Posts by Ascoli65

Quote from Shane D.

For the life of me, I can not imagine, were Fleischmann alive and healthy today, that he would not mop the floor with the likes of Ascoli,

Or maybe he would have simply dismissed my remarks on his 1992 test the way Josephson did with respect to the those on the 2011 demo on the Ecat (1).

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Now he is dead, and can no longer defend himself, and the sharks are circling the carcass.

I find this comparison very unfair. Do you mean that, being dead, it is no longer possible to raise any criticisms about his scientific activity? After all, I've only picked up the JR's invitation to carefully read the CF literature, especially that related to the F&P and the replications of their experiments, and look for any mistakes. I think I've found a crucial one, I described it in the best way I can, and I'm here to answer any comment on the merit of my analysis. Should I deserve to be compared to a shark for this?

Quote from Shane D.

Not sure who you mean by "they", but I saw a 300s scan average, that Ascoli thought was not sufficient to accurately capture the boil-off event as described by FP's. That is only one of the issues he brings up. Most above my head, but little push back.

Oh no, my issue is different and it is not at all above the head of any person capable to transform an hh.mm.ss time into seconds, and vice versa.

Let me explain it once again with reference to the jpeg titled "Misinterpretation of dry-out timing and mechanism" (2). The diagram of Figure 8 shows the temperature trend in the Cell 2 for a period of almost one day. A vertical arrow indicates the time when the cell becomes dry. Then we have a couple of frames of the lab video showing, by means of blue arrows, what was presented as the rapid lowering of the water level inside the cell. So you expect these two moments to occur just before the "Cell dry" arrow on Figure 8, but if you converts the hh.mm.ss time written on the video frames into the time scale of Figure 8 expressed in elapsed seconds from the beginning (00.00.00) of April 11, 1992 (the starting day of the experiment), and consider that they are taken in the 20^th day of testing (*), you will see that those frames refer to a couple of hours after the "Cell dry" arrow.

Now, start thinking how it is possible that the water level inside the cell drops a couple of hours after the cell has dried out, and you will realize the rest.

(1) http://www.physicsforums.com/s…hp?p=3219729&postcount=85

(2) FP's experiments discussion

(*) For example, the frame with the blue arrow indicating the upper level reports the time 3.26.14 on its lower right corner, meaning that it was shot 19 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes, and 14 seconds after the beginning of the experiment, that is 1,654,718 seconds for the elapsed time scale used in Figure 8.

@ oystla,

First of all, thank you for your remarks and the link to the Infinite Energy article..

Then a premise. The only true FACT (in capital letters) that my analysis is proposing to the L-F readers is that F&P were absolutely wrong in estimating the rate of vaporization inside their cells in the boil-off phases of their 1992 experiment. The error they made in estimating a time of about 10 minutes for the vaporization of the last 2.5 Moles of water is enormous (more than one order of magnitude), and led to a huge overestimation of the power output concentrated in this short period, and consequently to their excess heat claims.

The above FACT is based on some observations and considerations that I exposed on the 8 slides posted in jpeg format. These observations and considerations are based on the paper presented by F&P at ICCF3 (1) - which lacks many information, in particular on page 16 which reports the wrong excess heat calculation - and on a couple of videos found on internet (2-3), containing some frame sequences of the lab video, which show the real behavior of the four cells under testing. Considering the scarcity of these infos, it is possible that some observations or considerations of mine are incorrect. For this reason, all criticisms on the merit are welcome. Meanwhile, I'm quite confident of the correctness of the FACT I'm proposing.

And now my replies to your remarks.

Quote from oystla

1. Water escaped as liquid and not gas is a claim of Yours, not a fact.

The escaping of water as liquid was described by F&P in one of their first articles (4): "It should also be noted that, although the cell potential initially decreases (in common to the situation for the bursts) there is usually a change to an increase of the potential with time when cells are driven to the boiling point probably due to the loss of electrolyte in spray leaving the cells."

In any case the F&P error in (1) is not based on the escaping of liquid water, but on the underestimation of the boil-off period.

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Level being foam and not water is a claim of yours, not a fact.

It's a fact that the 2 video frames at 3:26 and 3:46 with the arrows indicating the level inside the cell have been recorded a couple of hours after the "Cell dry" time indicated on fig.8 (1). What else but foam could you find in a cell a couple of hours after drying?

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Both of these worries of Yours was answerred going to closed cell calorimetry.

Closed cell calorimetry does not answer my remarks on the open cell experiment we are talking about. Furthermore, Fleischmann continued to focus his activity on the open cell calorimetry.

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2. The videos where made in 1992, and digitized in 2009 (AFAIK)

Much of the visual quality was likely lost inbetween, so you should not spend much time on these low quality videos now.

Interesting observation. Have you a reference for what you know? The history of these videos is very important to understand what happened.

Anyway, as for the quality, that of the 2 videos is more than sufficient to estimate the difference between mostly liquid and mostly void regions: the former are dark while the latter are bright.

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Anyhow: as can be seen in your figure, the excess heat event started allready after 3 days in this particular test, so the extreme conditions at Boiling is just part of the story.

If you refer to the temperature increase at around 200 ks, it reflects the sudden increase of current from 200 to 500 mA.

In any case, the extreme conditions at boiling and their alleged consequences in terms of excess heat were exactly the specific subject of the "story" reported in the F&P paper (1).

