Update of Russ George's blog: tiny ‘atom-ecology’ cold fusion fuel pellets

Alan Smith

what do you think of the relevance, about idea that great researchers have of spending a majority of their budget on high tech calorimetry while Lenr XSH doesn't manifest itself in an ambiguous way, either we see, obvious.. like the event you described, either there is nothing ?

For your side, what budget represents your calorimetry ?

Quote from Alan Smith

I can tell you about this one - those spontaneous gamma bursts were from a cold reactor in the small hours of the morning and were completely unexpected and (from memory) never repeated. We could only assume that some remote cosmic event was responsible, but could not determine what that might have been from astronomy data. It was then and remains a puzzle. As for different graphs showing different things, we were running multiple experiments with dozens of different fuel candidates, and these would sometimes exhibit a unique feature not seen in other experiments. There are well over 5M data points from this series, which happily survived a malicious attack on our server.

Quote from Alan Smith

I can tell you about this one - those spontaneous gamma bursts were from a cold reactor in the small hours of the morning and were completely unexpected and (from memory) never repeated. We could only assume that some remote cosmic event was responsible, but could not determine what that might have been from astronomy data. It was then and remains a puzzle.

The impression I get from George's blog post from May 7, 2019 is that elevated gamma emissions continued to be seen in the absence of external heating for months after the above (Oct 2018) data were gathered. I don't know how these elevated readings compare with the burst seen here. It may be that the burst activity seen here eventually developed into the constantly elevated signal seen in the 'notch' dataset (i.e., dataset 7 in my previous post).

Quote from Alan Smith

So they were. But this particular event was singular enough to be reported, they represent gamma counts that if sustained would have been a cause for concern and a re-evaluation of the safety measures in place.

This particular event looks comparable in magnitude to the cosmic-activity-entrained bursting described in May and June 2018. The ongoing gamma counts seem to arrive at a rate a little more than twice the lab background and the bursts are 2-4 times that.

There are some questions that arise from looking at the graphic evidence for the Atom-Ecology claims presented by Russ George on his blog.

Here is one. It arises from the figure showing reactor temperatures just after the external heater surrounding a fuel rod is shut off. The red line is for a reactor containing active Atom-Ecology fuel, the green line is for a control reactor with an inactive "fuel" and the blue line shows the temperature trajectory when the control reactor is additionally heated by a small internal coil rated at 25 Watts.

My problem here is that the red )active fuel) line shows a simple trajectory that seems as though it would closely fit an exponential relaxation. Given previous descriptions of the activation properties of the Atom Ecology LENR reaction, I wouldn't expect this at all. I would expect something altogether more complex as the excess heat turns off. Indeed, as Wyttenbach has reminded us on this thread, the process is temperature dependent and the rate of cooling depends on the temperature!

So it puzzles me that whereas temperatures declines from over 500C to around 250C in this figure, the apparent rate constant for cooling seems to be pretty much the same all along.

Quote from Bruce__H

So it puzzles me that whereas temperatures declines from over 500C to around 250C in this figure, the apparent rate constant for cooling seems to be pretty much the same all along.

May be Russ mixed it up. Blue is typical for fueled cool down!

Quote from Wyttenbach

May be Russ mixed it up. Blue is typical for fueled cool down!

Well !!!!! If the blue trace represents the temperature time course of the fueled reactor then I am much MUCH happier. The blue time course, with its tendency to plateau out and then suddenly drop off to a new level, is exactly what I would predict for a reactor equipped with a temperature-activated heating source. There should be similar inflections in the heating curve when the external heater is first turned on.

Systems like these should also show temperature hysteresis.

Quote from Alan Smith

Systems like these do show temperature hysteresis, but that is only really visible when new 'smart' thermostats are first deployed. They have both a programmable hysteresis function and also an 'auto-tune' function which I always used. The onboard software is smart enough to 'learn' the thermal lag of the systems and after 24 hours or so of running this minimises hysteresis - often to less than +/- 1C.

ETA. They do this by minimising the 'on' time as the set temperature is approached - they run on a 2 second cycle, and you can see the heater power being applied in shorter and shorter bursts every 2 seconds in anticipation of the set temperature being reached..

I think we may be using hysteresis to mean different things. Software control systems sometimes have software hysteresis to reduce their sensitivity extrinsic noise. I am using the term hysteresis to denote a physical property of the reactor that has nothing to do with software. It denotes a situation in which a constant input power can correspond to multiple steady-state reactor temperatures. Which reactor temperature you achieve thus depends not only on the input setting but also on the recent temperature history of the reactor.

Functionally, this sort of hysteresis will be most apparent as a region of temperature instability (i.e., you simply cannot hold the reactor at these temperatures even using a sophisticated software controller) separating temperature "high" states from temperature "low" states. Such instability would be very apparent if the input power follows a slow ramp instead of a step. In the Atom-Ecology figure, which uses a step drop in input power instead of a ramp, the regions of temperature instability are seen as the sudden downward turns in the blue trace.

The following bifurcation diagram may help you visualize my meaning ...

Quote from Alan Smith

By 'hysteresis' do you mean the isothermal/adiabatic ratio of these systems?

No. The type of hysteresis you are referring now to is a temporary one having to do with a lag between control inputs and system response. I think it would be seen in both fueled and unfueled reactors in your lab. I am talking about a steady-state phenomenon that would not be present at all in a control reactor lacking active fuel. The hysteresis I am talking derives from the nonlinear temperature dependence of heat production in your fuel.

