No: it shows that as you would expect in that part of the curve there was still some liquid evaporating, and electrodes as > 100C, as we suggest.
That's a guess. and a poor one.
Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?
- JedRothwell
- Closed
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Yes. That is why no one has any idea what the heat of vaporization of water is. People have been measuring it since the 18th century using Fleischmann's method. It has in the textbooks for hundreds of years. Chemists have been using retorts to distill water, alcohol, and countless other liquids since Medieval times, but the textbooks are all wrong and distillation does not work. Because you and Ascoli say so.
Jed - that is ignorant or disingenuous. Please calm down and do not cast insults that make you look foolish.
For heat of vaporisation you can:
(1) have constant power in exactly measured
(2) have a container without gunk where the exact point of complete evaporation can easily and accurately be deterimed
(3) measure over the whole experiment (full to empty) not some guessed half of it, and therefore have an exact amount of liquid boiled
(4) have no possible chemical reactions (recombination) to complicate issues
You are right, scientists have been able to do this for a long time.
F&P's 600s of asymptotic (positive feedback designed in) power input chaos break all of these (quite usual) requirements: because for some reason F&P were not able to do it. I have my strong suspicions why. When they had experiments with clearer instrumentation - the effect went away or become small enough that skeptics could easily invoke other errors like CCS (by that I mean the recognise "possible differences in calorimetric constants between control and active runs, magnified by the ratio between power in and signal out").
Now, you know that? You have looked at experiments enough to realise the problems coming from that poorly instrumented V-t curve at the point it goes asymptotic, or from the foam when you take your measurement points from eyeballing the cell rather than anything more scientific like say the V/I curve.
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That is true. And as you know all three methods have severe issues.
Yes! Imaginary severe issues. In your mind alone. No one else can see them. No expert anywhere has pointed them out. All of the example "issues" you have proposed -- such as heavy and light water magically reaching out and affecting Seebeck calorimeters, or chemical retorts not working, or clocks unable to distinguish between 10 minutes and 3 hours -- are preposterous nonsense.
Something that you alone can see, which violates the laws of physics and common sense known to every cook for the last several thousand years has a name. It is called a delusion. You suffer from a delusion, brought about by the Dunning Kruger effect and an ego so large, I am amazed you can fit through a doorway.
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That's a guess. and a poor one.
a guess. Yes.
That is my point. Everything about this system is a guess.
It is so loose that things mentioned above make 4 distinct ways in which the claimed results could be wrong. None of them are proven. But any one of them, and the results fall.
Let me just expand the ATER one (a variant).
For those approx 17kJ of excess heat you need 17/280 mol H2 or = 0.12g of H to burn. (please correct me if I've got this wrong). 1/500 of the mass of the liquid boiled off. Some small fraction of the electrode mass so I'd think getting that much from electrode + coating gunk quite possible.
It is reasonable to suppose that at the end a hotter electrode (heated by all that constant current going through a high resistivity deposited coating, thermally isolated while still electrically connected by foam and bubbles) could result in H in the lattice burning in the air. There is more than enough H in the lattice for that, and while you need to subtract the hydride formation energy there is still lots to spare.
You do not these conditions often, because not many people deliberately engineer electrolysis experiments to blow up by driving cells to dryness with very high voltage constant current sources.
Sounds like what Paradigmnoia would do! But he would do it for fun, and not expect to get accurate experimental results from partial instrumentation.
What would be full instrumentation?
(1) keep current data (current will reduce when driving voltage plateaus - easy to determine if you know the details of the CC source but we are not given this)
(2) refer 600s window exactly to V and I data, keep them at high enough resolution that power in can be calculated.
(3) if you have to measure over just this 600s condense the emitted vapour over juts that period to be sure how much you have boiled.
The system would still be unpleasant, an subject to effects such as ATER above, but there would be less speculation...
THH
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Another way to look at this (my point, not ascoli's)
When you boil a cell to dryness with a v high voltage CC source you are engineering asymptotic runaway is it dries out. Under those conditions, it is not easy to distinguish the deliberate thermal runaway due to increasing power in from some mysterious LENR thermal runaway as claimed.
