Posts by anonymous

Quote from Paradigmnoia

The 48 V DC 350 W power supply arrived early today, a nice surprise. Wired it up, installed it, set it to 50.0 V (it is adjustable +/- about 4 V). And three hours later, still 50.0 V. AC ripple 0.0076 V. Awesome.

Now I am assembling an Arduino data logger to (eventually) get all calorimeter sensors onto the same time stamp.
Apparently I can have 100 thermocouples logging simultaneously (offset by a few ms for each one) but I doubt I will try it.

Why run a 48V power supply at 50.0, i.e. past its rated operating voltage? Might burn it out or be unstable. Why not run it at 48V?

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Without fan voltage and current measurement , (without a MAF, etc) it is nearly impossible to determine if the air flow rate changes between experiments. The air flow measurement in the Mizuno calorimeter is one of the weakest points of that arrangement, IMO. Reduced airflow nets a higher delta T, all else being equal. It is the easiest way to fool the calorimeter based on my tests. The Albiston calorimeter fixes the weakest link with the MAF sensors.

The current sense resistor in the Mizuno calorimeter is in series with the fan in order to make a voltage signal for the data logger. In the Saito calorimeter photo, there appears to be no blower fan sense resistor, instead there is an adjustable DC power supply. In that case it is possible to feed and measure the reactor and calibration units the desired blower voltage and current directly. To match the Mizuno calorimeter characteristics, Saito would have to set the fan voltage to about 9V, not the total 10.45 V that the Mizuno calorimeter gets because the sense resistor is in series. However, it appears that the calorimeter is not fully assembled in that photo: the RTDs are still in a bag beside the electronics, and there is a blower fan gasket on the RH side of the calorimeter.

A current sense resistor in series with the blower performs some very useful functions. The voltage to the blower fan is proportional to air flow, and the current sense resistor voltage can show that the fan is in fact always on.

Although not fully tested by myself, it appears so far that changing the reactor/calibration device resemblance does not affect the outlet-inlet air temperature dT, if everything else remains the same. The calorimeter captures (most of) the input power no matter what the configuration of the heat source is. A 200 W resistor 10 cm long or a 20 x 50 cm steel cylinder with 200 W input react the same at steady state. It is quite difficult to get a 5 C dT above calibration without adding real heat.

1) I'm not disagreeing with you.

2) There are current measurement devices for digital data collector rigs that get rid of the need for the crude 3 ohm series resistor for current measurement. Fan power is simple DC current, not a complex high bandwidth waveform. Too much voltage drop relative to fan voltage.

1)

Quote from Brian Albiston

The airflow calorimeter consists of an insulated, airtight box (Magic Chef HMCF7W2). The 3 inch foam insulation has been supplemented with Reflectix foil insulation radiant barrier.

I really like the insulated Magic Chef box. Great choice.

2) "The calorimeter is housed in a non-climate controlled space so the input air is controlled to be a constant input temperature. A modified heated blower (Conair 1875) is used with PID control to maintain input temperature, usually within a few tenths of a degree."

Good idea, but please also consider that even with the insulated box the difference in both ambient air temperature, and the temperature of the roof, the walls, and any HVAC blown air will make a small but measurable difference on the net heat transfer from the reactor/control to the outside.

3) Your documentation is _great_ in this thread. When it comes time for the paper, you can copy and paste this into your journal article.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

I woke up two nights ago wondering if somehow the Mizuno blower fan was being run at 10.45 V for calibration but only 8.5 to 9 V for the excess heat runs due to inserting the 3 ohm sense resistor only in excess runs. Of course that might be possible once, but is very unlikely for many different runs to keep doing that.

Such an error would be clumsy and thus unlikely but not impossible. That is why having a replicated experiment or at least a second set of eyes review all components in Mizuno's rig is important as he could have accidentally left off an important detail. That said, do we see anywhere that the active vs control run have used a different blower power circuit?

I would expect that even if the current sense resistor in series was inserted in the active runs, the blower voltage should have been measured across the blower motor, not the blower + resistor, and the sense current measured across the resistor; so that no guess needs to be made on the blower effective resistance. Better than a current sense resistor would be to put a current sensor in series as exists in a common digital multimeter (but one that collects data for the digital data recorder) and not use a sense resistor as a crude current measurement device.

It is ESSENTIAL that the control run and active run have as little changed as is possible between them. This includes any electrical component and ideally the reactor itself. I have always been uncomfortable that the calibration reactor is different than the control reactor for the initial published Mizuno R19 tests; and that there is essentially no control for the published R20 tests. Any change between control and active must be documented as fully as possible for conclusive proof of excess heat.

