On 2012-08-14 14:36, Andre Blum wrote:
One thing I also fail to understand of Celani's setup is when he talks about switching from the "active" (treated) wire to the "inactive" (stock ISOTAN44?) wire as a control experiment. As far as I understand, both wires are in the tube simultaneously. What does this switching comprise of? Is he applying a DC current to the wire? (And -- just to make sure I understand -- this then is different from the power applied to the heater?)
As far as I understand there are two wires in Celani's demo setup. One is inert, one is active (the treated ISOTAN44 wire). The inert wire acts as a heater and as a calibration/control wire.
The treated ISOTAN44 wire over a certain temperature threshold will show excess heat even if heated indirectly. This is what is shown at beginning of the experiment by applying DC current to the inert wire only.
At a later time of the experiment, DC current to the inert wire is switched off and gets applied instead to the active wire, which shows even greater excess heat than when heated indirectly.
Celani concludes this shows the active material has a positive feedback with temperature, a phenomenon which has also been reported by Rossi. Incidentally, the ashes Rossi gave to Kullander for analysis about a year ago contained large amounts of copper together with nickel and other materials in small amounts at a natural isotopic ratio. I speculate that these were not ashes (in theory they were supposed to demonstrated Ni->Cu fusion) but part of the active powder instead (probably without the proprietary "catalyst"). Clever diversion by Rossi. The fusion theory (which he doesn't appear to believe in anymore) was probably a red herring to gain a time advantage: pure nickel doesn't work as good as other alloys.
To all effects and purposes, Celani's demonstrative cell (assuming there are no gross errors in calorimetry, although his cell in his laboratory at Frascati, Italy, should have a more sophisticated one) demonstrates that Rossi's E-Cat does work at least in principle.
In my opinion this is a huge achievement for the entire LENR field, which should make other researchers/experimenters think twice before keeping working on historically problematic Pd-D electrolytic systems. Ni-H gas loaded cells are cheaper, easier to set up, easier to replicate, and show a better observable effect. And we need more data.
Cheers, S.A.
