Why are these highly unusual as calorimetry goes? Why is the calorimetry any different from chemical calorimetry done for the last 180 years?
Electrolysis (messy, recombination in cell or issues, etc)
Excess power is << electrolysis input power.
Give me another experiment like that. It makes things more challenging.
I'd be happier if LENR community admitted F&P evidence is v suspect
Why suspect?
If you refer to the 1992 boil-off experiment, it's not a matter of suspect. There are clear and irrefutable evidences that both conclusions claimed in the F&P's "Simplicity Paper" are wrong.
But, I don't think that the LENR community (with the exception of Robert Horst) will never admit these errors.
What is suspect about it? Give three reasons why anyone should doubt F&P's calorimetry. If you wish to include the foam hypothesis, explain why the cell was producing high heat for days before the boil-off, and for a day or two after it. Why did it stop for 10 minutes, and then start up again?
More generally, Jed, your analysis here is flawed. You argue "something I don't understand => LENR". If you had spent much time with hardware experiments you would know that "something I don't understand" has very many different answers - which one is true can only be discovered from careful investigation.
Luckily with F&P boil-off there is a lot of data (the paper graphs and boil-off video) which allow post-mortem investigation. That is unusual.
and went with McKubre etc as better proof - admittedly of a less clear sort.
No doubt, McKubre is now a much better reference point for the LENR community, rather than F&P. He is the most famous face of the field. He has worked on CF experiments in a prestigious scientific institution for about 3 decades, and is still active in the field.
However, he has also been, and still is, very convinced of the reality of the F&P claims about their boil off experiment in 1992. In 2003-4, he was in the group of 5 CF representatives who selected the Simplicity Paper as the first in a short list of documents, which should have demonstrated to DoE the reality of the LENR phenomena. And less than two years ago, in June 2021, at ICCF23, he said that that specific F&P experiment is the only one to have been exactly replicated.
So, my opinion is that before taking into considerations his personal achievements as a better proof for LENR reality, it should be important to know the reasons why he gives so much importance to the 1992 boil off experiment.
McKubre is a member of LENR forum, so it would be a good idea if he will directly explain these reasons. I think.
Mike McKubre retired some years ago, though he still comments on various aspects of the field as and when he chooses. I doubt he will want to comment on this particular matter, but he could prove me wrong.
Electrolysis (messy, recombination in cell or issues, etc)
Excess power is << electrolysis input power.
Recombination has been understood and measured accurately since Faraday discovered it 1831. It is very easy to measure. There is nothing "messy" about it. There is no chance it would fool an electrochemist into thinking there is excess heat. For details, see p. 28:
More generally, Jed, your analysis here is flawed. You argue "something I don't understand => LENR".
I never said anything like that, and neither did anyone else. We understand perfectly. Any scientist in the last 120 years would have understood perfectly. Here is what we understand:
Calorimeters work. The laws of thermodynamics are based on calorimeters, and these laws are correct.
The upper limit of chemical energy is 40 kJ per gram. No chemical fuel can produce 10 times more than that, or 1,000 times more.
Any release of chemical energy must always change the chemicals. You cannot start off with water and palladium, end up with the same water and palladium, and release any net energy.
Tritium and helium can only be produced by a nuclear reaction. Chemical reactions never change one element into another.
Helium from cold fusion is produced in the same ratio as D+D plasma fusion, so the two reactions must be the same at some level. In the same sense that combustion and metabolism are both C and O combining to make CO2, so they are fundamentally the same.
That is what we know. We are 100% certain of these things. You may disagree, but you do not have a single valid reason to disagree, or any fact, or any scientific theory. Your disagreement is emotional, irrational, and without any basis whatever.
Display MoreI never said anything like that, and neither did anyone else. We understand perfectly. Any scientist in the last 120 years would have understand perfectly. Here is what we understand:
Calorimeters work. The laws of thermodynamics are based on calorimeters, and these laws are correct.
The upper limit of chemical energy is 40 kJ per gram. No chemical fuel can produce 10 times more than that, or 1,000 times more.
Any release of chemical energy must always change the chemicals. You cannot start off with water and palladium, end up with the same water and palladium, and release any net energy.
Tritium and helium can only be produced by a nuclear reaction. Chemical reactions never change one element into another.
Helium from cold fusion is produced in the same ratio as D+D plasma fusion, so the two reactions must be the same at some level. In the same sense that combustion and metabolism are both C and O combining to make CO2, so they are fundamentally the same.
That is what we know. We are 100% certain of these things. You may disagree, but you do not have a single valid reason to disagree, or any fact, or any scientific theory. Your disagreement is emotional, irrational, and without any basis whatever.
What might be critiqued is the use of the sum of many hours of ‘small’ excess heat into a ‘chemically impossible’ total energy. Or even sometimes big reported excesses, such as Lugano where MW well beyond chemistry was reported.
I see the point, but it is one often abused also.
What might be critiqued is the use of the sum of many hours of ‘small’ excess heat into a ‘chemically impossible’ total energy.
That can be ruled out in various ways.
