Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds
Hello, What I don`t understand is that with this system producing 15 kW of power the temperature in the room isn`t higher then 23 degrees Celcius. This amount of power corresponds to a group of 150 people or an intense perpendicular solar flux through a large window of 15 m2. It seems that everybody in the room during the Rossi experiments was feeling very comfortable. Normally when such an amount of heat is dumped into a room the aircon will fail. Peter - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 1:50 AM Subject: [Vo]:Rossi Responds Three pages of questions and answers at his weblog: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360cpage=3#comments including: Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T
Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds
This heat was removed by condensing the steam- by the cooling water. Peter the Older On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:45 PM, P.J van Noorden pjvan...@xs4all.nl wrote: Hello, What I don`t understand is that with this system producing 15 kW of power the temperature in the room isn`t higher then 23 degrees Celcius. This amount of power corresponds to a group of 150 people or an intense perpendicular solar flux through a large window of 15 m2. It seems that everybody in the room during the Rossi experiments was feeling very comfortable. Normally when such an amount of heat is dumped into a room the aircon will fail. Peter - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 1:50 AM Subject: [Vo]:Rossi Responds Three pages of questions and answers at his weblog: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360cpage=3#comments including: Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T
Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds
Hello Peter, On the photo http://translate.google.com/translate?js=nprev=_thl=enie=UTF-8layout=2eotf=1sl=ittl=enu=http://22passi.blogspot.com/2011/01/bolognia-14111-cronaca-test-fusione_14.html I see a black flexible pipe, which must be the cold water input. The other transparent pipe is ending in a plastic vessel. Is this heated water removed out of the room through a drainpipe? The somewhat younger Peter This heat was removed by condensing the steam- by the cooling water. Peter the Older On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:45 PM, P.J van Noorden pjvan...@xs4all.nl wrote: Hello, What I don`t understand is that with this system producing 15 kW of power the temperature in the room isn`t higher then 23 degrees Celcius. This amount of power corresponds to a group of 150 people or an intense perpendicular solar flux through a large window of 15 m2. It seems that everybody in the room during the Rossi experiments was feeling very comfortable. Normally when such an amount of heat is dumped into a room the aircon will fail. Peter - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 1:50 AM Subject: [Vo]:Rossi Responds Three pages of questions and answers at his weblog: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360cpage=3#comments including: Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T - Original Message - From: Peter Gluck To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 12:53 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds This heat was removed by condensing the steam- by the cooling water. Peter the Older On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:45 PM, P.J van Noorden pjvan...@xs4all.nl wrote: Hello, What I don`t understand is that with this system producing 15 kW of power the temperature in the room isn`t higher then 23 degrees Celcius. This amount of power corresponds to a group of 150 people or an intense perpendicular solar flux through a large window of 15 m2. It seems that everybody in the room during the Rossi experiments was feeling very comfortable. Normally when such an amount of heat is dumped into a room the aircon will fail. Peter - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 1:50 AM Subject: [Vo]:Rossi Responds Three pages of questions and answers at his weblog: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360cpage=3#comments including: Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T
Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds
Very probably..I cannot find other explanation, your observation re heat in the room was very wise. It seem we will receive the quantitative data only toward the end of the week- I think 1/2 hour would be sufficient for a thermotechnician- vederemo! (Let's see. I have just published my thoughts feelings re that event. at http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com Are you still following Blacklightpower? This year will be VERY interesting due to them. Peter de oudere On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 2:10 PM, P.J van Noorden pjvan...@xs4all.nl wrote: Hello Peter, On the photo http://translate.google.com/translate?js=nprev=_thl=enie=UTF-8layout=2eotf=1sl=ittl=enu=http://22passi.blogspot.com/2011/01/bolognia-14111-cronaca-test-fusione_14.html I see a black flexible pipe, which must be the cold water input. The other transparent pipe is ending in a plastic vessel. Is this heated water removed out of the room through a drainpipe? The somewhat younger Peter This heat was removed by condensing the steam- by the cooling water. Peter the Older On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:45 PM, P.J van Noorden pjvan...@xs4all.nlwrote: Hello, What I don`t understand is that with this system producing 15 kW of power the temperature in the room isn`t higher then 23 degrees Celcius. This amount of power corresponds to a group of 150 people or an intense perpendicular solar flux through a large window of 15 m2. It seems that everybody in the room during the Rossi experiments was feeling very comfortable. Normally when such an amount of heat is dumped into a room the aircon will fail. Peter - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 1:50 AM Subject: [Vo]:Rossi Responds Three pages of questions and answers at his weblog: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360cpage=3#comments including: Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T - Original Message - *From:* Peter Gluck peter.gl...@gmail.com *To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com *Sent:* Monday, January 17, 2011 12:53 PM *Subject:* Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds This heat was removed by condensing the steam- by the cooling water. Peter the Older On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:45 PM, P.J van Noorden pjvan...@xs4all.nlwrote: Hello, What I don`t understand is that with this system producing 15 kW of power the temperature in the room isn`t higher then 23 degrees Celcius. This amount of power corresponds to a group of 150 people or an intense perpendicular solar flux through a large window of 15 m2. It seems that everybody in the room during the Rossi experiments was feeling very comfortable. Normally when such an amount of heat is dumped into a room the aircon will fail. Peter - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 1:50 AM Subject: [Vo]:Rossi Responds Three pages of questions and answers at his weblog: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360cpage=3#comments including: Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T
Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds
Is this a misdirection or could the drive also be needed to prevent the sort of runaway we saw in Rayney nickel? First the drive aids in causing the effect - perhaps triggering an avalanche and then slaves the energy release to a certain duty factor? Fran Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T - Original Message - From: Peter Gluckmailto:peter.gl...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.commailto:vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 12:53 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds This heat was removed by condensing the steam- by the cooling water. Peter the Older On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:45 PM, P.J van Noorden pjvan...@xs4all.nlmailto:pjvan...@xs4all.nl wrote: Hello, What I don`t understand is that with this system producing 15 kW of power the temperature in the room isn`t higher then 23 degrees Celcius. This amount of power corresponds to a group of 150 people or an intense perpendicular solar flux through a large window of 15 m2. It seems that everybody in the room during the Rossi experiments was feeling very comfortable. Normally when such an amount of heat is dumped into a room the aircon will fail. Peter - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.commailto:hohlr...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.commailto:vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 1:50 AM Subject: [Vo]:Rossi Responds Three pages of questions and answers at his weblog: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=360cpage=3#comments including: Daniel G. Zavela January 15th, 2011 at 4:28 AM Greetings from California and congratulations on your successful work! Can you simply state what the Watts IN are versus Watts OUT? Can you turn off the input current? Does the reaction become self-sustaining? Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h Yes, we can turn off the input current, but we prefer to maintain a drive and the reasons are very difficult to explain without violating my confidentiality restraints. The reaction becomes self sustaining. Warm Regards, A.R. end COP = 37.5 T
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
FWIW. I found this at: http://www.moletrap.co.uk/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=1951page=7 I asked a contact from Italy check the videos and documentation last night (the contact knows the Bologna university very well). Summary: Rossi just has a black box where the university scientists are not allowed to look into (hey, patent pending, you know). Only measurements from outside are allowed. For example: to check the gamma-radiation Rossi has provided a special hole on one spot of his machine, and only there the radiation may be measured. The university scientists are 'used' by Rossi to provide acceptance for his in invention. Maybe one scientist is involved in the scam. During the first of the three videos the camera also turns to the invited professors and university board, naming them specifically. My contact was laughing, telling me that in Bologna the higher level management has only their positions because of family or politics, and that those 'professors' have no clue about the physics involved. But they really like publicity. Conclusion: this looks very much like the demonstration of the magnetic machine in Delft University (Netherlands) last year, where scam artists are using the naive openness of scientific University staff to create credibility. While they are not willing to show what's inside the black box (patent issues), not even to the people doing the experiments.
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
Ok, if the black box will be openedm what can we see except some black or not- powder? Can we expect that Rossi gives detailed description, recipe, protocol. a 101NiH course and a long FAQ so that anybody skilled enough (a pervese formulation BTW!) can reproduce his gizmo and use it to generate energy? Peter On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 3:31 PM, peatbog peat...@teksavvy.com wrote: FWIW. I found this at: http://www.moletrap.co.uk/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=1951page=7 I asked a contact from Italy check the videos and documentation last night (the contact knows the Bologna university very well). Summary: Rossi just has a black box where the university scientists are not allowed to look into (hey, patent pending, you know). Only measurements from outside are allowed. For example: to check the gamma-radiation Rossi has provided a special hole on one spot of his machine, and only there the radiation may be measured. The university scientists are 'used' by Rossi to provide acceptance for his in invention. Maybe one scientist is involved in the scam. During the first of the three videos the camera also turns to the invited professors and university board, naming them specifically. My contact was laughing, telling me that in Bologna the higher level management has only their positions because of family or politics, and that those 'professors' have no clue about the physics involved. But they really like publicity. Conclusion: this looks very much like the demonstration of the magnetic machine in Delft University (Netherlands) last year, where scam artists are using the naive openness of scientific University staff to create credibility. While they are not willing to show what's inside the black box (patent issues), not even to the people doing the experiments.
[Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011 by Jed Rothwell The experiment has been underway at U. Bologna since mid-December 2010. It has been done several times. Several professors with expertise in related subjects such as calorimetry are involved. LIST OF MAIN EQUIPMENT IN EXPERIMENT A hydrogen tank mounted on a weight scale which is accurate to 0.1 g 10 liter tank reservoir, which is refilled as needed during the run Displacement pump Tube from pump to Rossi device (The Rossi device is known as an ECat) Outlet tube from the Rossi device, which emits hot water or steam Thermocouples in the reservoir, ambient air and the outlet tube An HD37AB1347 IAQ Monitor (Delta Ohm) to measure the relative humidity of the steam. This is to confirm that it is “dry steam”; that is, steam only, with no water droplets. Alternating-current heater used to bring the Rossi device up the working temperature METHOD The reservoir water temperature is measured at 13°C, ambient air at 23°C. The heater is set to about 1000 W to heat up the Rossi device. Hydrogen is admitted to the Rossi device. The displacement pump is turned on, injecting water into the Rossi device at 292 ml/min. The water comes out as warm water at first, then as a mixture of steam and water, and finally after about 30 minutes, as dry steam. This is confirmed with the relative humidity meter. As the device heats up, heater power is reduced to around 400 W. RESULTS The test run on January 14 lasted for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes the outlet flow became dry steam. The enthalpy during this last 30 minutes can be computed very simply, based on the heat capacity of water (4.2 kJ/kgK) and heat of vaporization of water (2260 kJ/kg): Mass of water 8.8 kg Temperature change 87°C Energy to bring water to 100°C: 87°C*4.2*8.8 kg = 3,216 kJ Energy to vaporize 10 kg of water: 2260*8.8 = 19,888 kJ Total: 23,107 kJ Duration 30 minutes = 1800 seconds Power 12,837 W, minus auxiliary power ~12 kW There were two potential ways in which input power might have been measured incorrectly: heater power, and the hydrogen, which might have burned if air had been present in the cell. The heater power was measured at 400 W. It could not have been much higher that this, because it is plugged into an ordinary wall outlet. Even if a wall socket could supply 12 kW, the heater electric wire would burn. During the test runs the weight of the hydrogen tank did not measurably decrease, so less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. 0.1 g of hydrogen is 0.1 mole, which makes 0.05 mole of water. The heat of formation of water is 286 kJ/mole, so if the hydrogen had been burned it would have produced less than 14.3 kJ.
