The "problem" of excess energy in cavitation heating commercial products

Quote from Curbina

AFAIK EarthTech used the MOAC to evaluate this claims and they reported no overunity (1,01 to be precise).

They could not have tested the Hydrodynamics gadget with the MOAC. The Hydrodnamics machine is the size of truck engine, and it consumes (and produces) ~100 kW. Maybe you mean EarthTech tested some other sonofusion device, such as Stringham's. I don't recall anything like that.

Various people have tested the Hydrodynamics machine, mainly facility engineers at customer sites such as a fire department. They found considerable excess heat that comes and goes. It is typically around 115% of input HOWEVER without excess heat, they measure only ~85% of input because the device radiates a terrific amount of heat. Enough to kill you if you were be pushed against it. As much as a hot truck engine.

The most convincing tests were done by people from Georgia Tech with a superb set of instruments, that cost about $100,000 as I recall. It was a gigantic flow calorimeter. I witnessed some of the tests and I have data from them. I thought the tests were fairly conclusive. They were better than the early tests sparging water because they could continue indefinitely. With sparging, once you reach a high temperature after about 15 minutes you have to stop. There was some question about stored heat during the start up phase. Anyway, with the flow calorimetry, when excess heat was produced, these tests usually showed 100% to 115%. Again, that may not seem significant but -- as noted in the report -- the machine should only produce about 85% because much of the heat was not captured in the water. As I recall, the authors included some weasel words acknowledging this but saying it wasn't over 100% in most cases so they could not reach a conclusion, which is ridiculous.

I think with those instruments there is no likelihood of a 15% error. I can probably upload the report and people can judge for themselves, I guess.

Quote from Curbina

Jed Rothwell also brought hydrodynamics up in the comments of the ICCF 22 news and reports thread. He also noticed the drop of all overunity claims.

I did not "notice" that. They told me.

Quote from Alan Smith

I cannot recall EarthTech ever reporting an overunity result.

I don't either, but no one should hold that against them. Many people get no positive result in this business.

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I don't either, but no one should hold that against them. Many people get no positive result in this business.

In this case, some of the more reliable and credible people, for this type of testing anyway. Some of the principals of Earth Tech have gotten results with psychic claims which, IMO, were silly. But for "free energy" claims, they are pretty good, especially if their informal work with Steorn is an example.

Scott and Marissa Little ( https://earthtech.org/pubs/ ) participated in these null Orbo tests:

http://energynotfree.blogspot.com/ and http://freeenergytracker.blogs…netica-spinning-orbo.html

Quote from seven_of_twenty

In this case, some of the more reliable and credible people, for this type of testing anyway.

I did not think much of their calorimeter. Too complicated.

Quote from Curbina

If your comment is about the so called "MOAC", as far as I understand, it was built for a very specific purpose where the complication was needed.

I thought it was too complicated for the purpose.

Quote from Curbina

But, exactly as you say, flow calorimetry is the best fit for a mechanical cavitation system, and it is very difficult to justify the results as "error" if proper care is taken to minimize the potential sources of error.

The mechanical cavitation systems I saw were gigantic, and can only be tested with industrial equipment. They ranged from 30 to 100 kW. See:

https://www.hydrodynamics.com/

The company does not want to talk about the fact that they sometimes produce anomalous excess heat. I think that is a wise decision. Nothing good will come of talking about this. No scientist will believe them, no matter how good their proof is. That is what they learned after spending a few hundred thousand dollars buying equipment and setting it up according to a design made by the Dean of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. They also paid him a large chunk of money. Of course he reneged and refused to endorse the results from his own test system. That's what all scientists do. That's what you see here in the words of the pathological skeptics. Not one scientist in a thousand is honest. Engineers tend to be a little more honest, but not the academic ones. Several property management engineers send letters saying "yes, this system produces excess heat" but no academic scientist ever would. You can't blame them, really. They would be thrown out of their jobs. They would lose their livelihood. For that reason, there is no point to asking them in the first place. Why put them in a position where they have to lie to keep their jobs? Just let it go.

Of course that applies to cold fusion as well.

It turns out I do not have the Ga Tech report describing the flow calorimeter at Hydrodynamics. They designed it, found it produced excess heat, and then reneged on their agreement to report the results. I have another report from them describing a similar flow test at a customer site, Lindale Manufacturing. It has the usual nonsensical pathological skeptic excuse to dismiss the results. They all do. Plus I have several reports from various engineers at schools, factories, fire departments and so on saying "yes, this machine does produce more heat than the input electricity." It was sometimes substantially more. Around 20% for hot water and 40% for steam when you take into account losses from the reactor walls. That is, when you factor in the known efficiency of the electric motors, which is 82.5% for most of the units tested. The remaining 17.5% converts to waste heat. Additional heat is caused by friction. With no excess heat, the flow produces about 75% of input power. That's what the Ga Tech report shows for a null run. Then they do a song and dance to explain away the excess heat. No sane scientist or engineer would believe their excuses, but obviously they cannot write the truth or their reputations will be trashed.

