Posts by Ascoli65

Quote from Alan Smith

This is a waste of my time to be honest. I am not about to be drawn into the discussion of what exactly that video shows, it has very very little to do with the whole body of evidence that LENR is real. Find another argument if you like, but for me pursuing a couple of hand wavers on a tandem is a waste of breath.

Actually, in this case, I urged you to look at a diagram, the one shown in Fig.8 of the F&P's "Simplicity Paper", rather than any video. It would have required a tiny portion of the time you have devoted in these last days to reply to my posts.

But, ok, I understand your position. Yours is one of most effective answers that can be included in the FAQ for skeptics proposed by Rob, section: last resources.

As for the little importance which you devote to any video, let me remind you that this thread started because I asked JedRothwell to explain this statement of him (1): "Whereas a close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons cell showed that the cathode was producing heat, the anode was not, and the bubbles were all from boiling, which was definitive proof of anomalous excess heat."

So, it looks that sometimes F&P's videos provide the "definitive proof of anomalous excess heat", some other times they "ha[ve] very very little to do with the whole body of evidence that LENR is real".

Anyway, thank you for discussing with me.

(1) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Quote from Alan Smith

Ascoli's attempts to discredit an entire field of research are simultaneously sad and laughable. Without an experiment effort to replicate this with any reasonable facsimile of the F&P cell you are both just hand waving - supported only by Ascoli's vivid imagination and cherry-picked scenarios. You have it seems never experimented with or worked with electrolytic systems, perhaps Ascoli never has either. I don't know.

I confirm, I've never worked with electrolytic systems, but what does it matter in this case? Claims by F&P and by all their CF epigones are not directed only to people well trained in the art.

F&P announced their achievements in a press conference aimed to impress the entire world, magnified their successes in very popular TV programs, published their experimental results in publicly available scientific papers, their researches benefitted of a lot a money from many private and governmental institutions of many Countries, including mine. Anybody is authorized to pose questions about their claimed results and public evidences.

Now, it happens that the most important diagram in their most important paper about their most important experiment looks to be wrong. The result of the "1992 boil-off experiment" are reported in the so called "Simplicity Paper" (1), and Fig.8 is mentioned at the end as a prove of the reality of their claims: "… the cells nevertheless remain at high temperature for prolonged periods of time, Fig 8;".

But you don't need to be a well trained electrochemist to see that the vertical arrow in this Fig.8 is mispositioned. It's not true that the "Cell remains at high temperature for 3 hours", as written by F&P on the figure.

Quote

On the other side of this story, I have faith in F&P's skill and probity, and the huge body of experimental evidence from others showing that XSH in Pd/D systems is a genuine phenomenon.

Does this faith prevent you to make a simple time conversion to check the position of the vertical arrow on the above Fig.8?

Let me say that this doesn't look as a scientific behavior.

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

Quote from Alan Smith

Next time you have a moment, try attaching a wire to a good dieletric in the bottom of an empty glass beaker. Tell me how many volts it takes to melt it.

This has nothing to do with the F&P experiments we are talking about.

In the "1992 boil-off experiment", some water always remained over the Kel-F support until the temperature began to decrease due to the opening of electrolytic circuit after the cell dried.

In the very last period before complete dry out, all the current flowed through a thin layer of electrolyte wetting a tiny portion of the electrodes surface at the bottom of the cell, where the electrodes were inserted into the Kel-F support. More than 80% of the joule dissipation were concentrated on this tiny portion of the electrodes.

The voltage limit of 100 volts adopted by F&P, multiplied by the constant current of 0.5 A, gives 50 W, 80% is 40 W, more than enough to locally heat the electrodes to a temperature above the melting point of the Kel-F support.

There is nothing of extraordinary in this behavior.

Quote from Alan Smith

Kel-F being commonly used as a conductive heating element of course.

I don't know what are you alluding to. As just said by THH, you perfectly know that Kel-F is a non-conductive thermoplastic material: https://dielectricmfg.com/knowledge-base/kel-f/ .

BTW: did you check the position of the vertical arrow on Fig.8 (*)?

It would have taken 10 minutes, but I help you a little more. All you have to do is to convert in seconds these two times: 19 days + 3 hours + 26 minutes and 19 days + 3 hours + 47 minutes. Then find the position of these two values on the x-axis of Fig.8.

(*) RE: Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?

Quote from THHuxleynew

PS - if the electrode melts fully, making an air gap between the top of the electrode and the last bits of electrolyte, that would mark the end of the experiment at which point no more input power!

