Posts by Longview

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Many of these problems arise when good calorimetry is not in place. I agree that is certainly still a major issue with the Ni "furnace" efforts, in many cases. When you critique "20 year history" are you also saying this of McKubre's work? And Storms? You mention Mizuno, although you seem to place that in the context of Ni furnace efforts.... are there the same flaws in all of those as well? I suspect you over generalize your adverse case. By definition, you exclude any evidence to the contrary when you state "there is no experimental evidence that stands up...'. It cannot be quite so clear, although I understand your position. It appears that you begin with the assumption that CF / LENR cannot work.

I suspect it is likely easy to pick on specific situations and in retrospect criticize one or another of the ad hoc and/or poorly funded efforts that any worker may have produced over the years. And thereby tar with the same brush anything else they may have produced in a more studied and cautious and perhaps more well-funded manner. Fortunately, most of us posting here, and a wider number of informed members of the general public are reaching a tipping point where "over unity" is not so widely regarded as a disreputable mistake...Longview

The Japanese transmutation claims are from Mitsubishi researchers, they are the subject of patent applications and are not so strange here at the Forum.

It does seem very odd to have such a high percentage conversion to Ni62, although something similar may have been reported subsequently. We need to remember the sampling of the Lugano reactor has since been noted as "a scraping from the deposits on the inside wall".

Have you the numbers in MeV for say some sort of "tetra neutron" absorption by Ni58? And, is that an impressive number or not? I see no decay emission for any step down between Ni62 and Ni58 in my admittedly brief "Table of the Isotopes" from the CRC Handbook. I notice the position of Ni on the curve of binding energy does not seem likely to give a high per nucleon yield-- but the macroscopic view of that curve at Ni may be ininformative. What is the actual predicted yield of such fusion(s)?

I notice you are not mentioning Pd deuterium systems, which I did also mention prominently, since those are the ones that have endured over 25 years of scrutiny and are now much more well understood. It is relatively easy to be dismissive about the attempts to replicate Rossi's presumed and actual claims. Since Rossi has never been forthcoming with details, since he has been associated with questionable and energy-related promotions in the past, and since the possible "replications" so far have been based on incomplete or ad hoc information.... it is lttle surprise that the results have been modest to non-existent (and that might even apply to Rossi's work, we don't really know. However there are many enthusiastic "replicators" now, and a growing body of empirical findings through which these new Ni, Li protium efforts can, and are being refined.

Your focus on a COP of "1.07" may come, if I am not mistaken, from your own recalculations. Let's look at that for a brief moment. If one says "10%" error, that may actually apply only to the excess heat component of the calculation, so the one sigma or two sigma (I don't know the quality of the "10%" result may be 1.06 to 1.08 or even 1.065 to 1.075 depending on what your "10%" means. So if either of the latter actually constitute the measured situation, then given the crude nature of the efforts, we might well expect that something "in there" might be working with little or no benefit of any thorough engineering or physics inspired optimization. If so, a very modest over-unity number is not to be ignored because of its smallness. If well measured in a properly insulated and more calorimetrically precise context it might be considerably larger. Once any kind of reproducible over unity phenomenon is repeatably observed, then it can be mechanistically studied and the essentials can be distilled into a much higher performance device. Earlier, some of that sort of work had been, and continues to be done with Pd deuterium electrolysis, under the very sparse funding over the last 3 decades (perhaps $50 million total, but in no case more than twice that for the whole field, a handful of corporations and perhaps 8 nation state fundings-- US, GB, India, Japan, France, Russia, Israel, and?). Relatively speaking, the "furnace" efforts with Ni, Li and protium are surely just beginning....Longview.

OK, I am glad I am not making either of those mistakes.... Longview

This is why I specifically included metal insulator junctions. Here are where field strengths should be enormous. It is where numerous quantum anomalies are already known to occur. That is high temperature superconductivity, electron emissions in vacuo, "heavy" electrons, AND several reports with respect to palladium electrodes (for example calcium oxide enhancements), and by deduction may be a factor in some of the more promising Ni, protium, furnace results since alumina and nickel melting are coexisting in some of these experiments....Longview

We need to suspect this is minimal "by definition" again, unfortunately.... Longview

It surely is minimal in a "collisional" physics environment. Perhaps not so in some lattice constrained and transition metal partially filled d-orbital context, particularly near metal oxide boundaries....Longview

[by definition again, I suspect, since the judge and jury in that context is... Thomas Clarke... Longview]

[So as the blinders come off, they will even try LENR because of their new insights...Longview].

[quote]Finally -
Should there be some catalytic way to enhance lattice-based fusion it would be the easiest part of the LENR mechanism. The really extraordinary part is how, after nuclear reactions have occured, somehow: [a couple of worn out Huizenga "miracles" snipped]

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Little or no comment here may be necessary. We know there are differences from collisional physics and what has been reported numerous times over decades in CF / LENR efforts.

FreethinkerLENR2 here has just observed anomalous radiation counts. He has made efforts to block them, apparently only lead suffices. Blocking does show they come from his Parkhomov-like apparatus (with the modification of pre-baking the nickel powder). That will be an interesting story and should be repeatable, since there are several other high quality efforts along the same lines and these workers can communicate with one another and with their "public".... (unlike the days of suppressive editing during say the early 90s)...Longview.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

This is an illuminating comparison. Lets look at chemical catalysis. What is needed is something that can alter the electronic wavefunctions that bind atoms into molecules.

There are many candidates here - it is easy for other molecules to get close enough to reactants for their electrons and nuclei to alter wavefunctions in the reactants. Another way of looking at this is to see that the potential barriers to reactions depend on the reaction pathway, and catalysts mediating new pathways with short-lived catalyst-bound intermediates can reduce this.

Now for nuclear. Here we need a [bf]nucleus[/bf] that acts to catalyse the reactions between two other nuclei. But here we have a problem.

For chemical reactions the electrons that bind nuclei neutralise the nuclear change and other molecules can get in close. The exact amount they can do this depends on solving the wave equations for the electrons (you can approximate this by thinking of shells) but as other nuclei and associated electron clouds change this by altering the potential everywhere and modifying wave functions the electron shell model breaks down (at least for outer electrons) and catalysis is possible in many ways which require numerical wave function calculations to determine. These are difficult to do, because you have electron probability and electric potential and a 3D grid of points throughout the interacting molecules as variables.

Anyway that explains why catalysis seems magical to chemists who do not do ab initio quantum calculations, and also why cataylsis works. The key parameter is the ratio between the intra-molecule distance and the molecular size - this is around 1.

The same idea explains why in general we cannot work out physical properties from a single molecule - intra-molecular forces are often very powerful - for example in solids - because atoms can get up close compared with the length scale of the molecule or atom individual wave functions.

The problem now is that the length scale of nuclear forces, and the size of a nucleus, is much much smaller than the distance scale of molecules. Intra-atomic distance in palladium is 390pm. With deuterium highly loaded (1 per Pd atom) we go down to about 300pm (think 3D geometry bicubic).

The size of a deuterium nucleus is 2fm. That is an amazing 100,000 X smaller than the distance between a D nucleus and any other nucleus in deuterated Palladium.

Now, various points made are true:

(1) reactions occur at lower energies than the barrier due to tunnelling
(2) there are various ways in which tunnelling can be enhanced

BUT - the point Longview makes, that catalysts for nuclear reactions should exist just as they do for chemical reactions, suffers from this 100,000 X problem. Basically nothing charged can get close enough to a nucleus to alter potential (electric or magnetic) significantly over the length scale of the nucleus and therefore change the nuclear wave functions.

The various things that can make nuclear reactions more or less likely to happen have been extensively studied - as you'd expect - both experimentally and theoretically. The two are in good agreement

I'm not saying every last detail is understood. But the reasons why nuclear reactions do NOT happen in your backyard except from unstable nuclei is well understood.

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I appreciate that you, Tom Clarke, were able to look beyond my rejoinder to the Mary / George error. Briefly, his / her error suggests a significant if only unconscious blindspot when it comes to this subject. But that should be expected from her / him... in view of the long and blinkered history there. Let me give one last blast in the George / Mary direction: a 14 year old is very likely an impressionable youth, and clearly the rants versus Rossi seem to have made an impression already-- not that I would defend Rossi's history, but I certainly would view the Yugo / Hody version, and citations, with considered skepticism. But that is not the issue, the issue was, as you Tom Clarke recognize, whether or not there is some fundamental impossibility in the physics and chemistry of CF / LENR. The Hody / Yugo "accidental" failure to even recognize that exothermicity is distinct from reaction spontaneity, is telling of the her / his prejudice, regardless of the claims George / Mary makes now to the contrary.

Let's return to the potential for nuclear catalysis. First, with some observations that may show what is known, or thought to be known about CF / LENR? I'll list here what I think are repeated, and somewhat general reports, often by more than one independent lab:

1. Protons and deuterons themselves do not often work as such (e.g. no acidic electrolytes). [one of several possible exceptions: Lipinski UGC]
2. Negative ions containing protium and especially deuterium are frequently reported to give over unity results.
3. Lithium is often present in some form in both the electrolytic / deuterium and in the furnace / hydrogen types.
4. "Pure" amorphous palladium, say 99.999 or 99.9999 % reportedly does not work.
5. Pure crystalline Pd does not work either.
6. Early Pd experiments with rhodium or other precious metal contamination did seem to be associated with over unity COP in electrolytic experiments.
7. Deliberate inclusion of "impurities" has repeatedly shown cases of improved performance.
8. Deliberate mechanical disruption of "the lattice" in electrode preparation has been reported to improve performance.
9. Inclusion of oxides in electrode formulations and in furnace catalysts seems a recurring theme, if not a given.

Now a couple of comments with respect to the "wave equation". I assume you studiously avoided calling out Schrödinger in this context. And rightly so, since the "wave equation" is, to my knowledge, only solved for multi atom molecules and higher atomic weights using approximations such as a Hartree-Fock. Such approximations of course will easily miss what is happening at the femtometer nuclear level and in fact Hartree-Fock assumes fixed nuclear position, a reasonable assumption when say 10s of picometers are the currency, but likely not when dealing with nuclei or with their positions / wave functions.

By the way, many who are broadly "chemists" use the "wave equation" and certainly its implications all the time, even biologists are known to, and certainly pharmacologists, cell physiologists, biochemists, enzymologists and even neuroscientists are among the crowd of fields where individual scientists are familiar with it, and modeling based on it.

The most "magical" language I have been reading here for what is simply catalysis has come from some who are apparently recently trained in quantum physics. I note you Thomas Clarke are not among those invoking "magic", and I would expect not to be included as well. I recall Bohr and Feynman's comments to the effect that no one really understands QM.

Is there a synthesis here: What happens to the "real" orbitals (electronic, protonic and nuclear), whether of theory or in fact when a (varying?) voltage gradient of 3 X 10^9 V/m-- that is 1 volt taken across 300 pm--- is superimposed on a catalytic surface (various temperatures and/or pressures) in the presence of lithium ions, deuterium ( - or +) ions, a noble / transition metal surface conjoined with an electrically insulating refractory substrate?

[And that is without invoking Nernst pressure which has been claimed by experienced electrochemists, perhaps controversially, to be truly immense.]

Why impurities? Why surfaces? Why electrostatic gradients (metal-oxide junctions)? Why negative ions?

Impurities can disrupt orbital regularity. Surfaces provide an abundance of disrupted orbitals leading to transient anomalous reactivity. Electrostatic (and time varying) gradients of billions of volts per meter can provide fields that may to some extent overcome coulombic gradients. But if not, then negative ions, properly oriented may shield accompanying protons / deuterons from "seeing" their like charged opponents until it is "too late", and under conditions perhaps yet poorly understood, only after the strong force may have taken precedence.

But, in any case, the nucleons, electrons, atoms and molecules know how to do the calculations, even if the problem is "difficult to do" for modelers. This emphasizes the importance of following empirical efforts carefully and not become overly prescriptive with our models.

I am not saying that any of the above provides all or even part of the real story. But, I think there are enough questions unanswered to justify a lot more work... even though as you indicate, that such things may "have been extensively studied". To argue from an 80-year old equation that remains generally insoluble, that no more attention need be given to nuclear catalysis.... would be a serious error. Perhaps you may agree.

Quote from ogfusionist

"“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers"

How did Max Planck know Mary Ugo?

Is Mary that old?.....

Quote from Ecco

@FreethinkerLenr2: the reason why I'm sort of pressing about oxidation is that when I tried to find information about the low-temperature oxidation behavior of nickle powder some time ago, I stumbled upon an open access paper mentioning that cavities can form (on nanoparticles, at least) at the interface between the oxide layer and the bulk of the particles.

EDIT: on the other hand, if you want to prevent oxidation, it appears that heating Ni particles in air in an oxide matrix (ie alumina) will reduce their rate of oxidation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s…cle/pii/S0038092X00000256

Your reference seems clear that the rate constant is lower for particles in the aluminum oxide matrix. While I only see the abstract, it appears likely that the oxide matrix is protecting the nickel from ambient air or oxygen. This may or may not be what you get, or exactly what you want, when you heat nickel powder and/or LiAlH4 and/or Al2O3 powders together. In my mind anyway, it would be important to control (that is systematically study) the redox environment when preparing your reactor, and when running it as well. An important role for alumina powder may be that it greatly increases the surface area that can be potentially wetted by the metals... nearly all heterogeneous catalysts rely on surfaces for their activity, so the more surface the greater the rate of reaction. Surface catalysis can be understood in several ways. One phenomenon at surfaces is the presence of "frustrated" orbitals that are often, for example, in partial or fractional oxidation states due to the ambiguous stoichiometry at surfaces. Also, having a solid refractory substrate can allow a metallic surface catalyst to be far above its melting point, allowing rapid shifts in bond character as well--- good catalysts can form transient bonding to one or more reactants, then release the product rapidly-- No reason to doubt that nuclear catalysis, while mechanistically quite different, in regards to surface rate enhancement may very likely be similar.

If you really want to prevent "unwanted" oxidation, then inert gas such as argon is likely a good choice-- keeping in mind that at high enough temperature some sort of nickel oxide / intermetallic may form by sharing an oxygen with the alumina. That may be a good thing... experiments may tell.

Quote from David Fojt

I think those information are already know. Metal addition, such lithium, never can not be more electronegative than hydrogen.. so boron running well also but less !