Curbina started this on ECW. Do we have a thread on it here

https://e-catworld.com/2020/01…and-make-recommendations/

Quote from JedRothwell

Here is a hi-res photo of Saito's calorimeter.

Great photo.

A few quick notes:

1) No turbo pump, just what appears to be (if my memory serves me) a rotory vane type pump. This limits the vacuum to what that type of pump can put out.

2) I don't see the H2/D2 tank supply apparatus. It must have been removed.

3) Input valve is at the perfect place if it is valved to off, thereby limiting potential resupply of chemical fuel to what is already in the unit.

4) The input gas tube diameter is really small and really long , so I doubt that the effective conduction of the tube is significant to the calorimetry.

5) With the bricks under the reactor and the nice air gap between the reactor and the walls, I doubt too much reactor heat is going out by conduction to the bricks and thus the outside or anywhere else. It looks like certainly most heat is leaving via air convection or radiation to the walls.

6) Assume this is the same reactor body (i.e. conflat) I think the calibration run would be consistent after changing either the gas or the reactor mesh. Q. Change the gas and how does the heat flow change? A. I think it doesn't change enough to allow for the 30% excess heat that Saito thinks he is seeing.

Quote from Desireless

First update from the run. It is running just for 2 hours and the reactor is just slightly over 100°C. As far as I can tell, there is no excess heat.

But during one instance related to the pressure - I try to maintain constant pressure in the cell - there was clear burst of gamma radiation that correspond to over 2 times of background.

So many counts were never measured during normal circumstance. The readings returned within 10 seconds back to the background. This never happened earlier and I am convinced this is due to the pressure change as it happened exactly when pressure was increased by my intervention.

This is telling me the fuel is somehow active.

Next step is to increase the temperature.

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Betelgeuse

Quote from Paradigmnoia

I did a 210 W steady to 310 W steady and almost back to 200 W steady state. 100 W delta T looks to be about 5 C which corresponds well with the below image from Jed.

I attached and sealed the 70 mm vane anemometer directly to the outlet tube with a little wider spacer-adapter and it reports almost exactly what it did yesterday, which is almost exactly 7.0 m/s. Much higher than every single data point on the hot wire traverse group which looks to average maybe 4.5 m/s. (I haven’t averaged the 33 points yet, but there are two 6.3’s (maximum T) and about a third of the points are less than half of that.)

It smells like I cooked off some input wire insulation inside the big tube on the 310 W run. It can’t really go anywhere so it should be OK. The inner cartridge was around 700 C.

.

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Paradig,

1) This shows R-19 which is the name of a Mizuno reactor. But I thought you had built your own, or did Mizuno give you R-19?

2) Did you calibrate with the same reactor as the above experimental run? Or do you (like Mizuno) have a different reactor?

3) What is different in the test reactor run compared to the calibration run? Same reactor body with an inert gas or vacuum on the inside? Same reactor body with active gas but no mesh or a non-Palladium rubbed mesh? Or different reactor body of similar external characteristics?

4) Is the reactor's H2 or D2 supply valved off from the supply system?

Assuming the control is adequate, I think this is excellent results.

P.S.

Is Paradig a good abbreviation of your Pseudo-name -- it's easier to spell for me. I hope you don't mind.

Quote from Ascoli65

The following JPEG contains my answer.

[Photo of AC unit 2 meters from rig]

I've seen this before in a different setting. It's to be expected unless extremely controlled exterior temperatures and constant or zero airflow are are used, by, for example, enclosing the exterior of the rig in a water jacket that is kept at as constant of a temperature as possible by a thermostat. Almost all labs have some kind of HVAC connection to keep the inside environment at habitable temperatures and humidity, and almost all labs have one or more exterior walls, windows, or roofs that couple the exterior environment, diurnal solar heating and night time radiation cooling, and convection into the rig's experiment room.

What can be very helpful is if the AC unit and its fan blower unit on/off times are registered in the collected data so that the obvious change in external air convection can be at least noted on the charts if not (through extreme calculation gymnastics) filtered away. One idea is to cool off or heat the room before the experiment starts, then turn off the HVAC for the data collection period, collection room temperature as part of the experiment, and leave the door closed with the room empty during the data collection period, so that only free convection and radiation would occur.

All this is a real pain in the behind and is essentially a type of experimental noise, lowering the signal to noise ratio. That is why the ideal experiments need signals so large that you can drive a 18 wheeled truck through it -- so that the estimation of the environmental effects can be grossly simplified with minimal calculation work, without significantly lowering the probability that the positive result was experimental error.

Quote from JedRothwell

There is no chance you could detect either of these things with this equipment. It measures plus/minus 2 W or so. The effects you describe would be a fraction of a milliwatt. (Not actually a milliwatt of heat, but an error on that scale.)

Known sources of noise such as ambient temperature changes and fluctuations from thermocouples are orders of magnitude larger than the kinds of things you speculate about here.

Disagree Jed. If the cooling vent is on the rig, its temperature goes down. Has nothing to do with milliwatts, has to do with removal of heat by flow of air. We have all experienced same when standing outside on a still wind day at say 40 Fahrenheit and it seems warm, but add in a breeze and you are freezing. Convective air movement removes heat. I know this to be true from past experience.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Stood in front of the calorimeter 20 cm from the inlet. Raised inlet temperature 0.7 C, but only 0.2 at the outlet. Maybe it might catch up at the outlet but I didn’t want to stand there for an hour to find out.

Reset the blower voltage to 10.45 from 8.55 to more closely match the Saito values.
Delta T dropped to 13.5 from 15.

In addition to your body heat it could be you are interrupting the airflow from a more distant source (i.e. the door or a vent) to the inlet. This is to be expected and is noise. Because you are going to run for 1000's of seconds this noise will be filtered away. Or you could run a regression on it if you have a mechanical way to measure your position so you can subtract out the expected temperature increase noise of your walking around. If you don't want to see the noise you might need to move the unit so that when you are working on it you are not between the airflow source and the unit. I think because most of your heat removal is delta-T between input and output, this 0.7 degree rise is already not significant, but some of it is the conduction, natural convection and radiation to the environment from the rig and you can build that also into the equation. I think it is so second order compared to the signal from the heater control or the active unit that you don't need to worry about it

I'm liking this thread -- we have at least two active experimenters who are doing the real work feeding back to us in the audience with questions, conclusions, and requests for ideas.

Keep up the good work all and above all else -- remain polite to each other. We all share a common interest here if not a common goal. Great community. Good luck in the New Year all!!!

Quote from Desireless

Another aspect is - Mizuno recommend to fill reactor with Deuterium when it is OFF. But pressure is changing very noticeably during heating.

In my case from 200 Pa at room temperature to 2000 Pascals at the max. heater power.

Is it indended that pressure is still at 200 Pascals during whole run? Because this factor is extremely dependent on the reactor construction. Shall we try to hold the constant pressure?

What if pressure is changed by the reaction or by fuel during run? Calibration will then not match likely.

1) Thermal conductivity of gas is not effected too much by pressures above 1 Torr = 133 Pascal at for example 600K -- less than 1%. It is a second order effect if you are running these pressures.

But even at lower pressures below 0.01 Torr where it makes a significant difference...

2) Because there is no other path for the heat to escape other than conduction (which is limited to the input pipes and the supporting structure), radiation (which is constant for a given physical shape, emissivity, and temperatures for the rig vs the surrounding environment (because some radiation is reabsorbed back in the rig), and convection (which is being measured by the airflow), I don't think different interior gas conduction, or interior convective gas heat transfer makes _any_ significant difference here. The proof is to run some calibrations evacuated to where there is no conduction (i.e. 0.0001 Torr) and compare to where there is gas (1 Torr). I think this would be proven in calibration by a careful experimenter.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Adiabatic temperature rise= 0.243 C

which is a large proportion of 0.35 C.(actually measured)

Oh, wow. I've not been reading here carefully. Is it really true that the results here are based on such a low temperature difference (out - in)? Surely not! It would be unsafe in lots of ways. And unnecessary because in any air calorimeter flow can be reduced to increase out - in temperature difference.

They think there is a 150 to 250 watt excess heat. These adiabatic+fan power temperature rises are around 1 watt. So the temp chart (not provided) is showing a 150/1*.25 to 250/1*.25 = 37 to 62 temperature rise. We would like to see the temperature chart, but it must be something of the order I just estimated, not 1/4 degree.

Quote from THHuxleynew

As I said, nit picking. There is no evident way in which such a large difference in temperature with the same electric energy input can be explained by anything conventional.

The issue is what is the heat loss. I agree differences between cal and active cannot be larger than the total cal losses: but we do not have much info about what these are at the moment.

One caveat, if the in/out temperatures as measured are a not fair average of the air stream that would be another error that could be reactor temperature dependent (altering turbulence etc). Do we have info about that?

What difference does it make if there is a temperature error due to turbulence as long as temp measurement is consistent and monotonically increasing with actual temperature. Doesn't change the calibration, i.e. if a 500 watt inert control reactor makes the temperature rise 70C, and the active run shows an increase by 100C, that difference of 30C is positive and can be calibrated by running the control reactor at 600W, 700W, and 800W.

