LENR Is Real

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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PNeilson10
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by PNeilson10 »

Tom

I agree with your analysis 100%. We usually don't agree so completely!

I did not spend enough time on the analysis (the alumina emissivity issues were enough for me to stop) to consider the reaction rate as the fuel is consumed. This is a very good point.

The porosity and hydrogen adsorption of Alumina is another issue to consider. I have not looked it up but based on the construction my guess is that any Hydrogen would exit the hot reactor very quickly.

Is Tom Darden of Industrial Heat a Ian Clifford wannabe?

tomclarke
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by tomclarke »

One of the fascinating questions here is who other than Rossi is dishonest. There are I think a lot of people who are genuine believers.

It is ironic that somone incapable of presenting a scientific case should find it so easy to gather believers around him. But I guess that is what good con men do, and Rossi has certainly had enough practice!
PNeilson10 wrote:Tom

I agree with your analysis 100%. We usually don't agree so completely!

I did not spend enough time on the analysis (the alumina emissivity issues were enough for me to stop) to consider the reaction rate as the fuel is consumed. This is a very good point.

The porosity and hydrogen adsorption of Alumina is another issue to consider. I have not looked it up but based on the construction my guess is that any Hydrogen would exit the hot reactor very quickly.

Is Tom Darden of Industrial Heat a Ian Clifford wannabe?

303
Posts: 114
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:18 am

Re: LENR Is Real

Post by 303 »

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1917 ... f-gasoline

article is short but comments are entertaining

birchoff
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by birchoff »

tomclarke wrote:One of the fascinating questions here is who other than Rossi is dishonest. There are I think a lot of people who are genuine believers.

It is ironic that somone incapable of presenting a scientific case should find it so easy to gather believers around him. But I guess that is what good con men do, and Rossi has certainly had enough practice!
PNeilson10 wrote:Tom

I agree with your analysis 100%. We usually don't agree so completely!

I did not spend enough time on the analysis (the alumina emissivity issues were enough for me to stop) to consider the reaction rate as the fuel is consumed. This is a very good point.

The porosity and hydrogen adsorption of Alumina is another issue to consider. I have not looked it up but based on the construction my guess is that any Hydrogen would exit the hot reactor very quickly.

Is Tom Darden of Industrial Heat a Ian Clifford wannabe?
No, the problem is the scientific community decided at an early stage to make any research into anything resembling cold fusion a career ending decision. That is the problem. If good researchers were free to pursue research into this area without the ridicule factor. We would have a body of accepted work clearly explaining what cold fusion is already. This is the arena that makes it easy for dishonest people to operate freely. That said the researchers in this area also have some responsibility to bear. Most of the researchers pursuing this line of inquiry are treating it as the next gold rush, so without any patent protection. There is no way for them to make their work freely available to do reproductions. Some researchers are bucking that trend, like Yasuhiro Iwamura with backing by Mitsubishi Heavy industry and the MMFP (quantumheat.org). There are others that seem to also be moving the direction of being open with all the details, but the problem still remains; If a skeptical scientist attempts a replication and gets positive results there is a significant number of people claiming fraud or collusion.

I personally don't care if Rossi actually has a working power reactor or not, because I don't have any money to invest much less carry out the due diligence I would need to be sure the information that is currently available is accurate. I also assume any investor who is going to hand over money to Rossi or Industrial heat would also do the very same level of due diligence. Maybe this is naive of me but personally if your not willing to do the necessary due diligence then you deserve being swindled, its that simple. As my dad once told me, "A Fool and his money will soon be parted.".

birchoff
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by birchoff »

For those of you interested it looks like the folks from the lenr-forum are trying to collect questions to get answered by the team that carried out the test

http://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.p ... term-test/

tomclarke
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by tomclarke »

birchoff wrote: No, the problem is the scientific community decided at an early stage to make any research into anything resembling cold fusion a career ending decision. That is the problem. If good researchers were free to pursue research into this area without the ridicule factor. We would have a body of accepted work clearly explaining what cold fusion is already. This is the arena that makes it easy for dishonest people to operate freely. That said the researchers in this area also have some responsibility to bear. Most of the researchers pursuing this line of inquiry are treating it as the next gold rush, so without any patent protection. There is no way for them to make their work freely available to do reproductions. Some researchers are bucking that trend, like Yasuhiro Iwamura with backing by Mitsubishi Heavy industry and the MMFP (quantumheat.org). There are others that seem to also be moving the direction of being open with all the details, but the problem still remains; If a skeptical scientist attempts a replication and gets positive results there is a significant number of people claiming fraud or collusion.
It is difficult to distinguish between your hypothesis here, and the possibility that those scientists who are doing LENR research have no high quality research to publish and get ridiculed because what they publish is of such low quality, and not so recognised by them.

