Mizuno reports increased excess heat

Quote from Cydonia

... why R19 worked much less well than R20 despite it have had the same 30 nuclear isotopes on the wall ?

I believe R19 was never heated outside the calorimeter. R19 simply never saw as many sheath heater watts.

Correct me if I am mistaken.

In the new document so generously provided I note that only half the cap bolts are installed.

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTsupplement.pdf

What do you suppose would happen if the inside of the stainless tube had a slip fit nickel tube knurled on the inside face and palladium burnished?

This subsitutes the twill weave sheets for a embossed surface nickel tube.

When you google cold fusion investment right now google returns Woodford Fund goes bankrupt due to Rossi investment and the nature paper that fails to show any anomalous heat. First of all no real investment fund makes a single bet that will bankrupt the firm. Secondly thousands of valid peer reviewed papers are simply ignored. It’s a war out there right now. They are scared. Mizuno’s replications will be the key for this technology to make it out of the development stage and into the commercial stage.

Quote from Daniel_G

When you google cold fusion investment right now google returns Woodford Fund goes bankrupt due to Rossi investment and the nature paper that fails to show any anomalous heat. First of all no real investment fund makes a single bet that will bankrupt the firm.

IH was, from memory, about 6% of the fund? So if IH was worth nothing at all, it could only affect the value of the fund that much.

Quote from JedRothwell

That's a strange question. Is there a rule you cannot study two reactors at the same time?

What on God's Green Earth are you talking about?? There is no 60 W loss on 5/1, or any other date. Input + excess is ~300 W. The reactor temperature is the same as other days with 300 W. The calorimetry measures 300 W output normally.

I must have missed this discussion about missing watts. Anyway, there are none. It is some sort of confusion. I am too busy to look back through the messages to find out who is confused about what. Just forget it. No calorimeter loses track of 60 W.

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Thanks Jed, obviously I am misunderstanding some other part of the paper. From page 3:

Losses from the walls are estimated by calibration. The air-flow calorimetry recovers 95% of
the heat when the reactor vessel is at 40°C, but only 77% when it is at 360°C (Fig. 2). When this
heat recovery rate is applied, nearly all of the heat is accounted for (Figs. 3, 7).

Also note Figure 2.

My understanding of that is that 23% of the heat must be lost through the walls at reactor temp = 370C - 380C (therefore approx 60W for the 5/1 data).

PS - that quote is from the latest paper (including R20). The first paragraphs (page 2) clearly state that it is describing the calorimetry used, and indeed that this has not changed:

Calorimetry
The air-flow calorimeter was used in this study is described in detail in Ref. [1]. It is briefly
described here. The instrument has not been changed. As described in Ref. [1], before a new 3
sample is tested, critical parameters are measured. They include heat losses from the walls of the
reactor chamber, and the air flow rate. The calorimeter performance has been stable. These
critical parameter values have not changed significantly since 2017.

Quote from Daniel_G

When you google cold fusion investment right now google returns Woodford Fund goes bankrupt due to Rossi investment and the nature paper that fails to show any anomalous heat. First of all no real investment fund makes a single bet that will bankrupt the firm. Secondly thousands of valid peer reviewed papers are simply ignored. It’s a war out there right now. They are scared. Mizuno’s replications will be the key for this technology to make it out of the development stage and into the commercial stage.

This is OT for this thread. But: the Woodford fund debacle is obviously the most public matter related to CF investment. It was acknowledged here when first made that it was significant. Woodford getting into trouble is nothing to do with the success or otherwise of that IH investment. the issue is that Woodford invested in a number of illiquid high risk startups with a long time till realisation. IH was one of these. That would have been fine except that (1) in an open-ended fund investoers are allowed to take money out at any time and (2) the proportion of money in high risk assets is limited by regulation.

It should be obvious to all (and this is the scandal) that these 3 things together make for a potential disaster. if ever the public loses confidence in a fund and extracts a lot of money the proportion of money in high risk illiquid assets increases - but nothing can be done about this because they cannot be sold. ironically if the illiquid stock does better - being revalued through a later fund raising at a greater price - the stress on the fund increases.

All you can conclude about this is that if IH is really attractive to investors at the current valuation or higher it should with a little time be possible to sell IH stock. Even though illiquid, stuff can always be sold when there are buyers.

