The Great Optris Debate

Quote from Wyttenbach

@THH: I told you, already months ago, after your last attempt to prove that calculations are better than measurements, that experiments done by mfp have verified T³ law of Optris. If you are not able to find the JCMNS-21 proceedings then please silently ask JED who certainly will help you with the first steps in real LENR.

Here as short excerpt of the mfp publication:

Display More

MFMP do indeed say that in this paper, along with their recalculation of Lugano performance which is very similar to mine based on their thermal modelling.

I asked Bob Higgins for clarification, because what they say here is contrary to what the Optris camera software actually does - as you can easily validate for yourself. Wyttenbach - you seem most interested in this - I strongly suggest you get your hands dirty and have a look at the Optris software as I suggest above (with a link to the relevant downloads).

Bob replied to my e-mail as below (his remarks in italic). You can see that MFMP were making assumptions about the exponent of 3 for all temperatures, since they did not test this. They do not get a matching COP between the two higher power runs, as would be expected, and as TC got. So their results do not have the internal self-validation that TC's do: probably this is a tell-tale sign that more accuracy with the exponent in the higher temperature run was needed.

Of interest in the MFMP paper is the fact that the Lugano thermal modelling results were way off (by a factor of more than 100%) for the dummy reactor. Specifically the temperature claimed by them for this would be reached at a much lower input power. this result is independent of the possibly flawed exponent, since it is matching claimed Lugano input power against actual measured temperature.

This is a mystery because it appears to indicate:

(1) The Lugano testers had some experimental issue that meant they were undermeasuring input power to the dummy run by a large amount. (There was that mystery change in electrical setup, you will remember. It should not have altered anything).

(2) The Lugano tester theoretical calculations for the dummy run, which match the input to within 5%, were very wrong.

if you look at their assumptions you will see that to get even this 5% match they had to make some assumptions. It is a sign that here something was indeed wrong. Such wrong results can be generated when people try (in all honesty) to retrofit theory to results instead of predicting results from theory. We do not know what is their error, though there is a good candidate in the convection calculations.

TC did not attempt to reanalyse the dummy results. I agree with this (still) because the convection data is so full of unsafe assumptions it is very difficult to tell whether correct or no, and for the dummy this constitutes most of the power budget. The convection theoretical analysis could be wrong by 100% or more making the dummy runs unsafe. For the active runs convection is a small part of the total power budget so even if this is very wrong the results (corrected) still have some merit.

So my best resolution of this is:

(1) Some unknown error resulting in wrong input power measurement for the dummy

(2) A retrofitted convection calculation which is much too high that matches the (wrong) input data.

Further interesting (to obsessives like me) checking would be to test this hypothesis. Suppose the convection powers are all too high. Match them with the MFMP thermal data (thereby making them much lower). Check to see what effect that has on the active power budget (it will bring COP down slightly) and on the corrected COP for the two active tests. this should remain pretty well identical. I'd expect this because although we get some difference in convection budget between the two cases it is mostly linear - and only the non-linear component of this will produce a difference in COP. But it needs doing properly - I've found that expectations here do not always work.

if the power budget matches less well after this convection corrections we have a continued mystery. Otherwise this new information strengthens TC's (and MFMP's) conclusions. Note that what we know for sure is that the MFMP 1.3 reanalysis of the higher temperature test while broadly correct will be a bit high due to the assumption they made that exponent stayed at the same value for the two tests.

I'm almost motivated to write this up properly...

My e-m to Bob Higgins, with Bob's reply in italics

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So that I can understand this.
I am using the PI Connect software you have posted, and a .ravi file of
raw camera readings together with a layout that marks areas and assigns
emissivity to each one. I'd expect this is what they would have done,
since they use the marked areas in their photos?
So that changing the emissivity can be done at any time, for any one of these areas, and the calculated temperature changes.
I have posted the raw data for this on LF and you can see that this
software does exactly what theory says - an exponent varying from approx
9 to 2 over the range 60C to 1200C (remembering that this is T in K
that the exponent applies to.
When MFMP took the data, it was adjusted live while the Optris was imaging
the dummy reactor at high temperature (~900C as I recall). It was on
this basis that the 3.0 exponent was selected, not upon an evaluation
over large temperature range. Though as you point out, it was likely an
error to use it over such a large range in the analysis. However, it
is approximately correct in the range where it was used.

That is an easily verifiable (and verified by several people) fact, so to square this with your observations:
(1)
There must be some different and incompatible way to enter area
emissivities to the camera other than PI Connect with a ravi file from
the camera. There might be a direct online connection, but it is highly
surprising that it would be so obviously incompatible?
or

(2) Optris must have radically changed this software between the version you used and the version currently posted 2.9.2147.0
or
(3)
I was testing with a .ravi derived from 60C e=0.95 measurement. It
could be that for some reason at larger radiances corresponding to higher
temperatures they change (largely) the algorithm.
or
(4) Something else.

Do you have an idea which of these might be true? The difference here
is not small. For example, at 60C (a common temperature) a 10% change in
emissivity makes a 1% difference in temperature, rather than a 3%
difference as would be true for exponent 3. The result would be
radically different temperatures for an emissivity of 0.5.

I suspect that the calibration is stored in the Optris camera itself and
read out by the PI Connect software. I also bet the calibration is
contained in the .ravi file so that the correct calibration gets used
for the camera that produced the data. Thus, I suspect that the
operation of the PI Connect software on re-loaded .ravi data is correct
and behaves the same as it would with the live data with regards to
behavior over temperature and E.

TC's calculations based
on the correct correction (and this is the same as what the PI Connect
software does on the MFMP posted sample file) neatly give identical COP
for the two high temperatures to within 0.5%. this result is robust
against any of the parameters being changed within reasonable bounds
and so represents significant internal consistency checking. Your
recalculation does not do this, so I've no a priori reason to prefer it.

The first data comparison in the JCMNS-21 paper, in matching the lower
temperature Lugano thermal state to that of the dummy reactor, was very
close to where the exponent of 3 was extracted. Because of the failure
of the Optris during the dummy measurement, the exponent was not
measured at the higher temperature, and the exponent of 3 was used in
the extrapolation to somewhat higher temperature thermal state. The
first, lower temperature thermal state match, is likely very close to
correct. The second, higher temperature extrapolated thermal state may
be in error due to the presumed exponent of 3. It would be worth
recalculating.

Perhaps
we can find out how the calibration coefficients are stored in the
.ravi file and how they are applied. The calibration may include the
exponent as a function of temperature for the particular camera.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Search around for the Padua Reheat Google folder (there should be a link on the MFMP site). I found it without too much difficulty.

In there are .ravi files for a significant range of temperatures (some are rather large files).

Here are the ones I downloaded a couple of months ago (image)

So: I can google this and get an image. The MFMP experiment list does not seem to index older experiments. As always I find their site impenetrable when it comes to researching and checking specific older results. the format is optimised for live comment, and does not well suit reflective research. I'm sure it is all there, just no easy way to navigate or search - but maybe I've just not worked it out.

Can anyone help me over this? I'd like to check these higher temp ravi files.

Regards, THH