Interesting point. But, first, are we talking Pauling electronegativity, or another scale such as Allred-Rochow? Please look at these images, first for the most famous, Linus C. Pauling's, in the USA anyway:

http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/@a…f775c5f8a5.jpg?revision=1

Then Allred-Rochow:

http://www.green-planet-solar-…s/PT-small-electroneg.gif

Regardless of which scale is used, and for this discussion I'm choosing the numbers in: http://img.docstoccdn.com/thumb/orig/123327251.png,
there appear to be many elements with higher electronegativities than hydrogen (at 2.1) such as O at 3.5 and all the halogens. And many much lower, (such as Li, all the alkalis around 1.0 and alkaline earth metals ranging up to 1.5 for Be). And some only slightly varied from hydrogen such as B at 2.0.

Is electronegativity an important parameter with respect to LENR, in your view, David Fojt?

Quote from FreethinkerLenr2

@Ecco @BlowFish

The rational is that the Ni infact, in the regime 100-350C does not oxidize but actually shedding oxide. I will look into the ref for this, But it is something I picked up in discussing this with Bob G and some other guys replicating. There is a paper showing this clearly. I will look for it.

IN EDIT: http://goo.gl/Zclfx8 p174 fig 2.

Probably worth recalling that ogfusionist / OEL has long and repeatedly indicated here at the Forum that the green color of nickel monoxide / a.k.a. nickelous oxide, remains undiminished in his "reactor" even after its hydrogen meltdown above 830 degrees C. He indicates that his matrix was surely Al2O3 perhaps with some SiO2, but in any case the the high temerature version of FiberFrax of 40 to 50 years back. His protocol seems likely to have resulted in nickel in a variable but low oxidation number because of its intimate bonding to the refractory fibers. Also, of course, the surface area and the areal exposure of such redox ambivalent nickel was surely very high.

A further feature that has only been mentioned once here, to my knowledge, is that running an LENR within such a strong thermal insulator can make an even modestly over unity reaction rapidly go into positive feedback and lead to catastrophic breakdown-- assuming the reaction itself has some positive temperature coefficient (most, if not all do, if Dr. Mitchell Swartz is right).

And I see that is a very good reference FreethinkerLenr2 gives [Cabanas-Polo in Corrosion Science 2012] with respect to intermediates of Ni and NiO.

Quote from Mary Yugo

@backyardfusion

If you want to discuss why a heater is or is not needed for a highly exothermic reaction, let me know. It would only be needed if the "COP" is small -- very small and then only enough to compensate for heat losses to the environment.

Nice video. Silly comment. Why is an atomic bomb necessary for igniting a thermonuclear device (H-bomb)? The latter is highly exothermic, as are many reactions that are not spontaneous. Since Mary / George is pretending to know some physics here, let me point our young scientist's attention to "activation energy". It is very appropriate in the discussion of LENR and other variations on CF..... Look at a nuclear reaction from the standpoint of the "curve of binding energy". Those reactions that will work (and accomplish work!) have negative binding energies, that is they give up energy on reaction. So fission works because the products are more thermodynamically stable than the reactants (U, Th, Pu etc), and fusion works similarly, that is the fused atoms (p, d, t, Li etc.) are able to give up energy to their environment ("negative delta H" in this context) to become He, Be etc. What keeps things from fissioning or fusioning at will? For fusion it is ctivation energy, which can be very high in the case of an H-bomb or in the "lab" as D-T as we have seen now for well over 50 years of well funded attempts to do "hot fusion in a bottle". Fission of course has the simplicity of neutron chain reactions, easy to moderate by dilution and to initiate by assembling enough suitable fissile material.

But, activation energy is not an inherent trait of any reaction, nuclear or chemical. It can be "tunneled" under. The method is generally referred to as catalysis. Catalysis is done all the time at the chemical (electronic) level, the only requirement is that the overall series of reactions have a collective negative delta H, that is they give up energy or to put it simply "they can do work" , or put another way they can produce power over time that is kilowatt hours or watt seconds (also known as joules). Fusion of small atoms is generally exothermic, the only problem is the activation energy, the "barrier" in this case is mostly due to coulombic (like charge) repulsion, and in many chemical reactions the barrier is similar, but generally of a much lower absolute magnitude. However, the activation energies for many practical fusion reactions are measurably (by collisional physics) much lower than the exothermic work such a reaction can produce, so the relative magnitude is not unlike a good chemical reaction. The ratios for D-D and D-T are impressively good. Activation energy of a fusion reaction such as D-T, even without catalysis should be no more than 5% of the expected energy yield-- of course that is still a huge amount of energy to concentrate onto one pair of atomic nuclei. But there are ways to do this, as there are many known ways to bypass activation energy in chemistry, that is there are many types and configurations of catalysts. Before too long we will see that there are many ways to accomplish this for nuclear reactions as well. The key is funding, and as Planck pointed out long ago, http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/107032.Max_Planck

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Quote from ogfusionist

The Geiger counter is only capable of measuring the gamma level the alpha and betas would not escape the reactor anyway.

Related to hydrogen fusion, my reactor when fusing hydrogen produces no significant increase in the standard background. There is no significant ionizing radiation associated with this form of fusion.
You'll have to use the sun for a suntan the lenr reaction won't do.
What count level were you measuring?

To be complete, let us say it could also detect neutrons as generators of short-lived isotopes which in turn could give betas and/or gammas, within, outside or on the outer extremities of bricks, the window face of the Geiger-Mueller Counter etc. Energetic protons might also make it through the bricks and definitely give a nice click, recall the "rest" diameter of a proton is about 1000th of that of an electron or a small atom. Fast protons are even smaller.

Of course a solar event can have huge neutrino flux, greatly increasing the effective instantaneous neutrino "concentration" flowing through an LENR apparatus. Such events have been rarely, but sometimes clearly, associated with anomalous heat or other CF / LENR reported behavior. Remember there is a possible connection between neutrinos and the W-L-S scheme as in e^- + p⁺ + v^o --> n^o While neutrinos may be optional, they can at least account for spin conservation.

On an earlier point: let's please agree that an IR photon is hardly a gamma. Energy at say a short "near" IR photon of 1000 nm, is thousands to many billions of times less than any true gamma, which gamma are surely shorter than 1 nm (1 nm is just a low voltage "soft" X-ray bordering on extreme UV or "XUV"... a 10 kV electron to tungsten impact produces a mean of around a one angstrom X-ray, or 0.1 nm), while the metrology is sometimes vague, a gamma is often considered to be < 0.01 nm and on to much much shorter... as in cosmic rays where the wavelength may be less than an attometer or 10^-18 meter.

Longview

Quote from FreethinkerLenr2

I appreciate your tenacity. Thanks for the link, BTW. I checked them out. As did I Oceans (have done so before), they have a nice line of products.

BUT:

I have an established scope, and will execute in that scope. When that scope has come to an end, I will evaluate and contemplate options. Until then I will stay on target. That means, no window, no spectrometer, no vaccum pumping or inert gas filling of the reactor, or any other idea that stray to far away from the current setup. Only minor mods to secure reaching the target.

But your ideas are excellent. Sorry for being such a bore.

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Not at all. I much appreciate your letting me know you have at least understood those possibilities. As most here know, all our dialogs permit quite a number of others to see or to imagine what might be done in sooner or later work. For me, now it seems it's just ideas I'm allowed, it's getting harder to execute stuff. I'm amazed at all you have accomplished. So I imagine that much of your progress has perhaps been realized by that steady focus on fairly fixed goals-- along with the gifts / skills to accomplish them. And really, it is a good scope you appear to have.... if I can imagine, you wish to see if there is really anything there, to your own satisfaction. That way you can move on ... or delve deeper, from solid evidence you have seen for yourself.

And thanks, FreeThinker for your open video logging of your rapid progress! Please keep that up, regardless of the results you may find.

Quote from FreethinkerLenr2

Anybody has a high resolution spectrometer in 100-400(or about)nm lying about in the basement? No?

I bet someone does.

Recall my post earlier on the Ocean Optics device, from some suppliers at around $599 US. I have seen those advertised for about 15 years, so there should be some even in surplus auctions at universities. The interface to a PC might be somewhat archaic, but that is how they were originally brought to market. I forget the standard now, but it was basically on a card "way back then".

Quote from FreethinkerLenr2

BTW the special range for the Voltcraft Pyro is 8-14um.

I see this link below to a quite good window "Amtir-1" (60% t) at 1.5 to 10, and drops nicely from to about 55% from 11 out to 13 um. I did not see the temperature tolerance. Some windows in the IR cannot stand much heat at all. Other IR windows are linked there, calcium fluoride good out to about 20 um with a mp of 1,419 deg. C, and cadmium telluride good out to 30 um and mp of 1,092 deg C. I would at least check the prices. If necessary, make an appeal for assistance...

(Warning the melting points for each was from the "never-to-be-trusted-online-encyclopedia", and also may not correlate well to operation as a window... although the temperature maximum on the calcium fluoride looks promising--- I should not have to remind that both CaF and CdTe are very likely extremely toxic. Mill, grind, dissolve or fire with the greatest respect, please).

http://www.janis.com/products/…owTransmissionCurves.aspx

Quote from FreethinkerLenr2

Hi,

I have posted a couple of new videos. I am doing calibration runs right now using the modified test bed. I'll get back when I have some interesting graphs and data to write about.

On a more fun note.
Modified test bed

Nice videos, FreeThinker. It really makes it clear how dedicated you are to doing it right. And the battery story, humorous but what a lesson to us all.

I mentioned sometime back the possible use of a sapphire rod. Actually there are fairly cheap sapphire windows:

http://www.edmundoptics.com/op…ws/sapphire-windows/1904/

They claim good transmissivity from 200 to 5,500 nm (0.2 to 5.5 um). Your bright yellow is producing a lot of energy in the mid visible, that is 500 nm, and of course a lot more in the longer wavelenths including "mid-IR". By the way, I strongly recommend you wear ordinarly oxy-acetylene welding googles when looking at your reactor.... lenses of eyes are fairly routine to replace now, but not retinas!

One could close off your opening allowing much closer positioning for the pyrometer / IR photometer using such a window (assuming the IR transmission was good through the photodiode's spectral range--or even a true pyrometer... Anyway, a sapphire window could be attached at the outside surface of your firebrick, occluding the "hole" or maybe even at another position in the "hole" to create a double walled conduction and convection block. An Al2O3 tube with two sapphire window ends and an evacuated interior would likely be better than a solid rod-- far less conductive and far broader spectral transmissivity, and perhaps cheaper than a sapphire rod. Such an "IR / Vis / UV light pipe", cemented right into the "hole" itself should allow very close image coupling to your IR scope. The much thinner pair of end panes would attenuate less of the thermal signal than a solid rod, regardless of the spectrum. The idea being to get the optical / pyrometric device to "see" only the inside of the reactor rather than a bunch of additional cold brick with a little hot spot.

Quote from FreethinkerLenr2

For sure, the best way to do a dummy would be to mimic the real situation as closely as possible.

As I am now committed to a certain path in the choices I have made, some things are easier than other to modify. I will not use argon gas in the near future, and I may consider a double setup with a dummy and active reactor, but that too is a change in testbed setup that make it be something for the future.

I do have limited time and funds for this effort, and is now committed to get the current setup stable with surface temperatures at 1000C. Calibrating with Al2O3 sawoff dust at 1 bar, and do the same with LAH and Al2O3 would provide enough to secure a clear determination of anomalous heat on the scale seen in Lugano and by Parkhomov in the real runs, especially if occurring over hours.

Let us all know if we can help with funding or materials.

It appears that you won't be replicating all of the obvious errors just because some old guys wrote that 'one has to do that" from their desks. To them I say, "that might be needed for strong publication". In your case it is unnecessary at this point to repeat obvious errors. You are still doing development work. Incremental changes are clearly already in your view--- I've seen your YouTube video-- impressive by the way.

Careful attention to efficiency and to a control and/or precise calorimetry could allow modest COPs (between say 1.5 and 2) to reliably show the proof of principle and yet still be far from the "runaway" situation where the actual COPs may well exceed 4 or more.... based on Mitchell Swartz' OOP evidence, and admitting that it is surely a whole different situation---I suspect that pushing toward 1000 degrees C and higher was found necessary only because the designs were so poor that high COP was needed to overcome all the losses and other noise. (Written from my desk, unfortunately).

Quote from Tarun

An extra reactor can be made and the two heater coils can be connected in series, doubling the resistance.
The other reactor can be empty (or filled with alumina powder), and can serve as a control.
I think Denis had such a setup.

Let me suggest that some effort should be put into making the heat capacity of the contents of a "dummy'" / "mock" / "null control" as close to the experimental reactor as possible. Of course the phase change evident in FreeThinker's recent meltdown, would make some of that difficult-- but at least the goal should be passive thermal equivalence. One might have argon as a replacement of the hydrogen. So an equivalent molar weight of nickel, and perhaps a fused lithium aluminum alloy and argon at the heat capacity equivalent to the missing hydrogen. It takes a bit of chemical calculation. If anyone is interested, I will try to work up some numbers for others to critique.

Done with a fair degree of care, such a paired experiment would answer many critics and many critical questions.

By the way, the resistance of the two heaters should be exactly the same, and should remain the same up through operating temperature. Further, any corrosion is likely to be an experimental confound and at least should be made as nearly equal as possible. I believe the precise resistance numbers should also help monitor the health of the heater wires through a trial, and through any series of trials.

Please see this link in Symmetry Magazine. Of course these big Physics folks don't believe in CF / LENR, or so we are told. But, double beta decay has a certain beauty from the LENR / CF perspective, or so some may believe:

http://www.symmetrymagazine.or…neutrinos?email_issue=815

Quote from colwyn

PS. What's the "David-Giles effect"?

Try this link to a pdf at Cold Fusion Now--- I'm guessing that is the subject to which Fabrice David refers:

http://coldfusionnow.org/wp-co…3/07/DavidFselfpolari.pdf

Quote from acalaon

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".

Without fully comprehending what you are saying, I project that in a Ni-Li-H system as we have seen examples so far, one should be able to get around the "space" issue by having small tubes running through the reactor itself. That places the working fluid, whatever it is, in close proximity to the thermal energy presumably being generated. It also allows (as you suggest) "agile" thermoregulation by simply controlling the flow rate of the fluid cycle through those small tubes. In this, it looks a lot like what in the US I am fairly certain is called a steam superheater.

With Lipinski there is no "space" issue, the energy is delivered to a two dimensional surface, metal or ceramic, it could even be focused to some extent by using a curved lithium proton target as the alpha source, shrinking the alpha particle target area toward a desired or tolerable energy / flux intensity.