Alert readers will note that 75% is lousy performance for an electric water heater or steam boiler. When the Hydrodynamics gadget does not produce anomalous heat, ~75% is about what it does. Or what it used to do years ago. On the face of it, you might think it is useless but it has some advantages for other reasons, in some industry sectors. For example, it can boil highly contaminated, filthy water that comes out of carpet manufacturing equipment, recycling it. An ordinary boiler would quickly clog up.

By the way, I am not 100% sure the Hydrodynamics gadget is real. It hasn't been replicated, or widely tested. But I do not know of any reason to doubt the results. All of the reasons I have heard so far have been pathological nonsense, similar to what you read here, such as THH's theory that invisible macroscopic drops of water defy gravity and thereby magically circumvent the conservation of energy.

No skeptic has ever given a valid reason to doubt cold fusion. I am sure no skeptic ever will, because hundreds of them they have been trying assiduously for 30 years. But only a few scientists and engineers have looked at the Hydrodynamics gadget. Perhaps there is a problem they have not discovered, and that I and others overlooked. I can't rule that out.

Here are the absurd reasons the Ga Tech people used to dismiss their own findings at Lindale Manufacturing:

"An argument could be made that the motor losses which appear as heat are transferred to the water. However, most of the motor losses that show up as heat are dissipated to the surrounding air."

Yes, they noticed the machine is hot enough to kill a person. Good observation!

"A more appropriate conclusion would be that the instrumentation is not accurate enough to precisely quantify the [gadget] efficiency."

This is ridiculous, because their null run returned 74% of input power and the excess heat run produced 100%, ignoring losses.

Okay, technically their words here are a junior high level mistake. Which is it? Inaccurate or imprecise? There is a world of difference! Industrial equipment is imprecise but accurate. If that were not the case, factories would explode, and airplanes would fall from the sky. Not only is it accurate, it is very reliable. In many cases, industrial equipment is only precise to around 5%. But it would never be so imprecise it cannot show the difference between 74% and 100%. That would call for a thermometer with only 3 tick marks: 1/3 2/3 and 3/3. What instrument is like that?

(Okay, you might end up with that if you are an idiot and you install a thermometer with 1-degree tick marks for an application where the temperature only varies by 3 degrees. No one working in an industrial environment does that, without getting his head blown off sooner or later. If the temperature must be monitored to within 3 degrees, you install a thermometer with 0.1 degree or 0.01 degree tick marks. See: https://www.omega.com/en-us/search/?text=thermometer)

Think of something like an industry standard bi-metallic dial thermometer, which is same instrument you would have seen on a boiler in 1860. It is imprecise but extremely reliable. It cannot be upset by a power failure, vibrations, or anything else. Every boiler in the world has to have one (or several). An industrial electric power meter, on the other hand, is precise to a fraction of 1%, because electricity is easy to measure with high precision.

I do not know the details of the instruments at Lindale, but I am sure they were industry standard. You are not allowed to operate a boiler without industry standard instruments, because you may kill yourself if you do. Such instruments can definitely tell the difference between 74% and 100%. As I said, they may not be able to measure the difference between 70% and 74%, because that level of precision (NOT accuracy) is seldom needed in ordinary industrial applications.

Note that the test bed designed by the Georgia Tech people at Hydrodynamics was much better than industry standard. The instruments were not only accurate -- as they all are -- they were more precise than usual. They cost a lot more. As I recall it was precise to a fraction of a percent in the domain that was tested. Normal industrial applications do not need that, but some do, so if you pay a lot of money you can buy instruments capable of measuring it. There were also more instruments that at Lindale, or any normal customer site. For example, there was a dynamometer, so they did not have to depend on the electric motor efficiency specifications. It is safe to depend on those specifications. You can be sure no electric motor is 100% efficient. That is to say, no 20 kW or 100 kW electric motor runs stone cold, producing no detectable waste heat. That would be a miracle. All industrial motors come with a look-up table. You look at the power level and read off the efficiency for that power level. You can be sure it is right. As I said, if things like that were not right, airplanes with their myriad electric motors would burn up, or not actuate the flaps, or something like that, and they would fall out of the sky.

"If further measurements are desired, several changes should be made. First, pressure gauges with dampening fluid should be used because the pump assembly vibrates. Seeondly, flowmeters should be installed to accurately measure the flowrates of the

condensate and water from the heat exchanger. Finally, the pump and pipe lines should be insulated properly."

Pure BS. Utterly irrelevant. Worthy of THH.

Quote from Curbina

It is too close to a conspiracy theory, but one can’t deny that there is at least the appearance of enough evidence to sustain that, be it organized or based on fear of ridicule and loss of job, it seems to exist a de facto tendency to deny any possible result that goes against the grain of orthodox scientific knowledge,

It is not a conspiracy theory. Nothing like that. You see the same behavior in all groups of people. All institutions, organizations, families, companies, religions . . . Heck, you see it right here, in spades. Some people will go to extremes to deny anything new, or different, or anything they do not understand. They hate novelty! They fear it. This is common in all societies. The roots of this behavior are instinctual, and understandable. The unknown is usually dangerous.

In the 1970s and 80s, I was on the forefront of introducing microcomputers to replace mini- and mainframe computers. From a technical point of view, this was a no-brainer. From a financial point of view, it saved terrific amounts of money. But there was still a lot of resistance at first. This didn't bother me, because there were plenty of other customers. The holdouts hurt only themselves. Indeed, the ones in the computer industry itself went right out of business by the end of the decade. Even that did not stop the deniers and road-blockers from trying to stop the tide from coming in.

Here is an excellent set of quotes about this:

http://amasci.com/weird/skepquot.html

Especially:

"The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science." - Wilfred Trotter, 1941

"If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated." - Wilfred Trotter

For most of history, in most places, change was considered pernicious. Any kind of change; even that which we would consider progress. It was evil. People who advocated even small changes were sometimes tortured or killed. Here are some pages from a book about economics, "The Worldly Philosophers:"

"We are back in France; the year, 1666.

The capitalists of the day face a disturbing challenge which the widening market mechanism has inevitably brought in its wake: change.

The question has come up whether a guild master of the weaving industry should be allowed to try an innovation in his product. The verdict: "If a cloth weaver intends to process a piece according to his own invention, he must not set it on the loom, but should obtain permission from the judges of the town to employ the number and length of threads that he desires, after the question has been considered by four of the oldest merchants and four of the oldest weavers of the guild." One can imagine how many suggestions for change were tolerated.

Shortly after the matter of cloth weaving has been disposed of, the button-makers guild raises a cry of outrage; the tailors are beginning to make buttons out of cloth, an unheard-of thing. The government, indignant that an innovation should threaten a settled industry, imposes a fine on the cloth button makers and even on those who wear cloth buttons. But the wardens of the button guild are not yet satisfied. They demand the right to search people's homes and wardrobes and even to arrest them on the streets if they are seen wearing these subversive goods.

And this dread of change and innovation is not just the comic resistance of a few frightened merchants. Capital is fighting in terror against change, and no holds are barred. In England a revolutionary patent for a stocking frame is not only denied in 1623, but the Privy Council orders the dangerous contraption abolished. In France the importation of printed calicoes is threatening to undermine the clothing industry. It is met with measures which cost the lives of sixteen thousand people! In Valence alone on one occasion 77 persons are sentenced to be hanged, 58 broken on the wheel, 631 sent to the galleys, and one lone and lucky individual set free for the crime of dealing in forbidden calico wares. . . ."

Such views are alive and well everywhere in the world, even among scientists. Such views are so ingrained, we do not even realize we hold them. That is one of the reasons there is such strong opposition to taking steps to prevent global warming. It is not just greed, or fear of having to spend money. Most of the needed steps, such as improving efficiency, would actually save people money. Things like LED lights save tons of money. They consume ~10 times less electricity than incandescent bulbs, and they last 20 years, so the cost per unit over time is lower. Yet many people oppose them. They make up bogus reasons to oppose them. They claim the color is wrong, which is nonsense. The real reason is that people have a deep-seated fear of change.

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Heck, you see it right here, in spades. Some people will go to extremes to deny anything new, or different, or anything they do not understand. They hate novelty! They fear it. This is common in all societies. The roots of this behavior are instinctual, and understandable.

After all, isn't it evident even on this very forum? Every overunity claim is violently opposed here, 2LOT cannot be doubted, etc... How someone could argue after then, that mainstream scientists are better? They're even way more bigot than the people here in average. It's not conspiracy but pluralistic ignorance. But I don't believe in fear of change. It's all calculated, i.e. occupation driven: once scientists believe, that some idea - no matter how abstract or even nonsensical it may look at the first sight (string theory, multiverse) - could bring new jobs and grants for them, then suddenly all fear of change is all over and every such an idea or theory gets tirelessly hyped. They cannot fool me: what is primary here is the fear of competition.