Thanks for posting this.
What are the axes for the plot on slide 6?
Bruce__H
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Posts by Bruce__H
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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.
Such things have been said for years. We will see if anything is different this time. It is actually a scandal that the F&P experiments have to be dissected and argued over by grainy video or half forgotten videos instead of by just pointing to that machine over in the corner of the lab that works on F&R principles and is in everyday use for producing heat or radiation or whatever. That is the mark of a sterile field.
The thing that appears structurally different in 2022 is Daniel_G's apparent willingness to distribute working reactors to well-prepared laboratories for open validations. I hope that works out.
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Some systems self destruct at relatively low temperarures, meltdown is something I have seen only once at 1700C, Witness to which was a partly melted fused alumina fuel container.
"Meltdown" is a term I have been using. It is dramatic. Maybe too dramatic for what I mean to convey. "Ignition" may be a better term and is more in line with what seems to be Daniel_G's thinking.
Systems possessing a heat-activated exothermic reaction (whether LENR or not) should have an ignition point -- a threshold beyond which a positive feedback develops that allows the system to escape the restrains of local passive cooling. The temperature will then go up and up until something happens to stop it. So far, Daniel_G has not described any property of the reaction itself that would put the brakes on things -- he has simply said that the exothermic reaction produces heat at a steady-state rate that increases exponentially with increasing temperature. No brakes there. So the brakes would presumably come from either the fuel becoming exhausted, or from a derangement of the microarchitecture that is supposed to support the reaction (clefts in lattices and that sort of thing). "Meltdown" in this case need not appear as a bulk melting of the reactor parts. It would just seem that the reactor stops working with no visible change otherwise.
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The only thing about the new Mizuno style reactors that was on this thread was nickec talking about making a new thread to talk about them. That is it. The reactors that Daniel_G proposes to distribute for validation are Pd/Ni are far as I know.
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53 posts moved to the new Mizuno thread Mizuno Style Reactors WITHOUT Precious Metals - Page 3 - Experiments & Replications - LENR Forum (lenr-forum.com)
Very few of the posts you moved actually deal with the newly announced Mizuno style reactors without precious metals. Virtually all of them are about the standard Mizuno Pd/Ni reactors and should remain on this thread .
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Also we initially tried to fix the temperature with PID control and measure the reduction in power required to maintain a given temperature but that data was super noisy. When we flipped it around and fixed the heater input power and let the temperature vary, the data became very clean.
Was the PID control super noisy for the nonactive control reactor too? Or just for the LENR-equipped reactor?
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It's an oven rather than a calorimeter. In a post on Feb 25 2021, Daniel_G posted a link to a page containing the oven's manual. Sounds like it has been modified somewhat since.
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... In general people should be free to disclose real results. Any false negatives can be countered with multiple credible validations.
Equally, any false positives can be countered in the validation process. Admirable!
I suggest that as the sole supplier of test reactors for validation, you are in a position to set things up in a particularly persuasive way. This would include 1) registering all validation attempts, meaning that groups accepting a reactor would agree to make public all results positive or negative, 2) a public specification, before trials are carried out, of minimal crucial conditions for success (i.e., the things you mentioned recently like incubator-style calorimeter etc) which validators would agree to attempt to achieve, 3) what to measure.
In addition, I think that LENR-Forum could play an important role in all this by first advertising for potential validators (just look back on this thread and one sees multiple competent labs who might sign on), and then by sorting out, before the results come in, what success or failure might look like. The intention would be to attempt create community agreement regarding the quality of the validation program so that sceptics and supporters alike would be forced to acknowledge the reality of the results however they turn out.
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I would suggest switching to an incubator type calorimeter. The volume and surface area should be as small as possible. There should be a small thermal mass and high insulation. A mixing fan will reduce temperature differences within the calorimeter. Serious researchers attempting replication are welcome to contact me for assistance. If they build a good quality calorimeter and still having problems also contact me as we may offer a tested and confirmed working unit as a positive control.
Sounds good!
I think that confirmation of working reactors by independent groups is a good initiative. Would you be seeking control over the release of their findings ... or would they be able to release whatever results they come up with?
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Bruce_H, the problem is that Mizuno has developed entirely new technology since that publication due to the shortage of cash we couldn't purchase expensive Pd and Pt so Mizuno was forced to find a way to produce the reaction without using precious metals. He succeeded.
I had in mind advice relating to the information you published in your abstract. There you say .. "The physical distance between the resistance wire heating elements wrapped around the device significantly affects the variability in previous excess heat measurements. In addition, airflow calorimeters cannot support high & even temperatures which lead to difficulties in replications". Based on this, do you have specific advice for groups replicating the system described in the papers by Mizuno and Rothwell?
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A cathode with higher electrical resistance than the electrolyte would be a water heater.
Yes. That was the point I was making.
As for 'manufacturing defects' you won't find many pieces of Pd with that particular problem. It would be resistance wire
Yes. That is the same point. The one I was making. Not that I am terribly tied to it as the explanation of al this. The real resolution lies in reproducing the effect in an open way on demand.
But for now, the P&F technology has worked thousands of times in many laboratories.
Can you point to any device in your laboratory, in everyday use, which uses the technique? How about in anyone else's lab? On the other hand, think about walking into your lab and pointing at a piece of equipment, or identifying some process, in everyday use. Think about the original observations or discoveries that led to this device or process (there are probably many involved for each). Those original discoveries have a dense series of adaptations and improvements that led to their abundant, almost unthinking present day uses. And that is because they are founded on real insights into the natural world. I am struggling to see anything like that here.
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Superfiailly that looked good, However, he doesn't explain how the cathode got to be at more than 100C if there was no magic happening. Electrolysis itself is endothermic, however, the Joule heating losses can boil the water for sure. But the Joule heating of the cathode itself is very small, since it is designed to have a very low electrical resistance while the electrolyte is the high resistance part of the system that soaks up the amperes. It is normally the electrolyte heating the cathode, not the cathode getting hot and transferring heat to the electrolyte. Cathode heating is also self-limiting, since the hotter it gets the more it becomes sheathed in bubbles and so the surface area of the cathode available to conduct current becomes smaller.
Sure. And I understand your point. But one can think of counterarguments -- maybe some cathodes have internal resistances from manufacturing defects, etc. -- and the debate is on again. My point is that scientific observations only properly live on if they give birth to procedures and devices that are used every day in the lab and in the world at large. And that hasn't happened with the P&F stuff. That is why a fruitless debate continues fueled by grainy videos. A debate that can't be solved by just pointing to some device used every day in the lab and saying "this is where the P&F work ended up, that device works on the same principle".
And to bring this whole thing back to the topic of this thread ... the papers by Rothwell and Mizuno were an attempt to spread the practical knowledge of how to build and operate Mizuno's device. I am now hoping for the sort of uptake and translation into everyday lab experience that never happened for P&F. So far, I don't see it. But now, recently, in this thread, Daniel_G seems to be saying that Mizuno knows why some replicators are not encountering success. Well I wish that he (Mizuno, or Daniel_G, doesn't matter) would update the published descriptions so that this whole thing will become real and not just yet another phantasm as seems so common for LENR claims.
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Anyway, your making reference to that video means that you have not well understood the difference between a barrel of cold water and a well insulated Dewar bottle containing well stirred water at boiling temperature. In the first case you have a huge sensible heat capacity for quenching the pieces of metal, that is the cool water has plenty of room to increase its temperature before reaching the boiling temperature. On the contrary, the boiling water in a F&P cell has no more sensible heat capacity, it can't no more absorb heat by increasing its temperature. It can only evaporate to remove the heat released by the overheated cathode.
A good reply by Ascoli65. And I'm sure Jed will find a sensible response. But the basic truth behind this whole debate is that the fundamental experimental results cannot be simply replicated at will by anyone with an appropriately equipped lab. That is a huge problem. This debate should really not be happening. The fact that it is taking place at all indicates that the Pons and Fleischmann findings have little to tell us about reality.
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I still do not see how that would be any more convincing than ordinary, conventional calorimetry.
It is more convincing because the high-production state reached once you shove the system past a critical point is such a clear signal. In the models I have explored, the high-heat-production state has a COP much larger than those expected in the configurations Daniel_G (or your and Mizuno) have been seeing. Much larger! From an order of magnitude higher to infinitely higher.
In my opinion, you should always use conventional instruments and techniques to do a scientific experiment. Industry standard, off the shelf instruments are best.
Well that is a good principle to use in choosing research directions. But another good principle is to study big effects rather than small ones.
Also, you did not address the issue of destroying the instrument and having to wait weeks or months before doing the next experiment. Then there is the expense to consider. Some reactors and calorimeters cost tens of thousands of dollars. Do you really want to throw away that money just to do a demonstration that most experts would not think is more convincing than an ordinary flow or Seebeck calorimeter?
True. I didn't address this. But then we appear to disagree on what is convincing. I think it is convincing. And I don't see why others would not think it convincing to see a system producing high heat with no input power and no conventional explanation. So I don't see it as throwing away money. And, in any case, a team trying to push this system towards any sort of industrial/commercial capability will have to investigate possible high-energy excursions or meltdown anyway won't they? Why not do it now?
Note added in edit: I should reinforce something I said a few posts ago. Given the properties Daniel_G is claiming for the newly reconfigured Mizuno system, loss of temperature control and escape to meltdown should be easy to evoke even unintentionally. It should be a constant threat that the experimenters have to work hard to avoid. Push the input heater just a touch too high and positive feedback should push the system straight up the meltdown region unless vigorous cooling is introduced on an emergency basis. I don't understand why we haven't heard about any such thing yet.
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I do not understand why you think this is more convincing than conventional calorimetry.
It is because of the hysteresis. Think of it as like lighting a fire. The amount of energy released depends on the amount of fuel present and not on the amount of energy in the match that lit the fire. The initial input energy is just there to push the system past a critical point beyond which internal heating and positive feedback takes over and ramps the system up to a high output state. I would call that an impressive demonstration! ( as long as a chemical exothermic release can be eliminated as the cause).
Daniel_G claims there are major-league engineers involved in this. They can sort out the safety precautions. It is workable. I made some nice fires in my fireplace last winter!
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We are getting 0.2W per cm2 so our latest prototypes which are about the size of a notebook computer have 40,000cm2 of surface area so if the 0.2W/cm2 heat output holds, these units will produce about 8kW of heat.
With these higher heat production densities are you not getting thermal runaway to meltdown? For a heat-activated exothermic system, the positive feedback between rising temperature and intrinsic heat generation should result a region of unstable rising temperatures until maximal activation is reached. Since you have repeatedly stated that the activation depends exponentially on temperature, the micro sites releasing energy should have no real maximum and simply ramp up in temperature until they destroy themselves. So I don't understand how you get a stable production density unless you undertake robust cooling to counteract the heat generation.
I repeat something I have said before. If you want a convincing public demonstration that LENR is real, let the thing melt down. I don't under5stand why no one wants to do that.
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... Jed's comments about the reaction not being repeatable and reliable may have been true for the technology of several years ago but this is no longer true today. The reaction can produce excess heat on demand dependent upon only temperature without any precious metals at all. Every test I have observed or arranged has been able to validate the heat. A total of 3 Japanese and 2 foreign entities have successfully validated or replicated so far.
I am glad to see this because I was just about to undertake a survey of how many groups claimed to have replicate the procedure as published by Rothwell and Mizuno. No need now, I guess. But I am a bit unclear on what you are saying. Are you saying that 3 Japanese and 2 foreign entities have replicated or validated the original procedure? Or that these entities have replicated or validated more advanced procedures that are still under wraps.
Who are these groups?
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Where did the Edgerton story come from? It sounds wrong to me. Edgerton perfected the strobe light. If you have ever seen the photo below of a drop of milk hitting a hard surface and the edges splashing back up to form a crown ... that is Edgerton. It was famous at one point. He also participated in the development of sidescan radar.
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Mizuno is saying that the physics is done. Only the engineering is left to do.
If this is true, then I urge Mizuno to publish an update to his papers describing how to build a reactor that produces excess heat. The problem with the papers published so far is that they have not really led to a satisfying set of replications -- it is really a pretty spotty record so far. So if there are new insights that would definitely improve the chance for replicators then I think they should be carefully written up and published forthwith.
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That is not necessary. It is a distraction. Just have qualified people such as Beiting use good calorimeters to independently confirm the excess heat. A good scientist will be persuaded by that, and might even be put off by a turbine or other "showboating" demonstration. You want to convince good scientists. Ignore bad scientists and people who do not understand calorimetry.
I agree. The LENR community is full of people willing to accept "it's confidential" or "Its proprietary" as a substitute for good evidence. Community standards need to be higher than this.