I agree that this matter does not say anything about the existence or not of cold fusion. it is a financial scandal and will probably lead to tigheter regulations in the future. it is being taken as one sign of the greed and risk-taking nature of the finance industry as a whole.

I disagree that this has anything to do with anyone being scared about the (possible) success of cold fusion.

THH

Quote from Paradigmnoia

IH was, from memory, about 6% of the fund? So if IH was worth nothing at all, it could only affect the value of the fund that much.

True - but the regulatory problems remains with too much risky stuff as proportion of total because I don't think Woodford is allowed to write off the value of an investment without reason, and IH, along with other untraded investments, is illiquid.

Having said that if anyone wanted to buy IH Woodford could obviously sell. Perhaps (unwisely IMHO) he is able but unwilling to sell at the current valuation, or perhaps he is unwilling to downgrade this stuff off in a forced sale. Since the fund is currently not trading (for the 2nd 28 day period) we cannot I think tell what has happened. Maybe he has already sold IH? Quite likely he is taking time to try to find buyers that realise as much value as possible.

THH

I have some second thoughts about the remark that as much as desirable reactant could be added to the R20 concept.

There might be some risks to exceed the amount of reactant material as has been applied by Mizuno.

There are some indications that the IR radiation of the heater element is the trigger for the excess heat production, combined with a minimum temperature of the reactant.

In the occurrence the reactor wall gets near as hot as the heater element it will also radiate IR.

That would be the point where the reactor could become unstable and uncontrollable, unless an additional controllable forced air cooling will be added.

I think there should be a delicate balance between the heater heat capacity, the reactor wall heat/cool capacity and the amount of reactant to be safe.

The R20 reactor and its described amount of reactant seems to have that balance.

Quote from JedRothwell

Ah, ha. I begin to see what you mean. You are not talking about what I would call "watts lost." "Lost" would be "unaccounted for." You mean heat that is not recovered from the stream of warm air, but is instead radiated from the walls of calorimeter box.

Going back over the numbers . . . I may have mixed up SI units and U.S. standard units for the R-value. I may have that wrong . . . Let me do some checking here.

In SI, which is what they must use in Japan, the R-value is degrees K * m^2 / W

In U.S. it is degrees F * square feet / BTUs per hour.

That's 5.7 times higher than the SI unit. So a U.S. R-value of 11 is 1.9 in Japan. I will have to go over Mizuno's first-principle estimate again and see if I dropped an order of magnitude by accident. Which is something I often do.

The area of the aluminium insulation is 1.9 m^2. The R-value is also 1.9, which is a coincidence.

With the checking I did in the ICCF21 paper, at low power, this error would be small. I thought the box was leaking 1 or 2 W. It might have been 6 or 12 W. You could hardly tell the difference by measuring surface temperatures and other temperatures. If it was ~12 W, there was more excess heat than I thought, not less.

Suppose the reactor is producing 300 W, either in a calibration or total heat in an active run including excess heat. The reactor temperature will be 380°C. Figure 2 shows that 78% of this will be recovered by the airflow calorimetry, meaning 22% will be lost through the walls. That's 66 W. Let us assume that is correct and figure out the R-value.

First of all, we cannot use the emerging air temperature to determine the R-value (or vice versa). The air coming out of the box is 13.6°C warmer than ambient (so it is ~34°C). But that is not what dictates the R-value. The R-value depends upon the difference between one side of the aluminum insulation and the other. Objects in the box are warmer than the warmest air, as you would expect. I think the inside of the aluminum insulation must be considerably warmer than the air. It is reflecting heat from the reactor. I think it is heating up the air, just as the reactor is.

If the R-value were 11, as I thought, the insulation would have to be 243°C on the inside. That seems unlikely. If I have mixed up SI and U.S. units, and if R-value should be 1.9 SI, then the inside of the insulation is around 66°C warmer than ambient (the same as the number of watts lost -- same coincidence). Ambient is 20°C so I guess the insulation is ~88°C.

R-value 1.9 = 66 K * (1.9 m^2 / 66 W)

Right?