But, your experiment will look impressive as a demo either way.
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I do rather like the modified ATER explanation (one of four, and quite different from ascoli's concerns) - perhaps Alan (inveterate close-minded skeptic of skeptical ideas) will be able to poor cold water on it.
The mechanism;
H (or D) absorbed by a metal lattice + deposited gunk (not sure whether or not the gunk is relevant) over a long electrolysis experiment can be released over a short period - 10 min - by exposure of lattice + gunk to the air at a high temperature.
The measurement conditions here are designed to optimise such an effect, if it can exist.
For those who don't like > 100C temperature for the electrode.
Remember that foam?
Wet foam is a thermal insulator - and electrical conductor. The B.P. of foam, as it dries out - gets > 100C due to the reduced water content from the concentrated gunk in the liquid phase part of the foam.
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For heat of vaporisation you can:
(1) have constant power in exactly measured
(2) have a container without gunk where the exact point of complete evaporation can easily and accurately be deterimed
(3) measure over the whole experiment (full to empty) not some guessed half of it, and therefore have an exact amount of liquid boiled
(4) have no possible chemical reactions (recombination) to complicate issues
This is all bullshit. The power is easily measured. It is constant current, so they need only publish voltage, but in fact they measure both. They measure over the entire experiment. There is no guesswork. The amount of liquid in the cell at each minute is known. Ascoli's comments about foam are wrong. The minute boiling begins and the minute the cells is boiled dry are known, and so is the total volume of water. A 10-minute segment is used for convenience. It is a round number of seconds during a prolonged, steady state segment of boiling. You can use the entire mass of water, and the entire duration of the event, which you can measure from the video. There is no gunk -- only lithium salt, which is measured with precision, going in, and remaining in the cell. There is no recombiner and no recombination, but even if there were, it would have practically no effect on the energy balance. The total energy release far exceeds the limits of recombination. In other words, you can assume 100% recombination and it would hardly affect the heat balance. Most of the gas is water vapor, not D2 and O2. After electrolysis stops, it is all water, so recombination cannot happen.
Everything you say here is wrong. Everything you have said in this entire thread is wrong. Not slightly wrong, but completely at odds with the facts and with common sense and textbook knowledge. Your assertions are as baseless, ignorant, and wrong as the anti-vaxxer's nonsense about RNA vaccines changing DNA, and all the rest of it. It is appalling that you can recognize their ignorance, but you are blind to your own mistakes with regard to cold fusion. How can you possibly imagine -- for one second -- that heavy water and light water affect the performance of a calorimeter outside the cell?!? It is as if you have no knowledge of everyday physics. Kitchen level physics. You are stringing together words that mean nothing, about "exact amounts of liquid boiled." If you seriously think foam is a problem, why don't you boil some water in test tube? Find out. See for yourself. Drop a hot nail into water. Put a resistance heater in a test tube and see if it boils the water after the water falls below it. You make one crazy assertion after another, and you could test most of them easily, but you will not lift a finger to do that. It is the opposite of science when you refuse to check anything by experiment, even things that people have known to be true for thousands of years.
You seem to lack all self awareness and objectivity with regard to this subject. Everyone has blind spots, but this is an extreme example.
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Yes! Imaginary severe issues. In your mind alone. No one else can see them. No expert anywhere has pointed them out. All of the example "issues" you have proposed -- such as heavy and light water magically reaching out and affecting Seebeck calorimeters, or chemical retorts not working, or clocks unable to distinguish between 10 minutes and 3 hours -- are preposterous nonsense.
Something that you alone can see, which violates the laws of physics and common sense known to every cook for the last several thousand years has a name. It is called a delusion. You suffer from a delusion, brought about by the Dunning Kruger effect and an ego so large, I am amazed you can fit through a doorway.
Jed. One thing that obscures science is over-generalisation. Included in that is personalisation. I am making specific arguments here, as is ascoli. You do not properly counter my arguments by bringing in extraneous things, or claiming all my arguments are wrong, or I am delusional.
You may properly conclude I am delusional if my arguments are unreasonable. However you need first to show the lack of reason. I've not seen it from you on this thread. I've seen it only a bit from Alan. Even Alan cannot deny the problems inherent in these boil-off conditions.