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Anyhow 2: you claim water loss started earlier than F&P said, but I only see the the paper refer to 1/2 level not statement on initial start of water loss.

As shown in the expanded fig.8 (1) included in the first jpeg, not only the water loss started several hours before the video frames marked with the arrows, but it also ended a couple of hours in advance, due to the drying-out of the cell.

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3, 4 and 5: . "Having a closer look" at bad quality video is not recommneded.

As explained the video quality degradert a lot between the tape was recorded and later digitized.

As said, the quality of the videos is more than sufficient.

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6,7,8:

Ascoli: Fleischmann and the CF community where well aware of water and foam entrainment possibility in the steam outlet, as noted in the article Below.

Thanks. Really interesting article. It clarifies many things and confirms my opinion.

This article will be particularly appreciated by @kirkshanahan, who will at last find in it an authoritative and first-hand support for the CCS hypothesis, which was asked to influence the results both ways:

As for the foam problem, I don't doubt that Fleischmann and many in the CF community were aware of it, but this fact worsens the situation of those who estimated the wrong rate of water vaporization on the basis of the foam level and supported or believed the consequent wrong conclusions.

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They Checked and corrected for any possible wet steam. Still the excess heat where way too large to be explained by carry over.

As already said, the carry over (or entrainment, or wet steam) issue is not the problem at the basis of the F&P error, i.e. the FACT described in the premise. The real problem is the large overestimation of the vaporization rate due to the large underestimation of the boil-off duration.

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Anyhow, as shown in fig 2 in the paper, a blank experiment where the only difference was using a platinum electrodes never showed any apparent excess heat behaviour.

Fig.2 does not refer to the boiling conditions. The max. temperature was below 50 °C.

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And this were never explained by the critics claiming it was wet steam droplet carry over that caused apparent excess heat in real tests.

It happened because none of them have thought the unthinkable, that is that F&P provided a completely wrong duration of the boil-off phase!

Any other remarks?

(1) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBAIIZU6Oj8

(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88YdKYv8sw

(4) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetr.pdf

Quote from Wyttenbach

Ascolis arguments are pathologic as nobody makes exact claims for excess-heat for the boil-off phase. Important are the excess-heat claims before the boil off.

The F&P paper we are talking about (1) begins with this paragraph: "We present here one aspect of our recent research on the calorimetry of the Pd/D2O system which has been concerned with high rates of specific excess enthalpy generation (> 1kWcm-3) at temperatures close to (or at) the boiling point of the electrolyte solution. This has led to a particularly simple method of deriving the rate of excess enthalpy production based on measuring the times required to boil the cells to dryness, this process being followed by using time-lapse video recordings."

So this paper deals with, and ONLY with, the excess heat that should have been produced when the temperature were "close to (or at) the boiling point", i.e. during the boil-off phase.

(1) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

Quote from oystla

Presumably not, and also, since both Fleischman and Lonchhampt found excess heat before reaching Boiling point, your main idea of foam error is an incorrect assumption.

Anyhow, others using closed cells nullified all possible errors connected to open cell and dry or wet steam, and therefore also confirmed the results of open cell.

But wait, the other must then have other errors like the famous calibration ghost of Kirkshanahan.

These are many different arguments. I'm willing to discuss all of them, but following a precise order, and sticking to the facts, one at a time. The foam error - or what else F&P committed in calculating the energy balance at boiling conditions in their major paper (1) reporting their boil-off experiment of 1992 - can't be eluded just by hiding it behind a curtain of smoke.

IMO, for what I have seen, this first fact is described in the 8 jpegs posted in the previous comments:

1 - Misinterpretation of dry-out timing and mechanism (FP's experiments discussion )

2 - Evolution of the water contents inside cell 2 (FP's experiments discussion )

3 - A closer look at the boil-off phase of cell 2 (FP's experiments discussion )

4 - Videos reveal the real behavior during boil-off of Cell 1 (FP's experiments discussion )

5 - The strange case of Cell 4 (and Cell 3) (FP's experiments discussion )

6 - Vapor volume generation during boil-off (Cell 3) (FP's experiments discussion )

7 - Axial distribution of water during boil-off (Cell 1) (FP's experiments discussion )

8 - Axial distribution of water during boil-off (2^nd part) (FP's experiments discussion )

Did you see them? Did you find any major error in them or in the relative posts? Please, let me know. I will appreciate any factual criticisms.

If you haven't find any major error, do you agree that F&P reported on their ICCF3 paper one of the "most obvious and simple errors" (just to use your previous words)?

Only if we agree on this first fact, we can try to find an agreement also in the other arguments you mentioned.

(1) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

Quote from bocijn

Do you think that it is likely that subsequent confirmatory experiments have the same kind of technical errors as what you describe from your video shots?

Presumably Lonchampt made the same error, as I already explained at the end of a previous comment (*), but this is not necessarily true for the other replications: there are as many possibilities of error as the parameters involved in the calculation of the energy balance.

The problem is that rarely the documents reporting these results have information sufficient to understand the cause of the calorimetric errors, and after almost 30 years it's almost impossible to find more information to supplement those presented in the papers.

In the case of the F&P paper on the 4 cells, we have been particularly lucky to have the 2 YouTube videos published by Krivit in 2009, otherwise it would have been almost impossible to detect the error made by the two authors only on the base of their main documents (the paper presented at ICCF3 in October 1992 (1) and the slightly different article published in May 1993 by Physics Letter A (2)). Moreover, until the Ecat has monopolized the LENR debate, this specific work of F&P was the most celebrated and contested in the CF field, even years and decades after its publication, so that some other additional info can be gathered on the web.

