MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Low thermal mass should make the research go quicker and be more productive. We are still looking at a signal through the thermal mass of a large stainless vessel. For all we know the data could be pretty bumpy with that capacitance. I just don't think this matters. What I care about is scaling up to kW level excess heat to confirm our design assumptions from the previous generation of reactors to be able to scale up with reasonable accuracy.

Quote from Daniel_G

I am an empiricist. With 100% reproducibility we can get excess heat in the exact same amounts in a different lab with different calorimetry. We can argue until the cows come home about how you think the data "should" look. I don't know if that is a productive line of thought. The inflection point may or may not exist and I don't think it really matters. I can get 100s of watts of excess heat at will and soon will be kilowatts and beyond. I don't really get why you think there should be some shape of the data. What does it mean to you if there is no inflection point? If it takes me another 400W of input power to get to 593C from 563C during calibration and the reactor does reach a final temperature of 593 with the reactors and only 563 without them inside then how would you explain the results?

I am making few assumptions. And the ones I am making are simplistic. If one assumes a lumped thermal capacitance, an external heat source as an independent variable, Newtonian cooling, and an internal heat source that turns on relatively quickly as the temperature increases, then you should see the behaviour I mentioned. I make no assumptions about the physical nature of the internal heat source ... it could be chemical or it could be LENR. Doesn't matter.

If you don't see the behaviour I mentioned then I would say you don't have a temperature-activated source of internal heating.

Quote from Bruce__H

I am making few assumptions. And the ones I am making are simplistic. If one assumes a lumped thermal capacitance, an external heat source as an independent variable, Newtonian cooling, and an internal heat source that turns on relatively quickly as the temperature increases, then you should see the behaviour I mentioned. I make no assumptions about the physical nature of the internal heat source ... it could be chemical or it could be LENR. Doesn't matter.

If you don't see the behaviour I mentioned then I would say you don't have a temperature-activated source of internal heating.

With all due respect Bruce_H this is absolute nonsense. How would you explain the difference in temperature achieved without and with reactors then? 400W just shows up magically? How do you explain the 72MJ of excess energy? The HHV of 1g of H2 is 140kJ, yet you can say it must be chemical energy? (or LENR, doesn't matter?) It really does matter. This is the ONLY thing that matters, so my apologies for not following your disjointed arguments.

Why do you expect the internal heat source to turn on quickly? Not only do I disagree with your assumptions but I disagree with your logical conclusions as well. They have no basis in math nor physics, nor are your arguments even logically internally consistent. You say you make assumptions which may or may not be true yet your conclusion is that if you don't see the results that you expect that there is no temperature activated heat source. By your own argument you admit you make assumptions but your conclusion would be true if and only if your assumptions are right, of which there is not any guarantee. Therefore your conclusion is nothing less than meaningless.

Quote from Daniel_G

How do you find excess heat without doing calorimetry?

Daniel, to clarify your description, I used carefully calibrated thermometry in still air at the center of the external reactor surface for my tests. Calibration was repeated eight times, refining the design and protocol with each iteration. The final two calibrations showed a deviation of ±3°C or less over the entire range of input power and reactor temperature up to 390°C. When the Ni mesh (prepared as described by Mizuno and Rothwell) was installed in the reactor, no heat above the calibration bars was seen. A post calibration was also within the error bars.

The "thermal scanning" you mentioned was used to characterize the heat distribution over the surface of the reactor, not for comparison with calibrations. It would also have shown any local hot spots away from the thermocouples used for primary measurements, and none were seen.

Quote from magicsound

Daniel, to clarify your description, I used carefully calibrated thermometry in still air at the center of the external reactor surface for my tests. Calibration was repeated eight times, refining the design and protocol with each iteration. The final two calibrations showed a deviation of ±3°C or less over the entire range of input power and reactor temperature up to 390°C. When the Ni mesh (prepared as described by Mizuno and Rothwell) was installed in the reactor, no heat above the calibration bars was seen. A post calibration was also within the error bars.

The "thermal scanning" you mentioned was used to characterize the heat distribution over the surface of the reactor, not for comparison with calibrations. It would also have shown any local hot spots away from the thermocouples used for primary measurements, and none were seen.

Good to be in touch again. We have two unknown variables here. Your method calibrated thermometry and we don't know if your reactor is actually producing heat. So you have created in my opinion a complex problem. I prefer to work with only one unknown at a time. I don't know the reason for choosing this path but suffice it to say that this is not the way I would choose to proceed.

I have two systems that do work. I suggest comparisons between a known and an unknown and not two unknowns.

PM me again if you want to discuss a way to move forward.

Quote from RobertBryant

"fairly" as in "fairly wildly"

it depends if there is one or several Mizuno reactions

and what is the temperature dependence????

is the heat production a smooth dependence or a discontinuous one

what is the assumed equation????

dQ~+AT-CT2

dQ~... SQRT T. T2 etc etc etc

In addition some inflection is expected when the calorimeter is empty!...according to my reading

according to assumptions...but how obvious the inflection is? is anyone's guess.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5317227/

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Equations of temperature dependence have been published by Mizuno.

Daniel_G

I had thought that you (and Mizuno and Rothwell) believe that the LENR reaction going on inside the treated mesh is such that it is more active at higher temperatures than at room temperature. Is this not correct? If it isn't correct then why do you need to externally heat the reactor?

I have also made the assumption that the time constant for LENR activation is faster than the hours-long heating time constant associated with your present large thermal mass. I think that this assumption probably matches your own picture of what is going on. If it doesn't -- if you think that the LENR reaction turns on more slowly that the time constant of your present reactor -- then what benefit would you derive from moving to a new reactor with a lower thermal mass?

If these 2 assumptions are correct (and I do think that they match what you believe is going on) then in your system I would expect to see inflection points in the heating curve such as I have described. I don't see it and so I wonder what is going on.

The 2 assumptions can be fulfilled by an LENR mechanism, or a chemical mechanism, or by even through electrical heating. It really doesn't matter so far as the time course of the heating curve is concerned ... they should all produce inflections in the heating curve. I mention electrical heating because if you inserted a resistive heater into the centre of your reactor (replacing the Mizuno mesh) and arranged for the heater to turn on above a set temperature, you should also see an inflection in the heating curve. This would allow you to understand how your measurement system should react if you really have what you think. Alan Smith did something like this in the reactors he built for studying the properties of Russ George's LENR fuel.

Quote from Bruce__H

Daniel_G

I had thought that you (and Mizuno and Rothwell) believe that the LENR reaction going on inside the treated mesh is such that it is more active at higher temperatures than at room temperature. Is this not correct? If it isn't correct then why do you need to externally heat the reactor?

I have also made the assumption that the time constant for LENR activation is faster than the hours-long heating time constant associated with your present large thermal mass. I think that this assumption probably matches your own picture of what is going on. If it doesn't -- if you think that the LENR reaction turns on more slowly that the time constant of your present reactor -- then what benefit would you derive from moving to a new reactor with a lower thermal mass?

If these 2 assumptions are correct (and I do think that they match what you believe is going on) then in your system I would expect to see inflection points in the heating curve such as I have described. I don't see it and so I wonder what is going on.

The 2 assumptions can be fulfilled by an LENR mechanism, or a chemical mechanism, or by even through electrical heating. It really doesn't matter so far as the time course of the heating curve is concerned ... they should all produce inflections in the heating curve. I mention electrical heating because if you inserted a resistive heater into the centre of your reactor (replacing the Mizuno mesh) and arranged for the heater to turn on above a set temperature, you should also see an inflection in the heating curve. This would allow you to understand how your measurement system should react if you really have what you think. Alan Smith did something like this in the reactors he built for studying the properties of Russ George's LENR fuel.