Were I a CF person (and I bet McKubre would be with me on this) I'd say that the conditions of this boil-off phase calculation as instrumented in the paper are too loose for any results from it to be considered strong. For all that, like Rossi's demos (which you will remember experts were also unable to see problems with - that Samovar one? The "hot core" explanation gives you the observed apparent heat after death there, and was not imagined by a number of experts Matt contacted, including you), it is a good demo - it has small scientific value.
And why be concerned about that? There are many other experiments, which, you claim, provide good results. Why hold onto this bad one?
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Boring it is - but I seem to have time this evening, I will answer Jed's objections as well I can.
such as heavy and light water magically reaching out and affecting Seebeck calorimeters, The case in point was where the barrier was a gap containing vapour where H2 and D2 have different thermal conductivity? Or, another time, a gap with heat transfer dominated by radiation where the surface of a hydrided or deuterided wire could have a slightly different total emissivity. No magic. If I have applied this to a case where the gap was guaranteed to have no H or D, with no H or D seeping through the an inner containing barrier to alter emissivity of the outer surface, I apologise. H or D will get through many things but can be well contained by stainless steel: so I'd expect such a case to be Ok - I'd maybe want to be sure it was ok - because leaks are possible in such a system.
or chemical retorts not working, OK - I agree that a decent retort will certainly prevent liquid from contaminating phase change data except in the case that the electrolyte goes up the retort (e.g. if it forms a foam that does this). However in the case that the retort is not open but leads to further tubing there is the possibility of vapour going up the retort an condensing somewhere else in the tubing. So you need to check that the "non-retort" port of the tubing is thermally isolated from the system you are measuring. It is not difficult to gte this - but equally something that muts be checked. A lot of LENR experiments are done by people who do not check sush things.
or clocks unable to distinguish between 10 minutes and 3 hours - no the issue here is that the time data in the paper is not consistent with the time data on the video. If you suppose there could be no mistake from a person - then you, not me, are in the realm of weird clocks as you say that say 10 minutes is 3 hours. So it is quite ironic you accuse me of that delusion!
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This is all bullshit. The power is easily measured. It is constant current, so they need only publish voltage
The point here is that during the asymptote - the 10 minutes measured - they do not publish voltage. The graph 6B has 0.03mm Y axis covering t10 minutes. i do not think you can get any useful data from that given the voltage waveform looks like a straight line going upwards during the relevant part.
The current waveform as well would help to tie down the endpoint and provide insight into how the cell dried out.
Ascoli's comments about foam are wrong. The minute boiling begins and the minute the cells is boiled dry are known, and so is the total volume of water. A 10-minute segment is used for convenience. It is a round number of seconds during a prolonged, steady state segment of boiling
No. From the paper "the period chosen if from 1/2 full to empty". That period has asymptotic voltage change throughout caused by increasing cell resistance as it dries and average voltage (according to F&P) 75V when the typical cell voltage is 4V. 75V is way into the asymptotic highly nonlinear part.
"steady state segment of boiling" could not include the asymptotic endpoint.
You can use the entire mass of water, and the entire duration of the event, which you can measure from the video.
That would be better - but still include that asymptotic uncontrolled part - which is where most of the phase change enthalpy goes.
The minute boiling begins and the minute the cells is boiled dry are known, and so is the total volume of water.
The calculation is from half cell boiled to cell empty. It is only 10 minutes. How are those conditions known? Assertion without explanation is not helpful. the paper says they are known from careful inspection of the video. You think that is reliable?
The total volume of water over that period is only known if the half-full state can be accurately eyeballed from the video.
In any case ascoli's problem is that the video and paper are not consistent. My problem is that those 10 minutes do not have accurately measured (or even measured at all in any meaningful way) voltage in. The voltage is asymptotic during that 10 minutes.
There is no recombiner and no recombination, but even if there were, it would have practically no effect on the energy balance. The total energy release far exceeds the limits of recombination. In other words, you can assume 100% recombination and it would hardly affect the heat balance.
