MFMP: Guess the scientist of new bulletproof experiment

Quote from barty

Can you give some more general information about the paper?

The paper is for the special proceedings of the J of CMNS that covers the RNBE-2016 conference in France (similarly, they will have one for ICCF). Mathieu Valat was an organizer and speaker at RNBE-2016, and he spoke about MFMP's work. The paper that we put together to go along with his talk had 2 sections - the first contained an analysis of the real heat from the Lugano experiment based upon a replica reactor used as a dummy (made by MFMP/Hunt Utilities Group - Ryan Hunt). We draw conclusions about the actual Lugano excess heat and temperatures. The second half of the paper was about Alan's Glowstick 5.2 experiment: the device, thermal analysis, and the measured gamma signal.

The paper was peer reviewed by 2 technical reviewers, and believe me they provided lots of comments. We adjusted the paper and the second pass was accepted for publication. The technical reviewers "did not pull any punches" - it was hard work to address their concerns/comments.

A prediction, based on some of my own (fairly rough) calculations from MFMPs previously released data:

It shows Rossi's Lugano COP was a little higher than Clarke's 1.07 (somewhere around 1.12) but with a greatly reduced error margin. (ie much less than Clarke's 30% - he was surprisingly accurate considering his report was based purely on theory).

Clarke's "1.07" is an estimated maximum, within an uncertainty larger than the 0.07 "excess".

True, my position is that Clarke's figure was not quite a 'maximum', as some heat transfers were ignored, and also that his actual 'uncertainty' is smaller than the supposed excess (Several of his error estimations ended up cancelling out rather than adding up - I think he will feel vindicated overall).

Anyway, don't read to much into it: It's just my opinion.

However my opinion is based on some real-life figures I recorded from a long MFMP glowstick video, and also my own set of slightly different assumptions...

I used spectral radiance matching, and came up with temperatures within about 20°C of Clarke, and sometimes around 5°C, without assumptions about the microbolmeter response. (Ijust assumed the Optris did a perfect job of the integration internally).
Considering the Caps are tied into the Lugano power data in an annoying way, and the limited amount of data, that is really close, actually.

It was interesting to see just how well the integration method in Clarke's and Bob's reports matched the radiance matching method, however.
That is what finally convinced me that Clarke was right. Totally different methods zeroing in on the same disappointing answer. That and duplicating the MFMP Lugano Thermal Verification temperatures with emissivity setting changes, by spectral radiance matching alone.

Quote from Bob

Can you state what the subject paper's conclusion was?

The paper bases its analysis on using the MFMP/HUG replica to create a T(Lugano) vs Pin(electrical) curve. This is the null experiment that everyone wanted to see performed in the Lugano experiment, where the dummy reactor was swept over power input and the output thermal state was measured. Then subsequently when the fuel was added, one would simply match the thermal state with the fuel and compare that to the corresponding thermal state solely heated electrically to find the excess heat. Since the MFMP replica's thermal state was measured 4 ways (k-type thermocouple, b-type thermocouple, Williamson pyrometer, and Optris Pi-160 thermal camera) we had the opportunity to correlate the temperatures from the erroneous Lugano temperatures to actual temperatures. However, that was not the important part. Using the Optris in exactly the same way that the Lugano researchers did (emissivity iterated to a wrong curve), we could match their thermal state with the corresponding MFMP dummy heater power. This co-analysis of our data with the Lugano reported data allowed us to extract the temperatures and excess heat. I don't want to totally spoil the conclusion, but lets just say that the result of the analysis suggested that the Lugano experiment probably had excess heat commensurate with what others (Parkhomov, Zhanghang, Jiang, Goldwater) have been reporting for this fuel system.

Quote from zeus46

True, my position is that Clarke's figure was not quite a 'maximum', as some heat transfers were ignored, and also that his actual 'uncertainty' is smaller than the supposed excess (Several of his error estimations ended up cancelling out rather than adding up - I think he will feel vindicated overall).

Clarke's analysis was right in some ways and wrong in others. The system is partly transparent at higher temperatures making surface calculations for heat not possible without measuring the actual emitted spectral energy - it will not be a blackbody spectrum. This is akin to the case of the incandescent light bulb where the glass envelope temperature doesn't represent the radiated spectrum of the bulb or its thermal emission. The temperatures that Clarke reported for the surface simply did not match the visual indications from Lugano photos and our experience with the temperature of an object versus its appearance. So, there was not enough data from the Lugano report by itself to arrive at a conclusion.

This was the case for a while, until MFMP/HUG made a replica of the Lugano reactor that could be swept over power and evaluated for real temperature vs. Pin. With that additional data co-analyzed with the Lugano reported data, it was possible to come to a result that is more substantiated and sensible for temperatures and excess heat.

I'll be fascinated to read it Bob.

Crawl back under your stone Yugo.

Are you not aware of MFMP's 'Gammas on demand' results?

Quote from zeus46

Are you not aware of MFMP's 'Gammas on demand' results?

Do you have a link for this?

@BobHiggins,
The Lugano device is optically thick enough, that it is not actually transparent to IR to any significant degree. The "transparent" band IR for alumina paste and tube will be reflected, diffracted, and finally absorbed and re-emitted in the main high emittance IR peak band for alumina.

Quote from Eric Walker

Do you have a link for this?

Not since my old hard drive crashed. Memory suggests it involved Matthieu, and a leaky Celani cell that had to be constantly refilled with hydrogen.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

The Lugano device is optically thick enough, that it is not actually transparent to IR to any significant degree. The "transparent" band IR for alumina paste and tube will be reflected, diffracted, and finally absorbed and re-emitted in the main high emittance IR peak band for alumina.

Of course, "IR" covers a lot of spectrum. By the time that you get to the 1-2 micron wavelength, the alumina transmission coefficient is rising and by 0.8 microns (deep red) it is approaching 80%/mm. There is a lot of scattering, but the net transmission coefficient is high (think of a frosted light bulb). At temperatures >1000C, there is a lot of spectrum in the red and yellow.

Regardless, this did not factor into the recent re-analysis of the Lugano data. We matched the Lugano thermal state using the same camera with the same factory calibration and with the same faulty emissivity as was used in the Lugano analysis. This thermal state was matched to an electrical power input with no fuel. Since at each of these thermal states, MFMP also had thermocouple and Williamson pyrometer data; as a side analysis, we also got the surface temperatures. The temperatures that were extracted this way were consistent with the experience for the visual appearance as well.

Just some comments on Bob's comments.

BobH did some early work on the Lugano data (before TC) which was insightful though not entirely correct. Good that this has now been updated.

I'll be fascinated to see what MFMP say and then compare it with my assessment of the TC report and the reality. It is great that they have taken the effort to write up properly some new data.

BobH's comment above about > 1000C. Well the Lugano temperatures were definitely < 1000C and so we have, definitely,:
(1) The IR (7-13u) data is not affected by transparency - hence temperature calculations are not imprecise for this reason.
(2) The total power out data will be imprecise for this reason, but at < 1000C not so imprecise. Visible light makes a relatively small contribution so fact that it looks transparent is not very relevant. And certain other factors come into play (I'll reserve precise comment for when I've got something real to comment on).
(3) The error from "transparency" can be positive or negative, and is not straightforward to calculate. MFMP may have done this correctly, or may be making assumptions. Apologies for saying this, but when work is hinted at without disclosure such caveats are needed.

TC gave broad tolerances for the reasons he stated (one of which was transparency) so he was certainly not wrong on this matter. The interesting question is how much can tolerances be tightened up. As Bob points out, you have a whole load of new data doing real experiments on similar equipment not available to TC. It is, given that, a real triumph of theory that theory and (real) experiment match so closely. However without seeing a complete MFMP error analysis I'm uncertain whether they can tighten those "guestimated" TC limits. You see, the practical measurements have errors (due to setup and material differences) that the theory does not. So neither practical data nor theory can give precise answers. Estimating precisely the imprecision is really difficult, and interesting, and I'll enjoy commenting further (in the absence of TC who no doubt would want to do this) when the MFMP paper surfaces. As has been pointed out by others they could put it on Arxiv now. That would be very normal.

Regards, THH

PS - Mats is on record as not believing the TC report, nor others here who broadly agreed with it. He said he would not do so until he had reports from experts who compared TC's report with The Lugano report (and Levi - who supported the Lugano Report saying colleagues had also agreed with this). Since then (many months ago) he has been silent, so I wonder what his experts concluded? I'm still hoping he will deliver this information for the guys on ECW who view LENR Forum as contaminated by Satan and therefore not as reliable as (to stretch a bad analogy) God's own journalist.

Not for a computer only used for reading websites and watching pink unicorn porn.

Maybe you can send me some new links babe.