Posts by Ascoli65

Quote from JedRothwell

A mysterious way! That only you can understand. Or that you are keeping secret. You should tell us how a mistake relating to foam invalidated flow calorimetry. Show why the mistakes at MIT reached out and invalidated the entire plasma fusion program. How can a mistake made by one author "undermine the authority" of another author? Because you imagine that other author agrees with the result?

Do you mean that the experts commissioned in 2004 by the LENR community to write the letter to DoE didn't agree with the results reported in the documents they selected and submitted to the department in order to demonstrate the reality of CF and support the request for public funding?

Quote

You have no idea how many cold fusion researchers know about or care about the boil-off results. Based on the questions I asked several of them writing the recent paper, they never thought about it. They have no interest in it. It is a fact they never tried to replicate it.

But it is also a fact that F&P experiments are cited in almost all CF papers and that at the beginning of your recent "Review of the calorimetry of Fleischmann and Pons" you wrote that the boil-off experiment was the culmination of their experimental activity.

Quote

Furthermore, you have overlooked countless technical details and proof that your hypothesis is wrong. Such as the fact that the cells produced heat before and after the boil off, and the reflux cell produced heat for months, while condensing the steam. You have made dozens of idiotic mistakes, which you do not see. You are suffering from the Dunning Kruger effect. You are incompetent and this leads you to imagine you are an expert.

You are digressing too much.

This is the video (it shows the arrows mentioned in his comment) carefully watched by Robert Horst, a reputable member of this forum.

Here is once again his comment with some added emphasis:

Could you please specify what is wrong with the above description of what happened inside the F&P cells?

Quote from RobertBryant

Stupid.

such as asserting that airconditioning produces the oscillations in the Akito Takahashi calorimeter..

when the calorimeter is isolated from room air,

or that moisture is present in calcined fuel.

to name just two examples in 2020

of "serious loss of credibilty"

there is no art in creating doubt in science

by the foam master.. it is slapdash

Display More

My answer is here:

Takahashi: Enhancement of Excess Thermal Power in Interaction of Nano-Metal and H(D)-Gas

This is not the place to discuss this topic.

Test PNZrr10 #1-4 - Mundane interpretation of TC4 curve

Quote from RobertBryant

Stupid.

such as asserting that airconditioning produces the oscillations in the Akito Takahashi calorimeter..

when the calorimeter is isolated from room air,

or that moisture is present in calcined fuel.

to name just two examples in 2020

of "serious loss of credibilty"

there is no art in creating doubt in science

by the foam master.. it is slapdash

Display More

The composite graph at the center of the above jpeg was obtained by assembling some graphs taken from pages 10, 11 and 12 of the Takahashi's presentation at JCF20 (1) related to the test PNZrr10 # 1-4, started on September 2, 2019. Diamonds along the temperature curves mark moments and periods of the transient which are described in the following points:

0 - at the beginning of the test PNZrr10 # 1-4, the RC (Reaction Chamber) contains the water formed during test # 1-2. The water presumably formed in accordance to the mechanism described by the authors of the presentation, as illustrated in (*1) . Over the weekend this water had time to condense and leach through the dust to the bottom of the RC. The 4.87% oxygen in the 504g of PNZ10rr sample could have formed up to 1.4 moles of DO2, for a volume of about 25 cm³. The transverse area of the RC is 25 cm² (volume 500 cm³, internal height 20 cm), so if by hypothesis the water were all collected on the bottom it could form a layer of 2 cm (assuming a liquid fraction of 50% ). However, it is also possible that the condensation water was distributed over the entire height of the charge, wetting the dust contained therein;

1 - When the temperature of the lower layers of the powder reaches the boiling point of water at the pressure present in the RC (0.468 MPa), the water evaporates, increasing its volume by a few hundred times. The steam that is formed pushes upwards the interstitial water located at the upper levels. At the same time when the vapor passes through the higher levels of dust, which are still at temperatures below boiling point, it condenses. The overall effect of these 2 mechanisms is to raise the water present in the RC upwards, drying the lower levels of the dust;