Anyway, IMO, if these incredible errors are confirmed, they would not only affect the correctness of the results reported in the paper describing that work, but even the reliability of the two authors, so that all the other works confirming the reality of their "extraordinary claims" would lose their meaning.

(*) FP's experiments discussion

(1) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) http://coldfusioncommunity.net…n-Pons-PLA-Simplicity.pdf

Quote from oystla

Ascoli: "Morrison has denounced in 1993 (2), the data were logged every 300 s, so that only 2 (max 3) points fell in the 600 s period of final boiling considered by F&P."

Pure heresay and speculation? Morrison was informed by someone that claimed Fleschmann had told someone that only 300 seconds electric logging intervals where used throughout.

JR just confirmed that the logging interval was 300 s. This is a too long interval to properly analyze a phenomenon that, in the F&P interpretation, would have lasted about 600 s.

But the real problem is that F&P did not provide any voltage data to support their energy balance calculation on page 16 of their ICCF3 paper (1), not even the two values that fell in the considered boiling period. An even more serious problem is that they omitted to provide the trend of the cell voltage in the entire boiling period as they did in Fig.8 for the cell temperature. Considering that the voltage is necessary for evaluating the input power, I can't see any valid reason for this lack of transparency.

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Anyhow1: If your theory where right, they should see the same trends I blank experiment, but they did not.

They actually saw it, as reported by Hansen in his report to the Utah State Fusion/Energy Council (2). Hansen elaborated the original data provided by F&P of some of their experiment. In Figure 1, he shows the temperature and voltage trends of a blank experiment, which behaves in the same way of the 4 cell experiment described in (1), i.e. as the temperature approaches the boiling point, the voltage skyrockets toward the maximum allowable limit.

The big problem, in this case, is that these data have been reported by Hansen and not by F&P.

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Anyhow 2: Science work by questioning the results and then perform better experiments to avoid possible artifacts, like improved logging and the use of closed cells, like McKubre and others did and confirmed F&P results.

Morrison questioned the results published by F&P, but the cold fusion community was not aware about how the science works:

Anyhow, I am talking about the F&P experiment they presented at ICCF3 (1), whose conclusions are evidently wrong. Those people who claimed to have confirmed those results were evidently as much wrong.

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Other experiments confirming results also means the original F&P experiment and paper most likely showed real results worthy of a follow up.

Even more likely: experiments confirming wrong results are as well wrong.

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And by the way: You are aware that the Higgs boson do not show up every time in CERN, even if the same protocol is used....

I'm also aware of the incommensurable difference between the research on the Higgs boson, and the observations on some water boiling in a Dewar tube.

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HansenWNreporttoth.pdf

(3) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

Quote from bocijn

Do you think that MF became aware of earlier errors such as you have described (especially after the Lonchampt paper)
and due to the toxic climate just went on quietly eliminating them from future experimental work.

If you can do.it... then MF probably could to.... he went to sleep with this stuff for a number of years.

Your question is appropriate and very intriguing, but it is also terribly delicate, so that a premature answer risks to open a Pandora's box of controversies. Maybe it's better to delay this argument until the factual aspects of these flaws in the F&P experiments and papers are further discussed, better understood and hopefully accepted and shared by a larger number of the L-F members.

As said by THH, we need for the moment more precise data, but less speculations, especially those not strictly devoted to provide tentative interpretations of the experimental facts.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Ascoli65please explain: There was no total evaporation for days. How can Ascolis model explain a sudden evaporation...

I'm pleased to explain my POV, but, as I have already told you (1), there is no Ascoli model. It's mainly a matter of different usage of the same model used by F&P.

As for evaporation, it didn't happen suddenly. There was no evaporation until the water temperature remained well below the boiling point. As the temperature was approaching the boiling point, I expect that the heat generated by the electric current began to gradually generate small vapor bubbles, particularly on the hottest spots on surface of the electrodes. The widening of the surface not wetted along with the reduction of the overall density of the electrolyte due to the vapor bubbles, caused an increase in the overall resistance through the cell and in turns of the voltage required to maintain a constant current. This led to a further increase of the electric power dissipated in the water, and this "positive feedback" brought the voltage to reach the maximum value of 100 V. The electric energy generated during this transient, which lasted several hours, was sufficient to vaporize all the water inside the cell.

Maybe, as some larger oscillations in the T curve could suggest (2), the first hot spots on the electrodes which generated the first vapor bubbles - thus triggering the above process – were formed a few days before the dry-off of the cell, when the bulk water temperature was around 70°C, but these early bubbles condensed inside the cell. But these are just speculations. The availability of a more complete version of the lab video, including the onset of boiling, would help to better understand this process.

(1) FP's experiments discussion

(2) FP's experiments discussion

Quote from oystla

Ascoli, You claim F & P to do some of the most obvious and simple errors possible Really ?

Yes, but no wonder, it happened again with the professors who tested the Ecat.

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SO your final actual claim in all of this is " If they had done so, letting the readers know which was the actual trend of the voltage during the few hours around the dry out of the cell, it would have been obvious to everyone that the input electric energy would have been sufficient to account for the evaporation of all the water."

It's just one of my opinions on this subject, not my final claim.