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So you can just hand wave away 400W of excess heat because you don’t see any inflection points?

I’m sorry I don’t follow your logic on chemical sources or electrical heating. Could you please explain further with some calculations? 400W for 50h is something like 20MJ of heat. What can react chemically with 150mg of H2 to produce that kind of energy?

I really don’t know what electrical heating means. Like we made a 400W error in our input measurement?

Quote from Daniel_G

I really don’t know what electrical heating means. Like we made a 400W error in our input measurement?

Resistive heating. Take a resistor and put some current through it.

I am not saying that this is a mechanism that explains your results. I am saying that if you replaced the nickel mesh with a resistive heater so configured as to turn on only when the temperature of the reactor increases, you would have a sort of physical model replicating some of the properties of what you believe is LENR heating in your system. This would enable you to understand how your reactor system should behave. You should see an inflection in the heating curve and I just wonder why you don't.

At one point I posted extensive explanations about all this for discussions of Russ George's results. But that thread was taken down, apparently at the insistence of George himself, and the explanations appear to be lost. However I think I still have Excel spreadsheets illustrating how the heating curves should look assuming a simple model of temperature-activated heating in a reactor with Newtonian cooling. I will search for them.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Foam enclosure mass air flow results from last year.

Probably it could have been even tighter

It don't get any tighter than that!

Quote from Bruce__H

Resistive heating. Take a resistor and put some current through it.

I am not saying that this is a mechanism that explains your results. I am saying that if you replaced the nickel mesh with a resistive heater so configured as to turn on only when the temperature of the reactor increases, you would have a sort of physical model replicating some of the properties of what you believe is LENR heating in your system. This would enable you to understand how your reactor system should behave. You should see an inflection in the heating curve and I just wonder why you don't.

At one point I posted extensive explanations about all this for discussions of Russ George's results. But that thread was taken down, apparently at the insistence of George himself, and the explanations appear to be lost. However I think I still have Excel spreadsheets illustrating how the heating curves should look assuming a simple model of temperature-activated heating in a reactor with Newtonian cooling. I will search for them.

Bruce_H, I am sorry but I can't follow your logic. The only power going into the system is a DC power supply running through a Joule heater. That is what we otherwise call input power. That is monitored and therefore accounted for. The only way it could explain excess heat is via measurement error. You don't think I can measure DC power within a few tenths of a percent? Or you are proposing someone broke into the lab and installed an extra heater in the night? I mean, seriously please give me an explanation that makes even one iota of sense.

You completely ignored my question about your suggestion that there might be a chemical explanation. Please show me your calculations were any chemical reaction can produce 72MJ of heat with 150mg of H2. Again I am open minded but hand waving isn't going to cut it here. 72 MJ is more power than the 59MJ that the JET hot fusion reactor produced. And you are yawning at our 72MJ. The longest running reactors have literally ran for years producing something on the order of 9 GJ. Ok I see you are not impressed because you don't see your coveted inflection points.

I don't do science the way you do it. The data is my boss not theories. The data comes first. I see what I see. Even after several rounds of back and forth with you, I see no reason that an inflection point is necessary. The input power and resulting equilibrium temperatures are the only two variables required. The null hypothesis is zero excess heat. We were able to falsify this with more than 5 sigmas (closer to 20 in some cases). But OK since no inflection points I guess the excess heat must be a systematic error I guess you are saying.

But wait: the same results were obtained from Mizuno's air flow calorimetry and an adiabatic calorimeter in a different lab. You now want to claim a one in a trillion chance of a different systematic error with two completely different systems? In an airflow calorimeter Newtonian cooling is relevant but in an adiabatic calorimeter, its not.

I don't tell my experimental apparatuses how they should behave. I try that with my kids but it also doesn't work... I properly design experiments and I take painstaking data. I try to remove as many variables as I can and I try to account for all the uncertainties. Theorizing about inflection points is not on my to do list.