2 - When the liquid layer has moved far enough away from the levels where RTD1 and RTD2 are located, the surrounding dust, now dry, can heat up more quickly than the upper layers;

3 - Subsequently, the upper layers of the powder also reach the boiling temperature, as shown by the curves of RTD3 and RTD4 placed respectively at 9 cm and 12 cm above the bottom;

4 - When the boiling temperature reaches the top of the powder, all the remaining water is concentrated on a layer on top of the powder and is boiling. As long as the upper flange remains colder than the boiling point, the steam condenses on its lower face and drop back to the powder surface, greatly increasing the heat exchange between the boiling water and the flange;

5 - The temperature of the upper flange, measured by TC4, therefore quickly reaches the boiling value and remains there during the vaporization phase of the water. During this period the vapor bubbles drag and eject the metal grains upwards, which partly stick to the lower face of the flange as shown in the photo on page 107 of the ICCF22 presentation (2);

6 - For about 25 minutes, TC4 remains perfectly constant at the boiling temperature, although TC2 and TC3, measured in contiguous areas of the RC cylinder, continue to rise. This typical behavior is the evidence that RC contains water, as already explained in (*2). This same behavior also indicates that the upper flange is thermally well insulated from the rest of the RC;

7 - After about 25 minutes all the water initially present in the RC is vaporized and then the TC4 starts to rise again;

8 - After a couple of hours the RC-calorimeter system reaches a state of substantial thermal equilibrium and all the temperature values become constant or almost constant, including TC4;

9 - At this point TC4 suddenly drops rapidly. The decline is much faster at first and then slows down in accordance to the Newton's law of cooling. The cooling speed is compatible with a sudden increase in the convective heat exchange between the pipe welded to the flange and the ambient, due to the switching on of the AC unit in the room, as explained in (*3). Subsequently, the temperature rises, following again the same Newton's law, returns to the previous equilibrium value. This warming phase is easily explained by theswitching off of the AC unit. These cycles are repeated over the days of the experiment and their trends are compatible with the conditioning needings of the laboratory, as explained in (*4).

The singular features shown at points 6 and 9 of the TC4 curve were explained by Takahashi et al. as related to AHE events of presumably nuclear origin, as reported at page 10 and 15 of their presentation (1). However, the above description of the PNZrr10 #1-4 transient provides a much more mundane explanation of what could have happened inside the reaction chamber.

Readers will decide which explanation is more ..., well, the readers will decide by their own.

(1) https://www.researchgate.net/p…_of_Nano-Metal_and_HD-Gas

(2) https://www.researchgate.net/p…_of_Nano-Metal_and_HD-Gas

(*1) Takahashi: Enhancement of Excess Thermal Power in Interaction of Nano-Metal and H(D)-Gas

(*2) Takahashi: Enhancement of Excess Thermal Power in Interaction of Nano-Metal and H(D)-Gas

(*3) The NEDO Initiative - Japan's Cold Fusion Programme

(*4) The NEDO Initiative - Japan's Cold Fusion Programme

Quote from JedRothwell

Not "anyone." You are the only person who can do this. No one else sees what you claim to see. No one else agrees with you. You are not saying, "anyone can see this." You are saying, "everyone else is blind to it." You are saying: "I alone, in my sublime genius, see mistakes where mere mortals cannot see them. I know more than Fleischmann, Pons, McKubre, Storms and all the others put together."

Since you have not read the comment I had linked to you (see The Art Of Creating Doubt About Science ), I copy it below after underlining a few sentences for your convenience:

So, anyone can watch the video and come to the same conclusions.

Quote

Okay, so let's explore how this works. Because F&P made an error, this magically reaches out and invalidates McKubre's flow calorimetry. You cannot tell us how it does this. You have not discovered an error in McKubre's work. But you don't have to. It must be wrong because F&P were wrong using different equipment and different methods.