PPS - if the melted electrode touched (via adjacent high resistance layers) the other electrode then the h50W or so of power input would continue until it melted further.

Please, beware also here.

F&P didn't claim that the electrode melted, they just wrote in their "Simplicity Paper": "the Kel-F supports of the electrodes at the base of the cells melt so that the local temperature must exceed 300ºC."

The Kel-F support of the electrodes melted, not the electrodes.

Quote from THHuxleynew

at 2200J/cc that is 50cc. Assuming 50% evaporation before the final phase we need to boil 25cc which at 50W would take about 20s.

Please, pay attention, as for your calculation, it would have been about 20 minutes, not seconds!

2200 J/cc * 25 cc = 55000 J

55000 J / 50 W = 1100 s = 18.3 min

Anyway, evaporation starts many hours before the final phase, so there is a plenty of time and energy to explain the boil off of all the liquid.

BTW, do you agree that temperature curve in Fig.8 of the "Simplicity Paper" shows that the system is losing heat by evaporation since the beginning of the period shown in the figure? Which other reason could explain the decreasing of its inclination, while the voltage (i.e. power) is still increasing more and more?

Quote from Alan Smith

What is the possible chemical nature of this hypothesised high-resistance coating on the cathode in a D2O/LiOD system? Never seen that happen in possibly 50 trials. If I had my notebooks here I could tell you exactly.

Since in your example this coating reduces current flow the system would cool down. It is exactly the same as having a smaller electrode.

Whatever its nature, something happens in F&P experiments which progressively increases the voltage across the cells. Since the current is constant, this voltage increase reflects an increase in the electric resistance, and since the electrolyte resistivity decreases with temperature, it also means that all the extra resistance is concentrated in the electrodes, more precisely on their surface. Indeed, Lonchampt wrote (1): "We have observed deposits on the electrodes after electrolysis, which, in our opinion, have a determining role in the excess heat generation." And thereafter, he added in a scheme: "Such deposits result in overvoltage".

Certainly, Lonchampt replications are closer to the F&P original experiment than your trials, and better documented.

In the "1992 boil-off experiment", the voltage increased up to 100 V, about ten times the base voltage, as you can see from Fig.6 in the "Simplicity Paper" (2). This is the "rail voltage" for this kind of F&P experiments, as explicitly confirmed in the "Heat After Death" paper (3): "We have then adopted the procedure of allowing the cells to boil to dryness. For these conditions the galvanostats are driven to the rail voltage (100 V) …" Therefore at a constant current of 0.5 A, the heating power can reach 50 W. This power is almost entirely (more than 80%) dissipated on the electrode surface.

At the end of boil-off, when the thickness of the liquid layer is less than the cathode height, this power concentrates in the bottom part of electrodes. No wonder that the support of the electrodes has melted as stated by F&P in the "Simplicity Paper". We should just wonder of F&P's wonder.

Quote from Alan Smith

So- a whole 17.5 watts. Couldn't do a lot of boiling with that.

As just said, the maximum power dissipated in the cells was much higher, up to 50 W. After subtracting the 11 W lost to the ambient (see page 16 of the "Simplicity Paper"), up to almost 40 W were still available in the final phase to boil-off all the water.

However, much less power was required to do that. Again on page 16 of the "Simplicity Paper", F&P estimated that a total energy of 102,500 J was required to transform all the electrolyte into vapor. As already explained (4), Fig.8 of the same paper tells us that evaporation began at least 60,000 seconds before the dry out of cell 2, therefore less than 2 W on average were sufficient to evaporate all the heavy water contained in the cell.

Conclusion, for those who want to look at the information contained in the documents provided by F&P and interpret them correctly, there is ample room to conventionally explain the melting of the electrode support and the evaporation of all the electrolyte in the "1992 boil-off experiment", without invoking any magic LENR

BTW – Did you check if the positions of the vertical arrows in Fig.8 of the "Simplicity Paper" were correct or wrong?

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

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

(3) https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/PonsSheatafterd.pdf

(4) RE: Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?

Quote from Alan Smith

I never asked you to do that. I would like you to perform an experiment where a realistic electrode of similar form in an aqueous -preferably lithium hydroxide and light water- electrolyte gets hot enough to boil the electrolyte - even for a few seconds- after the power goes off. It would be important to know the bulk temperature of the electrode itself, since as I have said many times, it's the electrolyte that heats up more than the electrodes, because it's in the electrolyte the power is dissipated. That would be something I have never seen.

This is a kitchen table experiment. not requiring high technnology, I am sure your hot fusion lab could run it.

I have no fusion lab, neither cold nor hot.

