Talking again and again about these old experiments says that you should be very close to the final hole in the ground.
Now depending if you were a good, a bad or an ugly you could reborn in the best case or going directly to hell
Display MoreI'd want an experiment where 4He concentrations were >> atmospheric 4He which ran a long time to accumulate higher concentrations, sampled from time to time, where there was no uncertainty as to whether what was measured was D2 or 4He, and where the 4He correlated well with excess heat. The 4He would be samples from emitted gasses in a system with a recombiner. The atmospheric 4He needs to be measured on occasion, and the lab where the experiment happens must not be used for other potentially 4He generating activities. Or else the experiment is housed in a gas-proof enclosure which measures - from time to time - 4He on the inside.
The various errors can then be addressed:
- 4He in electrode or solution: "edge effect" can be disambiguated from time vs 4He graph
- 4He from atmosphere: can be disambiguated from time vs 4He graph as long as 4He concentrations become >> atmospheric 4He. The possibility of sporadic high 4He lab atmosphere concentration - silly example - a 4He party balloon bursts - not detected by 4He spot checks is eliminated by the conditions.
- 4He/excess heat ratio. As long as excess heat can be accurately measured (Using Jed's measure: excess power / calorimeter calculated error after calibration* - that would be true of many experiments) the slope of the 4He vs excess heat graph over a long time should accurately equal that expected from the D+D-> 4He nuclear reaction (given what Jed says about branching ratio).
Jed, we could look at the single 4He / excess heat experiment you think best matches up to this? Obviously the Tritium experiment we were looking at does not.
My calculations have emission of 4He the same as can be found in 1l of atmosphere (5ppm by volume) every week from 100mW excess heat. That means in a closed cell with 100cc gas you would be clear of atmospheric leak issues in a few days if you could get 100mW excess heat - which I think many of the old experiments did (you would say)?
THH
* I do not necessarily agree with this because the assumptions that control and active runs have identical calorimetry sometimes break - but I think Jed would reckon this can be eliminated as a factor so an accurate experiment could be fairly easily made.
PS - I am not saying this is an easy experiment to do! Far from it.