Display MoreNickel 200 twill wire mesh, 0.055 x 180 mesh size, size 200 mm x 300 mm, 5 sheets
5 sheets cost $72. Not bad.
Will be difficult for non-Japanese replicators to find out exactly what product to order at that website.
Can you ask Mizuno-san whether he can tell what the purity of this nickel mesh is?
Should probably be 99.5% or so.
Let's hope the fabrication methods of the Nickel wire of these kind of mesh sheets are not too critical.
The results are indeed impressive. The relative simplicity of the as-it-seems robust experimental procedure is encouraging. Difficult to find any flaws explaining the high COP. Mizuno has been in the game for a long time, many hours and good thoughts behind this. However, no time to celebrate until credible replications are reported.
The thing I don't get is why Mizuno doesn't use a fraction of the output heat to replace the input. Couldn't he wrap a blanket around the thing to keep back enough heat to maintain the necessary operating temperature?
If this could be done, then the contraption would produce heat without any input, and if it could do that long enough, Nature could not ignore it. If it's not done, people will wonder why, and it's hard to blame them for having doubts.
Like, if a guy offered me $10,000 if I first give him $1000, I'd tell him to keep $1000 from the 10,000, and just give me $9000. Maybe Mizuno is a Nigerian prince.
I was referring to the room heater anecdote.
It is not an anecdote. It is an observation. An anecdote is defined as: "an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay." I regard Mizuno as a reliable source, and this is a first-person report, not hearsay.
I think you are misreading what I said. Obviously 36% is an overestimate of the problem, as i said. I'm just making a point about the inadequacy of the speed measurements. We broadly agree about the Reynolds number I expect, as above.
That is in the range 12,000 to 3,000 (the lower end would be lower speed and higher temperatures). . . .
This is wrong for three reasons:
1. This error would overestimate the heat. At low power calibrations, the apparent heat would be more than the input power. It is always less than input.
2. Mizuno confirms the airspeed by measuring the time it takes for smoke to clear from the box, as described in the first paper.
3. The estimates of heat losses from walls are not simply input power minus air-flow measurements. They are confirmed by various other methods. You can do this yourself, with the information in the first paper, plus the R-rating of the insulation, which you will find at the website for Home Depot. In other words, we know approximately how much heat is not captured in the flow, and we know the remainder that is captured is about equal to what the flow calorimetry measures.
You are looking for ways to explain a problem that does not exist. The data and the cross-checking confirm the flow rate is correct. If there were a problem, it would make sense for you to look for the cause, but there is no problem.
The thing I don't get is why Mizuno doesn't use a fraction of the output heat to replace the input.
Think about that for a moment and you will see the reason. It would probably not be difficult to trigger a self sustaining reaction. What happens next? As shown in Fig. 8, the heat increases exponentially with temperature. How would you keep the temperature from going up rapidly? What would happen if it did? It would be dangerous, to say the least.
How would you quench the reaction? I suppose you might dunk the cell in a bucket of water, but that might take a long time. You might open the cell and let in air, but based on the tests pumping down to 2 Pa, it would take a long time for the deuterium to come out of the reactant metal. Maybe days.
A power reactor or a heat engine are engineered to remove heat under control, as needed. The fan and radiator in your car do this. When the fan fails, the coolant boils over and the car stops. A 20-kg stainless steel cold fusion cell with a blanket over it is not engineered, and it would not be safe.
It isn't as if Mizuno hasn't thought about ways to do this.
Not really worth it to be honest. A good 3/4 HP 2 stage pump can be found on ebay for $200 or less, and it will pull all the vacuum you need because you can flush the system with argon or hydrogen if you want to exclude all oxygen.
I think you definitely need a turbomolecular pump, Swaglok connections, and a mass spectrometer to do this experiment. $200 or less will get you nowhere. I have not priced out the equipment in Mizuno's lab but I am sure it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The stuff is from the 1980s and it would cost a ton of money to replace. He needs about $20,000 more right now to fix the SEM that was damaged in the earthquake. I really wish he could make SEM photos. The GoFundMe effort was a tremendous help, but not enough.
In my opinion, people who do not have a fully equipped lab and experience using things like vacuum pumps and mass spectrometers should not try to replicate this experiment.
If this could be done, then the contraption would produce heat without any input, and if it could do that long enough, Nature could not ignore it.
Nature ignored thousands of cold fusion replications in over 180 major laboratories such as Los Alamos, that were published in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals. What makes you think they would not ignore this? That's absurd. Nature will only look at this if it is replicated at thousands of mainstream laboratories such as Los Alamos. Which I hope will happen. Then Nature will modestly take credit for the events, and claim that without their help, it never would have happened. They will rewrite history. They will try to, anyway. If anyone asks Mizuno or me what actually happened, we will set them straight, but I doubt anyone will ask.
I can understand your logic in restricting attempts Jed.
However. In trying to do the impossible, fortuitous things have happened.
Intention has great power.
Each query I make to persons involved in experimentation remains an opportunity to network and spread the word.
Again, understand your perspective, respect it, and hope we can agree to disagree.
JedRothwell : Do you know whether Mizuno monitored radiation around this R20 setup?
Likely he did. Would be good to make a remark in the paper to trigger naive replicators.
"Think about that for a moment and you will see the reason. It would probably not be difficult to trigger a self sustaining reaction. What happens next? As shown in Fig. 8, the heat increases exponentially with temperature. How would you keep the temperature from going up rapidly? What would happen if it did? It would be dangerous, to say the least."
Ah, he's scared. That makes sense.
Still, if he's scared to add insulation because of the possibility of an exponential increase, why is he not scared of improving the reaction? He's gone from small excess heat to 5 or 10 times. A little more, and it would sustain itself without insulation. All the dangers you describe are already present if the reaction gets too efficient.
It's surprising he doesn't have some kind of cooling in place in the event of even greater success with the optimization.
I think you definitely need a turbomolecular pump, Swaglok connections,
You are probably right. In fact definitely right. A modern turbomolecular pump in good order will probably cost around $3k from a 'pre-owned lab dealer- including the controller. But nickec was thinking of trying to build one based on a bad design idea. (IMHO). The method I suggested will be way better than that.
I can understand your logic in restricting attempts Jed.
I have no power to restrict anyone. I am just saying that in my opinion, it is a bad idea for an amateur to try to replicate this experiment. It will not work. Mizuno is sanguine about this. When we talked about it other day, he laughed and said, "Who cares if people fail to replicate? What harm would they do?" I think he means that as long as some number of people succeed, who cares how many fail.
I am a little worried that Nature or the DoE will sponsor a replication that deliberately fails, and then they will trumpet that failure to the world. I am sure they would do that if they knew this is going to hit them. Look at the Nature editorials that accompanied the Google research paper. But I am not too worried. They wouldn't bother to attack unless there are already some credible successes from major labs. I suppose 10 or 20. By that time, it will be too late. Compared to Fleischmann and Pons, this is relatively easy to do, and the signal to noise ratio is high, so they will not be able to suppress it. I am sure they will try!
However, bargains are possible, though you would have to make up a new cable to mate the controller and the pump together.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pfe…ee265f:g:6SEAAOSwa3FcO0fh
"It isn't as if Mizuno hasn't thought about ways to do this."
Good to know. I expect the cold fusion revolution will begin in the public perception when he gets it working without input. And it will likely be ignored by most people before that.
It's surprising he doesn't have some kind of cooling in place in the event of even greater success with the optimization.
His laboratory is on the 6th floor of a fire trap and a dump that was severely damaged in the earthquake. The staircase pulled out of the concrete wall a good distance. The whole building is tilting several centimeters. What is surprising that it is still standing, and it hasn't been condemned or burned to the ground.
Cooling in place? He doesn't have an air conditioner. He cannot do experiments in the summer months, because it is too hot and the heat makes calorimetry impossible. We're talking about a retired prof. with salvaged equipment from the 1980s. He can fix just about anything, but there is a limit to what you can do with chewing gum and bailing wire.
You are talking about "greater success." He and I are wondering how to avoid an explosion. That would be "great success" in a way I guess.
You seem to imagine this is some sort of well equipped laboratory in a properly funded scientific project. We are talking about cold fusion here. This is a 30-year long shoestring effort, funded by Mizuno himself.
I expect the cold fusion revolution will begin in the public perception when he gets it working without input. And it will likely be ignored by most people before that.
We don't need people who would ignore these results. Better they should ignore them. If "most people" are so stupid they would ignore 50 W in, 300 W out, that's good, let's hope they ignore it, because they would be a nuisance to deal with. We only need people who are smart enough to realize that "working without input" is a trivial engineering problem that should be dealt with later, in a properly equipped engineering facility.