Really? That is only true if you assume recombination is uniform - so that the recombination happening can be no larger than electrical power in over any period. In which case you are right, recombination would change the excess from X4 to X3. Perhaps my generalised use of the word recombination to include anything that chemically gets that H back into H2O has confused you. I apologise. I'm not an expert and my terminology is sloppy. I tend to talk about effects not knowing the correct technical words but knowing the physics and maths.
I have suggested that H or D chemically absorbed by the electrodes or lithium salt deposits could subsequently come out when exposed to air at high temps so that we get say 3X the expected recombination/oxidation in that final 10 min segment.
EDIT - I apologise - I have made a mistake.
It is more then 3X. You would need maybe 0.1% of the total electrolysed H to be oxidised in that 10 min segment. But more than 3X the amount electrolysed in the last 20 minutes, because most of the water loss then is from boiling not electrolysis.
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After electrolysis stops, it is all water, so recombination cannot happen.
And, of course - in a cathode loaded with H or D and exposed to air at an elevated temperature the reaction:
H (in lattice) + O2 (in air) -> H2O can happen.
I claim it is highly exothermic, comparable per mol of H with normal H combustion. If I am wrong I apologise. But it does not need to be as exothermic is normal combustion, a very small quantity of H in the electrode doing this would be enough. I agree - for gaseous H you would need a large volume, storage does not look feasible. But in the electrode?
I'd like to thank you for responding to my arguments - it allows me to clarify them and will help readers.
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H (in lattice) + O2 (in air) -> H2O can happen.
So it can, but very rarely - and you know what, you can hear it- even tiny amounts of gas go off with a sharp crack. But is it exposed to air, or to water vapour? That is the difference.
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such as heavy and light water magically reaching out and affecting Seebeck calorimeters, The case in point was where the barrier was a gap containing vapour where H2 and D2 have different thermal conductivity?
As I said, the cells are calibrated with whatever isotope will be used in the final test. The difference in thermal conductivity is well known and can be included in the equations if both isotopes are used. Ordinary water is 1.045 times more conductive at 75°C. See:
The thermal conductivity of heavy water between 75° and 260° c at pressures up to 300 atmThe thermal conductivity of heavy water having an isotopic purity of 99-85 per cent was measured with a vertical coaxial cylinder apparatus at pressur…www.sciencedirect.comFurthermore, you applied that argument to all experiments, even those it does not apply to. Heat has been measured outside the cells in many experiments. Are you suggesting this heat in these tests was real, but heat measured in cells in which both D2O and H2O were used was not? (And which tests were these? I am not aware of any.) As Fleischmann said, dreaming up a special case to explain away every variation of the experiment and every different instrument is no way to do science.
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It is constant current, so they need only publish voltage, but in fact they measure both. They measure over the entire experiment.
Just to reiterate this point, which you have not yet perhaps understood.
The10 min they do the enthalpy over is at the asymptote at the end of the experiment where you cannot determine voltage from their graphs, because the graph goes up vertically and the time is only 0.03mm on their axis.
There is no evidence they have measured voltage to the required time resolution to accurately integrate. They have not given the data, not explained how they obtained that high resolution time data. You would think, if they had it that they would include a graph of the data for the relevant 10 minute segment? It is after all what they need to integrate to get the enthalpy in. I think it would be highly unusual for a paper making such a claim not to publish the evidence on which it is based given that the voltage conditions are decidedly NOT steady-state.
You are however right. Had they chosen any other 10 minute segment they would not have this problem, their enthalpy in estimate data would have been much better. However then they would have an much less accurate determination of the water loss and therefore phase change enthalpy, which dominated energy out.
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As I said, the cells are calibrated with whatever isotope will be used in the final test. The difference in thermal conductivity is well known and can be included in the equations if both isotopes are used. Ordinary water is 1.045 times more conductive at 75°C.
I am not disagreeing with you for most well-conducted experiment. And where such calibration has been done, I would never advance that as an error source. In fact it is not something I have claimed at all often... (and BTW I was considering gas-phase H2 or D2, not water-phase - where the difference is much larger. Still you are right that 4% is a very significant error for some of these experiments).
But, you cannot assume that because it is normally done, and clearly should be done, that every person doing LENR experiments will do it. If such calibration is missing from the expeirmnatl writeup you cannot suppose that it has been done. A mistake has been made, either in the writeup (omitting something important) or the experiment (the same!).
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Furthermore, you applied that argument to all experiments, even those it does not apply to. Heat has been measured outside the cells in many experiments. Are you suggesting this heat in these tests was real, but heat measured in cells in which both D2O and H2O were used was not? (And which tests were these? I am not aware of any.) As Fleischmann said, dreaming up a special case to explain away every variation of the experiment and every different instrument is no way to do science.
So if I have used that argument where it does not apply I am sorry. I might have done, if the experiment has not been clearly enough described so that I mistook it. In that case people like you can happily correct me.
A lot of the experiments referenced here are not well described. So my default is not to rule out any of the very many possible error mechanisms unless they paper on the experiment shows they cannot apply.
I am not expecting that my arguments are true (and before I was on this site I knew nothing of calorimetry - I enjoy learning). Merely that if there are 5 possible ways in which the experiment could go wrong, one of them could be true and account for the anomalous results. It is the nature of a skeptics life that most of the skeptical arguments are bound to be untrue - when speculating about possible error causes.
How can that be checked except by examining and specifically ruling out each possibility? Those not ruled out, unless checked in the future, make the result unsafe.
The special case argument is interesting. The very special conditions of LENR results - where half of all errors can be claimed as an LENR results, mean that if you think think about it special cases must come into play.
An LENR researcher will try different things hoping to find the "effect". When they are finally successful, all that work could be selecting special case conditions just as much as selecting "LENR happens" conditions. If LENR were quantitatively predictive you would not have this strong selection for experimental errors or unexpected special case anomalies.
THH
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And, of course - in a cathode loaded with H or D and exposed to air at an elevated temperature the reaction:
H (in lattice) + O2 (in air) -> H2O can happen.The lattice is under water. Recombination never happens underwater with an anode horizontally separated from a cathode, but only when one is on top of the other. Recombination can occur in the headspace, but only when there is a recombiner. It is very unlikely to happen when most of the gas is water vapor.
But even if we assume that every drop of free O2 and D2 recombined in the cell headspace, that would still not be enough to explain the excess heat. The thermoneutral potential for heavy water is 1.54. That's how many volts you add to the voltage. Electrolysis heat during the 600 second sample was 37.5 W. It would have been around 40 W with full recombination. Excess was 144 W. The excess heat far exceeded the limits of recombination, and it continue long after electrolysis stopped and all free O2 and D2 left the cell.
What is the point of your hypothesis? Anyone can see it cannot explain the facts even if it is true.
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A lot of the experiments referenced here are not well described.
Which ones? Be specific. I have mainly referenced the top tier ones by Fleischmann, Miles, McKubre, Storms and others. They are well described. I suggest you ignore poorly described experiments.
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So it can, but very rarely - and you know what, you can hear it- even tiny amounts of gas go off with a sharp crack. But is it exposed to air, or to water vapour? That is the difference.
Well - the speed of the reaction is surely adjustable.
Air or water vapour? Well, after the cell has boiled off, there is no more water and no more water vapour. It is open. You tell me?
The 10 minute segment chosen is when conditions are very rapidly changing and we do not know how much of it has enough excess steam vapour pressure so as to prevent diffusion or turbulent convection from hot surfaces of air back into the cell.
PS - and for HAD this mechanism looks quite a good explanation? At that point there is no more steam and the electrode is hot and exposed to air.
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Which ones? Be specific. I have mainly referenced the top tier ones by Fleischmann, Miles, McKubre, Storms and others. They are well described. I suggest you ignore poorly described experiments.
Of those - the boil-off phase of the Simplicity experiment we are now discussing is poorly described.
For example: how high does that oh so important asymptote on voltage go? - it must be known, from the design of the CC source. How was the 75V over 10 min average voltage calculated, from what measurements?
I reiterate - this 10 minute segment is very far from steady-state. The voltage is asymptotic to infinity (subject to CC limitations which we do not know).
I WAS ignoring it - but others put it forward as strong evidence.