There are high quality LENR papers. Almost certainly wrong, but still high quality, and published in good journals. For example the ultra-dense deuterium stuff (Holmid et al). Or Widom-Larssen's idea. But such are very few and far between.

You may reckon that is because good scientists tend not to do LENR. But it could be because LENR is a dead end with no good research to do, because it does not work. Of course that would be recognised by good scientists, who would tend not to do it.

Axil
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Axil »

tomclarke wrote:
birchoff wrote: No, the problem is the scientific community decided at an early stage to make any research into anything resembling cold fusion a career ending decision. That is the problem. If good researchers were free to pursue research into this area without the ridicule factor. We would have a body of accepted work clearly explaining what cold fusion is already. This is the arena that makes it easy for dishonest people to operate freely. That said the researchers in this area also have some responsibility to bear. Most of the researchers pursuing this line of inquiry are treating it as the next gold rush, so without any patent protection. There is no way for them to make their work freely available to do reproductions. Some researchers are bucking that trend, like Yasuhiro Iwamura with backing by Mitsubishi Heavy industry and the MMFP (quantumheat.org). There are others that seem to also be moving the direction of being open with all the details, but the problem still remains; If a skeptical scientist attempts a replication and gets positive results there is a significant number of people claiming fraud or collusion.
It is difficult to distinguish between your hypothesis here, and the possibility that those scientists who are doing LENR research have no high quality research to publish and get ridiculed because what they publish is of such low quality, and not so recognised by them.

There are high quality LENR papers. Almost certainly wrong, but still high quality, and published in good journals. For example the ultra-dense deuterium stuff (Holmid et al). Or Widom-Larssen's idea. But such are very few and far between.

You may reckon that is because good scientists tend not to do LENR. But it could be because LENR is a dead end with no good research to do, because it does not work. Of course that would be recognised by good scientists, who would tend not to do it.
You may reckon that scientists both good and bad tend to work on projects that pay their salaries.

Ivy Matt
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Ivy Matt »

Axil wrote:Rossi has been trying to get rid of the radiation for years and he has done it.
I thought he did it with the demonstration back in January, 2011. Bianchini, at least, didn't detect any radiation. And what about the "hot cat" that was tested over a year ago? Did that still have radiation problems? I think there are a few Italian and Swedish scientists who would be interested in the answer to that question.
Axil wrote:The audience that the testers were aiming their spin at was Elforsk and their CEO.
Maybe, but they reportedly submitted the paper to arXiv, as well as Journal of Physics D, so it's fair game for public discussion.
Temperature, density, confinement time: pick any two.

Axil
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Axil »

I thought he did it with the demonstration back in January, 2011. Bianchini, at least, didn't detect any radiation. And what about the "hot cat" that was tested over a year ago? Did that still have radiation problems? I think there are a few Italian and Swedish scientists who would be interested in the answer to that question.
The positron gammas stopped when Rossi installed the secondary heater in his reactor at that early time to increase the pumping of the boson condensate especially at startup and shutdown. That was near the end of 2011 if memory serves.
Maybe, but they reportedly submitted the paper to arXiv, as well as Journal of Physics D, so it's fair game for public discussion
The report was submitted...true, but it won't be published. Knowing this, the authors released it publicly anyway.

tomclarke
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by tomclarke »

axil this reactor has no secondary heater. It has a whacking great heater that gets the temp up to 750C or so. And that is what the temperature is, so no evidence of heat generation.

Further evidence:

The "ash" measures as pure 62Ni - also as chemically pure 62Ni with none of the other elements in the fuel. That is a chemical test on all of the extracted ash, not a surface test. That is strong evidence for Rossi substituting. 58Ni->62Ni would be strongly exothermic and for that reaction to happen equally throught the test and exactly deplete the fuel is not credible.

PNeilson10
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by PNeilson10 »

The rates of reaction seem very unusual for any sealed reactor. In any reaction (of any type) the rate is normally constant if nothing is consumed and the supply of fuel is constant. Since this is a sealed container, one would expect fuel to be consumed during the reaction. If fuel is consumed then the rate of reaction should change as less fuel is available to react.

Its hard to imagine any reaction that would be linear over time except for the case where only a small percentage of the fuel is consumed.

We have an inference that the fuel was in fact fully consumed - from natural ratios of Ni to Ni62 - and at the same time this consumption produced a linear output. This is a paradox that should not be possible.

You could look at the Hydrogen supply as the limiting fuel. Its the same problem. As the Hydrogen is consumed in the sealed vessel the reaction rate should decline.

However, the linear over time output of a heater plugged into the wall matches these reaction rates exactly. A simple error in the emissivity factor produces exactly these results.

So I am forced to speculate, is this a deliberate scam or a correct observation? A simple slight of hand during the handling of the fuel by Rossi? I don't know, but the reaction rate discrepancy from the expected rate begs the question.

