Mizuno reports increased excess heat

    But how about then the air temperature alone indicates 150 W excess, as shown in Fig. 6? That is even more compelling. That is before adjusting for the losses from the calorimeter box walls. THH and his handwaving cannot explain that.


    Jed, I'm happy for anyone to criticise me. I'm not happy when you make this sort of rhetorical comment that shows you have either misread or ignored what I've posted in this thread many many times.


    Read my lips:

    The airflow errors cannot explain R20 Fig 6. However, this is a sample result with a new heater and I suggest a mistake that might not have been checked and could explain this. Mainly however I think it unfair to Mizuno (would be to any scientist) to rest too much credence on this very early pre-published result. It is very compelling, and if it stands there will no doubt soon be much more complete evidence validated by others and I will entirely agree this is extraordinary.

    Quote from Ascoli65

    So, I understand that the portable wattmeter you plugged into the wall is a "third check" of the "power input", the other two being the product V/DC*I/DC and the wired instrument, probably another wattmeter, connected with the HP A/D converter, which provides the data listed in the "Power input" column of the Mizuno's spreadsheets. Can you confirm this?


    The other meter is a Yokogawa PZ 4000 gadget costing $16,000. Old, but it still works. See: https://tmi.yokogawa.com/solut…rs/pz4000-power-analyzer/


    Quote from Ascoli65

    If this is the case, the main question is why the measured data from the wired wattmeter which should have appeared on the spreadsheet of the 120 W active test wewe instead substituted by the values obtained by multiplying V/DC and I/DC (*)?


    Can you figure out the possible implications of such a substitution?


    As I said, the spreadsheet numbers come from the same A/D unit. There are no implications from the "substitution" as you call it. The power and total energy is the same to many decimal places from all three devices.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    The other meter is a Yokogawa PZ 4000 gadget costing $16,000. Old, but it still works. See: https://tmi.yokogawa.com/solut…rs/pz4000-power-analyzer/



    As I said, the spreadsheet numbers come from the same A/D unit. There are no implications from the "substitution" as you call it. The power and total energy is the same to many decimal places from all three devices.


    Jed - you are not getting this. The wattmeter measurements shown during the cal run are clearly NOT the same as V*I - as would be expected from a different instrument. That is not a problem, in fact it means a wattmeter was used, which is good.


    The power measurements shown during the active run are too close to V*I to be anything other than calculated. This is the same issue as the anenometer where you eventually agreed that air velocity column was calculated from the blower power.


    The issue is the different methodology, and the fact that calculated V*I i is susceptible to rms / average measurement errors giving systematic false positive COP if the heater voltage has significant ripple, whereas wattmeter is not.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    (1) ambiguity on spreadsheet between what is calculated and what is measured is nothing new.


    That wasn't the ambiguity I was referring to. The ambiguity is in the note which appears on the spreadsheet on top of the "Input power" column: "V/DC*I/DC but probably measured directly with a wattmeter"


    The ambiguity is: the data reported in the "Input power" column of the spreadsheets

    were obtained by multiplying the values listed in the V/DC and I/DC columns

    **OR**

    were directly measured with a wattmeter?


    For what I have seen in the two spreadsheets of the 120W active and control tests held on May 2016 (*), the "Input power" of the control test comes from a wattmeter, while the "input power" reported for the active test was obtained by multiplication.


    Can you understand the possible implications of this hypothesis?


    It's not a matter of waveform, rms or ripples! We are dealing with claimed COPs allegedly ranging from 2 to 6 and beyond!


    (*) Mizuno reports increased excess heat



    Hi Ascoli. I understand that. Implications:


    (1) If heater voltage is DC low ripple than V*I and wattmeter result will be the same (roughly) as they are during the cal run.

    (2) If heater voltage has significant ac component then average V * average I (which you have shown was used) will under-read the real power (as would have been measured by the wattmeter). The underreading could give COP = 2 quite easily, COP = 6 possible but would require a definitely spiky waveform not likely from a bench PSU even when current limiting.

    (3) I can't say this is deliberate. To manually enter those wattmeter values would be a pain, might only be done once during cal to check V*I is OK. Or, in active runs there might have been need to use a/d inputs for another sensor. It is careless, and bad practice, but not sinister.


    PS - OK - you mean perhaps a wattmeter on the INPUT of the PSU!


    Yes, that would be a big difference! The inverse of the bench PSU efficiency would then be a systematic false positive. Surely that could not have been done? Jed?


    EDIT - ignore this - not a problem

    • The airflow errors cannot explain R20 Fig 6. However, this is a sample result with a new heater and I suggest a mistake that might not have been checked and could explain this. Mainly however I think it unfair to Mizuno (would be to any scientist) to rest too much credence on this very early pre-published result. It is very compelling, and if it stands there will no doubt soon be much more complete evidence validated by others and I will entirely agree this is extraordinary.
    • Why not leave this discussion of possible errors to a post-mortem session after more replication results have come in? Whilst it has been a useful exercise in identifying possible error sources arising in JR and TM's work, many replicators may be discouraged by this and lose the initial enthusiasm inspired by their honest & transparent disclosures.
    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    I don’t disbelieve you. However, for example, maybe there is an undetected error that “loses” 10 W, and some other error that adds 10W so everything appears to square up at 95%. How do you know the difference?


    If there were an undetected error of 10 W, I do not think Fig. 3 would be linear. I do not think the undetected error would increase in magnitude just enough to remain hidden over a range of power levels.


    There have to be losses from the reactor box walls. There is no such thing as perfect insulation. The walls are slightly warm, as shown with IR detectors. So, we know that has to be one source of loss. If there were another significant hidden source, I do not think the two of them together would be linear. Of course there are other loss paths, such as heat conducted by the pipes and wires, but this system is probably too insensitive and noisy to detect them. I expect a more precise system would show a non-linear response at the extremes (low power and high power). That tends to happen. See, for example, Miles, Fig. 5:


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


    The cell constant is nice and linear above 0.6 W, but below that it is not constant at all. It is an inconstant constant; an oxymoron. Quoting Miles:


    ". . . This effect of the power level on the apparent cell constant (K) and heat transfer coefficient (h = 1/k) is shown in Figure 5 for our experimental results for thermistor 1 in cell A (Figure 3). The neglect of the intercept term in Equation 4 produces significant errors in the apparent cell constant for power levels below about 0.6 W. All of the calorimetric data reported by N. Lewis et. al. is near or below a total power level of 0.6 W, hence his use of the approximate relationship, Ρ « ∆Τ/h, is likely a large source of error."


    I expect if you ran Mizuno's calorimeter at low power or high power with a quiet ambient background, you would see similar distortions. But as it happens that his ambient is so noisy, anything below 2 W is lost in the noise, as you see in Fig. 7.


    A calorimeter only works over a certain range of power. It is designed for a given range. It has to be calibrated to confirm it is actually working over that range. At lower power, it either becomes non-linear (which you can account for, if you know what you are doing), or it starts to drown in noise (which cannot be fixed or accounted for). At higher power this one gets hotter and hotter until something breaks, I suppose. I don't know what happens to it.

    Quote from Dr Richard
    • The airflow errors cannot explain R20 Fig 6. However, this is a sample result with a new heater and I suggest a mistake that might not have been checked and could explain this. Mainly however I think it unfair to Mizuno (would be to any scientist) to rest too much credence on this very early pre-published result. It is very compelling, and if it stands there will no doubt soon be much more complete evidence validated by others and I will entirely agree this is extraordinary.
    • Why not leave this discussion of possible errors to a post-mortem session after more replication results have come in? Whilst it has been a useful exercise in identifying possible error sources arising in JR and TM's work, many replicators may be discouraged by this and lose the initial enthusiasm inspired by their honest & transparent disclosures.


    I'm a great believer in full disclosure, and not trying to put spin on things to influence others. Replicators are (if competent) serious enough to come to their own conclusions, and the more accurate analysis they have the better for all. Most are convinced by R20, which is fair enough.

    There have to be losses from the reactor box walls. There is no such thing as perfect insulation. The walls are slightly warm, as shown with IR detectors. So, we know that has to be one source of loss. If there were another significant hidden source, I do not think the two of them together would be linear. Of course there are other loss paths, such as heat conducted by the pipes and wires, but this system is probably too insensitive and noisy to detect them.


    I thought initially that heat losses should be roughly linear (proportional to power), leading to a roughly constant efficiency over a range of powers.


    Then I reckoned that the natural convection cooling of the calorimeter box determines in part the external wall temperature and this component is maybe non-linear. But I'm not very confident about how all this works. It is a complex system because of the forced air cooling.