Re: [Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
I uploaded that to the News section. I was tempted to add: Hey, Richard Garwin: here's your cuppa tea, big guy! I will soon upload a more detailed description by Mike Melich, and I hope I can add Prof. Levi's report. I think it is all but certain these results are real. They cannot be a mistake, and fraud seems unlikely to me. - Jed
[Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
Here is the website of the company founded by Andrea Rossi and others a few years ago. This company funded and owns the technology in question. http://www.lti-global.com/index.php However, apparently there has been some kind of falling-out with Rossi, and as you can see there is no mention of any of this on the website. It seems he is being marginalized. The company has changed focus to so-called clean-coal. Sad. They have no comment about Rossi, who was operating out of a different branch (New Hampshire). They have large DARPA grants, unrelated to the LENR cell, and do not want to compromise those. You may or may not agree, but it is clear to me that this drama in Bologna was hastily staged, not ready for prime-time, and will end up being a disaster for Rossi and LENR in general - when all of the details emerge. First off, he will sell not a single unit in the USA without an NRC license, which is complicated, costly and takes years. As for Europe, where the need for inexpensive energy is greater, who knows? The best thing that could happen, IMHO, is that the Italian military, their Pentagon equivalent, will take over the program and work something out with LTI as to the IP. Jones
[Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
Jed, Nice job! My only question regards the Alternating-current heater used to bring the Rossi device up the working temperature. Do they specify if this is just out of the wall AC or a more elaborate HV duty factor sort of arrangement? Regards Fran Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011 by Jed Rothwell The experiment has been underway at U. Bologna since mid-December 2010. It has been done several times. Several professors with expertise in related subjects such as calorimetry are involved. LIST OF MAIN EQUIPMENT IN EXPERIMENT A hydrogen tank mounted on a weight scale which is accurate to 0.1 g 10 liter tank reservoir, which is refilled as needed during the run Displacement pump Tube from pump to Rossi device (The Rossi device is known as an ECat) Outlet tube from the Rossi device, which emits hot water or steam Thermocouples in the reservoir, ambient air and the outlet tube An HD37AB1347 IAQ Monitor (Delta Ohm) to measure the relative humidity of the steam. This is to confirm that it is dry steam; that is, steam only, with no water droplets. Alternating-current heater used to bring the Rossi device up the working temperature METHOD The reservoir water temperature is measured at 13°C, ambient air at 23°C. The heater is set to about 1000 W to heat up the Rossi device. Hydrogen is admitted to the Rossi device. The displacement pump is turned on, injecting water into the Rossi device at 292 ml/min. The water comes out as warm water at first, then as a mixture of steam and water, and finally after about 30 minutes, as dry steam. This is confirmed with the relative humidity meter. As the device heats up, heater power is reduced to around 400 W. RESULTS The test run on January 14 lasted for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes the outlet flow became dry steam. The enthalpy during this last 30 minutes can be computed very simply, based on the heat capacity of water (4.2 kJ/kgK) and heat of vaporization of water (2260 kJ/kg): Mass of water 8.8 kg Temperature change 87°C Energy to bring water to 100°C: 87°C*4.2*8.8 kg = 3,216 kJ Energy to vaporize 10 kg of water: 2260*8.8 = 19,888 kJ Total: 23,107 kJ Duration 30 minutes = 1800 seconds Power 12,837 W, minus auxiliary power ~12 kW There were two potential ways in which input power might have been measured incorrectly: heater power, and the hydrogen, which might have burned if air had been present in the cell. The heater power was measured at 400 W. It could not have been much higher that this, because it is plugged into an ordinary wall outlet. Even if a wall socket could supply 12 kW, the heater electric wire would burn. During the test runs the weight of the hydrogen tank did not measurably decrease, so less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. 0.1 g of hydrogen is 0.1 mole, which makes 0.05 mole of water. The heat of formation of water is 286 kJ/mole, so if the hydrogen had been burned it would have produced less than 14.3 kJ.
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
This is a quote from peatbog, who is not here. I would answer his skeptical assertions as follows. You can see why I wrote my short description the way I did: The university scientists are 'used' by Rossi to provide acceptance for his in invention. Maybe one scientist is involved in the scam. During the first of the three videos the camera also turns to the invited professors and university board, naming them specifically. My contact was laughing, telling me that in Bologna the higher level management has only their positions because of family or politics, and that those 'professors' have no clue about the physics involved. So, you think it is a scam? All hypothesis -- including yours -- must be held to the same standard of rigor. So why don't you give us a thumbnail description of how this scam might work. Details are not needed; just cover the basics to explain the following: There is small black box on the table. 