Quote from Bruce__H

At one point I posted extensive explanations about all this for discussions of Russ George's results. But that thread was taken down, apparently at the insistence of George himself, and the explanations appear to be lost. However I think I still have Excel spreadsheets illustrating how the heating curves should look assuming a simple model of temperature-activated heating in a reactor with Newtonian cooling. I will search for them

See my earlier comments on the use of PID temperature controllers -which Daniel_G was not, but Russ and I were. Programmed properly they are very smart at controlling the rate of heating and work in concert with other sources of heat to avoid overshoots and excursions.

Quote from Alan Smith

See my earlier comments on the use of PID temperature controllers -which Daniel_G was not, but Russ and I were. Programmed properly they are very smart at controlling the rate of heating and work in concert with other sources of heat to avoid overshoots and excursion

Yes. I recall. No problem with that.

Daniel_G

Here is a zipped folder with an excel spreadsheet that calculates the temperature timecourse of cooling from an initial high temperature after external heating is shut off. The timecourse is in the lower plot. You can see an inflection in the curve. I chose to model cooling instead of heating just because it is easier to code it into the spreadsheet. The inflection is seen during both cooling and heating.

The reactor here is modeled as a lumped thermal mass undergoing Newtonian cooling and also undergoing heating from an internal source whose activity is temperature dependent. That is it. That is the whole model. It is intentionally simplistic.

The temperature-dependence of Newtonian cooling and internal heating is shown in the plot in the upper left. The Newtonian cooling part is just rudimentary physics. The internal heating depends sigmoidally on temperature. Internal heating is low at low temperatures and goes to a maximum at high temperatures. This is roughly what I think you (and Mizuno and Rothwell) are suggesting for your LENR mechanism. The precise properties of the activation are controlled by parameter settings in the yellow highlighted cells. "a_max" is the strength of the internal heating, "s" controls how steep the temperature dependence is, and "T_1/2" is the temperature at which the internal heating is half activated. You can play around with these and see how they affect the timecourse of cooling. Setting "a_max" to zero turns off the internal heating altogether and you get a purely exponential timecourse.

I chose not to tie down a particular value for "k", the heat transfer, because this changes with the nature and size of the thermal mass you are dealing with. Instead, I have set it to a value of k=1 which renders everything into dimensionless time units -- you can think of time here as being expressed in terms of thermal time constants. A large thermal mass will mean that a thermal time constant is many hours and a small thermal mass will mean that the time constant is much shorter.

In sum ... this is rudimentary standard physics (Newtonian cooling) combined with internal heating having characteristics of the type I think you you claim to have. This model show what happens when you combine the two.

Temperature-dependent LENR.zip

Quote from Daniel_G

You completely ignored my question about your suggestion that there might be a chemical explanation.

I haven't suggested that your results might be explained chemically. I haven't made any particular suggestion about how to explain your results.

Quote from Daniel_G

The longest running reactors have literally ran for years producing something on the order of 9 GJ

As I see it... Big thanks for all the effort engineering the nuclear reactive environment in your lab, improving that engineering and sharing what you can with us here. That is an inflection point summed up as, I trust you, your team, your data and your skills. Continuing success in your efforts.

Quote from JedRothwell

It don't get any tighter than that!

Actually it gets a fair bit better.

The DC measurements were recorded every two seconds, and are straight as a line can be. The DC supply is smooth as can be.

The AC measurements were collected every 10 minutes or so, were 100% outlet AC with no conditioning, and the shop voltage has a habit of lazily wandering between 115.7 and 119.3 V. For most things, that won't be a big deal. For a 12.5 ohm resistor, it makes a noticeable difference.

edit:

The AC was used on Sylvania incandescent lamps, and they were perfectly on W output spec at the rated voltage but getting actual 120V to them was rare so they were 97W at 100W rated, etc.

At one point a 75 W rated “Blacklight” tested reported 65-67W, (way off trend), and seems to be 130V rated but 120V marked.