    Quote from Ascoli65

    That wasn't the ambiguity I was referring to. The ambiguity is in the note which appears on the spreadsheet on top of the "Input power" column: "V/DC*I/DC but probably measured directly with a wattmeter"


    I do not know who wrote that note, so I cannot address the issue. It does not sound like I wrote it. I am sure there is no significant difference measuring power to a resistance heater with these different instruments. If you disagree, I suggest you try it, rather than spinning out these endless, useless, idiotic fantasies and veiled accusations. You and THH live in a fantasy land where nothing is real and anything might be true. You really ought to try measuring electricity yourself.

    If we had the exact equipment used for each run, as would be the case in a formal test report, we could, at least in theory. Without that it is not possible, so the uncertainty remains.


    What do you think about (maybe ascoli's) point that the wattmeter could have been put on the input (mains) side of the supply psu. It seems unlikely to me, but can you rule it out?


    EDIT - PS I'm being stupid here, the cal wattmeter column was roughly the same as V * I so there is no problem there. Forget about input side connection!

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    If we had the exact equipment used for each run, as would be the case in a formal test report, we could, at least in theory. Without that it is not possible, so the uncertainty remains.


    Nonsense. Different equipment was used and it produced exactly the same air temperature Delta T. You cannot tell which data points came from which test. They are smack on top of one another. More to the point, what do you think calorimeter are for? How do you think they are used? Do you think they only work with one sample, in one cell, at one power level? Do you think that Ed Storms can never insert a different sized cell or a cell with different configuration into one of his Seebeck calorimeters, because all of sudden, it will stop working for no apparent reason? This is like suggesting you can only cook turkey weighing 10.5 lbs in a given oven, and 6 lb turkey or any sort of roast beef will burn up, or after several hours it will still be raw.


    In all cases, in every lab, in every calorimeter, researchers begin by calibrating. The calibration shows a balance of zero. No excess heat, no unknown deficit larger or smaller than the deficit recorded previously with that cell, or with any other other cell. With Mizuno's calorimeter, the response is the same whether you calibrate with a 50 kg monster cell, or 1.5 kg cell, or a resistance heater sitting out in the open. It is exactly the same. You cannot tell which number came from which device, unless you look at the date of the spreadsheet. Those are facts, experimentally proved. Actually data. What you are saying here is pure bullshit. It is fantasy intended to introduce doubt where no doubt exists. You want the readers to ignore the calibrations, ignore years of work by Mizuno, ignore the data, ignore the textbooks about calorimetry, ignore the laws of physics, and instead, to buy into your pretend fantasy that there might be something wrong and that "uncertainty remains." This is the Flat Earth Society form of uncertainty that "remains" despite a mountain of proof that it has no basis. You don't believe a single cold fusion result from anyone! Not Miles or McKubre or anyone else, because in your mind uncertainty always remains.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    What do you think about (maybe ascoli's) point that the wattmeter could have been put on the input (mains) side of the supply psu. It seems unlikely to me, but can you rule it out?


    That is where it is put. That's the only place you can put the $75 meter. It resembles this gadget:


    https://www.amazon.com/Digital…G5/ref=asc_df_B07M8JKLG5/


    As I said, you turn on the power supply when it is not connected to anything, to measure overhead. Then later you subtract that to determine how much power is going into the resistance heater. At higher power this becomes a little inaccurate. If that bothers you, feel free to pretend that every joule of electricity goes from the mains into the resistance heater, and the power supply is at room temperature. There would still be massive excess heat if that were true.


    The PZ8000 can go anywhere, of course.

    Different equipment was used and it produced exactly the same air temperature Delta T. You cannot tell which data points came from which test. They are smack on top of one another.


    I understand that will often be the case. But have you documented calibrating using the new style reactor, swapped over so that it mimics the active reactor, and with a cal reactor next door to duplicate airflow exactly?


    Just saying "it is always the same" without specifying what has been varied is not convincing.


    Similarly with the input side issue. Easy for things to be the same when tested once and after many months become different due to different eqpt etc.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Hi Ascoli. I understand that. Implications:


    (1) If heater voltage is DC low ripple than V*I and wattmeter result will be the same (roughly) as they are during the cal run.


    Sorry, THH, maybe I'm not able to explain correctly what I mean, but no, this is not my point. Forget the ripples, please. Assume there is none.


    As you correctly said, V*I and wattmeter results should always be ROUGHLY the same, as shown in the second graph of my jpeg (*), but NOT EXACTLY the same as shown in the first graph of the same jpeg.


    As for the control test, the discrepancy P-VxI - which ranges from -0.4 to +0.4 W - and the difference in the P and VxI shapes assure us that the "Input power" signal came from the wattmeter. Pay attention, please, not from the cheap portable wattmeter (Sanwa WattChecker, 75$) brought with him by JR, but from the expensive wattmeter (Yokogawa PZ 4000, 16000 $) which was connected to the HP data logger.


    On the contrary, the substantial identity between the "Input power" values and the "V/DC*I/DC" product shown in the active test spreadsheet strongly suggests that the original data coming from the Yokogawa wattmeter were substituted, in this only case, by the values obtained by simply multiplying the V/DC and I/DC columns.


    Quote

    (2) If heater voltage has significant ac component then average V * average I (which you have shown was used) will under-read the real power (as would have been measured by the wattmeter). The underreading could give COP = 2 quite easily, COP = 6 possible but would require a definitely spiky waveform not likely from a bench PSU even when current limiting.


    No, as said before, forget any AC component. A COP of 2 or 6 can only come from a big mess in the input circuitry. IMO the most suspicious candidate to be the cause of these huge errors is the shunt resistor used to measure the DC current.


    Quote

    (3) I can't say this is deliberate. To manually enter those wattmeter values would be a pain, might only be done once during cal to check V*I is OK. Or, in active runs there might have been need to use a/d inputs for another sensor. It is careless, and bad practice, but not sinister.


    No need to manually enter the wattmeter values. As said before, the Yokogawa PZ 4000 wattmeter is directly connected to the HP data logger. You are making confusion with the portable Sanwa WattChecker wattmeter plugged in by JR.


    Quote

    PS - OK - you mean perhaps a wattmeter on the INPUT of the PSU!


    Yes, I assume that the Yokogawa PZ 4000 wattmeter is placed upwards of all the circuitry, hence upwards of the PSU too.


    Anyway, I repeat the main question: why these "Input power" values directly measured by the Yokogawa wattmeter and recorded by the HP data logger appear only on the control test spreadsheet and not in the active test one?


    (*) Mizuno reports increased excess heat


    OK, Jed there is something strange here. Even a good switching PSU would have 10% losses. Typically a lab PSU as Mizuno says he used for R20 much higher losses. A nonregulated PSU will have lower losses, but that will give large ripple on the output with the average/rms measurement problem boosting the apparent active run COP.


    This does not make sense because the power column matches. So this must then be calculated power from the wattmeter modified by PSU quiescent power.


    For a lab PSU (regulated) that is likely to result in a high apparent COP because of low efficiency. But it could be anything - it depends on the PSU and the function used to calculate power from the wattmeter readings.


    I am now very worried about this. How do you know the R20 X4 (uncorrected COP) is not just a lab PSU run with a 25% efficiency - quite possible - so that the calibration run heater element power is 25% of what it is expected to be?


    That is not a problem if the R20 calibration run has V and I data as well because we can check the wattmeter value against the actual V and I values?



    I believe that digging into those sort of issues is important. For the same reason that an accountant will dig into the data if there is a 1 cent discrepancy. It could be fine, or it could be a much bigger issue.

    Why compute input power differently for the active and control tests? If it was Rossi we would be accusing him of trying to pull a trick.

    Since it's Mizuno, it's probably not a big deal, but it would be unfortunate to dismiss it as some skeptopathic fantasy.


    Do we have similar data available for the more recent runs?

    Quote from JedRothwell

    I do not know who wrote that note, so I cannot address the issue. It does not sound like I wrote it.


    For sure, it was not written by Mizuno. He should have known if the "Input power" were obtained by multiplying V and I or came from the wattmeter. Who others could have written that note?


    Quote

    I am sure there is no significant difference measuring power to a resistance heater with these different instruments. If you disagree, I suggest you try it, rather than spinning out these endless, useless, idiotic fantasies and veiled accusations.


    I don't disagree. Normally, there is little difference, of course. But the crucial question is: why the wattmeter reading was substituted by the VxI product for the active test only? Could you ask Mizuno?


    Quote

    You and THH live in a fantasy land where nothing is real and anything might be true.


    Well, I can speak only for myself and, yes, after having followed the CF/LENR saga for a few years, I'm fully aware of this!

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