Posts by acalaon

@Mary Yugo
Carl Page on Edge.org "MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS?" : Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Work And Could Supplant Fossil Fuels
It looks like the Page family is interested in LENR too, as it appeared at ICCF19 in Padua last year. It does not mean anything ...

@H-G Branzell,
I am known for missing jokes (sometimes); some of my colleagues would not be surprised .
Your words and your BEAUTIFUL suggestion to learn from the free lessons of Leonard Susskind (what a great scientist and man!) tell me that you are a real physicist. You call him Leonard. It sounds like you know him personally.
If you are a physicist who does not believe that Cold Fusion is a reality, may I ask you what brought you to this desolate outpost?
The greatness of any civilization is in its computing capability. Now this civilization has internet, the brain of the planet, so its computing capabilities have recently experienced a quantum leap forward. I agree that before being able to contribute to this greatness it is necessary to load your brain with what prof. Leonard Susskind calls the Theoretical Minimum. The rest will be a matter of curiosity, strive for beauty and perseverance.
The journey to a full training as a physicist is long and I don’t think I will have the chance to follow it completely. I am not intimidated . When I was younger, during University, I was trained in Atomic Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Solid State Physics, Physical Chemistry, Quantum Electrodynamics ... and I added a couple of other subjects on my own. I am now very curious about Geometric Algebra, Cosmology and the interpretations of QM, … apart from Cold Fusion …
So I can tell you that I am aware my “theory” has nothing rigorous, … it describes electron trajectories in orbitals which make sense only for Hidden Variable Theories, uses a geometrical interpretation of the Zitterbewegung (in special relativity) which is sort of forbidden, there is no Hamiltonian, there are no precise scattering calculations, …
And above all it is based on the assumption that the nuclear force is NOT a residuum of the strong interaction, but is instead an electromagnetic effect (this is actually not my contribution).

Let me ask you what is the detail that suggests (more than the others) that I am now in mid air and not on the wall, safely hanging on the pitons of the previous consolidated knowledge gathered by this civilization.

By the way, some years ago I had actually listened to some of the beautiful lessons of Prof. Leonard Susskind at Stanford on Youtube.

@axil
I see that eventually you agree that LENR are made possible by an uncommon neutral particle with a high magnetic moment. You call it Exotic Neutral Particle (ENP), I called them Hydronions. My theory explains their origin and properties, inclusive the NAE (Ca(IV), K(IV), Zr(IV), Li(I), N(III), ...).
These particles should easily remain trapped in condensed matter, thanks to their relatively large size and large magnetic moment.
All released binding energies are emitted by LENR (I actually call them EMNR: Electron Mediated Nuclear Reactions) in the Extreme Ultra Violet, around the wavelength of 14.6 [nm]. Fulvio Fabiani admitted seeing an extremely strong light ... it comes from the rapid thermalization of the intense EUV emissions. And Swartz measured a strong non-themal near-IR radiation, attributing it to Bremsstrahlung ...bah. But it was Randell Mills who first measured the EUV directly from his plasmas. Slowly the origin of the thermal energy coming directly from huge nuclear quanta is being revealed.
I suspect Rossi traps the Hydronions, possibly in iron, and then he releases them progressively thanks to the kHz EM stimulation. These frequencies are Larmor frequencies for the magnetically trapped Hydronions/ENP. Once the magnetic flipping frees them from the lattice traps, the abundant phonons present at high temperatures, thanks to the magnetic-phonon coupling, push them around where they can further react causing isotopic shifts, fusions and fissions. So the magnetic stimulation at a few [kHz] is essential for a smooth power release. I am not sure about the cat and mouse thing ...
Axil, for sure many of the heavy masses measured in the Lugano report are due to multi-atomic ions.

@Mary Yugo
Well ... why should the behaviour of Bill Gates prove anything apart from the fact the he is interested in LENR? Don't be scared!
Anyway, I would guess Mr. Gates and some of his friends, like Warren Buffett, tend to know a bit more than the average people do ...
Let us see. There's still some time.
Enjoy now your scepticism Mary Yugo!
The tidal wave is coming, and probably Bill Gates will surf it. Uhuhuhuhuhuh

@Pathoskeptic,
Lowell Wood, who advises Bill Gates on Cold Fusion (he was with Bill at ENEA in November), sat in the last row of chairs at ICCF19 for the whole week listening to every presentation and taking notes on his laptop.
I was there and I can tell you.
Do you think it was hist initiative?

@axil
You appear to be quite skilled in speculative physics (more than me), but I am not sure you have read my presentation.
I am not proposing an attraction between electrons. I am proposing an attraction between an electron and a hydrogen nucleus.
Clustering of Hyd, which would require some attraction between electrons, is a hypothesis which is not at the base of the theory and is not needed to explain the phenomenology of LENR. I haven't even investigated it properly.

Anyway, using the "Dallacasa attraction mechanism" between electrons could be part of the explanation of the electron pairing in both conventional and high temperature superconductivity, and would explain why it has been so far impossible to find a satisfactory explanation for high temperature superconductors. This is however a purely speculative thought. When electron pairing takes place, as you say, an as in the BCS theory, each couple of fermions becomes a boson, its statistic changes and all couples can fall into the same quantum state. Macroscopic coherence, like in laser light.
One should probably see how a pair of electrons with opposite spins could couple (through the magnetic mechanism of Dallacasa) with the positive charges of the reticulum. As you say, having equal charges, the two electrons repel each other, and will remain at a distance which is modulated by the location of the positive charges. If the positive charges (the nuclei) "resonate" with the precession of the electrons (which modulates the attractive force of Dallacasa at low frequencies) the system made of electron pair and the crystal could become an eigen-function ... It would explain superconductivity.

Dear LeMoyne Castle,
thank you very much for the support, the attempts and the long comment!
For sure, as you say, Storms wishes to keep both spam and pathoskeptics (!) off what is a book related site.
Since January this year when Edmund Storms contacted me, I have exchanged very many instructive, interesting and challenging and e-mails with him. I leaned a lot from him and from his clever way of reasoning. He actually knows my theory (apart from the very latest developments). I wrote the post to see why he is now saying that my theory does not fulfil his criteria, whereas I think it does.
I think Edmund is not busy studying my presentation, because he already knows it quite well through the long exchanges we’ve had.

It may be, as you say, that Edmund is trying to prevent the thread from derailing. But my first guess is that there is some sort of technical problem.

You say: “I appreciate the attempt to boil down the results from many disparate experiments to find what is common among them”. To be honest I started my theory ignoring the majority of the evidences that later my theory happened to explain in a way or another. Some experimental results like the strange radiation were completely unknown to me, whereas my theory was predicting a neutral particle with characteristics that would fit the required properties.

My EUV radiation frequency comes from a simple formula that uses only physical constants, so I can not tweak with it. That frequency corresponds to a single energy, which generates the list on page 25. No adaptation. No attempt to fit. I realized about the accordance between the theoretically best NAE and the list I was getting, progressively as I looked at the orbital energies.
I think there is really not much space for an alternative explanation of the major evidences of LENR, but a theory similar to mine. I do not see alternative path that do not crash against evidences at some point.
The long delays typical of electrochemical experiments can actually be completely eliminated by loading the material prior to the stimulation of the formation of the NAE, as Swartz does. So there is no need for a self-organizing phenomenon that leads to the NAE. The NAE is instantaneous if you have a system that generates it. The delays of electrochemical experiments were due to the need to develop an oxide layer thick enough to obtain the correct potential gap necessary for the acceleration of the protons to the right speed. And when the barrier grows too much the NAE disappears.
The metachronous thermal effects are due to the Hyd that accumulate in condensed matter and react also when the NAE is not active, stimulated by phonons and magnetic effects.
The NAE requires protons at the right speed. This obeys chemical laws, and can be generated in MANY different ways. I don’t know if correlated dislocations or similar phenomena can help. I would guess the correct proton energies have simpler explanations. In fact the NAE is present in very different materials. And I think it is not like superconductivity.

Hi Edmund,
you say that my theory does not explain the basics of Cold Fusion. However, I still think it does. I will comment each of your points, referring to my updated presentation:

1 ) The NAE is explained in the pages 21 through 25; its rarity is explained on page 24.
2 ) My NAE is stable once formed and can be present in significant concentration. It is actually very well protected, because it is due to electron orbitals that have energies above the chemical range. My NAE is neither a minor impurity nor an occasional flaw in the material.
3 ) In my theory there are fusions and fissions. The fusions are not restricted to the addition of a helium nucleus/cluster, but have a strong preference for stable nuclei. Tritium is produced without neutrons.
4 ) My NAE is generally limited to the surface region, and in fact is NOT inside the metal, but very near to it.
5 ) Most of the heat energy results from He4 formation when deuterium is used. This is a consequence of the energies of the reactions on page 19. I explain the difference between hydrogen and deuterium loading.
6 ) The huge nuclear energy differences are released is as Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) radiation around the unique wavelength of 14.6 [nm]. EUV thermalize in very thin layers in condensed matter. Randell Mills measured this radiation directly. Swartz measured non-thermal near infrared, but he attributed it to Bremsstrahlung. Some gammas can arise when fissions take place.
7 ) My NAE does not require impossible chemical conditions. It requires only the presence of the right atoms, surrounded by ionic bonds (e.g. the zeolites of Kidwell in the recent patent), and hydrogen nuclei with energies of a few [eV]. The numbers say that only Ca requires hydrogen energies below 1 [eV]; and in fact Iwamura reaches fusion only with diffusion energies.

Cheers
Andrea Calaon

@AlainCo
Sometimes I need some time to comment ...
Thank you Alain for:

• your support on this thread,
• the suggestion of my theory to to Dr. Olafsson,
• the important suggestion that my theory can (at least qualitatively) explain the vast experimental findings of Anatoly Klimov and his group,(I was at ICCF19 as you, but unfortunately did not take the chance to exchange ideas with Dr. Klimov),
• the suggestion of putting Hydronion on the LENR mug!

I recently noticed that my theory was appreciated by DOUG MARKER as well:
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.i…-lenr-notes-and-info.html

Dear Alain,
Thank for you appreciation of my efforts.
Actually my theory is not much about QM. It uses some consequences of QM, but does not introduce any typical QM effect.
I can tell you that I was contacted by a group of experimentalists who is now trying to put my theory to the test. The theory will be used for guiding the experimental efforts.
My theory suggests that gaseous or liquid Li is the best NAE, so the suggestions of my theory are not too far off from the reactor of Andrea Rossi.
Zr(IV) and Ca(IV) are found in solids (at least the first exists for sure). The problem with solids is that the protons crossing them cannot travel farther than a few atomic layers, so the volume of the NAE will always be quite small if compared to the total reactor volume. Only with gaseous/liquid Li it can become possible to have the NAE occupying a large portion of the reactor volume, and so reach the power density necessary for industrially devices.

There are many possible arguments against my theory:

• The first and strongest is the fact the it is has not been proven that the nuclear force is actually an electromagnetic effect that originates from the rotation of point-like charges inside nucleons. Proving this is a necessary step towards the acceptance of my theory.
• My theory assumes that the intrinsic frequency of nucleons can be computed with the approximation of a single charge travelling at the speed of ligh. The good point is that the ratio between the nucleon and the electron frequencies is exactly equal to the p/e mass ratio.
• I assume that the orbital component (for reaching the coupling) can be provided by electron orbitals. In “standard” QM terms there is no such thing as an orbital motion of electrons. However Hidden Variable theories would agree more with my assumption.
  I assume that the ionization energy of core orbitals in ionic bonds is very similar to the ionization of free atoms. This is progressively less true as the bonds are more and more covalent. Precise numbers coming from numerical evaluations would be necessary to test my simplifying assumption.
• Why would fission inside Hyd avoid the assembly (through fission) of nuclei that decay through the weak interaction like the beta decay? The perturbation of the electron in fact is only electromagnetic.
• …

Many other weak points can be listed. In my defense I can say that I haven’t seen a complete (without unknown but fundamental missing bits) theory for LENR that matches, or does not contradict, so many evidences of Cold Fusion, including the radiation of Randell Mills, the strange radiation, the unusual preference for stable nuclei (at least a qualitative reason for a preference, differently from common neutron hits), the production of tritium without neutrons, the explanation of the NAE in totally different chemical environments, the possibility of organic NAE, ...
So far I haven't found experimental results that go against the basic of what I am proposing.
Edmund Storms suggested that my theory would not be able to the explain the NAE in experiments with palladium without lithium in the electrolyte. However in those experiments palladium is covered by a blue oxide layer rich in N(III). And that layer is known to be a key ingredient …
The next important step would probably be trying to prove that the nuclear force is electromagnetic by calculating precisely the binding energy of many/all nuclei with the Dallacasa-Cook approach.

About the results of Iwamura. You are mentioning a VERY important point.
As you say, the results seem to suggest that there is a sort of “even deuteron addition rule”, because many elements transmute producing X +2d, +4d and +6d. I think that this rule, which Edmund Storms mentioned to me as well, has nothing physical, and is instead the consequence of a simple fact:
The series of stable isotopes in the nuclide table has often a zigzag profile. This means that in many cases the stable isotopes are at a distance of even number of deuterons (diagonal move in the nuclide chart).

A clear example is Sr88. Only adding 2d or 4d the fusion can lead to stable isotopes, which in this case are Zr92 and Mo96.
Another example is Ba138: only adding 4d one gets the stable Nd146, and with other 2d one gets Sm150.
Starting instead from Ba137, the only stable nuclides on the diagonal are: Nd145 and Sm149, which correspond to the addition of 4d and 6d respectively.
Ca44 +2d = Ti48; a further possible step should be adding other 2d and reaching Cr52.

Cs133 is an important exception to the idea of the addition of even numbers of d, as opposed to the possibility of adding as well single deuterons, neutrons or protons. The only two stable isotopes that can be reached on the nuclide table moving along the diagonal (addition of deuterons) are Ba135, Pr141 and Nd143. These three nuclides would need respectively 1d, 4d and 5d. However the experimental result suggest that the real products are La139, Ce140, Pr141 and Ce142, which require (2d + 2n), (3d+1n), 4d, (4d+1p) respectively. The less abundant is Pr141, which is the only one that follows the “even deuterium addition rule”. So the example of Cs133 shows that the even (deuterium) addition rule is only apparently a rule. What happens is that the Cold Fusion mechanism is able to add not only deuterons, but also neutrons and protons alone. And it can do it by adding these ingredients in amounts as large as 2 or more deuterons at a time.

How can this happen in the framework of my theory? Which I think was your question.
A Hyd forms in the NAE (Deuteronius, for example, as in Iwamura’s reactors). It attaches to a nucleus Nu, so that d and Nu are both “inside” the electron. Let us suppose that the sum of d and Nu does not lead to a stable nuclide. In other words Nu+n, Nu+d, and Nu+p are not stable nuclides. So they remain near each other inside the electron. The new system made of e+d+Nu has the same charge of Nu, so the electron orbitals of Nu do not change (chemical invariance). Another deuteronius, ed2, forms and approaches the system e+d+Nu. ed2 is neutral so it can get near to the e+d+Nu system exactly as its predecessor could approach Nu. Here it is the difficult part: what happens? My guess is that the two electron ZB “touch” each other and the d in ed2 manages to enter the e+d+Nu system while the second electron flies away.

So there is now a new system: e+d+d+Nu1. The two deuterons and Nu are all “inside” a single electron. If any combination of the new bunch of nucleons is stable, that combination forms and the Hyd breaks apart.

Dear Jarek,
thank you for your comment. I understood my short description of the magnetic attraction mechanism of Dallacasa and Cook was too short and incomprehensible.
I have now updated the presentation on my page:
http://lenr-calaon-explanation…ted_nuclear_reactions.pdf
Now on slide 5 you can find a few more words.
What you describe is the effect of a given vector potential on a magnetic dipole. I haven't been through your descriptions, but I guess it is what we can find in books on electromagnetism. Definitely it is correct, but, as you say, it is a very very small force, if compared to the huge force generated by the mechanism of Dallacasa and Cook that I was trying to summarize on page 5 of my presentation. The magnetic mechanism of Dallacasa and Cook gives binding energies of the order of [MeV] for two nucleons at 2 [fm] distance.
Best regards

I've just updated the presentation about my theory. I corrected a few mistakes and cleaned old staff.
I hope it is now more consistent and clearer, especially for the NAE.
I added a "reddish" slide with my concerns about the neutral radiation.
The link is here:
http://lenr-calaon-explanation…ted_nuclear_reactions.pdf

I hope someone will be so kind as to criticize and suggest changes, corrections, ... may be with suggestions for improvements as well.

Dear Arnaud,
what gets ionized is the atom/ion, not the nucleus. The nucleus is positively charged anyway.
I had answered to you last question in my previous post: the energy necessary for the ionization comes from the binding energy of the Hydronions. In other words the attraction that the electron feels towards the hydrogen nucleus is way larger than any electrostatic attraction and prevails over the forces that keep the electron in the orbital. The energy released by the binding between the electron and the hydrogen nucleus is in the [MeV] range, while the ionization energy is around 85 [eV], so there is an enormous potential well the ionization energy comes from.
The binding energy is released in the Extreme Ultraviolet, so in quanta that are near to the ionization energy.
The energy that binds electron and hydrogen nucleus inside the Hyd comes actually from the same mechanism that binds nuclei together, so the Hyd could be seen as a new neutral nucleus.

I would like to ask these questions to Prof. Sveinn Ólafsson:
How much energy do the electron orbitals in ultra dense D have?
Do they approach 85 [eV]? Do you see anything strange when the sum of the energy of the electron orbitals and the D energy added by the laser reach 85 [eV]?

Do you see particles that are neutral (no delta electrons), but can be deviated by a magnetic field as they had the magnetic moment of the electron, while having a mass corresponding to the sum D + e?

Do you observe strong Extreme Ultraviolet emissions in the wavelength range around 14.6 [nm]?

What I am suggesting is not that radiation should contribute to the heating of the cycle fluid. I am suggesting to exchange heat ONLY through radiation. With no pressure losses at all. Dense SC CO2 in well engineered chambers can absorb all the energy radiated from LENR heated walls. If the walls are well above 800 [C], let us say 1,100 [C] I "feel" the density of transferred power per unit volume would be enough for engineering a system with only radiation exchange. Instantaneous thermal energy flux control, no losses. Possibly the LENR devices could be very rapidly controlled through a change of SC CO2 flux.
The heat exchange system would be something like a reheating furnace with many walls and SC CO2. That is why I was saying "you need some volume here".

Dear Longview,
Argon does not absorb IR and must be heated by convection. This means to me too high pressure losses.
Prof. Gianfranco Angelino back in the '60 studied many gases and CO2 was recognized as optimal. So Argon would not be the best choice from the efficiency point of view either.
Bearing are not a limiting factors for certain dimensions, but going below the MW power would mean reactors that are so minuscules that the bearings would absorb too much energy and limit very much the efficiency. I am not an expert, but I read this:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/…ritical-co2-turbines.html

Thomas,
may be you have already read this, but ...

Someone under the name of Boris wrote on the JoNP:
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=879&cpage=12#comment-1091953
This guy seems to have imperfections in his English, that are not too different from those of Rossi ... anyway ...
Thomas I "feel" you are "the criminal" of Boris's argument, what do you reckon?
You are showing "a complete ignorance of the topic"! You'd better learn what spectral and equivalent emissivities are!

And Rossi charges:
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=879&cpage=12#comment-1091988
"Thank you for you INSIGHT!"
It seems the apparent replications of the H-Cat reactor are valid arguments for the correctness of the Lugano temperature estimation.

"The concept of epsilon is not easy ... "

The comment of Frank Ackland may suggest that actually the "concept of epsilon" is not that difficult, that he has understood, and in fact asks:
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=879&cpage=12#comment-1092217

Quote from AlainCo

the isotopic shift may however be caused by a tiny reaction that may cause a COP around 1, a bit like the dark trace of burning of wood when failing to start a barbecue with matches. This mean that wood can burn, but not that you started the fire.

Alain, the isotopic shifts, if true, must have generated the energies everyone can calculate from the mass differences, not less. The sample could be not representative.
So if the isotopic shifts took place, a certain energy was released, which, divided by the time of the experiment would be a certain minimum constant power. The nuclear energy that one would calculate is already in excess of the measured heat, that declared in teh report with the probably overestimated temperatures. I do not have a solution for this puzzle.
One science fiction possibility would be that most of the nuclear energy exited the device not as heat through IR. Since it was not gamma, neutrons, protons or alphas, it would be somehow scary.
I don't know what to say.

Dear Thomas and readers,
here is the text of my unpublished comment for the JoNP.
If you see mistakes, please tell me.

Quote

Dear Andrea Rossi, dear JoNP readers,

this time I would like to draw your and the JoNP readers’ attention to the recent work of Thomas Clark, who examined very carefully the the radiation measurement in the Lugano report. His work is in form of an article accompanied by the python code he used to perform all numerical staff, and can be found on LENR-CANR.org:

lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?p=1589

Actually his work is a sort of completion of what Bob Higgins had done about the radiation measurement, and which was published on E-Cat World:

http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…o-e-cat-test-bob-higgins/

One of the conclusions of Thomas Clarke is that the temperature of 1400 [C] of the reactor surface (of the Lugano report) was wrong and largely overestimated. I have redone myself part of the calculations of Higgins and Clarke and I confirm this. The correct temperature should be less than 800 [C], something around 780 [C]. The numbers are robust and it is not a matter of a slight change in a curve or a rounding error … All necessary data come from “official” sources, and even the ridges on the alumina surface were taken into consideration; and this is something that is missing in the Lugano report.

I will try to repeat here qualitatively the argument and make it as simple and intuitive as possible, so that everyone can understand.

Any body radiates power through its surface (and receives radiated power as well). Almost all radiated power, for the temperature range between 20 to 1,500 [C], has a wavelength that lies between 1 and 25 micrometers.

The infrared camera Optris PI 160 used in the Lugano test (as any infrared camera) can instead measure power only in a limited range of wavelengths: In this case between 7.5 and 13 micrometers.

Now I add a fact of physics: for any surface, as temperature increases, the majority of the thermal power gets emitted in a range that moves towards lower wavelengths. Let us make an example: At 50 [C] the ideal emitter radiates the majority of the thermal power around a wavelength of 9 micrometers, inside the camera range. While at 1,000 [C] the ideal emitter radiates the majority of the power in a range around 2 micrometres, therefore far off the camera range. Of course some small part of the thermal power will in this latter case still be emitted in the camera range, but it will be a small portion of the total power.

Another ingredient is that there is an upper limit to the power that a surface can radiate, and this limit depends solely on the temperature. The hypothetical surface that emits the maximum possible power is commonly called “black surface”, and is what I called “ideal emitter” in the previous paragraph.

Real surfaces are not “black” and we need a number that says which percentage of the maximum theoretical value the body really emits. Emissivity is precisely this percentage. Emissivity (this is the spectral emissivity) depends on wavelength because the percentage changes at different wavelengths. However, to make things practical, what everyone uses are equivalent emissivities, which are AVERAGES of the emissivity over a given wavelength range or most often over the whole thermal range. The so called “weight” used for averaging is the power of the ideal emitter at each wavelength. In this way it becomes easy to know how much a body is radiating in any wavelength range. It will be the black surface power multiplied by the equivalent emissivity. It is however important to know the wavelength range corresponding to the equivalent emissivity we use.

Now let us go back to the present case:

In the range seen by the Optris PI 160 alumina happens to emit very well, with an equivalent band emissivity (average over the restricted wavelength range) that is near to 0.9. The precise curve is shown on Figure 8 on page 3 of Bob Higgins’ article.

Instead the value of the equivalent TOTAL emissivity of alumina (average over the WHOLE thermal wavelength range) goes down towards 0.4 for temperatures approaching 1,400 [C]. Plot 1 (page 9) of the Lugano report shows the values of this total equivalent emissivity. Bob Higgins calculates the same total equivalent emissivity from other sources and comes up with the curve on Figure 10 of his article. The two graphs are not too different, confirming the substantial correctness of the numbers in the works of Higgins and Clarke.

The decrease of the total emissivity of alumina at high temperatures is due to the fact that the wavelength dependent emissivity (or spectral emissivity) of alumina decreases to very low values for low wavelengths (see Figure 4 of Higgins’ article). Since higher temperatures mean an averaging weight that moves towards lower wavelengths, when temperature increases the total average emissivity decreases.

At this point we have all the elements to understand the important mistake pointed out by Thomas Clarke in the methodology adopted for the estimation of the radiated power in the Lugano report.

The emissivity values that were input in the camera software at each temperature were values of equivalent TOTAL emissivity, i.e. the average over the whole thermal range (1 to 25 micrometers), shown graphically on Plot 1. However the camera was measuring only the portion of the power emitted in its measuring range. The correct emissivity that should have been input in the camera software is instead that on Figure 8 on page 3 of Higgin’s article. Since this curve is always higher than the total emissivity used, the temperature that the camera software declared were always overestimations of the real temperature.

While the difference between the two emissivities is minimum in the temperature range between 300 and 400 [C] , it grows to its maximum at 1,400 [C]. At this high temperature the correct emissivity that should have been used is 0.902, while the used values was 0.39.

Thomas Clarke (and I independently replicated it) estimated that real temperature of the alumina when the camera was saying 1,400 [C], should have been around 780 [C].

I would add a qualitative comment about the images of the alumina of figure 12a of the Lugano report. Despite the fact that digital cameras can give different colours depending on many conditions and filters adopted, the colours of this image match much better 780 [C] than 1,400 [C]. In fact at 1,400 [C] alumina should be blinding as an old fashioned tungsten light bulb, more similar to the pictures of the replications attempts, which did not even reach 1,250 [C]! No to mention that at 1,400 [C] alumina becomes progressively more transparent and it should let through some infrared radiation coming from the even hotter resistance beneath it.

In his article Thomas Clarke goes on and estimates the COP coming from an alumina rod at 780 [C]. The number is only slightly higher than 1. I will try to replicate this part of his work too.

I hope someone else will check what Thomas Clarke said.

I hope also that the authors of the Lugano report will comment on this, which is anyway a fundamental point for their further work with their own reactor.

Andrea Calaon

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Dear Thomas,
I am taking the parts of your code and reproduce bit by bit the steps towards the evaluation of the real temperature of the Hot Cat experiment. I am VEEEERY slow and haven’t finished yet because I do not have much time for these things.

I did a series of changes to the code that do not modify the message you gave. The results so far agree with what you say. In fact the result is that the correct temperature in the second part of the Lugano experiment (using the data of the Lugano report, the spectral emissivity of Alumina and the bolometer sensitivity) was not 1,400 [C], but around 780 [C].
What I did so far to you original code was:

• improving a bit the input data (I digitized the graphs),
• added precision to the constants (not needed, but anyway …),
• limit the highest frequency of the camera band to 13 instead of 14 microns,
• “corrected” the planck function by eliminating the 1E6 multiplier for the wavelength (the input wavelengths are in meters and the planck() function converts to micrometers); this does not change the result.
• modified the integration to the trapezoidal rule,
• add the possibility to modify the angle of the ridges,
• remove all sensitivity parameters for simplicity,
• modified the function fun_to_pts() to include the extreme point ( delta=(b-a)/float(NUM_PTS-1) ).

I haven’t reached the estimation of the actual COP yet. But definitely the temperature of the alumina in the Lugano report was wrong and largely overestimated.