MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Quote from Bruce__H

When you make these design calculations for a power reactor, is it not relevant to also keep track of the input power needed to reach the operating temperature? What input power per cm2 is needed to achieve 600C ?

We use electrical power for physics experiments due to the fact that it's easy to measure. Do you follow the power of the battery/starter motor when you consider a 300HP Diesel engine?

No input power is required if your control system removes only the excess heat. Envision a system that reaches operating temperature of 600C and continues heating to 650C. A heat transfer medium leaving the reactor at 650C and returning at 600C would require input power? (hint: the answer is no) Just like we don't leave the starter motor running on a Diesel engine...

Quote from Daniel_G

I cannot follow your flip flops either. You seem to move the goal posts with every post.

No. I have been consistent but I think you are misreading what I say. I think that COP is meaningful and useful. I also think that absolute excess energy is meaningful and useful. They are intimately related because they are both calculated from the same observations.

You commented that you think that COP is meaningless because it can be altered by adding insulation to the calorimeter. But I am pointing out that that absolute excess heat would also be altered by the same thing. So I didn't understand why you wouldn't also regard it meaningless. I now understand that you want to use absolute excess power in calculations to design a scaled-up reactor and that you think that COP is not useful for this purpose. So this appears to be the reason why you think that COP is meaningless.

You can see why I was confused can't you? You said the reason COP is useless is because it can be altered by reactor configuration,. But I think you regard it as useless for a different reason.

What some may not be aware of is that I built a Mizuno type acrylic calorimeter, then slowly tested each main item, including a series of insulation tests. I tried many configurations to see how insulation affected the operation of the calorimeter. That’s how I know that the box can be insulated on three sides and the top but front open and get 85 % recovery. The “TV” version had a 70 cm x 30 cm opening to look inside (the acrylic is still closed). Earlier I had tested an uninsulated corrugated cardboard box that worked great. It worked almost identically to the acrylic box in temperature performance but actually went to steady state 2 hours sooner than the bare acrylic. That test lead me to getting rid of the acrylic and building the present version.

Quote from Daniel_G

I agree Para tends to be passionate about some things that I can't agree upon but Brucisms at least superficially shows some troll-like features such as lack of logic and internal inconsistencies.

From my perspective I have been logical and internally consistent. These are things I care about so if you can point out where you think I am being illogical or inconsistent then I am willing to answer.

Quote from Daniel_G

Irregardless, I still enjoyed the exchange about the sigmoids and think his concerns were addressed sufficiently (although he may not feel the same).

Well yes and no. When you asked me to put numbers around why I expected an inflection point in the your heating curve I supplied a spreadsheet containing a simple model that embodied some of the characteristics that people claim for LENR heating. That spreadsheet was created by me in Fall 2018 for thinking about Russ George's LENR reactor. When you asked me why I proposed a sigmoidal dependence of heating on temperature I replied that, first, it seemed to be how George's reactor worked based on what I knew at the time and, second, that I thought that an ever-increasing rate of heating with increasing temperature was unphysical. I then invited you to play around with the parameters of the model to see that, indeed, the existence of inflection points in the heating or cooling curves are a feature of such systems.

I don't see anything wrong with any of this and I still stand by it. You will still get inflection points with a purely exponential dependence of heating rate on temperature. I'm not demanding a sigmoidal activation curve. That is just what I used in 2018 and what is implicit in the Arrhenius relation that Mizuno used.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

If 10% increases in calorimeter recovery result in a logarithmic heat increase then the Joule heater that heats it infinitely more effectively than insulation doing nothing should melt it instantly. I’m not talking about insulation on the reactor itself.

The increase is not that effective. A higher temperature usually increases the reaction rate, but it does not increase it much, and the effect reaches an upper limit. The point is, with enough insulation, input power can be reduced. It seems that if you heat a cell initially in a well insulated cell or a well insulated calorimeter, you should be able to gradually reduce input power down to zero. That seems to be the case, but I don't know anyone who has done that. As I said earlier, you don't actually want to work with a well-insulated cell or calorimeter, because you cannot instantaneously remove insulation. Whereas you can back off resistance heating. Also, having a lot of insulation makes the response time of the calorimeter slow.

Anyway, the ratio of output power to input power, or COP, or whatever you want to call it, is arbitrary. It is not meaningful. It would have to be high in a practical device, but in an experiment it does not matter.

Quote from Bruce__H

No. I have been consistent but I think you are misreading what I say. I think that COP is meaningful and useful. I also think that absolute excess energy is meaningful and useful. They are intimately related because they are both calculated from the same observations.

You commented that you think that COP is meaningless because it can be altered by adding insulation to the calorimeter. But I am pointing out that that absolute excess heat would also be altered by the same thing. So I didn't understand why you wouldn't also regard it meaningless. I now understand that you want to use absolute excess power in calculations to design a scaled-up reactor and that you think that COP is not useful for this purpose. So this appears to be the reason why you think that COP is meaningless.

You can see why I was confused can't you? You said the reason COP is useless is because it can be altered by reactor configuration,. But I think you regard it as useless for a different reason.

Bruce, if you look at the quotes I sent you say the exact opposite things and subtly change your argument each time you post. Just scroll back and look.

Again, if you go back and reread my posts you are just plain incorrect. COP and excess energy are not intimately related. Period. Full stop. They are independent factors. COP is related to insulation. Exh is related to temperature and cm2 or cm3. Insulation ≠ temperature & cm2, so where is the "intimate relationship" you allude to? Hint: it doesn't exist.

COP can be altered by calorimeter configuration, not reactor configuration. Reactors respond to temperature and temperature only. Again I think you are having a hard time differentiating between a proof of concept calorimetry experiment and real world devices. I tried to give you a concrete example of how we at MTI think and why we never discuss COP. Unless your goal is to write endless academic papers, there is no meaning to discuss COP. Investors want to know what a real world practical device will look like, what it will cost to produce and how much you can sell it for. Nothing else matters.

I hate to have to repeat myself so many times but if your device requires ELECTRICAL input for continued use such as Brillouin's device, then COPs are important. If you are running a hot fusion experiment and have to run electromagnets, chillers, lasers, vacuum pumps, etc. then COP matters greatly. Mizuno's reactors don't require any electrical input. We use electric heating only because its easy to measure. Exh is related to temperature only. That's what I meant that there is so much confusion about COP because the precise meaning is different for each device. For MTI it's meaningless since we can extract only the excess heat with simple, modern control technology.

COP is infinity in real world practical devices when you extract only Exh.

Jed, I think you may not be aware of our recent details. In our last validation, at 295C Exh was about 10W. At 590C it goes to >600W, or about 60x with a doubling of temperature. The relationship is exponential. Not sure what you mean when you say "not much" and that it "reaches an upper limit." Perhaps in some older data, that was the case but certainly not in anything that I have seen. The only upper limit I am aware of is the annealing temperature of the materials it's made out of. As we continue to push the upper limits of temperature, material selection even for the calorimeter becomes a big challenge as you move up to and beyond 1000C. The exponential increase in power that we have observed has no upper limit so far. Perhaps there was some different data that you saw before I arrived, but these days all we see is a massive increase in Exh with temperature.

I know I owe you and everyone here more details but I am waiting for some additional calibration data before I write the final report. Hopefully it will come soon.

Quote from Curbina

Out from memory, both Brillouin and Clean Planet have focused solely on COP. Brillouin has worked comprehensively on reviewing and fine tuning their calorimetry and overall energy balance measuring methods to meet stringent standards, mostly because this is the aspect where skeptics still focus to dismiss the claims.

yes I think CP has reported a COP of 1200 with some nanowatts of absolute power. Someone please correct me if I am wrong but that's what I remember reading. I guess they had some picowatts of input? I may be completely off base here but that's what I remember. Whether its true or not, it does illustrate the absurdity of using COP. The numbers can be hacked. With all due respect to the team at CP, they did seem to convince Miura and Mitsubishi to cough up some serious cash. Maybe my obstinate insistence that COP is meaningless is the wrong way to think?

Brillouin is a different story as they are required to use electrical power to make their pulse stimulation so COP very much does matter here. I don't know enough about what CP is doing to comment on them but despite our legal battles, I do wish all our competitors the best of luck. I don't mean this snidely. This field will grow for all of us when multiple players are competing with real world devices.

Whatever Brillouin is doing, they seem to have convinced investors to cough up some pretty big chunks of cash also, so kudos to them. They must be doing something right. We are still chugging along but haven't raised anywhere near the amounts that either of these guys did. Being closer to Silicon Valley doesn't hurt either.

We are taking the slow and steady route and being poor has actually helped us to drive innovation so there are always some silver linings. The horse race will hopefully get very interesting soon.

Quote from Daniel_G

COP and excess energy are not intimately related. Period. Full stop. They are independent factors.

Maybe this is where we are having trouble. I had thought, from what you said, that COP = Output / Input and absolute excess heat (which I will call AXH) = Output - Input. For a given input power, doesn't this mean that COP = 1 + (AXH / Input)? Have I got this wrong?

Quote from Daniel_G

The relationship is exponential. Not sure what you mean when you say "not much" and that it "reaches an upper limit."

By "not much" I mean it does not get so hot, so quickly, that the device might melt. That was the scenario described above. Also, as far as I know, after a while increased temperature no longer increases the reaction rate. The effect of temperature plateaus. That's what the data showed years ago.

"Exponential" does not always mean drastic, or large. The exponent might be 1.1.

Quote from RobertBryant

What is the maximum temperature so far? 550C?

Above 550C you have to use high grade chemical reactor steel for reactor construction else you start to loose hydrogen and embrittlement can harm. Our steel can go up to 1100C. For higher T you must switch to other material. Depending on pressure there is not much choice. One possibility is graphite. In the medium range some high tech ceramics work well.

Quote from Daniel_G

In our last validation, at 295C Exh was about 10W. At 590C it goes to >600W, or about 60x with a doubling of temperature.

I had an out-gassing problem with my 304 stainless steel cell when over 350°C. Nitrogen and CO₂ both appeared along with water vapor from the reduction of oxides. Post-testing with vacuum showed no leakage issues. For operation at 500°C or higher, a ceramic inside coating would probably help with this. It would have to be thermally matched to the steel COE. Maybe an exhaust header coating would work, something like cerakote or jet-hot.

Quote from magicsound

For operation at 500°C or higher, a ceramic inside coating would probably help with this

Best/most expensive would be to use a tantalum coating! There are new electro plating processes for doing it. The other, much simpler alternative is to evacuate the reactor with two high voltage feed through's and just burn/explode a thin tantalum wire with at least 6000C (boiling point 5731C....) May be applying a negative voltage on the reactor could make the deposition more homogeneous.

Bruce_H, you increase COP by increasing insulation. You increase excess heat by increasing temperature or reactor size. Those two phenomenon are unrelated although the variables in the mathematical formulas are the same the formulas themselves are not the same. The two phenomena are unrelated and independent.

There is no point in discussing the theory and mechanism of the CF phenomenon, which has not been completed yet. First of all, it is important to do many tests by yourself and accumulate data. In particular, it is meaningless to discuss the upper and lower limits of this phenomenon, such as the amount of excess heat generated, the duration, materials, and temperature.

What Mizuno is trying to say is basically the same thing that Curbina said and I have been saying: We first get data then models follow. You don't make a model that you don't fully understand and then falsify data that doesn't fit your model. It's exactly backwards from the way real science is done. There is still a lot we do not know. We cannot discuss upper limits until someone has the proper equipment to test at those temperatures. This is not a trivial problem. Real science is boring with a lot of hard and tedious work. I am focusing only on getting some more outside validations and moving forward with scaling up to larger reactors with larger outputs. The data from those devices should help to show whether we are on the right track or not.

Quote from Daniel_G

Real science is boring with a lot of hard and tedious work. I am focusing only on getting some more outside validations and moving forward with scaling up to larger reactors with larger outputs. The data from those devices should help to support whether we are on the right track or not.

And made all the harder when questioned every step of the way...on a public forum, for all the LENR community to see! We understand you did not have to subject yourselves to this informal peer review, but very much appreciate that you did.

Both you and mizunotadahiko have been perfect gentlemen. Thank you.