First, because there are no major papers claiming that. Effects close to the margin are considered null results. Even if they are a little on the positive side, none of major researchers would consider that a positive result. I have seen a few fifth-rate papers making claims like that.
Second, when the heat is significantly above the noise, it has to continue uninterrupted for a certain duration before it can be considered cold fusion. The net energy from it has to exceed the limits of chemistry by a large margin. Both the amplitude and duration have to be high. "Uninterrupted" means the line cannot go back to zero. It has to be continuously above the noise. If it went back to zero and then climbed up again, it might some sort of chemical recharging.
There is an aspect of this which sometimes confuses people. Actual chemical recharging is endothermic. People say, "maybe the endothermic phase is so low, you cannot detect it." In this scenario the line only appears to drop back to zero; it is actually below that, but you don't see it. There is endothermic negative heat, but it is too low to detect. That is plausible, but it can usually be ruled out. Suppose the cell produced heat for 1 hour, then it went to zero for 1 hour, then back to heat. Granted that is an unrealistically clear example, but the basic idea is that each exothermic burst is within the limits of chemistry, and it is fueled by the endothermic phase, and the two phases overall are about the same duration. In that case, the negative phase would be just as visible as the positive phase. The line would go down below zero the same distance it then goes back up above zero. That is what you actually see when cathodes load and deload. A calorimeter measures negative heat with as much sensitivity and precision as positive heat. So, as long as the total duration of the phases was about equal, they would be equally visible.
If you had a situation with 5 hours of apparent zero, followed by 1 hour of positive heat, 5 hours of zero, 1 hour of heat, that might be some sort of chemical storage, happening at such a low rate it is invisible. I have never seen anything like that.
In real life, most Pd-D cold fusion experiments produce no heat for a week or two, and then they produce heat continuously for weeks or months. It will probably fluctuate, but it will not go back to zero. Or close to zero. Even if there was some form of low level chemical loading during those first weeks, it can only load so much. It cannot exceed the limits of chemistry, giving the cathode more than ~4 eV per atom. So, as long as one of the positive heat bursts is high enough to measure with confidence, and long enough to exceed the limits of chemistry, you can be sure it is cold fusion.
Or even sometimes big reported excesses, such as Lugano where MW well beyond chemistry was reported.
That was just nonsense. Anyone who looked at the data, including me, instantly saw it was fake.
Recombination has been understood and measured accurately since Faraday discovered it 1831. It is very easy to measure. There is nothing "messy" about it. There is no chance it would fool an electrochemist into thinking there is excess heat. For details, see p. 28:
Jed, as always you take a superficial reading of what i say.
I made two points, which work together.
I agree, recombination has not in the past been a big issue.
however the circumstances here are unique (I notice you did not challenge my statements of why LENR is unique showing me some similar experiment in the past).
We have recombination + unusual Pd cathode which is known to be catalytic + changes in cell conditions are maybe 20X more significant than they would be in a normal experiment.
We won't know - of course. How could we without careful replication of those positive experiments with more investigation?
Second, when the heat is significantly above the noise, it has to continue uninterrupted for a certain duration before it can be considered cold fusion. The net energy from it has to exceed the limits of chemistry by a large margin. Both the amplitude and duration have to be high. "Uninterrupted" means the line cannot go back to zero. It has to be continuously above the noise. If it went back to zero and then climbed up again, it might some sort of chemical recharging.
That makes no sense. The total integrated heat out must be >> the possible chemical energy available from the reactants. what form the excess heat has is irrelevant. Which LENR researchers are arguing this? Because it does not make sense.
But, where caution is needed, is that a continuous small (say 5% of input power) excess power corresponds to a 5% error in measurement between active and calibration runs. That must be ruled out, and the problem is always the unchallenged assumptions. Ruling them out beyond all doubt is difficult. Most LENR experiments do not try to do that.
I made two points, which work together.
I agree, recombination has not in the past been a big issue.
It has never been a big issue or a small issue. Any electrochemist knows how to deal with it. They have known since Faraday established Faradaic efficiency in 1831. I described this in the paper I linked to above. I suggest you read it.
however the circumstances here are unique (I notice you did not challenge my statements of why LENR is unique showing me some similar experiment in the past).
No, the circumstances are not unique. Pd electrolysis has been studied for over a century. It is important in fields such as metal embrittlement, where Pd is used instead of steel and other metals that do not absorb as readily. There are countless similar experiments. Some of them produced excess heat, such as Mizuno's. He and others dismissed it.
There is nothing unique about cold fusion. It is unusual electrolysis only insofar as it is extremely well done, with loading to very high levels, and they measure the heat. If they had done that a century ago there is no question they would have discovered anomalous heat. It has been there all along. It did not occur to anyone to look before F&P. There is nothing special about their experiment, instruments or techniques. Any first-rate electrochemist can replicate. There are only about 100 first-rate electrochemists, and nearly all of them did replicate in 1989 and 1990. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/WillFGgroupsrepo.pdf
If it was unique in any way before 1989, by late 1990 it was one of most widely replicated experiment in the history of modern electrochemistry. Not a bit unique.
We have recombination + unusual Pd cathode which is known to be catalytic + changes in cell conditions are maybe 20X more significant than they would be in a normal experiment.
