Please explain this graph

Here is a paper I have been meaning to upload for a long time. I kept forgetting to do that. Anyway here it is now:

Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann, Calorimetric measurements of the palladium/deuterium system: fact and fiction. Fusion Technol., 1990. 17: p. 669.

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/PonsScalorimetra.pdf

There is a graph in this paper which is sort of famous. It shows a large heat burst. I believe I've seen it reproduced on a T-shirt. Here it is:

I do not understand what the y-axis of this graph shows. I would appreciate it if someone would explain it.

The y-axis is the log of 100 times "enthalpy generation / joule enthalpy input." That does not seem to correlate with anything in Table 1. And why is it "Joule" enthalpy input and not "Watt"? At peak, it is 100 * 3 = 300 times . . . what?And what does "enthalpy generation" mean, anyway? Is that excess heat? (~10 W just after 1.6 million seconds.) Or is it input power plus excess heat? (~17 W just after 1.6 million seconds, I think.) Why is it multiplied by 100?? I am confused!

Let me go back to the beginning.

The paper says: "The cumulative excess enthalpy for the bursts shown in Figs. 5a, 5b, and 5c = ~16 MJ/cm^3 far exceeds the heat that could be generated by any conceivable chemical process (factor of 10^2 to 10^3)."

Here is the previous graph, 5a, which I do understand:



The top graph shows the temperature. This corresponds to output power, but not in a linear fashion because the temperature goes up to 47°C which means power goes up significantly more because of the Stefan-Boltzmann law. The caption says the cathode is a rod, 0.4 x 1.25 cm. That is 0.63 cm^3. The text says total enthalpy from this graph is 16 MJ per cubic centimeter, so that comes to 10 MJ absolute value.

The experiment lasts ~7 million seconds, so that is ~1.4 W average. But, as you see, most of the time it is quiescent. Most of the enthalpy is generated in the first burst, which lasts from 1.6 to 3.2 seconds, a duration of 1.6 million seconds, or 18.5 days. 10 MJ/1.6 million seconds = 6 W. Most of the enthalpy is generated between 1.6 and 2.4 million seconds = 0.8 million seconds, so I guess that is ~10 W.

The graph below this, Fig. 5c, shows total specific excess energy. Which is 16 MJ as noted. "Specific" means per cubic centimeter. And, as I just said, most of the energy is generated soon after the 1.6 million second mark.

Getting back to figure 5b, the one I do not understand, the curve from 1.6 to 3.2 million seconds is level compared to the temperature (Fig. 5a) or specific excess energy (Fig. 5c) curves, because this is a log scale graph.

But what exactly does the y-axis show?

Quote from Curbina

I assume that you are familiar with this document, yet, a Google search with the exact terms in the Y axis yields this document and it relates to the ICARUS type of experiment and why the Enthalpy Generation and Joule Enthalpy input terms are used. Way too dense for a skim read, just throwing it to the table for later.

I have that document here:

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBossthermaland.pdf

I see where it uses "enthalpy generation" but I do not find the exact terms in the y-axis. On what page did you see that?

The program FileLocatorPro does not find any example of this:

"enthalpy generation" NEAR "joule enthalpy"

"Joule enthalpy" is apparently what Martin Fleischmann called resistance heater input heat. FileLocatorPro found 3 instances of this term, all 3 in papers by Fleischmann. Example:

"The main anomaly of the processes taking place in the lattice is that the sum of all the nuclear

products detected does not match the excess enthalpy generated in the cathodes above the one to

be attributed to the Joule enthalpy input (e.g. see [7,8,37, 34,35,56-67]). The observation of 4He

in the gas phase of cathodes producing excess enthalpy in rough accord with that predicted for

the reaction

iii) 2D +2D → 4He +23.9 MeV,

indicates that this is probably the dominant process involved in «cold fusion» [68]."

Fleischmanpossibleth.pdf

APPEND: This means heating power from electrolysis. I guess in it means power that goes to heat, not total electrolysis power. Much of that power leaves the cell as free D2 and O2. The heating is: (Ecell − 1.54) × Cell Current. (Ecell is how electrochemists say "voltage.")

"It may be noted that the errors in (k'R 2 are measures of the accuracy of the true heat

transfer coefficient as the estimates are made in terms of the known Joule enthalpy input

to the calibration heater."

MosierBossthermaland.pdf (what you found)

APPEND: This is total input power to a joule calibration heater. No subtracting to take into account the thermoneutral potential.

So that tells us what the denominator means.

Someone suggested the "100 x" in the y-axis definition means it is percent. That makes sense, but I don't get the rest of it.

Okay, Ed Storms translated the y-axis label from Martinese to English as follows:

log 100*(excess power/applied power)

In other words, output was 3 times input soon after the first burst began. If this is the event shown in the last row of Table 1, input was 7 W and output around 21 W. That sounds right.

I resorted to grade school arithmetic to try to figure out what is happening here. On Fig. 5c, I drew the intercept lines for the first phase of the large burst:

I printed this image and carefully measured the timeline and the red and blue line intercepts. On my printout:

1 mm = 13,008 s. Distance between red and blue intercepts on x-axis = 39 mm = 507,317 s

y-axis intercept is at -1 MJ, so the blue line intercepts the y-axis at 12 MJ

12,000,000 J / 507,317 s = 23.65 W per cubic centimeter (red slope)

Rod 0.4 cm diameter, 1.25 cm length = 0.16 cm^3 volume

23.65 W/cm3 * 0.16 cm3 = 3.78 W actual power

The net energy gain during the first phase is:

Method 1. The first phase continues for 234,146 seconds (65 hours) at 26.65 W/cm3 which equals 5,538,462 J/cm3, or 886,154 J actual.

Method 2. The y-intercept for the start and end of the initial steep slope indicates an increase of 5,014,925 J/cm3. That is reasonably close to Method 1.

Starting at ~1.8 million seconds the curve levels out and then continues to increase at a slower rate, in the second phase. I added a green line to show this. The slope indicates 15.38 W/cm3, or 2.46 W actual.

I used the online utility WebPlotDigitalizer to convert the graph in Fig. 5c to digital data. I plotted it, and then converted specific energy to actual power. That is to say, I took the specific joules for each time segment divided by seconds in each segment, then multiplied by 0.16 (the volume of the rod in cubic centimeters). Here are the two graphs.

Quote from Alan Smith

Are you planning to add this as a footnote/comment to the original paper?

I never do that. I never change papers, except when the author asks me to. I sometimes point out typos and errors to the authors and ask if I should fix them. I sometimes add the title and journal name to the first page, if it is not shown. Like this:

Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann, Calorimetric measurements of the palladium/deuterium system: fact and fiction. Fusion Technol., 1990. 17: p. 669.

If I have enough to say about a paper, I might write a companion paper similar to this one:

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreviewofth.pdf