It works in a different, more complex way. As I wrote in my reply to Mark U, just a few comments before the shorter version addressed to you: "The huge errors in the 1992 boil-off experiment and in the related papers affect not only that specific work, but heavily undermine the credibility of its authors (which are also the CF's fathers) and of all the others researchers and supporters, who had the opportunity to watch the videos and nevertheless continued to proclaim the validity of the F&P results."

So the point is, who has had the opportunity to watch the 1992 boil-off video?

Well, F&P for sure. They watched the video since June 1992, after the test was ended. But they also showed the video at the ICCF3 in Nagoya, the following October. So, everybody in the CF community watched at least one time the time-lapse video and was aware of its essential role in determining the exceptional amount of the excess heat claimed by F&P for that specific experiment. It's logical to assume that all the closest friend of F&P have had the opportunity to watch again that video. In any case, watching carefully the video would have been a scruple of any member in the small group of CF representatives who selected the "Simplicity" paper as the first paper to be submitted to DoE in 2004.

Hence, the most expert, authoritative and representative members of the CF/LENR community continued to support the validity of the 1992 boil-off experiment reported by F&P, notwithstanding the available documentation, ie the video, clearly showed that the experiment was severely flawed by the presence of foam inside the cells. It means that either they were unable to see such a blatant flaw, or have chosen to ignore it. Either way, their own results suffered a serious loss of credibility.

Quote from Alan Smith

Anyway, buy some comics or I'm not speaking to you for a bit.

I will first look for a suitable beard.

Quote from JedRothwell

So you say, but you have not given a technical reason. Because you cannot give a reason.

The technical reasons were given directly by F&P and by those who published their videos of the 1992 boil-off experiment. Anyone can watch them and see the technical reasons which invalidates the F&P claims.

Quote

You must explain how it can be that an error in boil-off calorimetry invalidates isoperibolic, flow or Seebeck calorimetry. That is impossible. Your claim is preposterous.

No, I don't have to. The foam error "invalidates" the people who reported and supported the 1992 boil-off experiment, not only that specific experiment. So it invalidates all other experiments done by the same people, even if methods and equipments are different.

Either way, it seems you no longer question that the 1992 experiment was flawed. Are you going to correct and update your recent "Review of the calorimetry of Fleischmann and Pons" and explain why the "simplicity" paper is simply wrong, or will you keep it in the present wrong status?

Quote from Alan Smith

There is an expression in polemics called 'arguing from authority' - I think yours version is best described as 'arguing from ignorance'.

Yes, exactly. When someone argues from his authority, people simply believe what he says. This is the case of F&P when they presented their calculation made by assuming that at the beginning of the boil-off phase the cells were full of liquid watew, and of many others authoritative CF members who supported the F&P results.

Conversely, arguing from ignorance requires you to provide the evidence of what you are saying. This is my case when I invite the people to carefully watch the F&P videos to see what really is inside the cells.

Quote from Mark U

As you related a few posts ago, F&P used the results from that experiment to request DoD funding.

No, I didn't say that (see The Art Of Creating Doubt About Science ). The so called "simplicity" paper, reporting the 1992 boil-off experiment, was the first of 8 documents selected by 5 very important CF members to request DoE funding in 2004, 12 years after the experiment (see http://newenergytimes.com/v2/g…ent/DOE2004/7Papers.shtml ).

Quote

But it's a huge leap to conclude that it is thus "the cornerstone" of CF. If that 1992 experiment was not made I see no compelling reason reason to believe work on CF would have fizzled out.

Yes, it would have continued, because illusion is one of the most powerful force of humankind, but after its presentation at ICCF3 in Nagoya (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88YdKYv8sw ), the 1992 boil-off experiment was considered by the CF supporters as one of the most compelling evidence of the reality of the F&P effect and of its capability to be used for practical applications. These myths continued up to nowadays, as you can see on the cover of the comic book "Discover Cold Fusion".

Quote

You may have a point about foaming in this specific case (I haven't read the material closely enough to have a strong opinion), but I'm puzzled why you project a potentially real but specific problem in one experiment to all the multitudes of other quite different experiments.