No, we do not have recombination. If we did, it would be obvious. Anyone could measure it, and they always look for it. A Pd cathode under water is not catalytic. But, as I said, if it were, you would know it is. The cell conditions are the same as every other Pd electrolysis experiment. Pd cathodes are no more catalytic than they were in previous experiments studying embrittlement and other aspects of Pd.
We won't know - of course. How could we without careful replication of those positive experiments with more investigation?
There have been hundreds of careful, positive experiments. How many more do you want? Trick question! A thousand more, or 10,000 more would not change your mind. You have not even looked at the ones done so far.
We do know. Any electrochemist understands the issues you raised, such as recombination and the catalytic effect of Pd immersed in water. (Hint: there is none.) They understand these things in far greater depth than you do. Everything you have said here is wrong, as you would know if you read the cold fusion literature or an electrolysis textbook.
If they had done that a century ago there is no question they would have discovered anomalous heat.
Don't forget 1927, almost 100 years ago, when Paneth dirst published and then withfrew his transmutation paper.
A FEW months ago, K. Peters and I published an account of experiments we had made in an attempt to transmute hydrogen into helium (Ber. d. Deutschen Chem. Ges., 59, 2039; 1926). A more or less detailed account of this publication appeared in the columns of NATURE (vol. 118, p. 526, 1926), and perhaps I may be permitted to refer to a more recent publication on the same topic by K. Peters, P. Günther, and myself (Ber. d. Deutschen Chem. Ges., 60, 808; 1927). In this communication, as a result of further experiments, we feel that we are in a position to give an explanation of the occurrence of the observed very small quantities of helium in our experiments, without having recourse to the assumption of a synthesis of helium.
A Pd cathode under water is not catalytic.
I should say:
. . . not catalytic when it is placed correctly, at sufficiently high power. Mel Miles explained that if you put the cathode on top of the anode, so that oxygen bubbles up and impinges on the cathode, there may be recombination. It will be easy to measure. He also pointed out that if you turn the power down to a level about 1,000 times lower than a typical cold fusion experiment, you will get recombination. That is what Steve Jones did. He was trying to show that all cold fusion positive results come from recombination.
That was one of many disputes Miles and Jones had.
Incidentally, when you ask the LENR-CANR.org Bot about these disputes, you get a distinctly partisan description. I suppose because Miles wrote about it, and I have not uploaded any papers by Jones. He didn't sent me any. I would be happy to upload them if he did. Anyway, here is the Bot's-eye-view:
ME: Did M. Miles and Jones have a debate, or argument? I think Miles wrote about this.
BOT: Yes, there was a debate between M. Miles and Steven Jones. Jones invited Miles to lecture at Brigham Young University in 1991, but when Miles tried to present his experimental results, he was repeatedly interrupted. Jones has had a vendetta against Miles ever since and wrote letters to journals and internet news groups repeating the same misinformation and unscientific claptrap again and again. Miles was finally forced to send a formal objection because he had an obligation to defend his reputation and the quality of work at a U.S Navy laboratory. Miles also wrote a reply to 'An assessment of claims of excess heat in cold fusion calorimetry' in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B in 1998.
Don't forget 1927, almost 100 years ago, when Paneth dirst published and then withfrew his transmutation paper.
That is here, in English and German:
https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/PanethFthepublica.pdf
They did not look for excess heat.
Any scientist in the last 120 years would have understood perfectly.
Alas.the real .Thomas Huxley died in 1895..
Perhaps he would've understood. we shall never know 
May the universe have mercy on him..
“The total net energy obtained during the 32 days run was about 1.5 MWh. This amount of energy is far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume.”
“By multiplying the value of each file by the length of time that the file refers to (48 hours) and adding the results, we get:
(1658.21· 48) + (1664.88 · 48) + ... + (2373.94 · 48) = (1618194 ± 10%) [Wh] =
= (5825 ± 10%) [MJ] (28) “
If one considers the weight of the charge = 1 g, one gets the following values relevant to thermal energy density and power density:
(1618194 / 0.001) = (1618194000 ± 10%) [Wh/kg] = (1.6∙ 109 ± 10%) [Wh/kg] =
= (5.8 ∙ 106 ± 1 0%)[MJ/kg] (29)
(1618194000 / 768) = (2107023 ± 10%) [W/kg] = (2.1∙ 106 ± 10%) [W/kg] (30) ”
“The quantity of heat emitted constantly by the reactor and the length of time during which the reactor was operating rule out, beyond any reasonable doubt, a chemical reaction as underlying its operation. This is emphasized by the fact that we stand considerably more than two order of magnitudes from the region of the Ragone plot occupied by conventional energy sources.”
Please don’t use that as example, no one takes that seriously flawed report at this stage of the game.
Please don’t use that as example, no one takes that seriously flawed report at this stage of the game.
However, at the time, it was considered to be unassailable proof by many.
Several Professors of some prestige had authored it.
We don’t always have the benefit of hindsight and years of post-analysis.
We don’t always have the benefit of hindsight and years of post-analysis.
The past is past.
Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of those atoms is talking moonshine 1933
Guess who said that?
