Recipes for cold fusion

    Quote from Bob

    Jed Rothwell? Read the published papers!


    Only because that is the best evidence we have. Papers are not much to go on. A live experiment is better proof, but there are few experiments you can go and look at yourself. However, there are more experiments this year than there have been in a long time. If someone important wanted proof I would try to arrange to have them visit Cravens, Beiting or Mizuno.


    I like the I.H. standard described by Higgins in his ICCF-21 slides:


    “The IH standard for official confirmation of any excess heat claims requires verification by a major independent lab with recognized, credible, and skeptical researchers."


    Visiting an experiment does not always work. Richard Garwin was tasked with looking at the experiment at The Aerospace Corporation. He came up with a ridiculous reason to deny it. As I mentioned, he said that hydrogen affects K-type thermocouples. This was ridiculous because:

    1. The thermocouple was shielded.
    2. This only happens at temperatures much higher than they were in this experiment.
    3. The effect would be to lower the estimate of excess heat, not increase it.

    People such as Garwin & Shanahan will never be convinced by an experiment. Only by commercial devices.

    As a general rule, in experimental physics you prove something works by having it independently replicated at high signal-to-noise ratios. By that standard, bulk Pd-D cold fusion is real. Tritium is real, and the 24 MeV ratio of heat to helium is real. To be conservative, most other claims are less real, and some are borderline. The ZrO2NiPd claims have emerged from borderline darkness unto light.


    I doubt the Patent Office would agree to this standard. I do not know what they have in mind, but they are not experimental scientists. Different groups at different institutions have different standards. The kind of proof an engineer demands is quite different from what a typical academic scientists wants to see. I cannot imagine an engineer saying "show me gammas" or "what is your theory?" Gamma, schmamma, an engineer should be satisfied the heat is real with good calorimetry. Beiting and Higgins are consummate engineers. If Higgins' SPICE simulator analysis of the Cravens experiment does not quite fit the calorimetric data, I suppose God accidentally left out a term. (Sorry for the blasphemy. Perhaps I should say "mother nature left out a term.")


    No engineer would demand to see helium correlated with heat the way Abd demands. That is not to say the demand is unreasonable. It is just not the kind of thing engineers look for.

    • Official Post

    What if the people in the HQ were already convinced, trying to convince the old experimenters who faced Garwin-like opposition for 30 years to work again, and help rookies.

    What if the only problem was media coverage.

    What if there was budget, universities, state labs, high-tech big and small corp labs, preparing their plan... Like teenagers plan their secret marriage when dad and mum disagree.

    I don't know what happens in US...

    If nothing happens in US (IH put aside), time to worry. I don't think so, but I'm not there.


    My feeling is that it is time to collaborate, prepare serious research plans, stop stupid behaviors, pet theories, pet experiments. Build research proposal, as provider or as consumer, let them public, assemble offers, create meshes of proposal... Someone you don't know yet, someone I probably don't know either, will sure find it, evaluate it, and if you are serious like what serious engineers and researchers demand, something will happen, and I will probably be informed very late.


    By the way, recently with IH/Letts patents, with Biberian/Iracus9SIMS, with few experimental results presented at ICCF21, there is both food for theorist, and many nails in the coffin for many pet theories.


    Do you realize we are at a turning moment? It is no more time to prove, but time to analyze and understand mechanism.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    If Higgins' SPICE simulator analysis of the Cravens experiment does not quite fit the calorimetric data


    I've not seen Higgins' paper, but if his results are within 20% or so, I'd say that's a great fit. SPICE isn't really the most accurate way to model heat flows, its just doing calculus - but its free, compared to paying $1000's for a Solidworks licence or similar.

    Quote from Rends

    Science will not be able to change the bad image of cold fusion (LENR),

    The moment research funding becomes available, the bad image of cold fusion will evaporate like dew in the morning. As Stan Szpak said, scientists believe whatever you pay them to believe.


    The "bad image" was never anything but a ploy to keep funding in the plasma fusion program and out of cold fusion, salted by a few delusions from scientists who think you cannot tell an object is hot by sense of touch. In 1989, some of the big name scientists who vociferously attacked cold fusion were quietly applying for funding from EPRI to study it. They attacked it to prevent others from getting funding, so they could get a jump ahead. It is all dirty politics.

    • Official Post

    In public what I say is not true.

    In public:

    • LENR is not confirmed.
    • Japanese companies could not reproduce and prove the phenomenon as Garwin explained.
    • Heat/He4 ratio is not an evidence, as it is just correlation of errors with errors.
    • Tritium just is an error of measurement.
    • Hundred of replications are not replications, but hundred of errors.
    • Heat above chemistry is just error.
    • Only hot fusion can work.
    • No serious institution HQ, at any power strate, would contact an LENR scientists.
    • LENR Patents will never be accepted.

    If it was not true, this would mean there is a great problems with reference media and academic media. Sure it is not true, as there is no problem.


    This is why until recently I was sad, because there is no way for LENR to be publicly accepted.

    Don't expect that to change until many years, and much work.

    Quote

    Science will not be able to change the bad image of cold fusion (LENR), it will only be possible through the detour of functioning, disruptive devices that ordinary customers can buy..

    Overly pessimistic. For example, If a cold fusion device made lots of heat and self ran for a long time compared to its size and "fuel" load, then it would accepted. It would have to be more than one independent and clearly unbiased tests. But it could be so expensive, dangerous, or delicate and tedious that it would not be anywhere near market ready.


    On the other hand, if you're simply saying that a marketed device would convince, then your name is probably Captain Obvious.

    • Official Post

    Jean-François Geneste said that engineers would accept it immediately if one cell could power a Stirling (or Thermoacoustic) engine for months.


    Jacques Ruer have made estimation of the required COP/Temperature for such a reactor, and it was not easy (I don't remember, but much above 3, and not liquid water)...

    However in recent presentation

    http://www.iscmns.org/work12/RuerJpreventingtherm.pdf

    he shows that if you have thermal control, then it is just an engineering problem.

    For long cells were unreliable and even if you had a good stable cell, once you reengineer the cell, it may no more work, or just you may not be able to make it bigger. It is like designing a steam locomotive with unpredictable wood logs.

    Now with replicable material like what Nedo-funded team created, maybe engineers could create a cell that have a good COP by design, enough to heat a stirling that feed it's activation and heating.

    No more research, but engineering. But given the today's performance, much work to do, and this assume the LENR material work reliably for month, and scale up like 1+1=2...


    I remember a lab near Chester (Thornton Park...) that was interested for some time, and they would have had all competence as I remember their pitch. All they needed was funding...

    Peut être qu'on pourrait faire ça chez nous, non? ;)

    Quote from Zeus46

    That's pretty cool Bob - I didn't quite realise the aim of the exercise until I read that.

    The paper shows how the model was refined and improved. An early iteration came up with Fig. 22, and an improved version produced Fig. 26, which is smack on top of the values actually measured.


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


    Fig. 31 also show simulated "extracted null LT heater waveform" smack on top of the actual measured output. I do not see the estimated difference, but it is is small. Most of the differences are in the first 10 kilo-seconds.


    If I were to summarize the purpose (that is, if I were to put words in Bob's mouth) I would say it is:


    1. Simulate anything that cannot be directly measured (that is, sorted out from rest of the output heat). "Model only what you don’t measure."


    2. Show that all inputs are accounted for, so the excess heat really is excess, not an underestimate.


    3. They confirmed excess heat by adding "mock XH power" to the model. (p. 22)

    Upon accepting the invitation to conduct my experiments in a 'third party' lab and arrival at the Looking For Heat lab my first efforts were to engage Alan and Martin in making modifications to their first generation tube furnaces. I suggested a larger diameter bore so that we could place more inside, the reactor tube that contained my fuel would be accompanied by an S-type thermocouple and a small control heating element all tighly bound into a triplet configuration and so as to act approximately like a single thermal mass. The small heater through which we could insert a precisely known number of joules of heat would on demand as perfectly as possible mimic excess heat in increments of a watt from 0 to 100. Alan and Martin graciously agreed and they in fact have done most of the building work to build now a bank of six such devices, see Alan's photos on this forum. Calibraton with heating and cooling curves are undertaken with the obvious variations on the use of this new 'bundle.' We monitor all inputs every second, so for example the data set from the now six week long 'lovel gammas' experiment has many millions of lines of data covering the HOT and CONTROL reactors. There are plenty of complications but following the late great Martin Fleischmann's teaching, "from simplicity to complexity and back to simplicity" is the key. One thing that is constant is what every parent knows thatthey can perform accurate themal mass calorimetry merely placing thier hand on their child's forhead, doing so with thier carefully tended to and very well known child they can accurately judge whether the child has even a slight fever. Such is the value of a unifom thermal mass with a well characterized heat loss and an equally well charcterized heat inputs (known and unknown). What can I say, the job was to create reliable enduring excess heat and hosts and partners be praised, let there be heat, and there is plenty of it. The gammas are just a tiara on the performing diva.

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