Because it's mainly a matter of people, not experiments. The huge errors in the 1992 boil-off experiment and in the related papers affect not only that specific work, but heavily undermine the credibility of its authors (which are also the CF's fathers) and of all the others researchers and supporters, who had the opportunity to watch the videos and nevertheless continued to proclaim the validity of the F&P results.

Quote from Alan Smith

Ascoli65I hope you buy a few copies of the comic book if it helps to prove your case. Though leaning on a comic for support seems a trifly flimsy.

I would gladly buy some copies of the comic if I could do so anonymously. As far as I have seen in the few published pages, the pictures are very nice and expressive and I like the way the story is told. Beautiful cover. Hope it will have good success. I think its significance goes far beyond the history of cold fusion.

Quote from JedRothwell

Other experiments are much better documented than this one, with hundreds of pages more information, such as McKubre's or Miles.

No number of pages can be more informative than a video. The "1992 boil-off experiment" video shows the foam inside the cells, but the excess heat was calculated by F&P assuming it was all liquid water. This is an incredibly huge mistake, damaging the credibility of F&P and of all the CF researchers who supported the reliability of their claims, despite having had the opportunity to watch the video. Consequently, their experiments and results can't be considered reliable, as well.

The images speak by themselves:

Likewise, anyone who realizes that F&P mistook foam for liquid can infer the opposite. There is nothing more convincing than the video showing the foam in the tubes to conclude that CF is, unfortunately, a big and long lasting illusion.

Quote

This is not a particularly important experiment. It has not been widely replicated. You are the only person who thinks it is specially important.

By what logic does this allow you to draw "global conclusions about the reality of CF"? What does that even mean? How can an error in a boil off experiment reflect badly on other experiments that do not use that technique? As I said before, if someone finds a recombination error in an open cell experiment, how can that cast doubt on a closed cell experiment? That error is physically impossible in a closed cell. By the same token, a foam error is not possible when there is no boiling and no foam.

What you say is illogical. It is preposterous.

F&P's 1992 experiment is the cornerstone of the entire CF's house of cards.

It is also confirmed at the beginning of the recently issued "Review of the calorimetry of Fleischmann and Pons", where we can read [emphasis added]: "This is an introduction to the calorimetry in experiments by Fleischmann and Pons. From 1989 to 1993, they published a series of papers describing three methods of calorimetry: isoperibolic, phase change and a cooling curve analysis. These experiments culminated in boil-off experiments in which cells produced over 100 W of excess heat, and stayed hot for hours without input power."

Actually, the F&P experiments culminated in two blatantly wrong conclusions:

(1) it's not true that the cells produced 100W or any other amount of excess heat;

(2) it's not true that the any single cell stayed hot for hours without input power.

Furthermore, the just published comic book "Discover Cold Fusion" also highlights the essential role of F&P and the crucial importance of their open cell, whose model used in the "1992 boil-off experiment" is shown at the center of the cover, in the first inner page and fully described at page 6. There is only a small discrepancy: the bubbles were inside the cell, not outside!

Quote from JedRothwell

You have hit the nail on the head. You are one of the very people I had in mind when I wrote that. You have the delusion that you have found a problem in a paper by Fleischmann and Pons. What's more, you think that because you found this imaginary problem, by some magic that makes all other papers by all other authors wrong. Even though these other papers could not possibly have the problem you dreamed up. Even if you were right, it would not begin to disprove cold fusion.

The following comment explains in a good English that the F&P cells was full of foam during the boil-off phase: FP's experiments discussion . The commenter, after having watched the F&P video many times, agrees with me that the F&P paper was flawed.

Quote

You have once again done a masterful job of distorting what I wrote, making it out to be opposite of what it said:

"OK. How could LENR be disproved?

That's obvious! You just show there is a mistake in an experiment, and out it goes. ..."