Look at the bifurcation diagram I put up in my last post. On the left, at low input power, there is but a single steady state temperature for the reactor. At higher (but not too high) input powers there are 3 steady-state temperatures available for the reactor (where by steady-state I mean a time-invariant equilibrium between applied heating and passive cooling). Two of these steady states are stable and one is unstable ... the unstable one will never be seen in practice. At these higher input power levels, therefore, the system can sit either at a low temperature steady state or a high temperature one. Which of these 2 temperature the system actually sits at depends on the recent history of reactor temperatures. If you start out at room temperature and gradually raise the input power, the systems will start off stuck at low-temperature states even though high-temperature steady states also exist for these inputs. At some point, however, as you continue to raise the input power, low-temperature steady states will no longer be available disappear and the system will skips up to its high temperature state -- this is what you would call runaway.

Now, that the system is in its high-temperature state it is stuck there. Even if you begin to gradually lower the input power to the levels you had before, the system will stay at one of its high-temperature states. This is the essence of hysteresis. The system remembers where it has recently been. If you continue to lower the input power, however, the high-temperature series of stable steady-states will be lost and the system temperature will suddenly decrease. This is what I interpret as happening twice in the blue trace in George's plot showing a cooling curve.

The entire course of events I just described is given in a journey from (1) to (2) to (3) to (4) in the bifurcation plot below. The cooling curve in George's plot is just parts (3) and (4)

Quote from Alan Smith

Hysteresis is a widely used term. fluid mechanics, magnetism, heat engineering and so on.

You bet. It is also used in biology ... population dynamics, metabolic reactions, neuroscience.

Quote from Alan Smith

At high outputs these systems tend to be 'bursty' and that may be what can be seen in the wiggles of the blue trace, sometimes this behaviour is more marked than others.

Two years ago I put together a model of reactor dynamics with the simplest assumptions I could imagine. The reactor undergoes Newtonian cooling and the fuel shows temperature-activated heating with a simple sigmoidal depedence of reaction rate on temperature. One can numerically integrate the equations to produce expected time courses for given initial conditions and parameter values. Given these simple assumptions, a cooling curve such as in Russ George's data plot is expected to look like this ...

The "wiggle" here is the system skipping from a high-temperature set of quasi-steady-states down to a low temperate steady state as it transits from points (3) to (4) in my previous post. The wiggles actually seen in the Atom-Ecology cooling curve data are compatible with this simplistic model.

One can add more assumptions to make the model more realistic. If one posits 2 different heating mechanisms that engage at 2 different temperatures, then there would be 2 wiggles exactly as in the falling phase of George's figure. If one adds slow inactivation to the model (via slow buildup of byproducts that poison the reaction?) the model will produce bursting that can be either spontaneous or evoked.

All traces in the Russ George figure have shoulders at the beginning. I had therefore assumed that this is an artifact and nothing to do with the properties of the Atom-Ecology fuel.

Yesterday was instructive! It turns out that a data plot that has been confusing me for 2 years shows the wrong information.

When the "golden area" plot (below) was first posted in the summer of 2018 it had a going over on this this site. The figure purported to show the cool-down trajectory of one of Alan Smith's reactors when fueled by Atom-Ecology fuel. It did show that, but the information identifying the trace was wrong. As a result, viewers were misled into thinking that the trajectory was purely exponential -- a form consistent with passive resistive heaters rather than active fuel that generates excess heat. There was suspicion! One poster here asked why he could take the control (resistive) trace and pretty much fit it over the supposed active fuel trace by stretching the time axis. I kept on saying that cool down should not be exponential with active fuel. It shouldn't be exponential! It shouldn't be exponential! I probably made a pest of myself. I also said the declining reactor temperatures after external heating is turned off should show one or more slow declines of even plateaus followed by eras of faster decline. So where was that?

lenr-forum.com/attachment/14054/

Well now we know that the real fueled reactor trace in the figure is the blue trace. It shows eras of slow decline punctuated by faster decline just as expected if the fuel reaction rate is temperature dependent. They aren't that big but they are distinctive and informative. I find it a little mystifying that this wasn't picked up by the "Androcles" crew back then. One has to remember that this golden area figure was the only temperature record ever shown to the world at large in support of the the extraordinary claim of the discovery of an easily manufactured lenr fuel. I guess Russ George, who was participating on LENR-Forum at the time simply wasn't that engaged with the discussion of his evidence. Alan Smith, however, was engaged but apparently never grasped what was going on and what the complaints were about.

And so here are ... 2 years of suspicion finally cleared up. I wonder what data Russ George was showing to the "seeming legions of visitors" who came to see the action in his lab?

For excess heat hunters, here are some tip offs about how to recognize it in reactors like Alan's. I've listed them before. Look for them, and if you don't see them, complain. Ask why they aren't there.

1) There should be temperature hysteresis with respect to the input power. This means that there should be be several steady-state temperatures corresponding to some input powers.

2) When input power increases, so should the temperature, but not in a smooth exponential, There should be one or more inflection points in the heating time course.

3) When input power is turned off, there should be one or more inflection point in the cooling curve.

I think that the same signs should be apparent in the Rothwell Mizuno system too. I'm not certain yet though. Their measurement rig differs from Alan's in having active cooling (i.e., heat is taken away by bulk movement of air). I'll think about it and try to figure things out.

Quote from Alan Smith

Now you can sleep at night.

I had a hysteretic nightmare last night with Pd105 Sm152 Fe57 Ag109 Eu155 Sm 151 Ag107 Yb171 epicycles

switching btw picoseconds and minutes..in 4D..