damage that something like this costs. If there is something it will be found either by someone in a garage or a lab.

But the "blue light special" needs to goto bed now. We have to move on. The quarkX is transparent to me. It should be to others.

Quote from Rigel

But the "blue light special" needs to goto bed now. We have to move on. The quarkX is transparent to me. It should be to others.

Transparent.... hmmm

Very much unlike a black body.

No wonder they had to switch to heating oil inside a non-transparent irrigation coupler and fix the experiment part of the paper.

Is the surface area of a plasma the combined surface area of its ionized particles?

Anyways, here's some pictures of data from last night. I shut it down before getting it as hot as originally intended so I could go to bed without leaving the slab baking away at high temperatures unattended. The linear extrapolation (last image) I suspect isn't quite right, but it is conservative. I think the internal T deviation will start going more logarithmic as the temperatures increase further, compared to the internal T (they will probably both go logarithmic, but at different rates). The "Stable" temperature data points were collected from the flat, steady state parts of the data for the first plot. Steps were at set at 5 V increases each time, but wire resistance change with temperature changes, SSVR temperature changes, etc, changed the set points after they were set sometimes, especially at the beginning. Lumpy data... real data.

I am thinking that I will heat up the slab tonight to 500 C, and then cycle it on two minutes, off 7 minutes (I think that is similar to the Indication of... cycling periods) to see what it looks like. I'll have to do that manually, so it might be a real drag. I can set the voltage on a dial, and there is an output on-off switch on my control box so it should send roughly the same power output each pulse. Of course it won't precisely emulate the actual performance of the Indication cylinder... but might be informative.

Anyone want to place some Quatloo bets on what the internal and external temperature traces end up looking like?

Hmm... That must have been complicated to figure out the output power with the temperature moving around so much. I should review that part of the report again to see how they dealt with that.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Anyone want to place some Quatloo bets on what the internal and external temperature traces end up looking like?

I will not risk any of my precious Quatloos on such a bet, but can you give a hint of what an interesting outcome would look like, and what an uninteresting outcome would look like?

Eric Walker ,

I guess an interesting profile would be one that resembles the E-cat version ("very much unlike a resistor") as reported in Indication of...

An uninteresting profile, therefore, would resemble a typical resistor profile. The Slab is of course just a rather large resistor.

I have a suspicion that this is where the thermal mass - time constant thingy comes into play. I don't think (quite certain, really) that there is time to reach steady state output temperatures in the two minute power-on part of the cycle before shutting it off again, so we lose the long tail as the increase rate dimishes towards the peak temperature obtained. The shape of the temperature drop from whatever peak temperature is reached at the power-off point is likely the most interesting part. And whether the external temperature keeps climbing or not after the power is cut.

Keeping track of when exactly the power is cut relative to the temperature changes might be a bit tricky. I don't have an integrated logging system for all the simultaneous data measurements currently. The internal temperature should be a fairly good relative indicator of on-off times, and I will synch up a clock to the thermocouple logger time for manual on-off switching.

This is mostly for fun at the moment.

Edit: 2 minutes on, 7 off is much too long turned off (far less than 35% duty cycle) and way too boring to do manually. Setting back to 500 C, and will try 1 minute on, 2 minutes off. Using a Chess timer app for the on-off periods.

Quote from Ahlfors

US20130300120 A1 - another turbine dream looking alike - "thermalization" of gamma rays from 178mHf relaxation.

https://www.google.ch/patents/US20140318132

This is an odd patent. The author claims to stimulate relaxation of metastable 178Hf using an x-ray source in order to heat a gas flowing through a turbine. He implies that the approach provides the basis for "an engine that can supply power and drive turbines, ..., providing heat efficiently, safely, and at lowered cost, without greenhouse emissions and with an increased transport range."

There are three metastable isomer states of 178Hf, with energies of 1.1, 2.4 and 2.5 MeV above the ground state. These gammas are penetrating. Usually gamma emission is omnidirectional. Are gammas in case of induced emission of a metastable isomer omnidirectional as well, or are they anisotropic? If the gammas in the Podrog patent above are omnidirectional, a lot of them will escape, either without heating the gas that drives the turbine, or heating the shielding that is in place to make the device safe. (In the general case gamma emission from an atom oriented in a field is anisotropic, but without taking special measures to constrain atoms in this way, the anisotropic emission profile is smeared over a full solid angle for the ensemble.)

The mean free path of a 0.7 MeV photon (lower energy) in air is 110 meters. So even if there is some control over the direction of the photon emission, the photons will still mostly interact with the turbine housing.

DOD does not deal with confectionery flavors.

Quote from Eric Walker

These gammas are penetrating. Usually gamma emission is omnidirectional. Are gammas in case of induced emission of a metastable isomer omnidirectional as well, or are they anisotropic? If the gammas in the Podrog patent above are omnidirectional, a lot of them will escape, either without heating the gas that drives the turbine, or heating the shielding that is in place to make the device safe. (In the general case gamma emission from an atom oriented in a field is anisotropic, but without taking special measures to constrain atoms in this way, the anisotropic emission profile is smeared over a full solid angle for the ensemble.)

The mean free path of a 0.7 MeV photon (lower energy) in air is 110 meters. So even if there is some control over the direction of the photon emission, the photons will still mostly interact with the turbine housing.

With due respect Eric, the block diagram does not necessarily embody the actual process in (proposed?) practice. Quite likely an omnidirectional source of gammas can be surrounded nearly completely by an absorption medium. That medium itself might well have a density of over a thousand times that in air, and hence a far lower mean free path. Liquid water, superheated high pressure steam, argon above critical point and so on. That medium may then do the work directly or more likely through heat exchange with a suitable working fluid.

I intend none of that to say that I believe in any aspect of the disclosure.

Reading a little more closely, I think you are correct, Longview. A heat exchanger is used to thermalize the gamma photons, and the air in the secondary circuit is heated up by the heat exchanger. That makes more sense.

Quote

After the X-rays strike the 178Hf, gamma rays are induced, resulting in the emission of gamma rays from the 178Hf. The gamma rays are directed from the 178Hf to a heat exchange apparatus. A gas that has been directed to the exchange apparatus from one or more compressors or an intake is heated and accordingly, expanded. The heated, expanded gas is channeled to a turbine, driving the turbine.

None of this strikes me as being related to LENR. Note that you can't really "direct" gammas in the way described above, unless there is a way to focus their emission, about which I am both curious and skeptical. But if the heat exchanger surrounded the hafnium, there would be no need for directed emissions. (It does not look like the heat exchanger surrounds the hafnium source in the patent diagrams.)

LDM ,

Certainly tossing the T_amb term has a very small effect on objects of higher temperatures and smallish areas. I assumed that the Optris dealt with this properly in the original measurement, and even with later emissivity changes its effect is almost insignificant.

Your method is the one that I originally used. My spreadsheets were getting out of hand eventually. (I had one with all of the individual measurement areas.... ugh.)

When I switched to the spectral radiant power per steradian matching method, using the NASA-USGS radiant power calculator, I eliminated many of the steps. In general, it is the same thing as what you suggest. The spectral radiant power per steradian method I was using bypasses the manual conversion to a blackbody and back to the new emissivity. Probably the calculator actually does this step internally. The calculator generates a spreadsheet of the radiant power integrated over a series of wavelength steps within the in band segments, and plots the spectral segments of the Planck curve (which cross when two different emissivities for two respective temperatures have equivalent radiant power).

As long as the total emissivity for alumina (assuming an alumina object), found in the literature and which is sufficiently correct in Plot 1, is used to calculate power, the result of power calculations resulting from the corrected temperature (assuming it is now corrected) will be correct.

The problem with the recursive adjustments in the report is that it is messing with the in band emissivity for the camera by inserting a derivative of the broadband emissivity. If the in band emissivity was used in a plot for the recursive method it might have worked properly.

Below is an example from the NASA-USGS calculator. (I forget if this is exact, but it will be pretty close)

Quote from Paradigmnoia

The problem with the recursive adjustments in the report is that it is messing with the in band emissivity for the camera by inserting a derivative of the broadband emissivity. If the in band emissivity was used in a plot for the recursive method it might have worked properly.

If you read my post correctly, the in band emissivity used on the Optris during the measurements is not important to arrive at the correct in-band black body temperature of the Optris.

You arrive at the in-band black body temperature of the Optris by setting the in-band emissivity on the Optris to one after the measurements.

Then you do a change from in-band to broad-band black body temperature using the data from the graph..

After that you do the recursive adjustments using the plot.

Thus in the method posted above we do not mess with in-band emissivities on the Optris during the measurements.

Quote from LDM

You arrive at the in-band black body temperature of the Optris by setting the in-band emissivity on the Optris to one after the measurements.

Gotcha... the NASA-USGS radiance calculator can do that, since we don't have the original data. We could also use the Optris software with a suitable hot object. (Crunching the numbers manually is feasible also.)

Quote from LDM

Then you do a change from in-band to broad-band black body temperature using the data from the graph..

Using your new graph? I think that is what you mean. OK...

Quote from LDM

After that you do the recursive adjustments using the plot.

Using the Lugano Plot 1 ? I can visualize how that could work.

I'm not sure how that is better than doing it the other way, but it does not seem wrong.

Seems to me like it adds more uncertainty because the alumina total emissivity plot (Plot 1) is used several times to extract information for the conversion, and that plot is built from fairly coarse data.

Can we choose a convenient surface temperature and run it through both processes and see where they end up?

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Gotcha... the NASA-USGS radiance calculator can do that, since we don't have the original data. We could also use the Optris software with a suitable hot object. (Crunching the numbers manually is feasible also.)

Using your new graph? I think that is what you mean. OK...

Yes, that is what I meant

Using the Lugano Plot 1 ? I can visualize how that could work.

Indeed

I'm not sure how that is better than doing it the other way, but it does not seem wrong.

I am not saying it is a better method, I am saying that it could be the way the Lugano team did it because it largely fits the description in the report.

Seems to me like it adds more uncertainty because the alumina total emissivity plot (Plot 1) is used several times to extract information for the conversion, and that plot is built from fairly coarse data.

You could indeed use that plot for extracting information. It can also be done in other ways. for example extracting the relationship between in-band and broadband black body temperatures using the Optris and an Alumina sample and test it at several temperatures afterwards in a lab since you don't need to have the information available during the tests itself.

Also I think that the team, coming from an academic background, could have had access to the original data from which the plot was made through their contacts.

Can we choose a convenient surface temperature and run it through both processes and see where they end up?

I have no preferences. I think that you with your knowledge of the subject will choose a good temperature if you want to test both processes.

In addition to this, I think the transient analysis step times where too short since the alumina physical properties where set for low temperatures and thermal conductivity and heat capacity are different at high temperatures. So I am going to adapt them and will run a new test tomorrow. (Takes the computer about 3 hours in number crunching).

LDM ,

Access to the original data would answer sooo many questions, and put so many theories to bed.

We don't really need to know about any special waveforms, as long as the kWh part is there, even if (properly) averaged over some reasonable time period to hide some secret details.

With the IH-Leonardo settlement, the recorded data likely belongs to Rossi 100% and I doubt it will ever be released. Probably it is scrubbed from the data loggers and laptops already.

IH did some tests on a virgin reactor, but that report is probably also sealed. Dewey hasn't answered any questions about the IH tests or the reactor paint since the settlement.

Quote from Bob

On the subject of vanishing into the night, I would like to put forth the following questions. Hopefully Jed can give some insight as it seems he is well connected and knowledgeable. Perhaps Mr. Weaver will respond as well!

The question stems from my lack of knowledge about current legitimate researchers and their status. It seems that many are of advanced age and I wonder what the status of their work in LENR today is.

I.E. Are these people still conducting physical research / testing in LENR, only writing papers or not active at all?

(please pardon if I have misspelled names)

Storms

McKubre

Piantelli

Miles

Muzuno

Cravens

Celani

Are there any others that are conducting current serious research in LENR? If so can you provide a short list?

Mr. Weaver,

Can you inform us if IH is still doing any funding or active work in the LENR field with other researchers?

Thanks in advance!

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Bob,

Dr. Nagel should be added to your list. He is both honest and well honestly everything I want to be when I grow up. I have been to his lab he has both equipment and resources.

To be fair I have been to another research level scientists, he is critical but has an open mind if new data becomes available. It is true beauty to see in action.

I want to know both sides as it is educational. It is critical thinking for me.