16 kg of water is pumped into it; hot water and then dry steam comes out. The box clearly could not hold 20 kg of water in the first place, and it was not hot when the experiment began, so the steam could not have been hidden inside it. An RH meter is used by an expert to confirm the steam is dry. Elementary, first-principle physics prove beyond question that the box must be producing 12 kW. I hope you do not dispute that! The box is connected to an ordinary wall socket, which cannot possibly provide 12 kW Less than 0.1 g of hydrogen is added to the box, so the heat cannot come from hydrogen combustion. Here is a detail you do not know, but I know for a fact. The experiment has been conducted several times over the last month, and many times before that in front of other witnesses, often for very long periods, which precludes the possibility that there is a hidden source of SO . . . how do you explain it? How can anyone conduct a scam of this nature? Where do you think the energy is coming from? I think these professors do understand the laws of physics, and I am sure they understand how much energy it takes to vaporize water. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: This is a quote from peatbog, who is not here. Peatbog has crossposted from a forum that is a spinoff of the Steorn forum. The actual author is ping1...@gmail.com if you wish to address him directly. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
What about China, India, Japan and Russia - for the first stage? Peter On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: Here is the website of the company founded by Andrea Rossi and others a few years ago. This company funded and owns the technology in question. http://www.lti-global.com/index.php However, apparently there has been some kind of falling-out with Rossi, and as you can see there is no mention of any of this on the website. It seems he is being marginalized. The company has changed focus to so-called “clean-coal”. Sad. They have no comment about Rossi, who was operating out of a different branch (New Hampshire). They have large DARPA grants, unrelated to the LENR cell, and do not want to compromise those. You may or may not agree, but it is clear to me that this drama in Bologna was hastily staged, not ready for prime-time, and will end up being a disaster for Rossi and LENR in general – when all of the details emerge. First off, he will sell not a single unit in the USA without an NRC license, which is complicated, costly and takes years. As for Europe, where the need for inexpensive energy is greater, who knows? The best thing that could happen, IMHO, is that the Italian military, their Pentagon equivalent, will take over the program and work something out with LTI as to the IP. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
Jones Beene wrote: However, apparently there has been some kind of falling-out with Rossi, and as you can see there is no mention of any of this on the website. It seems he is being marginalized. I just hope that someone else in the world knows how to make the material, in case something happens to Rossi. You may or may not agree, but it is clear to me that this drama in Bologna was hastily staged, not ready for prime-time, and will end up being a disaster for Rossi and LENR in general -- when all of the details emerge. I do not think it was hasty. They have conducted the test many times since mid-December and before that it was done many times at other locations. Details will emerge within a week. These people have thought carefully about the calorimetry and particle detection. First off, he will sell not a single unit in the USA without an NRC license, which is complicated, costly and takes years. This will not be a problem at first, because of an odd situation. When Melvin Miles was conducting cold fusion experiments in the early 1990s, some people in the Navy tried to shut him down because they said these were nuclear tests and there were safety concerns. I think they were using that as an excuse, and they wanted to close him down because they're opposed to cold fusion. However, he pointed to the New York Times and other sources and to previous statements made by Navy management to the fact that cold fusion does not exist, and he said if it does not exist it cannot be nuclear. So they had to let him continue. In other words, before the NRC licenses Rossi, they would have to first declare this is a nuclear effect. They would be loath to do that for obvious reasons. It would open the floodgates. Everyone would suddenly realize that cold fusion is real. At present, I'm sure the DoE, the NRC and other agencies will it is an experimental error or a scam, so it is none of their business. So I think it will be a number of years before any US government agency does anything to regulate this. Having said that, I agree this is a bad business plan. They should not try to sell practical devices at this stage. Sooner or later they will run into huge problems with Underwriters Laboratory and regulatory agencies. Even if they overcome these problems there is a limit to how how many machines you can manufacture and how much money you can make before the patent expires. I think they should instead try to sell thousands of small scale devices to researchers around the world. Later when manufacturing begins by major corporations they should try to cash in on the patents. I urged Rossi to consider this strategy but he politely rejected it. Rossi was more polite and coherent about his business strategy than most cold fusion researchers. He is a strange fellow in many ways, but I did not get the sense he is trying to scam someone, or hide something that he has no right to hide (such as plagiarized research). As I said before, the name of his web site and other things about him practically cry out Scam!!! yet he himself, in his communications with me, never gave me that impression. (We have only had brief exchanges, plus I have spoken with people who observed his experiments.) It is disconcerting. It is a disconnect. The big picture gives every impression of being a fake, but when you focus in, suddenly the image resolves into what looks like the real McCoy. Naturally, this gives me the willies. I find it hard to understand why a real scammer would be so careless as to make himself look like a scammer in so many ways, with a preposterous web site name and claims so seemingly overblown, they would embarrass the Correas. As a scam, it seems too over-the-top and blatant. I have not encountered a scammer who makes no effort to disguise himself as a legitimate scientist, and who does not at least try to imitate conventional academic discourse. I have talked to many researchers and inventors who seemed much less honest. I do not trust Rossi because I never trust anyone until they have been independently replicated. The tests at U. Bologna do not meet the standard of an independent replication, especially since professors were not allowed to look inside the box! Still, this kind test is more convincing than a claim made by a researcher himself without any verification by others. It is a good first step. I do not follow the work of Mills closely, but I am not aware that he has demonstrated a heat-producing device as impressive as this, or on such a large scale. Needless to say, no other cold fusion researcher has come close. They could not have scaled up this much because the devices cannot be controlled and it would be extremely dangerous to try. A large scale reaction alone does not add to scientific credibility. McKubre's calorimetry is so good that his data is as believable as this, or as any data could be. However, scaling up does
Re: [Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
Roarty, Francis X wrote: Nice job! My only question regards the Alternating-current heater used to bring the Rossi device up the working temperature. Do they specify if this is just out of the wall AC or a more elaborate HV duty factor sort of arrangement? I asked that but I have not got an answer yet. So far they said that Dr. Levi provided the instruments to monitor the heat input power. From the photo it looks like an ordinary power meter. Based on the photo, I think the part about weighing the H2 bottle is wrong. I think that detail was garbled in translation or in a misunderstanding. I will revise it after lunch. The photo shows what I think is the reservoir sitting on a weight scale. I will upload this photo and a report after lunch, as soon as the authors tell me it is okay. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
From: Jed Rothwell JB: First off, he will sell not a single unit in the USA without an NRC license, which is complicated, costly and takes years. JR: This will not be a problem at first, because of an odd situation. When Melvin Miles was conducting cold fusion experiments in the early 1990s, some people in the Navy tried to shut him down .. That story is hilarious . a catch-22 situation, if I ever heard one.. But it is not relevant to this situation. Unfortunately for Rossi, there is a huge difference between doing experiments privately, and going commercial to sell a radioactive device, even to other experimenters. Not to mention, the Navy has already changed its stance on LENR in a big way. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
Jones, I often disagree with you, but this time I have to say your suspicions ring a chord. Something doesn't smell right here. Please check me on this, because I'm not sure I've got it right. And feel free to yell at me; I realize I'm going kind of far on not much evidence. * The basic work for this process was done by other (clearly legitimate) researchers some years back, but the usual problems with reproducibility etc dogged them. * Rossi, apparently building on that earlier work, has found the Holy Grail: He can produce large quantities of high grade heat on demand with a reproducible process. /Everybody in the field wants this. Heck, almost everybody on Earth who knows anything about energy wants this./ * When answering questions about this, Rossi seems to downplay the truly earthshaking nature of this work, saying it's something that works, doesn't matter how, and he wants to sell heaters. (I _/think/_ I got that right -- from a post of Jed's but I don't have it in front of me right now.) /I have the impression that he never talks about how he's leapfrogged everybody and how fabulous this result is ... is that right? / * I don't see any acknowledgment in Rossi's comments of the serious difficulties which may arise in attempting to go straight to a salable product. /This all sounds so much like what we've seen of perpetual motion machine vendors ... they downplay the earth-shattering theoretical aspects and talk about how they're just going to sell devices./ * Nobody knows the details of the process except Rossi. * Rossi is keeping the secret ingredient secret so nobody can steal his work. Failure to reveal all has interfered with getting a patent. It has also made it impossible for anyone to attempt a replication. /If he says he's going to reveal it at the end of the patent process, that means another two years before he tells anyone what was in the box -- if I understood what I read on Vortex. And until someone has enough information to attempt a replication, there's no solid way to test his claims./ * Rossi, unlike the earlier workers, is apparently not a trained physicist or electrochemist. In fact, from what I've read here, it's not clear what his degree is in, or if he's got one. By all means yell at me if I've got this wrong, but if I've got it right, it's an important point -- outsiders can make breakthroughs, and dishonest outsiders can make breakthroughs too, but darn, it's /rare/. * Rossi has a past which includes possible con-artist work. If this isn't a huge red flag I don't know the meaning of the word red flag. It seems to me there's just one piece missing from the puzzle: Is there a financial incentive for this demo? In short, */are there investors in the background?/* If there are, then there's a financial incentive for Rossi to produce a convincing demo, and in that case I'd say /hold onto your wallet/. Now, Jed has said some interesting things about this: * They should not try to sell practical devices at this stage. Sooner or later they will run into huge problems... If Rossi really has the Grail, then Jed's comment is presumably correct, and this isn't the best approach. But if Rossi is faking it, then a black-box demo is /exactly/ what he needs to do in order to keep investment dollars coming in. * ... I did not get the sense he is trying to scam someone, or hide something ... I have talked to many researchers and inventors who seemed much less honest. Of course. If Rossi's not on the up-and-up, then one thing's sure: He's really good at fooling people. Good con artists may /seem/ totally honest. Honest people are often not as careful to /appear/ honest as dishonest ones! * I do not follow the work of Mills closely, but I am not aware that he has demonstrated a heat-producing device as impressive as this, or on such a large scale. Needless to say, no other cold fusion researcher has come close. Yes, indeed, Rossi hit a home run first crack out of the box. It's as though Edison demonstrated a 1000 watt mercury vapor floodlight as his first lightbulb. Is it too good to be true? * I cannot think of any way this result could be faked. Right -- Rossi's good. But there's a black box in the middle. As far as I know, nobody who watched the Statue of Liberty disappear a few years back caught on to how it was done. In summary, I really, really, really don't like black box demonstrations in an area where everybody is desperate for a solution. On 01/17/2011 09:55 AM, Jones Beene wrote: Here is the website of the company founded by Andrea Rossi and others a few years ago. This
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
Salut, Jed. I'm not Peatbog but this whole thing really bothers me, and I'd love to be convinced that it's real. On 01/17/2011 10:05 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: So, you think it is a scam? All hypothesis -- including yours -- must be held to the same standard of rigor. So why don't you give us a thumbnail description of how this scam might work. Details are not needed; just cover the basics to explain the following: There is small black box on the table. 16 kg of water is pumped into it; hot water and then dry steam comes out. The box clearly could not hold 20 kg of water in the first place, and it was not hot when the experiment began, so the steam could not have been hidden inside it. An RH meter is used by an expert to confirm the steam is dry. Elementary, first-principle physics prove beyond question that the box must be producing 12 kW. I hope you do not dispute that! The box is connected to an ordinary wall socket, which cannot possibly provide 12 kW Less than 0.1 g of hydrogen is added to the box, so the heat cannot come from hydrogen combustion. Here is a detail you do not know, but I know for a fact. The experiment has been conducted several times over the last month, and many times before that in front of other witnesses, often for very long periods, which precludes the possibility that there is a hidden source of SO . . . how do you explain it? How can anyone conduct a scam of this nature? Where do you think the energy is coming from? /I don't know./ But I'm not a magician, and I'm not a con artist. As I already observed, after David Copperfield disappeared the Statue of Liberty in front of a live audience, there was, as I recall, a period of total astonishment on the part of an awful lot of people. He had done the impossible, and there was /no/ possible explanation! It was only quite some time later that the trick was explained. The fact that, initially, nobody outside Copperfield's inner circle could explain it did not prove that it was real magic. It proved, rather, that somebody who was extremely clever and very devious had come up with a really remarkable way to fool the audience. In this case, we have, as I've already said, a black box with a secret ingredient known to just one person. The trick, therefore, cannot even be attempted by anyone else. The secret ingredient thus serves a very important function: It prevents independent testing of the claims. Does it also provide the catalyst which makes cold fusion work in this case? Or is it just misdirection? Time will tell. ** I also recall reading about a scam in which someone claims to have a tablet which turns water into gasoline. The demonstration consists of drawing a bucket of water straight from a spigot -- obviously totally ordinary water and a totally ordinary bucket, there is no place in the bucket to conceal anything. The scammer adds the magic tablet, lets it dissolve, and then the mark checks the contents of the bucket. It's gasoline! Wow!! In that case the trick is to drain the pipes and run a buck of gasoline into them before the demo. Need to do this in an upstairs room, of course, so the gasoline will ride on top of the water farther down in the plumbing, and maybe you need to use a small bucket. None the less it's a trick which most marks would /never/ think of. I can't think of a way Rossi could have brought the necessary energy into the room, either. But that doesn't prove it wasn't done. Only an open description of the process and honest replication can prove that. I think these professors do understand the laws of physics, and I am sure they understand how much energy it takes to vaporize water. - Jed
[Vo]:Rossi posts message out in New Energy Times: Rossi Discovery – What to Say? section
Not sure if the following tidbit has already been posted here or not, but it seemed relevant considering some of the controversy surrounding Rossi. See: http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/15/rossi-discovery-what-to-say/#comment-67 * Rossi Andrea says: January 16, 2011 at 08:20 About what I am reading in your blog I have to say that: 1- The test of Bologna has been directed from experts and they know the difference between dry steam and wet steam. The percentage of water in the steam has been measured 2- I have been cleared from the issues that have “devastated” mr Brian Ahern. If you go to http://www.ingandrearossi.com you will find all the documents: I had been accused of crimes from which I have been cleared. I am not here to talk of this past personal tragedy, but if you really want to know what happened, please go there and find the necessary documents. 3- My process has nothing to do with the process of Piantelli. The proof is that I am making operatring reactors, he is not 4- What I have presented is not a theory or a laboratory prototype waiting for the approval of anybody but the market: we are starting an industrial production of out reactors. If somebody has a technology able to compete, the competition will not be on the blogs, but on the market. In this field the time of mental masturbations is over. Now is time for facts, and facts are operating reactors of satisfied Customers. 5- I know you and I know you are serious persons: therefore I hope a correct information will start between us from now. my email: i...@leonardocorp1996.com Warm Regards, Andrea Rossi * -- Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
On 01/17/2011 10:05 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: The box is connected to an ordinary wall socket, which cannot possibly provide 12 kW European outlets typically carry 220 volts. 12 kw / 220 volts = 54 amps. It's not impossible to draw that from a simple wall plug, but it takes some preparation. While I doubt that's how it was done, unless someone inspected the plug and the cord, it can't be ruled out as being impossible, particularly if the 12 kW can be shaded a bit. If the person doing the demonstration is not honest, you cannot take /anything/ for granted. And that is why issues with Rossi's background are so important.
[Vo]:Have the Professors gone over the setup with a fine tooth comb?
This email questions whether or not the sensor described in Rossi's setup can measure the dryness of the steam and whether or not there was a double check on the steam calorimetry by using the amount of cooling water along with the change in temperature of the cooling water to calculate energy. Here are two links that describe the dry steam sensor that was listed as being used in Rossi's setup . I googled HD37AB1347 IAQ Monitor http://www.wandbinstruments.com.au/Websites/wbinstruments/Images/HD37AB1347_Ing.pdf http://www.deltaohm.com/ver2010/uk/st_airQ.php?str=HD37AB1347 I can't tell if this sensor (and its various probes) can measure the dryness of the steam. Basically the HD37AB1347 is an electronic device that can be hooked up to various probes which can measure all sorts of things including temperature, relative humidity, Carbon Dioxide and pressure. Various other probes can be connected so as to measure more things. But can it measure the dryness of steam? I'm initially skeptical until someone has a good explanation that it can. Measuring steam quality is hard. Steam quality is defined as the fraction of liquid water compared to total water in the sample (i.e. mass of liquid water divided by the mass of liquid water plus water vapor where water vapor is H2O gas). I know that it has been written that a person that is a professional in calorimetry set up Rossi's test. I'd like to know if that person did a double check on the calorimetry by measuring the temperature change of the cooling water and the mass of the cooling water and compared this to the energy calculated by the mass of water converted to steam. Or are they using room air to cool the condensing steam? If they are using room air to condense the steam then this double check method can not be done. Below is a method of measuring the dryness of steam if you have PRESSURIZED steam (Rossi is not using pressurized steam). It uses a device called a throttling calorimeter. I don't know how the simple probe listed (HD37AB1347) in Rossi's setup can measure the dryness of the steam without starting with pressurized steam (steam having a pressure at least 15 psi above atmospheric pressure) but I'm sure someone will respond with an answer. Is Rossi using a different sensor? The following link is a description of a throttling calorimeter: http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2003/378.html?page=full The equations hold for steam ranging from 30 psia to to 600 psia (where atmospheric is 14.7 psia). But the key here is you have to start with pressurized steam - which Rossi is not doing so obviously he is using another method. If you have pressurized steam at a starting pressure (PS) you can measure the steam quality using the throttling calorimeter (Note - Rossi is NOT using pressurized steam). Steam quality is defined as the fraction of liquid water compared to total water in the sample (i.e. mass liquid water divided by the mass of liquid water plus water vapor where water vapor is H2O gas). The method involves throttling down to 1 atmosphere of pressure and measuring the resulting temperature of the H2O gas. The throttling will result in all of the liquid phase turning to gas (if the sample does not ALL turn to gas then this method of measuring steam quality WILL NOT work). This method results in two pieces of data - the starting pressure (PS) before throttling and the final temperature (TE) of the H2O gas after it has been throttled. