ICCF21 Thread

I am typing this on my phone at the airport, so it will be brief.

I think the Holmlid replications by Olafsson and Zeiner-Gundersen are much more significant than is being openly acknowledged. Note that Zeiner-Gundersen has formed a company to develop this technology into commercial deployment using direct conversion of the charged particle flux into electricity. I think they have a good chance of success.

Forsley and Mosier-Boss with GEC also seem to be on a serious path to commercial deployment, and they have the deep technical skills and connections needed to succeed. I am a bit biased about their technology because of the neutron activation and fission products problems, but for the right application, I think it will work.

Given the high caliber of these serious contenders, I find it baffling that so many people here are so inclined to bicker about that two-bit crook still. The field is moving on, despite the assertions of the willfully ignorant amongst us.

Quote from Dan21

I'll repeat my comment: When comparing the energy released by nuclear reactions to chemical reactions, the mass of both fuel and oxidizer needs to be included.

Yes, I said that to Beiting. However, I think you are missing the point. This is only a rough approximation. Actually, the metal is a catalyst, and the hydrogen is what reacts. The mass of hydrogen is small, so the comparison becomes even more extreme.

Right from the beginning of cold fusion people have been making this comparison with the metal, even though it was obvious the metal itself is not reacting and it is not consumed. People, including me, have often compared the results to gasoline and other fuels, without taking into account the weight of oxygen. We do this because the reader is likely to look up the energy content of gasoline, and find it is 42 MJ/kg, and we don't want to confuse the issue. Yes, it is actually more than 1 kg when you include the oxygen, but a table listing the energy content of coal, gasoline and other fuels does not include the oxygen.

In my opinion, this was the best ICCF conference in a long time. The number of participants was up. The number of young researchers was up. The number of experiments was up, compared to past meetings dominated by theorizing and rehashing old experiments. What brought this partial renaissance about? The magic ingredient is money. M-o-n-e-y. The present experiments are far better than any previous ones. Modern, precision instruments are being used. Things like helium detection are better than they used to be. The work is being done in first-class facilities, with superb instruments operated by full-time experts. See, for example:

http://www.aerospace.org/

People are no longer trying to accomplish a miracle on a shoestring, with 1960s equipment. The money is coming from I.H. and two other sources. It isn't a huge amount. It is nowhere near enough, in my opinion. But it is far better than nothing, and it has had an impact.

I think it is likely that if we had been funded decades ago, there would be cold fusion automobiles by now.

It will take many billions of dollars to make cold fusion into a practical source of energy. Heck, it took a billion just to develop the Prius, which is a minor incremental improvement to existing technology compared to cold fusion. But, for the first steps, such as finding effective catalysts, the money now coming in may be enough, whereas what we had before was certain failure.

Something else that struck me was the spirit of cooperation among researchers. Several presenters talked about their excess heat results, but had no way to analyze the reaction products. People came to the microphone with offers to analyze the products if they were sent samples of the gas or or electrodes.

Another noteworthy paper:

Haglelstein's group at MIT is now doing experiments to test his theories. Metzier described experiments with CO-57 on a steel plate under stress to induce phonons to stimulate X-ray emissions. This kind of testing of theories is critical to sort out what is really happening.
 

Quote from Ascoli65

Me: "Rossi heroically defies the world, silhouetted by the setting sun.

[…] He has done a lot of things right. If he succeeds, people will say this business strategy was the stuff of genius. In the future, they will teach his methods at the Harvard Business School."

No doubt he succeeded.

I hope you realize I was joking. Rossi has not succeeded in anything other than larceny.

Quote from sam12

I think the high caliber contenders are losing

the LENR race to dark horse Dr Rossi

Sam, you are free to call Rossi whatever you like, but you do realise that his qualifications do not include the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of a PhD? His highest qualification is an Italian first degree in Philosophy. Which makes sense, he talks well...

I'd also not call him a dark horse. Rather a self-proclaimed (and believed by many) front runner who has been disqualified due to cheating.

And it is just not fair on the ICCF guys to bring AR stuff onto their thread.

On that subject. Jed - you say that there are more than usual high quality experiments, which makes me happy, and is no doubt due largely to IH. Do we expect proper experiment write-ups from all of these, and if so when? It would be noice to have a thread commenting on the detailed writeups when they emerge.

THH

Quote from sam12

This high caliber contender is coming

on fast THH.

https://e-catworld.com/2018/06…t-completed-225-day-test/

I'll call Parkhomov high quality when he publishes just one conference quality (not a high benchmark) experiment write-up. Let's hope this happens, but I'm not holding my breath.

Quote from THHuxleynew

On that subject. Jed - you say that there are more than usual high quality experiments, which makes me happy, and is no doubt due largely to IH. Do we expect proper experiment write-ups from all of these, and if so when?