My basic knowledge in physics is sufficient to understand what Fig.8 of F&P's "Simplicity Paper" implies: the leveling of the curve toward the horizontal, at the same time as voltage (and power) are increasing more and more rapidly, means that the system is losing heat by evaporation. Do you agree on this?

Now, since the bulk temperature of water remained below the boiling point for many hours, this means that locally, somewhere in the system, this temperature was exceeding the boiling point. The only point where this could have happened was the cathode surface. The reason is simple. The current lines are concentrated on this surface, so there is a huge increase in the current density and in the consequent volumetric heat release by joule effect. The diameter of the F&P cathode was 2 mm, its height 12.5 mm, so its surface was about 1/10 (Order of Magnitude-OM) of the average section of the electrolytic current. Due to the quadratic relationship between current density and joule heating, on the cathode surface the juole heating density was on average 100 times (OM) larger than elsewhere in the cell.

As evaporation began, bubbles formed on the cathode surface which further reduced its wetted surface, so that the local heating density increased more and more.

The wetted area, and therefore the heating release, was mostly concentrated on the bottom of the cathode, where the palladium rod was wedged into the plastic support, because this is the point where liquid water, coming from the relatively colder walls, converges to replace the evaporated water.

Furthermore, in the very last period of boiling-off, when the level of residual liquid was very low, the lower portion of cathode was the only part which could have been in touch with liquid, for obvious reasons. When the liquid electrolyte reduced to a thin layer, the local joule heating density became thousands times greater than the initial bulk density.

To this geometric effect must be added the effect due to the deposits on the cathode surface, that, as already said (1), were found by Lonchampt as the cause of the progressively increase of the overvoltage.

So, no wonder for what F&P claimed in their "Simplicity Paper": "the Kel-F supports of the electrodes at the base of the cells melt so that the local temperature must exceed 300ºC." This phenomenon can be satisfactorily explained by conventional physics.

All the wonder is concentrated in the previous claim: " following the boiling to dryness and the open-circuiting of the cells, the cells nevertheless remain at high temperature for prolonged periods of time, Fig 8;"

This is completely untrue! Cell 2 started cooling immediately after the cell dried. F&P made a big mistake: they shifted the time of the time-lapse video by more than 2 hours (2). This is a fact, not an opinion! Anyone can verify it for themselves. In this case, it is not even necessary to know the basics of physics, all you need is to know how to perform a couple of elementary time conversions.

Have you never checked this evident fact? It's very simple. Just watch the F&P video (3), write down the times (hh:mm) on the right of the blue arrows which appear along Cell 2, convert these instants into elapsed time in seconds starting from 00:00:00 of April 11, 1992 (consider that the boiling off of Cell2 occurs during the 20^th day of the experiment). Put these elapsed times on the x axis of Fig.8 of F&P's "Simplicity Paper" (4), and you will see for yourself that F&P had misplaced the vertical arrows by more than 2 hours!

It takes a maximum of 10 minutes. It doesn't require a lab, not even a kitchen table, just your PC. I'm sure you are able to do a time conversion. Why don't you do it?

(1) RE: Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?

(2) https://imgur.com/X2q1TWv

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

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

I've been kindly asked not to post "about the boil-off" in other threads (*), so I will "restraint" my answers in this "[my] own thread", … as long as it remains open.

(*) RE: LENR FAQ (for skeptics)

Quote from Alan Smith

And based on his imaginative interpretation of a grainy old video. That's it. Would you accept evidence of this quality as evidence for UFO's?

My interpretation of the presence of mostly foam in the cells, shown in what you call "a grainy old video", was confirmed by at least one other LENR member, who provided, in native language, an accurate description of what he saw there (1). Is this description imaginative too?

As for the quality of the videos (2,3), a few years ago they were considered (4) a "proof of excess heat [is] palpable or visible. In the F&P video, you can see that the electrolyte has boiled off, so there can be no current and no heating."

And even more specifically (5): "You don't need Fleischmann, Miles or anyone else. You can see for yourself. I mean that literally. Look a good copy of the boil off experiment video and you will see." Or, again (6): "You can see the proof yourself, right there in the video. You can also see that 30 W of electrolysis does not even boil the water. You can see a great deal, …"

Definitively, the time-lapse video was considered the capital proof to resolve any doubt about LENR reality (7): "You doubt that was the case? LOOK AT THE VIDEO."

Then, suddenly, after the coming out of the "foam issue", the time-lapse video "unfortunately" became (8) "an old VHS video, and it is a copy of a copy, so the quality is degraded and the picture is blurry, but you can still see when the boil off events begin and end."

Anyway, regardless of the opinions on video's quality, the 2 main claims of F&P are wrong due to evidence provided by F&P themselves and not affected by any degradation.

In particular, as already explained here above (9), a thorough interpretation of Fig.8 of their "Simplicity Paper" shows that boiling has started many hours before the boil-off events identified by F&P .

The same Fig.8 also shows that the second main claim of F&P were wrong too. They mispositioned the arrows indicating the instants of half and full dryness of the cell. This error can be easily verified by anybody by comparing the time reported on the video frames with the time axis of Fig.8, as explained in (10). The times on the video frames are clearly legible independently by any supposed degradation of the video.

It is evident that F&P failed in synchronizing the time-lapse video with the temperature recording. This is a paramount error! It generated the subsequent decennial mythology about the so called "Heat After Death" phenomena.

(1) RE: FP's experiments discussion

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

(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn9K1Hvw434

(4) RE: Validity of LENR Science...[split]

(5) RE: FP's experiments discussion

(6) RE: FP's experiments discussion

(7) RE: FP's experiments discussion

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

(9) RE: Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?

(10) https://imgur.com/X2q1TWv

Quote from Rob Christian

Has anyone compiled an LENR Wiki FAQ for the common questions posed by skeptics?

My very short LENR FAQ list (for skeptics).

1 - What is LENR?

LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) is the name that was chosen by the people involved in "Cold Fusion" field, after the original name became a synonymous of pseudoscience.

2 - What is Cold Fusion?

CF is the name which was originally given to an undefined and mysterious nuclear phenomenon, such as the possible fusion of 2 deuterons, whose existence was invoked by the two electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons (F&P) in the press conference held on March 23, 1989, when they announced to the world that, in experiments carried out in their electrolytic cells, they obtained heat in excess with respect to the input electric power or any other possible conventional energy source.

3 - What happened since the announcement of F&P in 1989?

From (1): "DOE reviews in 1989 and 2004 both concluded that the body of evidence to date did not support the claim of D-D fusion, but that research proposals on deuterated heavy metals should be evaluated under the standard peer-review process. This has not happened, in part because LENR was largely dismissed by the scientific research community by 1990. Nevertheless, many groups from around the world continued to conduct varied LENR experiments on minimal budgets and to report evidence of excess heat and nuclear reactions (including neutrons, tritium, ³He, ⁴He, transmutation products, and isotopic shifts) in hundreds of reports/papers. However, repeatability of the key evidence over multiple trials of seemingly the same experiment remains elusive to this day."

(1) https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/…d3-4afc-bd17-bc7a7f05fb2f

4 - Which LENR experiment is considered the most important?

Each LENR expert has his own opinion on which experiment is the most important and meaningful. However, in 2004, when the DOE carried out his second review, a group of 5 people, among the most experienced and authoritative in the field, agreed on a short list of documents, to be submitted in response of a request from the DOE to "provide a summary of the status of the field which articulates what are considered to be the most recent significant experimental observations and publications … " (2).

The short list began with:

M. Fleischmann and S. Pons, "Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O System; from simplicity via complications to simplicity," Physics Letters A, 176, (1993).

For the sake of brevity, this document is also called "Simplicity Paper".

(2) https://www.newenergytimes.com…010/34/344doereview.shtml

5 - Which experiment is described in the "Simplicity Paper"?

The paper describes the so called "1992 boil-off experiment", a CF experiment carried out in April-May 1992 at IMRA Europe laboratory, in Sophia Antipolis, near Nice, France. The experimental set-up involved a row of four cells placed side by side in a constant-temperature water bath. After about 3-4 weeks of applied constant current, the temperature of each cell, one at a time, increased up to the boiling point, and the electrolyte boiled vigorously and evaporated completely, until the cell dried out and the electrolytic current has stopped.

The experiment was first described in a paper (3) presented by F&P at ICCF3 in Nagoya, Japan, in October 1992.

In May 1993, an article with nearly the same contents was published in the peer reviewed journal Physics Letter A (4).

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

(4) https://www.sciencedirect.com/…icle/pii/037596019390327V

6 - Is the "1992 boil-off experiment" still considered important by the LENR community today?

Yes, it is. The "Simplicity Paper" is still considered the "major paper" of Fleischmann (5, page 14), and, at ICCF23 in 2021, Michael McKubre stated that it was the only LENR experiment, to his knowledge, which was exactly replicated (6, slide 11).

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

(6) http://ikkem.com/iccf23/speakervideo/1a-IN01-Mckubre.mp4

7 - Which were the main claims contained in the "Simplicity Paper"?

At the end of the "Simplicity Paper", F&P made two main claims:

1st – "We note that excess rate of energy production is about four times that of the enthalpy input even for this highly inefficient system; …"

2nd – "… following the boiling to dryness and the open-circuiting of the cells, the cells nevertheless remain at high temperature for prolonged periods of time, Fig 8; furthermore the Kel-F supports of the electrodes at the base of the cells melt so that the local temperature must exceed 300ºC."

8 - What is the experimental evidence on which the above claims are based?

F&P relied on the images captured in a time-lapse video recorded during the experiment. In the "Simplicity Paper", they explained: "It is therefore necessary to develop independent means of monitoring the progressive evaporation/boiling of the D2O. The simplest procedure is to make time-lapse video recordings of the operation of the cells which can be synchronised with the temperature-time and cell potential-time data. … As it is possible to repeatedly reverse and run forward the video recordings at any stage of operation, it also becomes possible to make reasonably accurate estimates of the cell contents. We have chosen to time the evaporation/boiling of the last half of the D2O in cells of this type and this allows us to make particularly simple thermal balances for the operation in the region of the boiling point."

9 - Is this time-lapse video publicly available?

Yes, although not entirely. The most important parts, those used by F&P to estimate the enthalpy output, are shown in two videos available on internet.

The first video was uploaded to YouTube in 2009 (7). It shows the main phases of the time-lapse video, preceded by some preparatory phases.

The second video was uploaded to YouTube in 2015 (8) and shows longer footages than the previous one.

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

(8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn9K1Hvw434

10 - Are these videos important?

Yes, they are fundamental to understanding the CF phenomenon, because these video are the only publicly available document which was directly used by F&P, the pioneers of the field, to infer their claims related to their most important experiment.

Therefore, these videos allow anyone who understand the basics of physics to check for themselves whether F&P's claims were correct or wrong.

11 - What can be deduced from the videos of the "1992 boil-off experiment"?

The videos show that both the main claims made by F&P in the "Simplicity Paper" were wrong.

1st – In the first one, F&P claimed to have obtained an excess heat about four times greater than the enthalpy input. This estimate comes from their calculation reported in the "Simplicity Paper". In this calculation F&P assumed that the last half of the D2O liquid originally contained in each cell had boiled away in just 600 s.

However, the videos show that at the beginning of the final period, identified in the first video by blue arrows, the cells were already mostly filled with foam, not liquid (9), therefore the heat required to evaporate the residual electrolyte was much less than the quantity estimated by F&P, so that it was not necessary to invoke the presence of an additional energy source, besides electrolysis, to explain the dry-out of the cells.

2nd – In the second claim, F&P stated that cell 2 remained at high temperature for prolonged periods of time, following the boiling to dryness and the open-circuiting of the cell. They cited Fig 8 of the "Simplicity Paper", where they indicated by means of two vertical arrows the instants in which this cells was half dry and full dry.

However, a simple comparison with the times reported in the first video, when the blue arrows appear to mark the moments of half dryness and full dryness of the second cell, shows that the vertical arrows on Fig.8 was shifted a few hours to the left (10).

(9) RE: FP's experiments discussion

(10) https://imgur.com/X2q1TWv

Best regards.

Quote from Bruce__H

You are asking whether any here, on this site, is willing to say that a fundamental theory ... is wrong whereas I am asking about whether the community will say it is wrong.

Actually my emphasis is on claims rather than theories. Claims come first, theories follow.

For example, consider the many theories that have been published in order to explain the Rossi's claims.

In one of the many documents aimed at explaining LENR, two authors from University of Budapest wrote (1): "The electron assisted neutron exchange processes in pure Ni, Pd and Li−Ni composite systems (in the Rossi-type E-Cat) are analyzed and it is concluded that the electron assisted neutron exchange reactions in pure Ni and Li − Ni composite systems may be responsible for recent experimental observations." – This specific theory is accompanied by many graphs and 103 formulas. May be all of them are formally correct, but if its purpose is to explain the Rossi's results, this theory is useless, it has nothing to do with reality. Why? Well, because Rossi's claims are wrong, so no theory is required to explain them.

The same holds for the BSM-SG model presented by a member of Canadian university (2), and for many other theories and models aimed to explain the Rossi's claims.

Now, look at this presentation by MIT (3). The first two rows in the table at page 44 report some claims of the major LENR researchers. Rossi and friends are not included, of course. We all know why: their claims about LENR are unreliable. But the list starts with F&P. Problem: are their claims more reliable than Rossi's? The answer can be easily obtained by looking carefully at their own documentation on the "1992 boil-off experiment".

However, and this is the basic question, are anybody here willing to look carefully at this documentation, thus questioning the F&P reliability?

(1) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.01474.pdf

(2) http://gsjournal.net/Science-J…e%20Physics/Download/4805

(3) https://arpa-e.energy.gov/site…orkshop_Metzler_Final.pdf

Quote from Bruce__H

Can anyone here point to a fundamental LENR theory or claim from the past 30 years that the community now sees as wrong? (I exclude the unmasking of charlatans like Rossi)

A more basic question is: can anyone here see (and admit) that a fundamental LENR theory or claim from the past 30 years is wrong?

IMO, the F&P claims about their "4-cells boil-off experiment" performed 30 years ago, in 1992, are totally wrong, as it is clearly shown in their paper (1), and by their lab video (2). But, supposing my opinion is correct, as I'm convinced it is, can anyone here admit the erroneousness of these F&P claims, and the groundlessness of theories based on them?

On the contrary, it happens that the most active defenders of the correctness of F&P's claims and related theories are the same who were the most active in defending the reality of the Rossi's claims.

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

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

Quote from Alan Smith

Reproduce the experiment, produce a similar effect without LENR and I will be very impressed

I'm not equipped to reproduce the F&P experiment, and, in any case, a reproduction by me has no possibility to impress who strongly believes that F&P were right.

Three years ago, when Team Google asked the opinion of this community for suggesting an experiment to be conducted, I strongly recommended to reproduce the "1992 boil-off experiment" of F&P (1). A Team Google replication would have been very impressive, but my suggestion was not accepted.

Quote

until then it's just your anonymous opinion against that of 2 distinguished scientists whose work has been replicated independently many times.

Well, it's not a matter of anonymity, as shown by the reactions to the THH posts in this thread.

There is a well precise order in the credibility of the arguments which have been used in debating the reality of the F&P effect. Starting from the most important:

- 1st level: the experimental evidences provided by F&P;

- 2nd level: the F&P opinion;

- …

- last level: my finger.

I 'm aware that my anonymous opinion counts nothing, but my anonymous finger is pointing to the 1st level of credibility and says: please, look carefully at the experimental evidences, interpret them correctly and you will see that they are in conflict with the F&P opinion!

I know that most people here will not look at my finger, that's why I've addressed my last post to THH. May be he'll let us know what is his opinion about the interpretation of Figure 8 of the F&P's "simplicity paper".

(1) RE: Team Google wants your opinion: "What is the highest priority experiment the LENR community wants to see conducted?"

THHuxleynew

Hi THH, JR wrote to you:

Quote from JedRothwell

There is no input power for most of the boil off. That is what the graphs show, and what common sense tells you must be the case. Got that? No Input Power. NO INPUT POWER, for crying out loud. Do you understand what that means? Ascoli does not, but you probably have some knowledge of everyday physics.

I strongly recommend you to follow his hint, and look at the graphs.

IMO, the most important graph produced by F&P, and one of the most revealing of the whole CF history, is the one shown in Figure 8 of the F&P's "simplicity paper": https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf .

Its caption says: "Expansion of the temperature-time portion of Fig 6B during the final period of rapid boiling and evaporation."

The temperature-time portion starts at about 1,597,000 s, when temperature of the electrolyte is about 86 °C. Then it slowly reaches a maximum temperature of about 101°C, and suddenly drops at 1,657,000 s (at the right end of the horizontal arrow). So the rising part lasts 60,000 s, that is 16h40'.

You should locate the fig.8 portion into the whole temperature trend of fig.6B. This last shows the voltage too. Before the beginning of fig.8 portion, both temperature and voltage in fig.6B are rising (on average, of course), and both are accelerating their increasing rates. The second derivative is positive for both curves.

Voltage increases due to increasing of resistance of circuit, but, as known, in electrolyte the resistivity decreases on increasing temperature because viscosity of electrolyte decreases. So the resistance can only increase for the phenomenon highlighted by Lonchampt, that is build up of deposits on electrodes. This slow phenomenon explain the needing for F&P to run very long experiments.

On the other hand, electrolyte temperature increases because cell must dissipate more extra heat by means of radiative losses, which vary with the 4th power of temperature.

F&P calculated the radiative losses at boiling point. On page 16, they wrote that, at 101°C, the cell loses 6,700 J in 600 s, i.e. 11.1 W, toward an ambient at 20°C. Therefore, at 86 °C, at the beginning of fig.8, the radiative dissipation is about 8.5 W. So, at a constant current of 0.5 A, the radiative losses, in the portion shown on fig.8, accounts for a voltage difference ranging from 17 to 22.2 V, that is 18.5 to 23.7 V after having included the 1.54 V absorbed by the electrolysis. But fig.6B shows that, in this final boil-off period, voltage skyrockets well above 25 V. Where does it go all this extra power?

Only a tiny fraction of it can be stored as sensible heat in the electrolyte, because its temperature is already close to the boiling point, and it increases more and more slowly, by levelling its trend. As a consequence, as clearly shown by fig.8, the second derivative of temperature is negative, while the second derivative of voltage continues to be positive for a while, until voltage reaches the maximum allowed value of 100 V, that is 50 W. Nearly 40 W more than the radiative losses in that period!

Again, where does it go all this extra power?

Well, the answer is simple: it generates steam!

Evaporation is the only way in which the F&P cell can dissipate the extra heat produced by the electrolyte current during "the final period of rapid boiling and evaporation". But this period doesn't last 600 s, as F&P assumed in their calculation at page 16, it actually lasted many hours as shown by the levelling trend of the curve in their fig.8. Probably yet at the beginning of the curve, at 1,597,000 s, but surely at 1,620,000 s (that is 10 hours before dry out(*)), water is evaporating at the cathode surface. It means that the cathode temperature is above boiling point, hence it is higher than the electrolyte's. And this over temperature surely increases with the increasing of the extra power.

In conclusion, if you look carefully at fig.8 of the F&P "simplicity paper", and interpret it correctly, you can desume that:

- there have been input power for ALL of the boil off (not only for most of it);

- this input power is largely sufficient to explain the dry out of the cell (no excess heat is required);

- the temperature of the cathode rises well above the electrolyte's.

(*) Please, pay attention, the dry out doesn't happen in the instant indicated by F&P on fig.8, in fact the vertical arrows are misplaced, the dry out happens when temperature drops.

Quote from JedRothwell

It may not exist any more. I wouldn't know. As I recall, it came out after we made the video.

Impossible.

You said (1): "It [the video] was broadcast on a major TV channel as I recall." and "It was made by F&P and a TV reporter. I don't recall who."

If the video existed, it should exists still now. A major TV channel, which sent a TV reporter to the F&P laboratory (in France at that time) doesn't lose a document like this. Moreover, such a TV channel doesn't wait years before broadcasting such an expensive video.

Since the close-up video was made by both Fleischmann and Pons, and the TV reporter visited them in France, the program showing the close-up video should have been broadcasted well before 1998, the year during which your documentary "Cold Fusion: Fire from Water" was released. So, the alleged "close-up" video should have been at your disposal when you reviewed the footage stock for your documentary.

Quote

Anyway, you are either accusing me of lying, or being crazy, so I think it best to end this conversation.

No, sorry, I don't mean that. it could just be that your memory is not so infallible. It happens. You often accompany your sentences with caution words as "I wouldn't know", "as I recall", "I don't recall who", and the like.

In this case, it seems that you have a vague memory of the ABC program "Good Morning America", broadcasted on May 31, 1994 (2). In this program a young TV reporter, the PhD Michael Guillen, relates the TV anchorman about his travel in France, where he visited Fleischmann and Pons at the "15 million dollar lab created for them by the Japanese" (at 1:20). This program contains images recorded during the reporter visit and some others, presumably provided by F&P, related to old experiments, as a footage of the "4 cells boil-off experiment" (at 2:18). Immediately after Fleischmann says: "We have been able to achieve heat output at boiling point for 15 minutes, so now we have to device cells which can be maintained on the boiling conditions for 3 months". He says "15 minutes" and "3 months", but these are only words. No close-up video showing this achievement appears in the ABC program.

(1) RE: Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?

(2)

Quote from Shane D.

Soon we will have all the ICCF24 videos available, and then you will see the field is well past FP's. No use quibbling over old experiments when we have verifications of XH/RF/transmutations flooding in from the likes of NASA, US Navy (Navsea), and the US Army.

Why? From an historical point of view, quibbling over old experiments is exceedingly important just now, since NASA is going to equip its spaceships with powerful CF power generators.

We must absolutely retrieve such an important document as the "close-up video" of the F&P boiling cell, before it get lost for ever.

Quote from Alan Smith

Your posts are off-topic for this thread. No more please.

OK, I agree, this is not the right thread. I will no post here any other post on the F&P subject. But this subject was introduced in this thread by JR (1).

Don't you think that his scoop deserve a new thread dedicated to the "close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons cell showed that the cathode was producing heat, the anode was not, and the bubbles were all from boiling, which was definitive proof of anomalous excess heat"?

Quote from Shane D.

And I was just having fun with Ascoli, because of his obsession with the FPs boil-off.

I'm happy you have fun. I also have, by seeing how any single word of JR is taken for true, even when he is not able to provide any proof.

You did ask him (2): "Maybe it is time to give skeptics what they have demanded all along...a device clearly demonstrating excess heat with some practical consumer use? "

He answered (3): "Years ago, I saw a close up video of a boiling cell. It was a perfect demonstration! As I said above, "it showed that the cathode was producing heat, the anode was not, and the bubbles were all from boiling, which was definitive proof of anomalous excess heat." It also showed a person's hand, indicating the scale of the device, and much else. I wish I could find a copy."

I think you too wish to help JR to find a copy of this video. Don't you?

In which thread can we help JR to retrieve this crucial "close-up video" of the F&P boling cell?

(1) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

(2) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

(3) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Quote from JedRothwell

No it is not. I have seen all the footage for the video. Give me a little credit here. Gene & I wrote the voiceover for the video, so I know what went into it, and what was left on the cutting room floor.

Given my question, your answer ("no it is not") means that the "close-up video" was not included in the Footage Stock of your documentary "Cold Fusion: Fire from Water":

So, I have no problem to give you credit, in just this case. It means that the "close-up" video, you are talking about since 2020, did never exist, otherwise you and the other authors of the documentary should have seen it in the ponderous material that was collected to produce your documentary. This material included every program on CF transmitted by all the major TV channels until then. It would have been extremely stupid not to include such a phenomenal video in your documentary. You are not a stupid, so the "close-up video" does not exist.

You also said (1): "I discussed it with Mallove, McKubre and others who saw it." The only video of a complete F&P experiment that you all could have seen and discussed about is the time-lapse video of the "1992 boil-off experiment". A footage of this last video appears in your documentary. It lasts 5 seconds (from 24:39, to 24:44), which corresponds to 10 minutes of experiment (from 21:25:58 to 21:35:58).

Another footage of the same time-lapse video was included in the program "Good Morning America" aired by ABC on May 31, 1994 (2). It lasts 7 seconds (from 2:17 to 2:24), corresponding to 15 minutes of experiment (from 22:13:58 to 22:28:58).

The two footages doesn't overlap. It means that you and the other documentary's makers had at your disposition the original and complete "time-lapse video", probably provided directly from Fleischmann.

Therefore, only the "time-laps video" of the "1992 boil-off experiment" does exist, and this video shows that F&P were wrong. The "close-up video", you are talking about in the last 2 years, is only a potpourri of sparse images assembled by your wishful fantasy.

(1) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

(2)

Quote from JedRothwell

How the hell would I find a video at someplace like ABC? Do you think they will let me look through their archives from the 1990s?

[...]

You make yourself look like an idiot disputing such things.

Not at someplace like ABC, but at someplace like Infinite Energy or the like.

Your documentary "Cold Fusion: Fire from Water" was released in 1998. It contains a lot of footages taken from all the TV reports and programs broadcasted up to then on the CF subject. The sources of these footages are listed at the end of documentary (at 1:07:20). All the major TV channel are mentioned: ABC, BBC, CBC, CBS, CNN.

You said (1): "It [the close-up video] was broadcast on a major TV channel", therefore this video was for sure among those included in the Footage Stock of your documentary.

Who does own this Footage Stock?

In any case, you and the other authors of the documentary "Cold Fusion: Fire from Water" have collected and reviewed all the TV videos broadcasted until then by the major TV channels on the CF subject. It's not believable that you and your friends lost a video which, as you wrote, "was a perfect demonstration" (2) and the "definitive proof of anomalous excess heat" (3). It's not believable, and, let me say, it would have been extremely idiotic. You are not an idiot (you just say the others are), therefore if you don't find and show it, it can only mean that the "close-up video" exists only in your fervid fantasy.

(1) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

(2) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

(3) RE: MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Quote from Alan Smith

The usual nonsense. If the electrode is isolated from the electrolyte by a film of gas then no current flows, and if no current flows there is no heating -unless there is LENR.

During the final boil-off period, the cathode is mostly thermally isolated from the coolant, but not fully electrically isolated.

At the bottom of the cathode, the boiling film is not completely evolved, so the current flows and heats the electrode until the liquid has completely vaporized. No need to invoke any LENR.