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So you believe either

- They didn't thoroughly log the voltage and current during their experiment, which was used to calculate actual excess energy - or even worse

Like other aspects of their experiment (1), the voltage and current logging was sloppy. For instance, as Morrison has denounced in 1993 (2), the data were logged every 300 s, so that only 2 (max 3) points fell in the 600 s period of final boiling considered by F&P.

But, from my POV, the logging rate is not the main issue, unless you really believe that half of the water contents vaporized in only 10 minutes. A 5 minutes logging time would have been adequate to describe the voltage trend in the much longer period of many hours during which part of the electric input power was available for vaporization. The real problem is that F&P omitted to show in their paper the trend of the voltage during this crucial period of their test. This is scientifically inexcusable.

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- They did not do the excess energy calculations right - or even even worse

Yes, I think it is evident.

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- They build a big hoax just to try to get millions in funding from the government

This argument is OT in this thread which is dedicated to discussing only the F&P experiments and their interpretation.

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Well, luckily Science work by replication of papers and checking for errors. And this was done by several laboratories several times, which proves something is worthy of further study.

In this regard, it's interesting to look at the statistics on the scientific articles on CF published by JR in 2009 (3) and partially based on Britz bibliography. Fig.2 on page 11 provides the trends since 1989 of the published articles subdivided among positive, negative and undecided. At the beginning, the negative articles exceeds the positive ones, afterword both curves quickly lower, with the negative curve remaining mostly at zero. This shows that many of the laboratories that in a first time gave credit to the F&P, lost their interest when the inconsistency of their claims was widely recognized. Since then, only those labs and authors which were producing similarly inconsistent and apparently positive results continued to publish on this argument.

But this is not the main point. What I would like to underline is that the F&P paper (1) we are talking about is classified as positive by Britz in his bibliography (4), as indicated by the presence of the "res+" mark among the keywords associated to that paper (see pages 204-205). Of course, Britz based his classification on the claims of the authors of the documents he listed, but if the paper (1) is considered positive, you can imagine how reliable the classification of the other positive documents can be.

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Like this - one of the many many papers confirming the results , which even have a drawing of their logging equipment J

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LonchamptGreproducti.pdf

Lonchampt was the replicator who lead me to better examine the basics of the original F&P tests (5). In the paper you mentioned, he admitted the difficulty of following the lowering of the water content due to the formation of foam. He wrote in section 3.2: "It is difficult to follow accurately the level of water during this period because of the formation of foam, so it is only at the end of the experiment, when the cell is dry that the excess heat can be calculated with precision."

However, by introducing the table summarizing the energy balances of some of his tests, he added: "As described in section 3.2, the exact evaluation of the excess heat can be made only at the end of the experiment, since it is difficult to follow accurately the water level during the experiment. However it is very likely that most of the excess heat occurs at the end of the experiment after the voltage burst. We call this last period the “grand finale.”"

From these last words, it seems that he concentrated all the water loss by evaporation in the period which followed the reaching of the maximum voltage, which in his case was 150 V, for a max power of 75 W. So, it seems to me, that he ignored all the energy input in the ramping up phase of the voltage, after the input power had exceeded the level of the heat dissipated by radiation, which should not have been very different from the 11 W calculated by F&P for their cell.

In conclusion, he confirmed the results of F&P, including their errors.

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/archives/DROM/cfu8.shtml

(3) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

(4) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BritzDcoldnuclea.pdf

(5) Where is the LENR goal line, and how best do we get there?

Quote from oystla

So Ascoli tries to question the F&P papers on open cell electrolysis, but he is not very clear in what he claims

I simply claim that, IMO and on the basis of the evidence explained in the previous comments containing the illustrative jpegs, the conclusions of the paper presented by F&P at the ICCF3 (1) are completely wrong.

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1. Total input power to the F&P cell is easy to calculate by the current and voltage, as shown in the papers

It's true, if you have the actual data of voltage and current, as F&P had at their disposition. But hard for others, because F&P didn't provide the information needed to verify the value of voltage used to calculate the Enthalpy Input by Electrolysis on page 16 of (1). From the subsequent calculation of the Rate of Enthalpy Output by Electrolysis, it would seem that the average voltage in the 10 minute period was 75 V (37.5 W / 0.5 A). But nowhere in their paper they explained where this value came from. The problem is that they omitted to include in figure 8, in addition to the trend of the cell temperature, also the that of the voltage. If they had done so, letting the readers know which was the actual trend of the voltage during the few hours around the dry out of the cell, it would have been obvious to everyone that the input electric energy would have been sufficient to account for the evaporation of all the water.

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2. Total evaporated water is easy to measure before and after the experiment as shown in F&P papers

This is true only for the two moments "before and after the experiments" and for those which immediately followed the daily refills. But F&P claimed in (1) to have noticed that "the cell would have become half empty 11 minutes before dryness" and this is not at all easy to measure with their experimental setup, unless they meant that the cell was half full of foam! But in this case, in their calculation on page 16, they should have multiplied the apparent 2.5 moles of water by the relative density of the foam, in order to calculate the water mass effectively evaporated in the last 10 minutes.

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Total excess heat is therefore easy to calculate, and was something like 4 in the F&P paper.

This result derives from their calculation at page 16 of (1), which is based on incorrect assumptions and unexplained data, as in the case of the cell voltage.

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But heat power bursts was in the 20* excess range.

No burst is mentioned in the ICCF3 paper, I'm talking about.

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Anyhow: The later closed cells confirmed the F&P excess heat calculations, so why anyone still bother to question this beats me.