More observation in the form of a simple calibration of the device at full electrical power with the dummy fuel load would have prevented this speculation. There is just not enough information in this paper to make any definite conclusion. The needed information could have been generated simply. That the necessary calibration was not conducted speaks volumes to me.

birchoff
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by birchoff »

PNeilson10 wrote:The rates of reaction seem very unusual for any sealed reactor. In any reaction (of any type) the rate is normally constant if nothing is consumed and the supply of fuel is constant. Since this is a sealed container, one would expect fuel to be consumed during the reaction. If fuel is consumed then the rate of reaction should change as less fuel is available to react.

Its hard to imagine any reaction that would be linear over time except for the case where only a small percentage of the fuel is consumed.

We have an inference that the fuel was in fact fully consumed - from natural ratios of Ni to Ni62 - and at the same time this consumption produced a linear output. This is a paradox that should not be possible.

You could look at the Hydrogen supply as the limiting fuel. Its the same problem. As the Hydrogen is consumed in the sealed vessel the reaction rate should decline.

However, the linear over time output of a heater plugged into the wall matches these reaction rates exactly. A simple error in the emissivity factor produces exactly these results.

So I am forced to speculate, is this a deliberate scam or a correct observation? A simple slight of hand during the handling of the fuel by Rossi? I don't know, but the reaction rate discrepancy from the expected rate begs the question.

More observation in the form of a simple calibration of the device at full electrical power with the dummy fuel load would have prevented this speculation. There is just not enough information in this paper to make any definite conclusion. The needed information could have been generated simply. That the necessary calibration was not conducted speaks volumes to me.
Like I said before when someone else made this argument. There are (Huge) assumptions in this argument.
  • Is the Fuel distribution uniform?
    Is the distribution of ash uniform before a sample was taken?
    Why was the test limited to 32 days?
The first one isnt too big of an assumption but without knowing how the fuel is prepared only Rossi/IH knows. The second one is the biggest because no mention of whether or not they extracted all the remnants mixed everything together then pulled a sample. Without this information your left with assuming that yes the fuel as an equal distribution of hydrogen throughout, and that the burn was uniform throughout the entire burn chamber. Those seem like pretty big assumptions to me. Also, inferring that the fuel was entirely consumed is based on the assumption that 62NI is the end of the reaction chain.

Axil
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by Axil »

tomclarke wrote:axil this reactor has no secondary heater. It has a whacking great heater that gets the temp up to 750C or so. And that is what the temperature is, so no evidence of heat generation.

Further evidence:

The "ash" measures as pure 62Ni - also as chemically pure 62Ni with none of the other elements in the fuel. That is a chemical test on all of the extracted ash, not a surface test. That is strong evidence for Rossi substituting. 58Ni->62Ni would be strongly exothermic and for that reaction to happen equally throught the test and exactly deplete the fuel is not credible.
The TIP2 test team was giving a few nickel particles ONE of which was almost pure Ni62. Transmutation has been seen in a 1000 LENR experiments and is observed to be a chaotic process based on the geometry of the LENR system. Nothing should be concluded from this single Ni62 particle.

The design of Rossi's reactor changed when Lithium aluminum hydride (hydrogen storage) was introduced into the design of the reactor. The early reactors used compressed hydrogen tanks. This hydride compound replaced the secondary heater. This also assured that hydrogen was not released until the Boson condensate was hot enough to shield the positron gamma rays.

PNeilson10
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by PNeilson10 »

"Like I said before when someone else made this argument. There are (Huge) assumptions in this argument.

Is the Fuel distribution uniform?
Is the distribution of ash uniform before a sample was taken?
Why was the test limited to 32 days?"

Sorry - but the assumptions you reference are covered in the paper itself

The fuel distribution was uniform and a random sample was taken before and after the test.

Around page 28 in the paper.

The test time is totally irrelevant and not used anywhere in my argument.

Reaction rates in a closed reactor (confirmed in the paper) have a fingerprint. The fingerprint was not met in the results in the paper. The paper confirms a random sample.

No assumptions anywhere in this argument never mind (HUGE) assumptions. The flat energy output in the paper combined with the consumption of all the fuel in a random sample of the spent fuel is a paradox that cannot be hand-waved away.

But its useless to argue so have fun .......

JoeP
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Re: LENR Is Real

Post by JoeP »

Rossi's blog has him saying the reactor was loaded with a 35 day fuel supply. Convenient. Also, he did not know what power level the test team was going to use and the rate of fuel use to support that.

When looked over the paper...I recall reading no reason why the entire ash should not have been supplied for analysis instead. It seems the team wanted it but this was not allowed.

This test stinks of fraud. I was willing to give Rossi a small benefit of doubt, but this last test has been pretty much the nail in the proverbial coffin for that little bit.

That said, IMO, I think the test team is probably honest, with the possible exception of perhaps one researcher.

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