I meant that one experiment goes out. Not all the others! To dismiss the whole field, you have to find errors in all of the major experiments. Finding an error in one experiment, such as undetected recombination in an open cell, does not magically cancel out the experiments with closed cells. Finding imaginary foam (your delusion) cannot change the facts about experiments that did not have boil off events. It does not even cancel out this experiment, since there was heat before and after the boil off.

Display More

Well, as you know, the only experiment which is fully document with a video recording most phases of it, is the "1992 boil-off experiment". But, given its special importance, this single experiment is enough to draw global conclusions about the reality of CF..

Everyone can look at the F&P video, which is available on the internet, and see the foam evolving inside the four cells. It means that F&P and the 5 authors of the 2004 letter to DoE, that is the gotha of CF field, were not able to distinguish foam from liquid water, or that they were not willing to admit that the 1992 experiment was totally flawed. This fact heavily affects the reliability of these people. It follows the unreliability of the results claimed for their experiments, the major in the field, and hence the substantial unreality of cold fusion.

Quote

On the contrary, I address this issue on p. 18. You do not agree with my analysis, but you are wrong.

Not at all. Page18 does not address my issues, which I recently reminded here: High repeatability rate in the history of LENR

Quote from JedRothwell

This video reminds me of people who think that if they can just find a mistake in the original paper by Fleischmann and Pons, the entire field of cold fusion will vanish. All those other papers by other researchers? They don't count.

Well, this is exactly what is written here:

But the real reason why the whole cold fusion field is disproved by the mistakes contained in the F&P paper describing the "1992 boil-off experiment" is that these errors not only compromise the reliability of the two fathers of the field, but also that of the of most important and representative researchers who selected that paper as the first document attached to their request to DoE for funding. This happened in 2004, 12 years after the F&P experiment. They had a lot of time for distinguishing foam from liquid water, but they didn't.

The refusal to acknowledge these blatant mistakes continues even today:

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

Quote from JedRothwell

Recombination cannot cause excess heat.

Yes, indeed the apparent large excess heat reported by Fleischmann and Pons was caused by FOAM:

High repeatability rate in the history of LENR

Quote from JedRothwell

Apparent excess heat from recombination can only happen with an open cell, when the researcher makes a mistake and does not measure the gas coming out of the cell. No researcher has made that mistake. It is very easy to avoid. See p. 28:

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

The cited paragraph in the above linked document concludes:

Quote

5.Since a recombination error is impossible in the second and third phase of this experiment, and since it was producing heat in those phases, it was probably producing heat in phase 1 as well. It is unlikely the heat in phase 1 was an instrument artifact, but real heat suddenly turned on in phase 2 and continued in phase 3. It is not possible the heat in all three phases was caused by a single artifact. The methods are completely different. There is no common aspect of the calorimetry that might have gone wrong. To show that all three phases were wrong, there would have to be three different systematic errors that produce roughly the same level of spurious heat. That would be a fantastic coincidence.

A few comments on these conclusions.

a1) I fully agree that the recombination error can't explain the alleged excess heat claimed in the second and third phases of the boil-off experiment,

a2) I also agree that a single artifact is unable to explain the calorimetric errors in all 3 phases, which are so different from each others.

However, in fact:

b1) the excess heat claimed by F&P in phases 2 and 3 of the 1992 boil-off experiment described in their "Simplicity" paper are simply caused by 2 other and different artifacts extensively explained in the last two years in this forum. More precisely:

b2) the presumed excess heat in phase 2, that is during the water boil-off, is due to a huge overestimation of the water mass evaporated in the short period lasting a few minutes during which the level inside the cells rapidly decreased from the top of the transparent portion of the glass tube down to a few centimeter above the kel-f support. This overestimation is caused by the totally wrong assumption that at the beginning of this period the cell was filled by liquid water, i.e. that the liquid fraction of the filled volume was nearly 1. In reality, the liquid fraction was very low, much closer to zero, because, at that time, the volume of the cell was almost entirely filled with foam swallen by the large water bubbles produced in the very thin layer of electrolyte, which was still on the bottom of the cell, after that most part of it was evaporated during the previous many hours during which the cell temperature was near or at the boiling point.

b3) the alleged excess heat in phase 3, that is after the complete boil-off, i.e. the so called Heat After Death phenomenon, is pure fantasy, supported only by an astonishing misrepresentation of timing in fig.8 of the "Simplicity" paper, in which the "Cell dry" instant was shifted ahead of more than 2 hours with respect to the real time reported in the abscissa of the temperature curve.

Of course these 2 obvious and indisputable artifacts has not been refuted, nor discussed, and not even mentioned in the recently published "Review of the calorimetry of Fleischmann and Pons", despite having been presented and explained many times in this forum.

Quote from Curbina

And from the other side, these authors claim to have finally explained how Fleischmann and Pons did it, and the proved experimentally that is just recombination what causes excess heat. And they publish in the same Journal than Fleischmann and Pons!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/…abs/pii/S1572665720304653

The Galushkin et al. article, "Mechanism of thermal runaway as a cause of Fleischmann-Pons effect", has been already mentioned here: High repeatability rate in the history of LENR

The authors state that "the Fleischmann-Pons effect (of burst type) is caused by an exothermic reaction of a recombination of the atomic deuterium accumulated in electrodes during electrolysis of the electrolyte".

However, they erroneously conclude that such an "established mechanism of Fleischmann-Pons effect explains all the currently known experimental facts". This is absolutely wrong. The most important experimental result obtained by F&P, namely the alleged high level of excess heat they claimed to have obtained during the final boiling phases of the 1992 boil-off experiment (ref. 39 in the Galushkin et al. paper), can be only explained by the FOAM mechanism, as already extensively illustrated in this LENR forum.

Quote from Bruce__H

Dr Mizuno's recent clarifications fail to address the issue of the crossing grey and red lines in one of his plots. I am glad to see, however, the arrival of new data that do not have this flaw.

After the new graph, the crossing lines in the old one could be explained by the smoothing of the red line in the former graph. Apart the strange peak at the beginning of the first one, the two red lines are compatible each other assuming that the former is an average of the latter performed by using a mobile window of a few minutes extending entirely on the left of the current time.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

A more interesting thing is that red trace continues to slowly rise, when the grey line is (Looks) flat (steady state) between 15 and 19 ks. This effect is especially noticeable in the 2017 paper, where the greater the output the less steady state the anomalous output is, at the end of the input power period, but the (Corrected) calibration traces become flat (steady state) fairly quickly and stay that way for a long time.

Presumably the red trace continues to rise because the correction factor depends upon one or more T values which continue to change during the experiment.

Some more words from the cook would easily clarify this point.

Quote from mizunotadahiko

水野：良いところに気付きましたね。出力計算は平均値を使っていたので、元ファイルを添付します。

いつでも校正後の値が大きいです。

Mizuno: You've noticed some good points. Since the output calculation used the average value, attach the original file.

The value after calibration is always large.

Thank you for the answer.

PS - Could you, please, check the units on the time scale and, just in case, correct the graph?

Quote from Alan Smith

a few words from the cook are more useful than many words from the dish-washer..

A few more words from the cook would be very helpful to understand why.

Quote from j9381

it's hard to know why the red trace off by that much in the start up of the run.

Why should it be so hard to know?

The graph with the red and gray traces was brought to the attentions of the L-F readers by its author mizunotadahiko 10 days ago (1). Within hours, Paradigmnoia noticed that "the grey power trace extends out beyond the red trace at the beginning" (2). The inconsistency was further pointed out by Bruce__H (3): "One trace (the red one) is supposed to be just the other trace multiplied by a temperature-appropriate correction factor that is always greater than 1."

What does prevent the author of the graph from providing an explanation of this oddity?

(1) MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

(2) MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

(3) MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Quote from JedRothwell

I have never turned down any paper about cold fusion. I welcome any paper, even the ones I strongly disagree with, and the ones I think are batshit crazy. It is a library, not a journal.

Did you applied this criterion also in this case?

A few years ago you were not so much confident about the prodigious performances of the constantan wires: