RE: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:My critique of an experiment posed by Dennis Cravens
I don't think skeptics will be convinced until someone stumbles upon a simpler experiment that unarguably demonstrates an obvious difference (burn your fingers scale) between input and output power. I am convinced that trying to increase the output power is the wrong way to go because this anomaly may depend heavily on a small thermal window / sweet spot where the gas is already near disassociation -trying to increase the effect could push the majority of the population into atomic form and either reduce the effect or make it runaway. I would bring the test up to temp then slowly vary my other controls (circulation, gas mix, ect) while reducing the heating control to keep temp constant for any gains from changes in circulation, mix or other variables. The goal to demonstrate a hot - non combusting- plasma maintained with little or no heating -I would want to circulate same hydrogen so skeptics cannot claim some micro combustion and a careful account of the pumping - I suspect the effect needs to be bootstrapped with a heater but then can be maintained by increasing circulation through a kindling of bulk nano powders like blowing on embers to start a fire. If the material is too active like Rayney Nickel it will burn itself out in a quick thermal spike like the Rowan confirmation while less active materials like the Arata Pd powders might be accelerated from their normal slow life after death into a more timely demonstration of excess heat. Fran From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 8:56 PM To: Nick Palmer Cc: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:My critique of an experiment posed by Dennis Cravens Nick Palmer ni...@wynterwood.co.ukmailto:ni...@wynterwood.co.uk wrote: The LED will not be convincing. How about just training an IR camera on it and putting the image on the web? A slow stream of air passing the cell would warm up and clearly show on the image. Why not simply install thermocouples and a thermometer in the cell, and in the nearby ambient air? That is simple, direct and foolproof. With 4 W it will produce a definitive result. If it were a fraction of 1 W this would not work. In an ordinary room this would be somewhat problematic and inaccurate because of fluctuations in air temperature and currents of air, but this room is reportedly temperature-stable. I would also insulate the cell well except for one copper pipe (or nail) coming out of the top. Most of the heat would radiate from that pipe, and it would be warm to the touch. At 4 W it would be quite warm. This occurred to me while I was driving home, when somehow the design of an internal combustion engine circa 1880 came to mind. Spark plugs were not invented, or not reliable, so they used an iron bar protruding into the cylinder. It was heated red hot on the outside by a small flow of burning gasoline. The mixture of air and gasoline was injected when the piston started to descend, and it ignited immediately from the hot plug. - Jed
RE: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:My critique of an experiment posed by Dennis Cravens
Jed, I agree simple thermal readouts of the reactor contents vs the ambient would be sufficient but the Cravens experiment provides a perfect opportunity to test the effect of circulation on an Arata type experiment. Maybe close loop 100ml of deuterium through the reactor and pump it around and around. The H-M prototype depends on moving the hydrogen fully into and out of fractional states and you can accomplish this to a lesser extent by just moving the gas atoms relative to the changing geometry of the film surface of the Pd powder grains -both inter grain (packing density) and intra grain of the Pd itself. Regards Fran -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 11:24 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:My critique of an experiment posed by Dennis Cravens Dennis Cravens sent me some ideas about an experiment he proposes to do. It is a demonstration intended to convince the public that cold fusion is real. The information has been somewhat fragmentary; I do not fully understand it, and I may be confusing two different experiments. Assuming I have it right, the demonstration would be along the following lines: This is similar to Arata's experiment. Deuterium gas is loaded into a palladium alloy powder. The powder produces heat without input. Cravens reports that the powder works better at high temperature, which is often the case with cold fusion. It produces produces 0.25 W/g at 300°C down and 0.01 W/g at 20°C. It is not clear to me what temperature he proposes to run this test at. He has described a poorly insulated glass cell. I do not understand why he would select this when a better insulated cell would drive the temperature higher. He intends to employ a 400 g sample, which takes up a volume of ~400 mL. If I understand correctly he expects this will produce roughly 4 W of heat. He intends to convert heat into electricity with a thermoelectric device, with 2% efficiency producing ~0.08 W. The electricity will drive something like an LED. This is a proof of principle demonstration that cold fusion can produce useful energy. The thermoelectric device is a small spherical Seebeck calorimeter that completely surrounds the cell. Like all Seebeck calorimeters this functions as both a calorimeter and a miniature generator. Cravens claims that this device is extremely precise and can detect 3 mW. (I do not know whether this refers to precision or accuracy, or both. I have seen a photo of the device but I know little about it.) The experiment will be conducted in a small room with constant temperature HVAC, so a flowing water envelope for background temperature is not needed. Cravens refers to this as a demonstration of engineering breakeven, as opposed to scientific breakeven. He writes: I don't see any use in redo scientific breakeven to 'prove' it to others. That has been done many times over. I do not think this is a good design for a demonstration experiment. I fear it will not be convining, especially to people who are not familiar with the field. I think that a simpler experiment would not only be more convincing but it would also take less effort and expense. I have several objections to this plan: 1. I do not think this has been done many times over. On the contrary, nothing remotely like this has been done with gas loading, and nothing at such high power levels with any technique has been made public. This is 4 W steady output with no input. Storms and others have told me that they struggle to achieve 1 W of output, which usually fluctuates. Previous Arata-style gas loading experiments have been at much lower power levels. The first set of experiments published by Arata and Kitamura used inadequate and unconvincing calorimetry. Arata apparently made large over-estimates of the chemical energy release, and therefore, presumably, of the cold fusion energy release that followed it. (Rothwell and Storms). There have been a few experiments at power levels higher than this. In France, Fleischmann and Pons ran many cells at much higher power levels but these cells required input power; very few people were allowed to observe the cells; and only a little, rather sketchy experimental data was published. Energetics Technologies has occasionally observed power levels as high as 20 Watts in a few cases in heat after death mode. These experiments have not been conducted publicly, although thanks to 60 Minutes Robert Duncan observed them and he confirmed that the methodology is correct. 2. I think this is the wrong kind of calorimeter for a demonstration. Rather than measuring this 4 W heat flow with a Seebeck calorimeter capable of detecting 3 mW, I think it would be better to use a conventional temperature-based calorimeter such as the ones used by Melvin Miles, McKubre or Energetics Technologies. I say this for several reasons: As a general
Re: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:My critique of an experiment posed by Dennis Cravens
The LED will not be convincing. How about just training an IR camera on it and putting the image on the web? A slow stream of air passing the cell would warm up and clearly show on the image. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:My critique of an experiment posed by Dennis Cravens
Nick Palmer ni...@wynterwood.co.uk wrote: The LED will not be convincing. How about just training an IR camera on it and putting the image on the web? A slow stream of air passing the cell would warm up and clearly show on the image. Why not simply install thermocouples and a thermometer in the cell, and in the nearby ambient air? That is simple, direct and foolproof. With 4 W it will produce a definitive result. If it were a fraction of 1 W this would not work. In an ordinary room this would be somewhat problematic and inaccurate because of fluctuations in air temperature and currents of air, but this room is reportedly temperature-stable. I would also insulate the cell well except for one copper pipe (or nail) coming out of the top. Most of the heat would radiate from that pipe, and it would be warm to the touch. At 4 W it would be quite warm. This occurred to me while I was driving home, when somehow the design of an internal combustion engine circa 1880 came to mind. Spark plugs were not invented, or not reliable, so they used an iron bar protruding into the cylinder. It was heated red hot on the outside by a small flow of burning gasoline. The mixture of air and gasoline was injected when the piston started to descend, and it ignited immediately from the hot plug. - Jed