Jean-Paul said the professors are supposed to turn in their papers by August, but he didn't say which year. With those people it is always late to never. (I wish I had known that when I was in college.) The paper I am most looking forward to has already been written. I hope I can get a copy soon. I have permission to upload it. It is:

E. Beiting, "Investigation of the nickel-hydrogen anomalous heat effect," Aerospace Report No. ATR-2017-01760, The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo CA, USA, May 15, 2017.

The Aerospace Corporation has approved it for unlimited public distribution, which is unusual for them, according to Beiting.

Beiting has another paper about a flow calorimeter: "Generation of High-Temperature Samples and Calorimetric Measurements of Thermal Power for the Study of Ni/H2 Exothermic Reactions." I gather that will be submitted on time. Beiting and his coauthor Romein are more engineers than scientists, so they turn in their work on time. This and all other ICCF-21 papers will be published in the JCMNS. That takes months, or years. I copy-edit the papers long before the journal is published. If there is a good one, I will ask Jean-Paul and the author for permission to upload a pre-print.

Quote from JedRothwell

The work is being done in first-class facilities, with superb instruments operated by full-time experts. See, for example:

http://www.aerospace.org/

I should explain that Beiting retired from the Aerospace Corporation recently, but he still has access to their instruments and experts, and they are enthusiastic and cooperative. I think he is now a consultant. He also has a home lab with a great deal of top-notch equipment, as shown in his poster. I hope to upload this and other posters soon. I will upload Mizuno's slides this week, with some of my narration appended.

If I understand correctly, Beiting and Romein can fabricate equipment at Aerospace, run it at home, and have the post-experiment material analysis done at Aerospace. The ZrO2NiPd material is fabricated at Ames National Laboratory (https://www.ameslab.gov/). I gather it costs a ton of money and it can only be made in small amounts. It would not cost as much if it were mass produced.

Running a presumed fusion reactor of unknown potential, at home without elaborate safety precautions, regulation or inspection by the appropriate nuclear regulating agency. It certainly is a brave new world.

@ShaneD:

Quote

"And two other sources". We knew about IH, and I am guessing Gates is another. NASA could be considered the 3rd as they are working with GEC. Am I close?"

If NASA is actively funding or supporting LENR, it should be clearly described in print. NASA can not have secrets unless the research is classified.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Running a presumed fusion reactor of unknown potential, at home without elaborate safety precautions, regulation or inspection by the appropriate nuclear regulating agency.

How do you know there are no elaborate safety precautions? Who told you that? Have you read the report? If you have not read it, why are you speculating about the contents?

This fusion reaction produces no dangerous radiation or radioactive products, so it is safe. They are quite sure of that because . . . wait for it . . . they take elaborate safety precautions. They also measure these things because it is essential to know about products such as tritium if they appear. Also, this is a relatively small reaction, of around 1 W. It is very large compared to the mass of catalyst, and compared to the signal to noise ratio, and it is large enough that any scientist in the last 200 years could have measured it with absolute confidence, but small enough that it is unlikely to cause harm.

No nuclear agency regulates cold fusion. All of the appropriate agencies say the effect does not exist, based on reports in the New York Times. Seriously, that is what they cite.

Quote from Shane D.

"And two other sources". We knew about IH, and I am guessing Gates is another. NASA could be considered the 3rd as they are working with GEC. Am I close?

I do not know. I asked some well-funded researchers "are you getting money from I.H. or the folks at Texas Tech?" and they said (more or less): "Neither of them. Someone else." Based on that answer, I suppose there could be 4 or more sources of funding. I.H. better hurry up if they want to corner the market for fundamental physics. *

* That is a joke. There is no such market. You cannot patent "a force of nature," which is what fundamental physics usually discovers. Because there is no market in fundamental physics, funding must come from governments or philanthropic organizations. The problem with cold fusion has been that governments and philanthropic organizations did not believe it exists. I hope that results such as Beiting's make them change their minds. Such results will never convince people such as Garwin, Shanahan, Seven_of_twenty, and others who live in fantasy worlds, but they will convince rational people who understand basic physics, signal to noise ratios, and the laws of thermodynamics.

The treatment that Bob Greenyer received at this years ICCF is troubling. He was not permitted to present his opinions because his opinions are too extreme for the old school LENR gatekeepers to accept. These old guard still adhere to the ridiculous idea that the LENR reaction requires huge pressure and heat ala the H bomb to produce transmutation of elements.

The old guard thinking is in lock step with their mortal critics. The people that are making progress in LENR systems development are not constrained by the deadly H Bomb fusion MEME. They don't care about theory, they don't have ideas, they just try things and if those things work they move forward unencumbered by dogmatic thinking.

Open minded people and free thinkers are having a hard time working with the old guard. It looks like it is boiling down to the age old struggle between the liberals and the conservatives.

Max Planck: "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out."