Because, as already said (2), the test and the paper we are talking about are very special. F&P confirmed and defended the test results and the conclusion contained in their ICCF3 paper (1) until the end of their activity in the field. The same was done by all the main promoters of CF/LENR. Besides JR and Krivit, already cited in (2), we can also mention Abd UlRahman Lomax, who recently promoted an articulated and ambitious project (3) aimed at analyzing specifically that paper and the relative controversy between Fleischmann and Morrison.

If F&P were so sloppy in reporting the experimental data and so wrong in deriving their conclusion for this paper (1) - the best documented and deepest scrutinized of any other former or later document they published - it's very hard to support the reliability of any other "extraordinary claims" made by them about cold fusion.

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) FP's experiments discussion

(3) http://coldfusioncommunity.net/morrison-fleischmann-debate/

Quote from Wyttenbach

May be Ascoli should once explain what he would like to tell us!

Only that the conclusions of the "major paper" of Fleischmann were, IMO, badly wrong.

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There was no total evaporation for days. How can his (Ascolis) model explain a sudden evaporation...

There is no Ascoli model. I'm applying the F&P model to the F&P experimental data, but, IMO, in the correct way.

The difference is in the timing. The authors of (1) wrote that "The last day of operation is characterised by a rapid rise of temperature up to the boiling point of the electrolyte leading to a short period of intense evaporation/boiling Fig 8. […] the cell would have become half empty 11 minutes before dryness, as observed from the video recordings (see the next section) and this in turn requires a period of intense boiling during the last 11 minutes." In the calculation on page 16, they reduced further this time to 10 minutes (600 s) during which they erroneously hypothesized that the evaporation of half of the initial water mass (equivalent to 2.5 moles, that is 45 cm3 of liquid water) was concentrated.

In the calculation on page 16, F&P calculated that the heat lost to ambient, essentially by radiation, was 11 W and that the rest of the heat generated inside the cell was lost by evaporation.

That's exactly what I did in my calculation, but, differently from them, I considered that the input power exceeded the radiated heat of 11 W many hours before the total dry out of the cell, as everyone can easily see expanding the portion of Fig.6A (as well as B-C-D) around the voltage peak. The total electric energy dissipated in excess of 11 W during this much longer period was available for vaporization, and this quantity was sufficient to vaporize almost all the initial water content. So it was physically impossible that half of the water content vaporized in the last 10 minutes, as stated by F&P in their paper.

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Does he want to tell us that max excess heat was only 40W instead of 50W ?

Nope. My intentios would be to SHOW that the max excess heat actually was ZERO.

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May be he is not aware that within 6 weeks of the 1989 PF-anouncement 4 different (US) LAB could reproduce the initial effect! One being a military LAB.

For the moment, I'm talking about the experiment described in (1), which was carried out in the spring of 1992.

I'm aware that this 1992 experiment was also reproduced by others, for instance by Lonchampt (2). But if the reproduction is accurate enough, assuming the same wrong hypotheses lead to the same wrong conclusions.

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf
(2) FP's experiments discussion

Quote from bocijn

Perhaps Brian Josephson would be interested ..

I don’t think so. He probably will reject my refutation about F&P results wondering why "people are putting so much effort into […] these criticisms", as he did in 2011 (1) about the refutation of the results of the first Ecat public demo.

Josephson regrets that many "ignore the experimental evidence contradicting the view that cold fusion is 'pathological science'", but has also ignored criticisms about these presumed experimental evidence, so that he concluded his obituary of Fleischmann (2) with a reference to Rossi: "… progress seems to be occurring towards the application of cold fusion as a practical energy source. It may well transpire that, in the words of one cold fusion entrepreneur: "The market will decide.""

Meanwhile, waiting for the decisions of the market, most people here on L-F have realized that the Nobel laureate for physics was wrong about the Ecat. No wonder if many others will soon realize that he was also wrong about Fleischmann and his extraordinary claims.

(1) http://www.physicsforums.com/s…hp?p=3219729&postcount=85

(2) https://www.theguardian.com/sc…aug/31/martin-fleischmann

Axial distribution of water during boil-off (2^nd part)

The following jpeg aims to complete the analysis initiated in (*) regarding the evolution of the water content in Cell 1 during the boil-off phase of the F&P experiments described in (1).

In the first part, the variations between the B and C frames of the video (2) of the height of the liquid region (L) and of the vacuum fraction of the void region (V) were analyzed. Frame B and C were 1h30 m apart in the middle of the boil-off transient. In order to get an idea, even if approximate, of the behavior of Cell 1 during the whole boil-off phase, it is also necessary to consider the initial and final instants of the relative transient.

The final instant is the F frame already shown in (*). This frame is the first of the video sequence in which the dark part, which indicates the presence of a transparent liquid region at the bottom of the cell, disappears completely. This frame is positioned 45 minutes after frame C. After this frame time, the region V occupies the entire free volume of the cell and further reductions in the water content can only be achieved by further reducing the liquid fraction of this region.

The initial instant will be called time O, to indicate the onset of evaporation, ie the moment when the electric power input (Ptot) exceeds the 11 W estimated as the heat dissipated by radiation, so that an extra power is available for water evaporation (Pvap). From the central diagram of the jpeg in (*), it is possible to estimate that time O occurs about 5 hours before frame B. At this time, Cell 1 could appear in the state of Cell 2 in frame B, ie almost completely transparent: a column of liquid water, with an inner column of raising droplets, due to the gases released by electrolysis, and whose overall volume is negligible. At time O, therefore, the region L occupies the entire volume of the cell and the region V has yet to start forming.

With the aforementioned times, the overall duration of the transient from O to F is 7h15m.

Simple calculations make it possible to derive the values listed in the first table of the above jpeg. From the values of Pvap and of the frame times, we get the vaporization energy of each period (Evap) and subsequently the volume of water vaporized in each period (Wvap), calculated on the basis of the volumetric enthalpy of vaporization (2676 J/cm3). It is to notice that in each of the 3 periods, a quantity of water of about one third of the initial content of 90 cm3 (5 moles) is vaporized. Therefore the amount of residual water (Wres) at the end of the transient is only a few percent of the initial value.

The calculated trend of Wres is represented in the first diagram by the green line, where it is compared with what should have been its trend according to the evaluations made by F&P in (1), where they stated that the last half of the initial content of water (2.5 moles, equal to 45 cm3) vaporized in just 10 minutes. The diagram clearly shows that this assumption made by F&P - represented by a red segment - is incompatible with the Wres trend estimated on the basis of the real power input. The excess slope of the red segment turns into the alleged excess heat calculated at page 16 of (1).

To complete this analysis, the values of the height of the L region and of the average liquid fraction in the V region are shown in a second table and plotted in the adjacent diagram.

(*) FP's experiments discussion

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88YdKYv8sw

Quote from bocijn

I admire your chutzbah ..

But I admire your quickness in understanding why F&P were wrong. You replied in just 8 minutes!

Quote

perhaps you would like to submit a refutation to a scientific journal?

Real scientific journals have since long dropped the argument. This forum is the only place in which this refutation can be understood and be somehow useful for someone.

Axial distribution of water during boil-off (Cell 1)

In analyzing the behavior of the F&P cells in the tests described in their ICCF3 paper (1), it is useful to take into account how the water modifies its axial distribution during the boil-off phase. For this purpose we need to go back to Cell 1, already examined in the previous comments, as for this cell many frames are available from the video of Pons presentation at the ICCF3 in 1992 (2).

The following jpeg summarizes the results of this analysis:

Seven views (A to G) of Cell 1, taken from as many frames of the video, are lined up along the time axis that spans a period of 3 hours, from 19:30 to 22:30 on the 16th test day. As already mentioned in (3), these frames show how the space inside the cell presents a clear separation between two regions:

- the lower region, here called region L (liquid), is still partially transparent and consists mainly of liquid water through which bubbles - due to vaporization and, to a lesser extent, to water electrolysis - rapidly rise;

- the upper region, here called region V (void), is almost uniformly bright due to the presence of many voids consisting of both the bubbles that occupy the entire cross section and the foam that builds up on the top and progressively thickens. It is impossible to distinguish the zone of intense boiling from that of the foam, so that this region will be considered as a whole, giving it an average value of void fraction, that is, the volume occupied by the bubbles and foam compared to the free space available.

That said, we want to estimate how the progressive loss of water by evaporation (the losses for electrolysis and for liquid entrainment are neglected for simplicity) affects the 2 regions, in particular the level of the L region and the void fraction of the V region.

For this purpose, frames B and C, which are 1.5 hours apart, are considered. The lower transparent portion of the cell makes it possible to estimate that during this period of time the height of the L region drops by about 2 cm, ie - taking into account that the average free section is 5 cm² (4) - the volume of water in this area decreases by about 10 cm³ in 1.5 hours. This accounts for a vaporization power of about 5 W, not enough to dissipate all the available input power.

In fact, by positioning the instants B and C on an expanded portion of the diagram of Fig.6A (1), we can see that, in the meanwhile, the electric input power increases from 20 W to 30 W. Subtracting the 11 W which, at the boiling temperature , are dissipated by radiation (1), the power available for vaporization is much greater than the 5 W corresponding to the lowering of region L. As detailed in the jpeg, assuming that between B and C the power input has an average value of 25 W, a quote of 14 W would be available for vaporization and this would result in the vaporization of 28 cm³ of liquid water. Since 10 cm³ are attributable to the shortening of L region, the remaining 18 cm³ must be attributed to the reduction of the liquid fraction of V region, ie to the increase in its void fraction. Given that 18 cm³ corresponds to 3.6 cm of liquid column and that the average height of region V between B and C is about 15 cm, this means that the void fraction increases by 24%.

Then, recapitulating, the extra power available for vaporization from B to C leads to a loss of 28 cm³ of water, equivalent to 31% of the initial content of 90 cm³ (5 moles). This loss determines a lowering of the L region by 2 cm and a further increase of the void fraction in the V region by 24%. These effects are caused by the portion of input energy represented on the graph by the intersection between the yellow area (heat available for vaporization during the entire boil-off phase) and the dotted contour (heat input during the 1.5 hours examined). It is thus possible to visually estimate that already at the instant C the cell has lost most of the initial inventory of water, that had been restored during the last refill. This refill happened just before the power input exceeded the value of 11 W.

Although very approximate, as based on rough and ready data, this analysis shows how impossible it is that half of the initial water content vaporizes in the final 10 minutes of the boil-off phase, as F&P assumed. This wrong assumption lead to a huge overestimation the heat produced by their cells, and in consequence to the erroneous conclusion that they were able to generate excess heat of nuclear origin.

