Document: Isotopic Composition of Rossi Fuel Sample (Unverified)

    Quote from kirkshanahan

    You're taking a data set that lies as a group far away from the (0,0) point, and adding several points in at (0,0).

    No. Kirk is so convinced that something must be wrong that he makes up what he thinks is being done in order to shoot it down, and did not actually look, I gave the spreadsheet data. First of all, measurements are measurements. We eliminated one measurement, the weakest, as an outlier. If you look at the other work, the energy measurement there is suspect as possibly having high error. If you look at the Bush and Lagowski data -- which I did *not* include -- you can see that the power is substantially more precisely measured.


    The data points added were not (0,0), they were 0 with a value of actually measured helium, about 0.51 x 10-14 atoms per 500 ml. That's "experimental background." So the generated helium will show as an elevation above that. It appears that you have not taken the time to understand the experiment. I *often* misunderstand this work when I first read it. I think you may imagine that the 33 samples are for different cells. I made that mistake for some years! They are different samples from a much smaller set of cells.


    These data points are not "fliers." They are part of showing a linear relationship between heat and helium. As I've mentioned, I'd have preferred to have an actual average power figure for the "no heat" periods. However, Miles simply states those as no heat. Maybe somewhere he gives his cutoff, but it would have been easy to include the power measurements, and in order to survive the study of cold fusion experiments, I had to pad the walls of my office. What is hindsight and armchair obvious, wasn't done. (My response is to encourage doing it, while appreciating the Miles and others did what nobody else was doing, exploring what the DoE had recommended be explored, with little or no support. Better late than never. And I went up to Jones at !CCF-18. shook his hand, and thanked him for being the only one to carefully and specifically critique Miles in a peer-reviewed journal. Jones has been coming around.)


    This was a community under siege, you can see it in the reports. There is constant "apology" and reference to the politics of the situation. There are scientists who managed to avoid most of that, but remember this about Miles: His project was shut down, and he was assigned to the stock room as a clerk.


    He left and went to Japan. And the Japanese had their own problems....

    Quote from kirkshanahan

    (By the way, it seems that you have taken a data set that 'shows' (not really) that various levels of excess heat all lead to a consistent energy per He atom, as shown by the near random correlation coefficient, and turned it into one that proves the opposite (which is what a correlation coefficient of 0.89 implies). Is that what you intended?)

    Apples and oranges. The first data set is not from Miles, it is from Storms derived from Miles, and the data has been newly plotted as helium/heat vs heat. This data has already been interpreted to calculate the ratio, and the plot shows that the correlation between the *ratio* and the heat is low, indicating that the ratio does not vary with the heat. As you say. But in your JEM paper you presented the low correlation coefficient as indicating no correlation.


    Water under the bridge, but you brought it up.


    Here, I have presented new spreadsheet data, on the newvortex list, and I analyzed it two ways. First as the ten data points without the no-heat controls. The correlation coefficient is 0.59 without the no-heat results, and 0.86 with it.


    There is no mention there of "energy per He atom." That figure can be derived, but that's another matter. What is shown there is what was claimed about the Miles data from the beginning. It shows a correlation between anomalous heat (in this case, power for a period) and helium (in this case as number of atoms per 500 cc of outgas.)


    (It's not "0.89" That was apparently a typo. It was "0.86." Unfortunately, my computer crashed and the actual spreadsheet was not saved, but was a few seconds to reload the data from the space-delimited data I provided. That spreadsheet data is at the end of the newvortex post, which anyone should be able to read at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/g…onversations/messages/815)


    The data very clearly shows the correlation of excess power, as measured in the normal manner, and helium in the outgas. I did not, in this calculation, look at the ratio at all. The basic Miles claim is not a specific ratio, but correlation.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:


    When you say "negative" I suppose you mean null. With no heat. Not endothermic. The experiments never show an endothermic reaction. Miles did use the null tests. Collecting effluent gas from experiments with no heat is very important. It is how Miles established the baseline.

    No, I mean the actual measurements. There is noise. "No heat" is an interpretation that can have various meanings.


    This is a general principle: the rawer the data, the better. There is obviously a trade-off, data is routinely interpreted. Yet those control experiments were presented in a table. Adding a column for the XP would not have confused the paper.


    This is an example of information that is of interest when one wants to thoroughly study a paper, that is omitted because it might seem "uninteresting." When there *are* artifacts, they often present signs in this "unimportant" data. Parkhomov's first report did not give the full input power profile, just the higher power levels. In order to study the effect of input power on temperature, I needed to guess the input power as being set at round numbers. It actually looked very stable, so I probably guessed correctly. But why was it necessary to guess? And that temperature profile then revealed that there was no large increase in the temperature slope at increased power, somehow the water was being boiled away, with onset at high temperature, without a corresponding high increase in device temperature, just what would be expected from increased input power. So ... the temperature record created a conflict with the evaporative calorimetry, indicating a need for more careful testing of the setup. But Parhkomov did not do that, he kept changing the conditions...


    Quote

    The sequence of events in these experiments is a little confusing. The gas is collected for two days, and the flow of gas fills the collection flask 40 times during that time. The excess heat from the last of these 40 time segments is recorded for the sample. (Or no heat, if there is none.) The gas flow rate is both computed and measured: "Actual measurements of the gas evolution rate by the displacement of water yielded 6.75 ± 0.25 ml min-1 for cell A and 6.69 ± 0.15 ml min-1 for cell B." Shanahan's concerns about the flow rate and volume are answered in the papers. As usual he has not read or understood what the authors say.


    To be fair, all this is obscure from the papers. If have often found this with some authors, and even with the best. Sometimes when I read a paper I misunderstand it, sometimes badly. This happened to the DoE review in 2004, the Case appendix was apparently easy to misread. Read carefully, impressions shifted, but more than one reviewer misread it, apparently. And I had to read it many times and look at other papers to check to understand this.

    Quote

    You may find my summary plus the quotes from Miles easier to follow than the original papers. Starting on p. 4 here:


    lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJintroducti.pdf

    Indeed. Much easier. Thanks for writing that. You do not, however, address the collection time, as to exact procedure. It is not clear what Miles actually did. Did he simply wait until the bubbler showed him 500 ml? Or did he calculate a time from the current? I dislike calculated variables!


    (So I think I'd have had him keep current constant and collect after a fixed time, but also record the volume. or collect a fixed volume and record the current and time. The former would be experimentally easier.)


    And that he varied the electrolysis current at all introduced another variable. When doing correlation work, it's important to eliminate as many of those as possible. Miles' work is weaker than it would otherwise have been if he had not used a Pd-Ce cathode for two measurements, and if he had set up a protocol in advance as to how to handle accidents (probably exclude them), and if he had done more controls (but, yes, easy measurement was expensive), and if he had not varied the electrolysis current, so that the gas collection procedure was exactly the same each time.


    Do realize that I think Miles did some of the most important work ever with cold fusion.

    Quote from kirkshanahan

    I believe my procedure was correct. Take Miles' He atoms/Watt/second, divide by the given He atoms/Watt to get 1/seconds, and reciprocate to get the unidentified time in seconds. And plotting the He atoms produced as a function of this time gives a plot that looks like a spike dilution process.

    This is almost certainly incorrect in two ways. Miles would have used an actual collection time, I'd think. This would have come in one of two ways: by calculation from the current, which is documented for each sample, or by bubbler volume (which would not be much different, we'd think).


    You have missed something. Miles corrected for the background helium. Failure to do that will produce an error into your calculations. He used a background figure of 0.51 x 10^14 atoms per 500 ml; obviously, his helium'/heat results would need to use new helium, not the helium already there, so that would be subtracted.

    Quote from kirkshanahan

    Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:


    Exactly, which varies from run to run, so a fixed 4440 is not correct.

    Kirk is correct that the time is not fixed, I was not clear about that. However, how it was calculated is shown.


    Your "I'm sure" indicates to me that your interpolating on what Miles said, and not quoting his actual words. In other words, like me, you're guessing what Miles did. That's one of my underlying objections to most CF research reports so far, insufficient information given forcing readers to guess at what was done, usually when what is being guessed at is very important, like this case.[/quote]It's not as important as you think. I understand why you want to know, and I ask questions like these of the researchers, because if is often the case that useful information is missing. However, most research in cold fusion is exploratory, and corners are cut.


    In this case, the core of the Miles claim is not a helium/heat ratio (and originally it was considered amazing that the apparent ratio was within an order of magnitude of the theoretical value.) Miles's work was not precise enough to be use for anything more than a crude estimate of the ratio. The core claim here is correlation, and that is crystal clear in the data, and the relatively minor variations in electrolysis current don't change that. As long as the collection time is consistent as to *volume*, the time is relevant for calculating energy from power, and not for the correlation.


    I have not gone over the data yet to see if I can see what you are talking about; it's fairly obvious that you neglected the background correction (which is huge). That would create an apparent systematic error.


    As to what I said I was sure about, it was not fixed time, it was that the time would depend on electrolysis power, in this case, current. Thus a default understanding of what Miles wrote would be that a time would be used that would be inversely proportional to the current, which varied from 400 mA to 600 mA overall, including the controls.

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    There is noise. "No heat" is an interpretation that can have various meanings.


    There is noise and there is electrolysis power. So there is always heat. No excess heat means there is no significant heat above electrolysis power. The margin of error for the calorimeter is well-defined. I would not call that an interpretation.

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    You do not, however, address the collection time, as to exact procedure. It is not clear what Miles actually did. Did he simply wait until the bubbler showed him 500 ml? Or did he calculate a time from the current?


    He did both, as he stated on in the quote on p. 6 of my paper. The flow rate was both calculated and measured at 6.75 ml/minute (6.75 for cell A, 6.69 for cell B). So the 500 ml cell filled up in 75 minutes, or 19 times a day (as he said). He used the excess power for the last 75 minutes, and correlated the helium to it. I do not think excess power fluctuated much, so that works. You can see the fluctuations in the graphs here:


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


    I should have put the 75 minutes in my paper.


    By the way, I expect using a bubbler to measure gas flow beats just about any flow meter. I do not trust flow meters.

    Quote from Hermes

    Here is the C code I use:-



    Hermes, this has been very useful. As I look at it more closely, several questions have come up. First, I'm not sure how you've derived the factor of 0.2708122 — what combination of constants is this, and what are the units? There are a number of slightly different versions and derivations of the Gamow calculation, it turns out. Which text did you use? Another question has to do with your numbers in relation to the numbers produced by this HyperPhysics model. Your Gamow factors are typically smaller than the ones produced by this model by 3 or 4 (e.g., 213Bi, 215At), and sometimes as much as a value of 9 smaller (209Bi). I note that you're using the reduced mass and Q value, and the HyperPhysics model is using the alpha particle mass and energy. To get the Gamow factors for the HyperPhysics model, you'd need to dig through the JavaScript, but perhaps you can eyeball the math and see if anything stands out; or, alternatively, look at the decay constant and half life.


    Your model produces sensible factors for heavier fission daughters whereas the HyperPhysics model does not in many cases, so my hunch is that your calculation is more general. But I want to understand that constant of 0.2708122 and why there is such a large difference between your calculation and the HyperPhysics one.

    Quote from Eric Walker

    I'm not sure how you've derived the factor of 0.2708122


    I wrote this a long time ago! But the answer is I fitted the constant using regression to the known alpha decay rates. So the formula works best for alpha decay. It underestimates the absolute rates for heavy fission.


    I used the formula described in "An introduction to nuclear physics" by Cottingham & Greenwood (Cambridge University Press) p 67-69.

    Quote from Hermes

    I wrote this a long time ago! But the answer is I fitted the constant using regression to the known alpha decay rates. So the formula works best for alpha decay. It underestimates the absolute rates for heavy fission.


    I used the formula described in "An introduction to nuclear physics" by Cottingham & Greenwood (Cambridge University Press) p 67-69.


    Thank you — I will take a look at the book. In the meantime I will try to figure out why even in the case of alpha decay your code is producing a Gamow factor of between 2 and 9 less than that used behind the scenes in the HyperPhysics model.


    Regression fitting is a nice idea. I wonder whether a regression that produces a table indexed in A and Z for both daughters, rather than a single static constant, would be a good way to go here.


    The HyperPhysics calculation goes on to calculate the decay constant and the half-life using assumptions about the frequency of the barrier penetration of the daughter alpha within the Coulomb barrier of the daughter heavy particle. You're using the Q value and the reduced mass. Do you have any sense of whether this latter part of the HyperPhysics calculation can be used at all in the case of fission? I have asked a similar question on physics.stackexchange.com but have not yet received a reply.

    Quote from Eric Walker

    I will try to figure out why even in the case of alpha decay your code is producing a Gamow factor of between 2 and 9 less than that used behind the scenes in the HyperPhysics model.


    I appreciate any critique! I don't recall exactly what the RMS error was when I made a least squares fit. I suspect it was about < 2 (orders of magnitude) against known alpha decays. I have no experience with the HyperPhysics model, but maybe you could compare it with experiment too.


    I have discussed my model with other nuclkear physicists. Many seem to be quite unaware that Gamow theory can accurately predict the assymmetric fisssion of actinides! Others, perhaps better informed, approve saying this is exactly correct. My view is that both sides are right. The correct solution requires consderation not only of the barrier penetration probability, bur also the (binomial) probability that fission daughters materialize at all! I have not applied such corrections. Maybe we could write a paper?

    Quote from randombit0

    Mary Yugo wrote:


    Oh my dear Mary. Really ? Haven't you read and heard about the fact that Rossi was cleared by all accusations ?


    Fear Uncertainty and Doubt dominates the argumentation of people who has no arguments.


    I have no wish to support Mary's insistent drumbeat, but ... we think randombit0 is Rossi, and this statement, then, is a bit ... disingenuous, most likely. It is difficult to disentangle what happened in Italy, but I will for now take Mats Lewan's account as authoritative. If it is incorrect, randombit0 may correct it.


    An Impossible Invention, page 62: after pointing out that many of the charges were just plain false, Mats has:


    Quote

    Of the 56 processes, five led to a conviction, according to Rossi, while in the other 51 he was finally acquitted or the case was time-barred. Time already served was deducted from the prison sentence. The rest he had to serve either under house arrest or on probation. He was released in June 2001....


    My conclusion, in 2011, was that the prior history was largely irrelevant. Tax fraud or (accounting fraud) is quite different from, say, deceiving investors. It's pretty common and can happen sometimes without mens rea, and it can be a mess. The "environmental crimes" were technical, and the environmental mess could have been a result of the pressure that forced Petroldragon to shut down.


    We don't care about what happened over 15 years ago. We do care about straightforward and honest business dealings in the present. I never understood Rossi as a scientist, but as an entrepreneur and amateur engineer (or at least originally "amateur,"). So I never expected "scientific reporting" from him. I was totally willing to postpone judgement, and, in certain ways, I still am. For his benefit -- it makes no real difference to me -- I hope he will face what he has done, his history, and understand how it has created the reactions he sees, because this will allow him to move on. I wish him the best.

    From the errata of An Impossible Invention:


    "Andrea Rossi was not acquitted from all environmental crimes. He was sentenced three times for environmental crimes. These sentences totaled about €260,000 ($350,000) in fines and a year’s imprisonment. Another environmental sentence that got more attention was €13 million ($17 million) in fines and six months in prison, but it was appealed and Rossi was acquitted. The environmental sentences were largely rooted in the changing regulatory framework, meaning that Rossi lacked permits for his operations—not illegal dumping or discharge.
    In contrast, Rossi was never convicted of fraud. According to his lawyer Andrea Ambiveri, four processes concerning criminal fraud were initiated but they all ended up with Rossi being acquitted or that charges were dropped. The last and crucial process of fraud lasted for a year in 2003 and 2004 in Milan. Rossi was charged along with three other people for what he was constantly accused of—illegally and knowingly having received and disposed of hazardous waste—but the court concluded that this was not true. On the contrary, it was shown that Rossi’s business really processed and sold the waste materials that were purchased.”

    Quote

    it was shown that Rossi’s business really processed and sold the waste materials that were purchased.


    The Italian newspapers of the period say different as does common sense. If Rossi really could turn toxic waste into clean fuel, he'd be a billionaire. My money is on the news articles which report that tubes from his toxic waste tanks drained directly into irrigation ditches (see Krivit's list of articles from Italian newspapers). You see, I think Rossi really *is* that sort of person. Anyway, at this point, Lewan has no credibility at all about anything-- not even errata.

    Link please, you are hardly 'Mr Credibility' yourself.


    Krivit's list contains stories by the Italian equivalent of the National Enquirer.


    Quote from Mary Yugo

    If Rossi really could turn toxic waste into clean fuel, he'd be a billionaire


    Hence why the law was changed to stop him, and he was closed down... Italy has bigger oil reserves than Norway. the largest inland oil reserves in Europe.


    You realise what he made back then is fairly standard technology nowadays?

    Edited 2 times, last by Zeus_46 ().

    Like 1
    Quote from Mary Yugo

    If Rossi really could turn toxic waste into clean fuel, he'd be a billionaire.


    Many industrial processes turn toxic materials in to clean fuel or raw materials. No process can neutralize arsenic, but many organic poisons from bacteria and the like are destroyed by heat. Garbage and other organic waste is converted to fuel. See:


    http://www.voanews.com/a/eager…e-into-fuel-/1917561.html


    See thermal depolymerization.

    Quote

    You realise what he made back then is fairly standard technology nowadays?


    It is fairly standard to detoxify certain industrial poisons and it is standard to convert used vegetable and certain other oils into diesel. But what Rossi claimed has not been achieved and certainly, it was never achieved by Rossi, even if a small portion of what he claimed is being done by others now.


    Petroldragon was a vicious scam and a major and costly disaster for the Italian province which Rossi victimized. Again: read the contemporary articles from Italian newspapers as cited by Krivit. Rossi's Petroldragon-related patents expired due to non payment of fees. Is that what happens to revolutionary discoveries?


    ETA: Here are links to extensive documentation by contemporary Italian newspapers about Rossi's Petroldragon disaster:


    http://news.newenergytimes.net…nmental-criminal-history/


    And excerpts of interviews and articles:




    above from: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/s…V-TheMagicofMrRossi.shtml


    And literally DOZENS of articles detailing Rossi's Petroldragon crimes from Italian news sources (not prosecutors and not magistrates): http://newenergytimes.com/v2/s…al-Criminal-History.shtml
    Italy is a modern industrialized country. Does anyone seriously think that if Rossi had had a billion dollar discovery which the Italian government could tax and export, they would have acted against him without cause? Absolute, total nonsense. This is as dumb as the claim that the Greek government sabotaged Defkalion.

    Edited 4 times, last by Mary Yugo ().

    Like 1
    Quote from Mary Yugo

    It is fairly standard to detoxify certain industrial poisons and it is standard to convert used vegetable and certain other oils into diesel.


    Yes, that is known as biodiesel, in Europe at least.


    Quote from Mary Yugo

    But what Rossi claimed has not been achieved [by others].


    Rossi, as Petroldragon, simply claimed to turn organic waste into fuel oil.


    Oh look, here's a facility that does exactly the same thing:


    http://newatlas.com/edmonton-w…acility-video-tour/32630/


    Jed even told you how the process works: It's called 'thermal depolymerisation', you could have googled it and avoided making a really dumb statement like the one you made above.
    I know that you famously don't read about the technology you chose to comment on, but this example of that is so egregious, it actually seems like a self-parody. Wow.


    How can you make such bold statements, when a counter-example is literally staring you in the face, in the comment directly above? Do you really expect people to take your ranting seriously?


    Nurse!

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