If all of the heat were transferred to the air, and none of it leaked from the walls, the air would be 16.6°C warmer than ambient. The spreadsheet shows it emerges at 13.6°C warmer than ambient. 3°C is lost through the walls. That's 54 W according to my calibration constant, which is within shouting distance of 66 W from Fig. 2. Figure 2 is probably closer to the truth.

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Thank you Jed. That makes sense: an R value of 1.9 at inner foil temperature of around 80C. Note that this relies on radiation between the reactor and foil surface - because convection would not give temperatures higher than the air stream.

Quote

They are scared.

Who is scared? Why are they scared exactly?

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Mizuno’s replications will be the key for this technology to make it out of the development stage and into the commercial stage.

Cart before horse. As usual. How do you know Mizuno's claims are valid?

I don't understand the THHuxleynew objections. If your concerns are valid, how is it that the working reactor is affected by, for example, losses at the calorimeter/room interface and that same mechanism fails to affect the blank (control) reactor? It's important to keep in mind that, if you believe the report, calibration with Joule heating is consistent and reliable over a range of power input values. And it accurately reflects the thermal energy put into the reactor from the Joule heater. Heat is heat, no?

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I don't understand the THHuxleynew objections. If your concerns are valid, how is it that the working reactor is affected by, for example, losses at the calorimeter/room interface and that same mechanism fails to affect the blank (control) reactor? It's important to keep in mind that, if you believe the report, calibration with Joule heating is consistent and reliable over a range of power input values. And it accurately reflects the thermal energy put into the reactor from the Joule heater. Heat is heat, no?

SoT - my concerns are that some things in the paper did not make sense. They were in fact wrong. Now Jed has explained, over this matter, how they are wrong I'm pleased.

Understanding papers is about understanding their content and seeing how it makes sense. That is all I've tried to do with this paper. It is fun. You don't have to have a desired end result.

It seems to me that some here do have a desired end result, and filter their thinking about the paper through that. Which is understandable, but unhelpful in evaluating the paper quality, or doing the critique needed to make it better.

Let me repeat: to get through a high quality peer review with conscientious reviewers you need all claims to make sense and be coherent. Some CF papers avoid this. They have an excuse, that journals will tend to view CF as crackpot. However that view is enhanced by badly written CF papers, and reduced by well written CF papers.

Writing a good paper is an art: and a satisfying one. Well worth it since it is about communication.

Quote from THHuxleynew

that some things in the paper did not make sense. They were in fact wrong.

THHnew has yet to supply an analytic model of the reactor-box heat transfer

including airstream temperatures..Reynolds Numbers,HTCS,areas etc. for radiative/convective transfer from the reactor surface, from both surfaces of the the box, a total of six heat transfers.

Gross simplifications such as

"Thus while convective transfer stays roughly proportional to dT"

to calculate the net convective heat transfer btw the reactor and the box are wrong

Mizuno reports increased excess heat

They are not analytic, as THHNew purports, but nonsense.

THH makes claims that are poorly coherent.

BTW.. TTHnew as Jed has stated the 2019 paper

is designed for replicators

not for halfbaked review by instant experts

in fluid mechanics/ heat transfer.

Quote from THHuxleynew

you need all claims to make sense and be coherent

THHnew has yet to supply an analytic model of the reactor-box heat transfer

including airstream temperatures..Reynolds Numbers,HTCS,areas etc. for radiative/convective transfer from the reactor surface, from both surfaces of the the box, a total of six heat transfers.

Gross simplifications such as

"Thus while convective transfer stays roughly proportional to dT"

to calculate the net convective heat transfer btw the reactor and the box are wrong

Mizuno reports increased excess heat

They are not analytic, as THHNew purports, but nonsense.

Well, it is true that as I and anonymous have pointed out any full analysis of the calorimeter is very difficult.

It is also true, and now agreed by most of us, that radiation is more significant than convection in heating the insulation foil (convection could not take the temperature above the exhasut, whereas a now recalculated based on erratum on paper temperature of roughly 80C is needed to match the known calorimeter heat loss for reactor at 380C.

So my point here is that things are not perfect, we will not have exact figures nor exact calculations, but approximate (analytic) calculations have utility in guiding thinking and therefore are not nonsense.

In any case surely it does not matter how a better understanding is achieved, as long as we have it?