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88YdKYv8sw

(3) FP's experiments discussion

(4) FP's experiments discussion

Quote from kirkshanahan

You've done a great job at delineating why the F&P video method for computing excess heat is flawed. I suspect F&P figured that out eventually since they never used that method in a subsequent paper.

Who can say what they figured out? What is certain is that they didn't publicly admit these flaws and that the paper they presented at ICCF3 is still considered (after 25 years) the Fleischmann's "major paper" (1, pag.14).

After all, the "Four-cell Boil-off test" was performed after many years of research, when F&P had already developed a good control on their methods, as reported by Krivit in 2009 (2): "By 1993 [it's a typo, actually it was by 1992], Fleischmann and Pons had developed such control of their experiments, particularly the cathode material, that they had the confidence and ability to set up a row of four cells side by side and initiate anomalous-heat reactions on all four at will."

The 1992 test is and will remain the cornerstone of the F&P activity, the event that gave rise to two of the main myths of CF: the ability to generate an excess heat density in the order of 4 kW/cm³ and the so-called "heat after death".

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanlettersfroa.pdf

(2) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…ivit-S-ANewLookAtLENR.pdf

Quote from THHuxleynew

Let's call it foamgate?

Well chosen. Bubblegate would be more general, but foamgate sounds much better.

Quote

it does rather cut against the "infallible electrochemist" arguments Jed advances for taking their results as correct because they say so, without detailed supporting evidence.

I fully agree, but I also must admit that he was right in urging to read the literature very carefully.

On the contrary, Morrison was wrong in asking for "a cup of tea". He should have asked for "a foamy cappuccino"!

Quote from JedRothwell

... there was no foaming and no entrained water, ...

Lonchampt, who tried to replicate the original F&P experiment as closely as possible, wrote in his 1996 paper presented at ICCF6 (3): "It is difficult to follow accurately the level of water during this period because of the formation of foam, so it is only at the end of the experiment, when the cell is dry that the excess heat can be calculated with precision."

The tendency to form foam in the calorimeter used in 1992 for the Four-cell experiment (probably the ICARUS 2 model) was confirmed by F&P themselves when they presented the ICARUS 9 model to the same ICCF6 (4):

"These calorimeters are much improved in thermal dissipation, sensitivity, precision, and accuracy compared to the original calorimeters used in these laboratories from 1992 to 1995. The present design incorporates better seals at all liquid/casing interfaces, and at the thermistor inlet ports. […] Foam rise in the calorimeter at the boiling temperature has been minimized."

Quote

… as proven by every method you or anyone else could think of.

It should not be so difficult to carefully check the formation of foam and the liquid entrainment in a F&P cell. The imminent coming of the 30^th anniversary of the F&P press conference, would be a the perfect opportunity to repeat their 1992 test and fully investigate these crucial issues.

(3) http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LonchamptGreproducti.pdf

(4) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RouletteTresultsofi.pdf

Vapor volume generation during boil-off (Cell 3)

As known, the estimate of the heat output of the electrolytic cells in the tests described in the paper presented by F&P to ICCF3 (1) is based on the rate of decreasing of the water content during the boil-off phase. However, the authors affirm that the initial electrolyte content, quantified in the paper in 5 moles of (heavy) water, remains unchanged, thanks to the daily refills, until just before the final phase, which, according to them, would last less than an hour (10-11 minutes for the complete evaporation of the last half of liquid water).

The video images (2) discussed in the previous comments show instead that many hours before this final phase the upper part of the four cells appears bright, a sign of the presence of many gas bubbles. These gas bubbles may be those that rise from the bottom of the cell in which they are generated by vaporization of water, or be part of the foam layer that forms above the liquid. In any case, their volume subtracts space from the liquid phase and therefore the mass of water present in the cell substantially decreases well sooner than estimated by F&P.

To get a qualitative idea of how much volume is occupied by the gaseous phase, it is useful to estimate the production of gaseous volume in function of the electric power dissipated in the electrolyte.

The previous jpeg shows that for every 10 W of power available for vaporizing of water, 6.25 cm³ of steam are generated in each second, a volume equivalent to a layer of 1.25 cm of the cell, considering that its free cross-section is approximately 5 cm². This vapor reduces the area of the electrodes (especially of the cathode) in contact with the electrolyte, so the galvanostat must increase the cell voltage in order to keep constant the current at 0.5 A. This produces a further increase in the vaporization, and this positive feedback continues until the maximum allowable voltage, set at 100 V, is reached.

At the maximum total power of 50 W, about 40 W are available for evaporation and a steam volume equivalent to a 5 cm layer is generated every second. This steam must go up quickly along the cell and cross the upper plug along the vent, whose area is a fraction (1/10, 1/20, ... ?) of the cross section of the cell. The consequent acceleration intensify the entrainment of water in the outlet gas stream.

As a final observation, it is worth noting that the transient of Cell 3, chosen to illustrate the increase in cell voltage, has the peculiaruty of a long period of time, estimated over several hours, where the voltage seems to oscillate between 50 and 100 V. If the numerical values of the measurements made during the test were still available, it would be interesting to verify the actual presence of these oscillations and understand the cause.

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBAIIZU6Oj8

The strange case of Cell 4 (and Cell 3)

The previous comments discuss the evolution of the water content within Cells 1 and 2 of the test described in the F&P paper presented at ICCF3 (1). As for the remaining Cells 3 and 4, it is worth noting a strange misattribution of a small sequence included in the "Short test video" (2), as shown in the following jpeg.

On the frame labeled with F (at t=2m02s of the video, daily time 5:05:04), a blue arrow appears at the bottom of Cell 3, as indicating the conclusion of the boil-off phase of this cell. The previous video clip ended with a frame (close to frame E) timed 4:03:04 and marked with a blue arrow placed at 1/3 of the cell height. However, in these two frames E and F, Cell 4 appears very differently: in the first, it is almost completely transparent as it was at the beginning of the test, while, in the second, it appears almost completely bright, due to the foam accumulated in the upper part, and to the bubbles rising in the lower part, where the transparency only remain at sides of these bubbles. It is impossible that such an evolution has occurred in just one hour.

It just happened that the frame F was given a wrong interpretation. It actually refers to the boil-off phase of Cell 4 and occurs about 5 and half hours before the first frame G of the subsequent video clip starting at 10:35:04 and whose first frame is marked with a blue arrow placed in the upper third of the cell. So, it could have taken about 5 hours to boil away the residual liquid water which was still present at time F, a quantity that can hardly reach one third of the initial mass. To know how long it took to boil away the entire initial water content, it would need to have some more frames between E and F, in particular some showing the foam appearing below the lower level of the upper silver layer.

The wrong attribution of a frame sequence raises again the issue of the authors of that "Short test video", whose title announces:

1992 Four-Cell Boil-Off

by Fleischmann and Pons

Produced by Steven B. Krivit

New Energy Times

2009

So, who did choose the sequences in the video and placed the arrows and the scripts on the selected frames? Did Krivit only published a video that was already circulating among the CF community?

Does anyone has a more complete version of the recorded video showing the instant in which the foam begin to build up on top of the liquid water?

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBAIIZU6Oj8

Videos reveal the real behavior during boil-off of Cell 1
 

The jpegs presented in the previous comments show how easy it is to distinguish the liquid part of the cell contents from the accumulated foam above it and how the boil-off period consists of a first stage of lowering the liquid level followed by a second phase in which only the above foam is reduced. The first phase lasts for a few hours and involves most of the electrolyte content of the cell. The second phase lasts much less and entails a small variation in the residual mass content of the cell. However, F&P relied on the timing of this second phase to estimate that the last half of the initial water mass had evaporated in just about 11 minutes (1).

One wonders if F&P realized the real behavior of the cells in the first boil-off phase. The answer to this question is positive and is provided by a short video (2) that shows a part of Pons' presentation to the ICCF3, while on the screen a piece of the experimental video is projected showing the 4 cells under testing. This video sequence refers to the boil-off of Cell 1 and allows to follow almost entirely the lowering of the water level in the cell, starting from about ¼ of the initial level, until the complete disappearance of the water.

The following jpeg compares the frames taken from the video of this Pons presentation, with those of the short experimental video examined in the previous comments, here called for semplicity "Short test video" (3).

It is evident that the blue arrows superimposed on the frames of the "Short test video" don't indicate the decrease in the mass of water in Cell 1, but only the lowering of the residual foam. Is it possible that F&P didn't realize this obvious fact that they could have observed in hundreds of tests performed during many years with similar cells and that Pons had before his eyes during his presentation in Nagoya? In this regard it would be interesting to know what Pons says while presenting those images. Unfortunately, the superimposed Japanese translation prevents from understanding them. Is there anyone able to understand and transcript them down here?

To complete the panorama of the publicly available videos documenting the boil-off of Cell 1, we can cite the short clip included in the "Good Morning America" program broadcasted on May 1994 (4). They go from 22:13:58 to 22:28:58 and therefore they refer to the last part of the period shown in the "Short test video". The words during that clip are: "but, as this lab video shows, the devices [can do (?)] boil over and dry out after just a short while". I think that the images were provided by F&P and the text agreed with them.

It remains to understand what is the source of the "Short test video" posted by Krivit in 2009 and who superimposed the blue arrows and the scripts on its frames. Does anyone know if it is a video originally prepared by F&P themselves?

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf (F&P paper)

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88YdKYv8sw (Pons presentation)

(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBAIIZU6Oj8 (Short test video)

(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXaijlN1AKo#t=2m17s (Good Morning America)

A closer look at the boil-off phase of cell 2

The following jpeg expands the time period around the boil-off of the cell 2 of Figure 6B (1).

The already cited YouTube video (2) contains a short sequence starting at 22:35:14 (on the 20^th test day, ie t = 1636514 s) that shows the behavior of cell 2 during the boil-off phase. The timeline on the expanded diagram indicates that the corresponding cell voltage has reached about 30 V after a few hours of continuous increasing. The simultaneous dropping of the liquid water level to about ¼ of the initial height suggests that the corresponding reduction of the surface of the anodic wire submerged by liquid water is the main cause of this progressively accelerated increase in voltage. It continues with the same trend up to point B, where the curve suddenly starts to rise much faster until it reaches in C the maximum allowable value of 100 V. The simplest explanation of this sudden acceleration is that in B the liquid level is dropped at the top level of the cathode. Since then, a further drop in the liquid level leaves unwetted an increasing portion of the cathode surface, provoking the sharp rise of voltage.

This simple interpretation of the experimental time-voltage curve implies that most of the water has left the electrolytic cell 2 at time B, long before the time assumed by F&P in their paper (1), that is around the peak voltage in C. Without considering that the arrows in the frame D and E of the video (2) place this dry-out period even later.

(1) http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

(2)