Posts by JedRothwell

Quote from interested observer

First of all, several Tesla models have well over 300 miles range (Model 3 LR 325 miles; Model S LR 370 miles.) As for charging, adding 200 miles in less than half an hour makes long-distance highway travel eminently practical for most people. Stopping for half an hour during a 500-mile drive is not exactly a major inconvenience for the great majority of people, especially those with bladders and who consume liquids and eat food.

You have to stop where the superchargers are. You may have to go out of your way, especially if you driving to a rural location off the beaten path. If there were superchargers at most McDonald's, that would be a different story. However, the supercharger gadgets are expensive and the number of electric cars is small, so it will be a long time before they become widely available.

Quote from THHuxleynew

Batteries, that most difficult of technologies to crack, have continued to improve and when EVs become cost-competitive with petrol (in 10 - 20 years) it will be from volume and better batteries.

Batteries now give the Tesla almost as much range as a typical gasoline automobile. Tesla 237 to 285 miles; average car 300 to 400 miles.

The problem is recharging time. You can refuel a gasoline car in 5 minutes. It takes much longer to recharge Tesla batteries, even with a "supercharger." Wikipedia says 20 minutes for 50% charge, 40 minutes for 80% and 75 minutes for 100%. This make long distance highway travel impractical for many people. For commuting or in-town driving, the recharge time makes no difference. You recharge at home, overnight. In Texas where they have lots of wind turbine electricity, electricity is free at night. Use as much as you like. Recharge your car. Leave the AC on, do your laundry. The power companies encourage people to shift consumption to the night hours, because the wind blows all the time and they cannot store the electricity.

Converting sunlight into electricity, and then using that to make hydrogen gas or synthetic hydrocarbon liquid would be inefficient. A 1-GW solar farm would not produce a 1-GW flow of fuel. However, I believe other methods are being researched.

You might use biology, converting algae into fuel.

They have lots of empty space and lots of sunlight in the Sahara, so efficiency and saving space are not the important parameters. They need a method which is cheap and reliable. It has to produce fuel cheaper than oil. To accomplish this, perhaps oil should be taxed at a higher rate, since it contributes to global warming but hydrogen from sunlight would not.

They could put hydrogen gas into a pipeline and ship it to Europe, for power generation and hydrogen powered cars. That would take a huge investment.

The gigawatt scale solar farms now being constructed in North Africa have big advantages over conventional sources such as the gigawatt Vogtle nuclear reactor now under construction in Georgia:

They cost less per gigawatt.

You can bring them on line one section at a time, so you start to make back the money long before the project is complete.

The technology is simpler, much better understood, and the pricing is predictable, so there is less danger of a cost overrun. The Vogtle project is way over budget. Quote:

Project Cost

In August 2008, it was originally estimated that Plant Vogtle reactors 3&4 would cost $14.3 billion and begin commercial operations in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Now, updated estimates put the total project cost at roughly $28 billion and the completion dates for the two reactors in November 2021 and November 2022. This latest estimate means the project is $14 billion over budget and more than 5 years behind schedule, compared to initial estimates.

https://www.taxpayer.net/energ…am-vogtle-reactors-3-4-2/

Quote from Shane D.

That said, we will know soon if reducing cow populations will have an effect on climate....anyone try one of those "Impossible Burgers"? Seriously, those things taste great.

I have heard they are good. However, sooner or later I expect we will have in vitro meat production, which -- after some tweaking -- should taste exactly like meat grown in animals. Maybe better, because it will be the "prime cut" with the parameters set the way people prefer. Such as the amount of fat, and the right level of toughness. The in vitro fish developed years ago was mushy, meaning not tough enough, but they fixed that problem. (They make it more or less tough by exercising the growing muscle fibers. I kid you not.)

The cost of in vitro meat measured in energy, space, materials and so on is far lower than animal meat. One of the researchers told me that per kilogram the materials, space, electricity and other overhead is roughly the same as for tofu or cheese.

I recently bought some "Beyond Meat" hamburgers and some sausages. The hamburgers were so-so. No one would mistake them for the real thing. I thought they tasted a little too much like preservative, with an unpleasant aftertaste. The sausages were remarkable. I grilled them along with regular, real sausage. They were very similar. They tasted better in some ways. Less salty.

Quote from Director

Solar, wind, or geothermal power won't be enough to overcome the problems mankind is facing. They are simply no where near good enough!

That is not quite right. It would be difficult to produce all of the energy we need from these sources with today's technology, but with some improvements we could do this, and it would be at a lower cost than fossil fuel. For example, suppose you convert wind turbine output into hydrogen fuel (gas or liquid hydrocarbons). This can be done today, but it is not cost effective. Suppose the technology is improved and we install wind turbines in North and South Dakota to do this. They would produce more fuel than all of the oil wells in the Middle East. It would bankrupt OPEC. For most applications we could use hydrogen directly. For hydrocarbon fuel, we might use carbon from garbage or extracted from air, making it zero-carbon. This would be expensive but do-able. Either solar or wind could be used to make synthetic fuel for transportation, not just electricity. Generating electricity from hydrogen gas would solve the problem of distributing the power. Hydrogen gas pipelines have been used for over 70 years in Europe. Gas could be sent to distant cities for power generation on demand.

The amount of potential energy from easily accessed wind and solar far exceeds total human consumption. In the U.S., one large solar installation in a place like Death Valley could produce all of the energy consumed in North America. In the Middle East they are now constructing solar farms ranging from 1 to 4 GW, the equivalent to 4 nuclear reactors during peak hours. Which is when they need the electricity, because air conditioning is a major demand.

One of those 4 GW sites now under construction has a concentrated solar portion which will run well into the night. In that desert area, solar is far cheaper than nuclear or fossil fuel. In Saudi Arabia they plan to build a 200 GW solar farm in stages by 2030. Their total electric power production at present is 77 GW.

https://singularityhub.com/201…er-than-any-in-the-world/

Wind in the North Sea could provide about 4 times more electricity than Northern Europe consumes.

Needless to say, cold fusion would be far cheaper than these methods. It would be roughly 200 times cheaper than today fossil fuel systems. See:

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

It would have many other advantages:

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf

However, wind and solar could be far better than what we have now, despite being spread out at low power density.

Quote from JedRothwell

"And in the heart "reaction parts" that support this fever phenomenon, uniqueness is introduced everywhere."

Let me take a crack at translating the Japanese. The Google version is literal. This calls for freer approach and some extra words. Original text:

そして、この発熱現象を支えている心臓部「反応パーツ」には、唯一無二の独自性が随所に取り入れられています。

I guess:

"Furthermore, the "reactant" at the heart of the device that produces the excess heat phenomenon incorporates an unparalleled unique approach to every aspect of the design."

Actually, it says "a unique approach like no other" -- rather redundant.

The language is typical of an advertisement in a trade magazine, for a technical product. It is written in polite, formal mode, the way you talk to a stranger or customer. Whereas a scientific paper or a newspaper report is written in plain, informal, impersonal mode, the way you talk to yourself.

You cannot say anything in Japanese without revealing your social connection to the listener, in two dimensions, or spectra I guess you would call them: politeness and familiarity. That's built into the grammar. You can be polite and familiar, or obnoxious and familiar, or obnoxious but formal (like a Victorian era British snob), or neutral but formal . . . and so on. What you cannot do is say anything without revealing how you think you stand in comparison to the person you address. So it is great way to insult people! You don't even need bad words, and indeed the language has a paucity of them, even though it has at least two and sometimes a dozen words for everything else under the sun.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

BTW, the site translates reasonably well with Google. I suppose JedRothwellcan tell us how well.

Not bad, except:

"And in the heart "reaction parts" that support this fever phenomenon, uniqueness is introduced everywhere."

"Fever phenomenon" (発熱現象 hatsunetsu genshou) should be "heat production phenomenon." In cold fusion jargon, it would be "excess heat." But, as it happens, "hatsunetsu" means a medical fever in ordinary Japanese. You can't blame the Google-bots for getting this wrong. "Reaction parts" (with the English word "parts") is what it says. Your guess is as good as mine as to what that means.

People expect too much from Google translate, given the present state of the art. Especially this guy:

https://www.theatlantic.com/te…-google-translate/551570/

I say it is amazing that it works at all.

Regarding this webpage, it is PR blather, not science. Regarding Clean Planet, I have a low regard for them, because they threatened to sue me for pointing out problems with their MIT presentation.

Quote from Alan Smith

The market is so big that there is room for many- think how many auto manufacturers, boiler manufacturers, oil companies there are. The market is the whole world.

On the other hand, there are many marginal claims in cold fusion, and I expect they will evaporate if an actual technology is introduced. There will be no need for them. They will resemble the weird airplanes I showed in this paper, such as the one that Alexander Graham Bell designed, on p. 9:

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

I think I recall that machine actually flew, unlike the others shown on these pages. But it was useless. It was a dead end. Most cold fusion experiments and approaches are probably a dead end. They may all be. No one knows, at this point.

In the early days of microcomputers, dozens of computer designs and products came and went. The market was gigantic, but these machines had no place in it. Some of them, such as the Cromemco machine, were not bad, but they could not compete with Apple or the IBM PC. When a technology takes off, it rapidly coalesses around two -- or at most three -- basic technical standards. Robert Cringley explained why in his book "Accidental Empires." The market cannot support more than that because it becomes fragmented and because people who sell and service the products cannot keep inventory and training for more than ~3 standards. Customers do not want non-standard equipment.

Quote from Bruce__H

Soon after he said that the QX was capable of generating not just excess heat, but also light, electricity, and thrust.

Why stop there? It is also capable of generating gravitation, electromagnetism, weak interaction, and strong interaction. Not to mention ESP, feelings of loyalty, erotic stimulation, and an ineffable craving for limburger cheese.

Quote from RobertBryant

I look forward to reading it after its been through the reviewers.

Sometime soon?

Ask Jean-Paul Biberian.

Quote from RobertBryant

Mario at gsvit never commented on the extensive raw data even though I sent it to him

and has never commented on the final paper,

Robert knows much more about this than I do. Refer all questions to him.

Regarding the calorimetry, Mizuno had a lot of additional information which he included in the upcoming paper. He had the info. when he wrote the older paper, but he did not include it. For example, the description of the fan testing I just posted was not in the old paper but it will be in the next one, but he did that testing every time he sealed the box.

I recall Mario complained that the photo of the fan was different from the one in the text. I gather Mizuno has several defunct fans and two air flow calorimeter boxes. Those fans seem to die often. So it is not surprising there was photo of one and the make and model of another listed in the paper. That kind of comment by Mario is nit-picking. As long as you test the fan and monitor it the whole time, it should be okay.

Quote from JedRothwell

They are not in the identical spot because they are in the box at the same time. They cannot occupy the same space. They are placed the same distance away from walls, sensors, fans, etc. They have to be placed in the box together and sealed, because every time you open the box and close it again, you have to recalibrate.

The point is, if you put the control and the active reactor in the exact same spot, you have to:

1. Put the control in, run it.

2. Open the box, take out control, put in active.

3. Run active cell.

Every time you open and shut the box, it works a little differently. You have to measure everything. For example, before you seal up, you have to clean out the fan. Then after you seal up, you have to test the fan. You step the fan through several power levels, measuring the air flow rate. You measure the flow rate at different locations on the orifice. You run smoke through the reactor to confirm the flow rate. The changes introduced by opening and closing are probably larger than the difference in performance you see by putting the two reactors side by side in different places.

It is a trade-off. Leave the box in one condition and put the reactors in slightly different places. Or put the reactors in the same place but alter the box in ways that show up as random variation.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

That's it? (page 7) I didn't see anything relevant on pages 3 and 18. Is the active reactor heated in an identical spot and by the same identical method?

You don't read carefully. Page 3 says: "The photo on the right shows two cells installed in the air-flow box: an active cell and a control cell. They are placed on insulating bricks to reduce heat losses through the table."

Also, p. 7 says: "Control and active reactor tested together. Two reactors of the same size and design were tested, in one calorimeter. One is active and the other is the calibration control."

That answers your question. They are not in the identical spot because they are in the box at the same time. They cannot occupy the same space. They are placed the same distance away from walls, sensors, fans, etc. They have to be placed in the box together and sealed, because every time you open the box and close it again, you have to recalibrate.

Various methods of running the control cells were used, such as heating on the outside with a heating tape wrapped around the control reactor; running resistance heating inside it, and doing glow discharge inside the control reactor with non-working metals. (See p. 19.) The heat balance was always zero, as shown in these graphs.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I have not read that paper in its entirety. Has Mizuno commented on it?

Oh come now. You have never read anything in its entirety. You didn't even read p. 3 in its entirety! I did read this critique from gsvit, but I don't recall the details. I do not know if Mizuno communicated with him, but some other people who were advising and reviewing the paper did. They sent me copies of their correspondence, and they sent corrections, including corrections to the equations. I put the corrections into the paper and circulated it back to the reviewers. The problems gsvit cited were fixed in the final version, as far as I know. Although the intro still says 1 kW. It should be "~1 kW." Meaning: within an order of magnitude; closer to 1 kW than 100 W, or 10 W. In the kilowatt range.

Here is a better version of the excess heat graph. This is the one we will put in the ICCF21 proceedings. As you see, the input lines are simply drawn in as dashed lines, rather than using the recorded spreadsheet data. The recorded data for input power is very stable lines in the same spot as shown here.

Input electricity power does not have to be massaged to account for losses from the reactor. I have various graphs of output power, some of them massaged, others showing the raw data. They are all well above the calibration lines. The shape is completely different than the control calibrations.

Here is the control calibration reactor data for these three power levels. In this case, the "input" lines show the actual input power recorded in the spreadsheet. You can see the lines are a little bumpy, compared to the dashed lines drawn in the above graph. The perturbations in output in this graph were probably caused by ambient temperature changes. A close look at the spreadsheets would probably confirm that. That's the beauty of having all the data, collected every 5 s for the entire test, in numeric format.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Can you clarify what is different between the control and working reactors?

See pages 3, 7 and 18.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Also: on the page 11 graph, the power output drops off after about 6 hours despite input power being sustained. Why?

I think he turned off the input power after 6 hours. I do not have that spreadsheet, but I think the straight input power line is an artifact of the way he generated the graph. What I mean is, this is data from two different spreadsheets. One with the control, with the brown and black flat lines, and the other with the active cell, orange, purple and blue. The data was collected at different times, and tests were probably of a different duration. So they don't match. It says "input" but actually that is the output you get with this input power level. The brown line is not the input power that generated the orange line; it is the control output for this same 248 W input power. It looks like the control run data I have, being very stable. It is a little confusing . . .

In the spreadsheets I have, these lines are adjusted to take into account losses from the calorimeter walls. Which is why the brown line hits 248 W on the left Y-axis. The raw data would be below this. The adjustment is described in detail in the upcoming papers.

In all of the spreadsheet data I have seen where input and output power is shown, both heating and anomalous power falls when he turns off heating. He always turned off active cells after ~6 hours because he did not want to leave it running overnight. Most of the composite graphs showing months or years of results actually show only data collected during the day when it was turned on. In some cases there was heat after death.

Data collection into the spreadsheets continued even when power was off, as you see on p. 16.

Note also the higher excess power shown in the bonus slide on p. 26, ~500 W. I did not discuss this in the presentation and it is not summarized in the other graphs.

The calorimetry was considerably better than I described in this presentation.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Neither is it likely that IH and Woodford will save their investments . . .

How would you know? Do you have inside information? Or did you just pull that out of . . . thin air?

Quote from seven_of_twenty

These are the guys I keep pointing to who showed prototypes of 1kW and 10kW "reactors" years ago. Check the next to last slides.

Where are those and are they working yet?

They were working years ago. They are working better now. As it happens I spent the last month slogging through the data and writing two papers on this. If ever the ICCF21 proceedings are published you will see one of them. * Here is the presentation about it I made at ICCF21:

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

As you see on p. 11, * the reactor produced ~250 W. That's not far from 1 kW. It has done better in subsequent tests. But that makes no difference to you. You will not look at the data. Whatever power level is achieved you will say it is not enough, or you will deny it happened as you just did here.

* I don't mean you, Seven_of_twenty, will see anything. You will not look, so you will not see. I mean "As can be seen . . ."

Quote from Alan Fletcher

The American Guernsey Association . . .

Emphasis on AMERICAN. Got that? So, like I said, Guernsey must be part of the USA. If the residents (cows, in this case) are American, that makes it a U.S. territory, like Puerto Rico. That goes without saying, doesn't it? Like one of my favorite self-evident assertions: "Soup in bags will remind us of spring hose-cleaning." See:

https://lileks.tumblr.com/post…-without-saying-doesnt-it

Quote from Alan Smith

The Los Alamos Tokamak AFAIK . . .

Los Alamos? Do you mean Princeton (PPPL)? Or do you mean the P-24 reactor at Los Alamos?