As long as the heat transfer is more or less the same between control and active reactor, it is calibrated. What could we be missing here THH? I know you're a skeptic and I want to hear it. I don't have this reactor in front of me to prove it for myself, but the report on its face seems like it would be proof if accurately reported. I'd like to see more details like in a peer reviewed paper (JCMNS is fine) where the reviewers point out missing elements in the paper and the authors fix the paper to improve its quality. But it seems pretty conclusive if the detail is provided. The details will come because Mizuno committed to open sourcing the test and we are doing it. Someone will write the conclusive paper.

Happy New Year All!

Quote from THHuxleynew

There might be thus-and-such a problem.

Specifically, a difference between active and cal runs that results in 30% less heat output from the calorimeter on cal run than on active.

All that is needed for this is for the reactor, or possibly some elements inside the reactor with thermal bridge to outside, to be much hotter during cal conditions cf active. As Jed points out an equilibrium is reached in which the heat out is still the heat in (roughly). However this can be with different temperature of the reactor and therefore different heat loss. The reactor temperature depends on the cooling of the air, the internal heater temperature depends on configuration and internal gasses (relevant if this thermally bridges outside the reactor.

How would I check? Increase by factor of 2 the insulation everywhere and see whether apparent heat excess reduces.

The way these results scale makes them look like some such issue to me, but it is easy enough to check and provide convincing support if they are real.

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The more heat from either LENR or resistive heating, the greater the temperature of the reactor. The greater the temperature, the greater the transfer by radiation to the walls, convection via the cooling air, and conduction by the supporting hardware and the pipes. But if the thermal resistance of the conduction is the same, the thermal radiation transfer goes to the T^4 power, and the convection captures a similar amount at the same calibrated temperature, hotter output air means more power. It can be calibrated and we are assuming that the U Hokkaido crew did a reasonable job as it is not hard. That's it. While we don't have all the calibration data or run data (i.e. the temperatures in each setting), we can assume that Hokkaido did a replication. Once calibrated there is no need to recalibrate by changing the insulation. That's 1 replication.

Future replications will be forthcoming as the technique has been open sourced. It takes about 6 months it appears to do a replication. There are at least 3 other teams working right here on this forum. They will eventually be better documented. So we can just wait right here on the forum, or we can go out and do it ourselves.

If the signal to noise ratio is that good and if it is as simple as Mizuno says to create the reactor with the simple materials, we can't miss the signal in other replications.

Quote from JedRothwell

No H2 will escape, because the pressure inside the cell is far lower than atmospheric pressure. Gas will only go into the reactor.

Even if the reactor were at 1 atm or somewhat higher...

We can ignore gas thermal conductivity because it cannot affect the calorimetry. If the heat were measured as a function of the temperature inside the reactor, gas conductivity would affect it. But conductivity cannot affect a measurement based on the inlet and outlet temperatures of cooling air.

1) "No H2 will Escape". H2 is not "escaping" like a high pressure leak, it would be diffusing from an area of higher H2 density thru the steel to an area of lower h2 density in the surrounding air. But with a sealed volume at 0.1 Torr (my recollection of the reactor pressure when it is valved off, i.e. 1e-4 ATM), we are talking about next to nothing in fuel available. But because the valve is shut with a total volume of say 2 liters and a energy density of 140 MJ/kg and mass density of 0.09 g/L, total energy is around 1e-4*2*.09*0.001*140 MJ = 2.5 joules. The fact that it is valved off means even if the H2 slowly diffused over 1e4 seconds, then its 2.4e-4 watts, i.e. 1/4 mW, i.e. nothing.

2) "We can ignore gas thermal conductivity because..." I agree we can almost certainly ignore it, because it hardly would effect the calibration. The only thing that could effect the calorimetry is if there is another path for heat that has less thermal resistance in the active run vs the control. In this case, the path could be the loading tube if it still has H2 in it which is an excellent conductor. However, the loading tube inner diameter is only around 5 mm judging by the photos, so there is not much of a path for heat conduction thru the H2. I can't quickly compute that but I think it is next to nothing. Thus, unless someone can prove otherwise analytically, I think an identical rig loaded with 0.1 Torr of H2 instead of air or a vacuum has essentially the same calibration.

Quote from JedRothwell

Extensive testing with a variety of different reactors and resistance heaters, including bare resistance heaters, shows that my statement is correct. I am not making this stuff up. I am not speculating. I am telling you what the data shows from three air flow calorimeters (two from Mizuno and one from Saito), and from many water flow calorimeters.

Why would this matter? It is not clear to me what "directly heating" means in this context, but whatever it means, how can it transfer more energy over time? I can see why it might heat up the air more quickly, if it emerges from the reactor sooner, or if there is less thermal mass. But over the total course of the reaction the heat balance will be exactly the same no matter with any heater. The heater does not measurably affect the inlet or outlet thermocouples. They are not directly exposed to the calibration heater or the active reactor.

How can any configuration of the heater increase the outlet temperature? This would not "appear" as increased power; it would be increased power. It would be a perpetual motion machine. The terminal outlet temperature must be the same at a given power level for any heater, with any geometry. If it is not the same, I suppose the outlet thermocouple is directly exposed to the heat source, or there is some other problem. The whole point of calibrating with different kinds of heaters is to ensure there is no problem of this nature. I have never seen a problem of this nature, but anyway, if there were one, calibrations with different heaters should reveal it. If you don't think so, what test do you propose to show there is "direct heating"? How can we detect this?

(Some people here -- not you -- have a bad habit of suggesting there might be thus-and-such a problem, but when I ask: "Okay, how would you detect this problem? What test will reveal it?" they do not respond. That makes their assertion not falsifiable. Meaning it is not true or false. If you cannot describe a test to demonstrate a problem, that problem does not exist. It is imaginary.)

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Ignoring the thermal conduction loss down the gas fill pipe to the exterior. However this should be small relative to the radiation loss from the reactor to the walls which should be the same at the same temperature assuming the reactor external emissivity is the same on both the test run and the control run.

There is also the slight but small amount of H2 that could diffuse thru the hot stainless steel reactor wall and recombine with the O2 in the exterior air, creating combustion heat. However, the unit is (under the Mizuno protocol) valved off so that the small amount of H2 has a known amount of potential combustion energy which would be quickly exhausted, thereby not effecting the test.

Because the calibrated vs measured power difference is large, I think we can rule out the H2 gas or gas thermal conductivity difference in this experiment. The only thing that could provide this level of experimental error is if the emissivity of the calibration unit was much different (thus getting more heat out thru the walls in the calibration run). Someone else can put a slide-rule to this, but my gut feel is that the Hokkaido experiment has sufficient delta-T in the output air to more than compensate for such unreported emissivity differences. And if they were running the SAME reactor body, then there is no difference.

Quote from JedRothwell

It is similar, but the instruments are better, and the environment is much better controlled.

...

Only for the 500 W tests.

Thank you Jed

Please help me understand/confirm:

1) I am assuming that the power outputs in the new MizunoTsupplement.pdf were generated using the same airflow calorimetry techniques as the earlier Mizuno papers? Is this correct?

2) Calibration in figure 3, page 7 is in 'arbitrary units'. What's the conversion from arbitrary units for "Air In" an "air out" to temperature in degrees C, i.e. how high a rise are we seeing?

3) Are there photos available in the as tested configuration (including surface polish to know emissivity and surface area are both about the same) of the the control unit vs the active unit? Is the placement of the heater unit within the control vs. active reactor unit the same. Or is is actually the same reactor unit with different gas or metal mesh? Do they have the same gas at the same pressure/vacuum inside the unit during the test, or is one running for example presumed to be inert nitrogen or helium, while the other runs hydrogen (with different conductivities)?

4) Why is the input air hotter for the first 10000 or so seconds?

5) I am assuming the airflow is the same for control vs active run. Is that correct.

6) Do we have available the raw input and output air temperature of the control run and the active run. I agree entirely with Jed's earlier statement (6 months back) that a significant rise in the output temperature (i.e. more than X degrees) running a similar reactor with same interior gas and the same airflow almost certainly has to be excess heat. So for example the 345 watt calibration run may have output temperature of around 200C while the active run having output of around 250C or above would be difficult to explain as anything other than significant excess heat. This lets us on the outside confirm the reasonableness of the calibration calculation.

If all other things being equal the reactor gets a LOT hotter, it _is_ excess heat. +50C on 200C is a LOT hotter. +75C more so. Such a signal can more than compensate for the "noise" of variation in reactor emissivity or internal gas conduction. We can leave the details to the excess power calibration for later, but at least focus now on the Mizuno type rig being a working and repeatable large excess heat producing unit. This supplement at 350 and 500 watts input looks like about COP 1.4 unit. Assuming the non-airflow captured heat can be used to heat the room, it's a 40% more efficient space heater! That's an economic start. (With better insulation around the walls and high temperature materials, input power can be reduced while lowering the airflow to maintain same reactor temperature, and thus COP can be improved.)

Thank you Jed. These are encouraging results.