Any CO2 usage is limited in temperature to the survival of the alloys, CO2 is an oxidant for many metals at sufficient temperature and pressure. Argon has no such issues. Also please look at the Air Liquide guide for compatibility of hot CO2 v. hot Ar with seals Viton, fluoroelastomer, slicone, EPDM etc., likely an essential component regardless of the type of bearing used.

It does seem that we are talking past each other a bit on this subject, Acalaon. But I respect and appreciate your persistence.

Quote from GlowFish

Just a question and a thought. I would assume in this case a working fluid or gas would be piped through the core of a reactor and the gas itself used to drive the turbine? Is there a huge disadvantage of using a heat exchanger like conventional reactors where the coolant is kept separate from the working fluid due to radiation concerns etc.? In that case, can you use CO2 as the coolant with whatever advantages it has in terms of IR absorption etc, but then transfer that heat to an Argon working fluid using convection? Heat would not magically vanish unless you have poor insulation and lose it to the environment.

Thanks for that interesting point, GlowFish.

To my knowledge, most of the gas phase Ni-Li-H style reactors require a particular gas composition and probably relatively low pressure in the actual reactor (applies to Lipinski- UGC as well). So with that constraint you are right, there is a need for a staged system. Lipinski's is inherently staged, or so my reading of their WIPO application leads me to conclude. In theirs the directionality of the resultant alphas assures that their impact can be on a articular "cooled" metallic surface, thereby generating the transfer locus for any secondary hot working fluid.

There is nothing preventing steam or other working fluid from being run through tubes inside of typical LENR reactors we've seen so far. That would be fine particularly if there was no dangerous radioactivity.... but even then the secondary heat transfer agent, steam, CO2, Ar, ammonia or whatever is essentially shielded by the tubes from lower energy radioactivity. Neutrons and high energy betas and beta +. Nevertheless, under some schemes we might imagine nuclear reactions that could conceivably induce radioactivity in at least those in-dwelling tubes, if not in their fluid contents. Of course much similar to that has been addressed many times in the fission engineering innovation history.

As a general rule the lower the atomic weight of the working fluid, the shorter the lifetime of any induced radioactivity. But that is a rather poor generalization. Generally in LENR claims we have yet to see any substantial transmutations via neutrons or positrons giving rise to much of concern. Perhaps because those particles are at comparatively low energies. The LIpinski alphas are low MeV, but they are massive, so much of the MV squared is in the M, and they effectively devolve to inert helium 4 gas.

If the whole thing is going to be radioactively "hot" it is likely to be a lot less than conventional fission, and certainly much less that "hot" fusion.

Quote from acalaon

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

Very interesting points Acalaon. Thanks. I see the IR absorption could be an issue if the transmission of heat were not direct. In radiators, and in steam boilers, the transmission is often direct through a metallic wall--- that is from one medium to another via the conductive barrier. IR is an interesting issue, perhaps even in such fluid to fluid transfers. But I suspect that when you are transmitting heat via a metal or ceramic surface from the reactor to the working fluid and to a mechanism such as a turbine, IR is a modest contributor to overall heat flux. Please note, the CO2 and Argon cases may well be supercritical fluids... both with very high conductiviity and convective heat transfer coefficients, regardless of the IR absorption spectra for either of those fluids... which I don't yet see good online examples for, by the way. Of course a supercritical fluid is likely to have IR extinctions hundreds of times greater than a dilute STP gas... simply from molar/atomic density or concentration (Beer's Law).

Further there may be other interactions of IR with dense fluids that just don't show in the spectrum of a dilute gas-- and those being colligative may apply to Ar as well as CO2. We need to see such fluid spectra to know. But even so, I suspect IR alone is not enough of an issue to kill or advance any particular supercritical fluid, at least in the model situation I give here:

Using the Lipinski UGC device as a exanple that may well be first to market, at least for long range drones or interplanetary flights, we see all of the MeV alpha flux is likely to be directed toward a metallic or ceramic target.... on the other side of that target will be some working fluid, that is for thermo-mechanical energy extraction the heat transfer agent will surely be some gas or liquid or supercritical fluid. The chemical inertness of Ar allows a much higher working temperatures both in the context of the "boiler" and in interaction with turbine blades. Such materials as 300 or 400 series Stainless, Inconel, monel or bronzes and including pure copper are all inert to very high temperature Ar, but may react readily with CO2 at such temperatures as 1000 to 1500 deg C. That inertness I already suggested was important for bearings and seals, which may well be some of the limitations of CO2 to well below 800 deg C well within Sorensen's "sweet spot".

The IR absorption itself is in many ways related to the possible chemical reactivity. For argon there are no molecules at all, and not even much interatomic association in the gas phase-- except possibly in supercritical fluids. There is also no asymmetry in the atomic orbitals or loose electrons or "holes" to participate at shorter wavelengths. The molecular IR (bond stretching, twisting, bouncing etc.) level of the IR EM spectrum is certainly one path for heat transmission for those molecules susceptible. If you look at CO2, it also has little IR absorption, except at a few very specific energies. That does not prevent it from acting as an excellent heat transfer fluid. But, I still find your suggestion interesting, at least in theory, that is IR absorption might well make heat transfer somewhat more efficient in a molecular fluid, if only that the heat has one more ways to get into the fluid medium. But I am sure the lack of IR spectral activity is not a "killer" for any heat transfer medium, particularly at fluid densities approaching 1 g/cc. I would never want to underestimate mere "convection" and "conduction", both are exceedingly important in heat transfer processes seen industrially, regardless of the medium.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

The issue is not whether research is anecdotal or not. Much of the LENR research is genuine and written up.

Th issue is whether the work is:
(1) compelling
(2) repeatable
(3) coherent
New physics is characterised by (2) and (3).

LENR experimental results are neither (2) nor (3). None of the claims are individually (1). Even if they were, as in the FTL neutrino experiment which had results so compelling they were published in spite of breaking relativity, a single result never proves an anomaly.

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Cold fusion / LENR / CANR / CMNS / UGC- Lipinski etc, are not even in the same ballpark as the reported OPERA transluminal neutrinos. That is, even for physicists, the possibility of CF etc. is not nearly the same magnitude of threat to the "grand theoretical" status quo. A demonstration of transluminal (velocity > C or FTL, that is Faster Than Light) particles would have required a monumental overhaul of space-time physics. That OPERA FTL report and its thorough discounting is an interesting example of a large and well funded group of physicists (OPERA) appealing to physicists at large to look at the result, to then critique the result... and that is exactly what happened. The CF story is much different in several fundamental ways. First, the F&P several years effort was quite individual and only modestly funded. The CF results were surely not optimally presented to the physics community, who clearly had, and still have, a large "hot fusion" horse in the race (although that horse is becoming "long of tooth" after 6 decades and billions of dollars of losing). Secondly, it was not physicists courteously presenting their one time results to their colleagues. Instead it was renowned electrochemists (Fleischmann a Fellow of the Royal Society, widely recognized for very innovative and very significant work in electrochemistry), whose work was prematurely presented through press stories. But as a paradigm-changing possibility, it was of much less fundamental impact than the apparent OPERA neutrino transluminality. Unfortunately, or providentially depending one's perspective, the University of Utah sought, perhaps from administrative ignorance, to get the jump on potential competitors by prematurely announcing the F & P results. Further, the haste made for poor description of many of the details-- among which we now know that handling and impurities in the Pd electrode materials were later demonstrated quite clearly to be important, and the essentiality of high % deuterium loading-- now well known to be absolutely crucial. None of that was properly understood or addressed by the largely physicist-dominated crowd of replicators-- many with little or no experience with electrochemistry and many with mixed motives, it now appears. Nevertheless a number of successful replications were announced, some were publicized, and some were deliberately "deep sixed", others were published in less than prestigious venues because of heightened editorial bias at high impact journals against the very idea of CF.

I'm stating that there are a very important and substantial differences between your example of "Faster Than Light" and the evidences for CF /LENR which you presume to judge so summarily. There are only much more flimsy theoretical grounds for thinking CF "cannot work". Those "grounds" ignore much of the thermodynamics and appear to concentrate on formulations derived from high energy collisions--- the lifeblood of nuclear physics to be sure, but not nearly so comprehensively buttressed and demonstrated as the Special or General Theories of Relativity. Your categoricals (1 through 3) make my point to many readers here that the CF / LENR story is completely distinct from the absolute velocity limit in say Einstein's Relativities. Your three points fail to be informative or instructive, and many here already know why that is-- which can be summarized as funding and motivation. Those that do not understand can read authors such as Mizuno, Storms, Beaudette, Krivit, Chubb and so on. Your example suggests that you would like us to think all of physics is so well argued and well evidenced that nothing new that does not fit the existing paradigm is even possible. I suspect you yourself don't even believe that... but perhaps I overestimate you.

Quote from ogfusionist

If for some perverse reason someone wants to witness nanoscale hydrogen fusion firsthand try this pathological approach to KISS:

Wind an alumina tube with heater wire and load submicron particle size nickelous oxide on Al2O3FiberFrax into the central section. A silver powder getter must be present adjacent to the NiO/FiberFrax reactor to eliminate all sulfur compounds.
Run helium gas through the tube while resistance heating to 830 C. Adjust the variable power input to maintain a steady 830 C and then switch from helium to hydrogen. The reactor will self distruct when fusion initiates.

From Peter Gluck's Ego out blog, http://egooutpeters.blogspot.r…n-of-successful-heat.html

his translation of a recent Russian Parkhomov style replication, has this:

"Initialization of the mode of thermogeneration with the destruction of the reactor during the transition 900- 1000 deg C
Power Watt 400…Transition 800-900 deg C
Destroyed reactor."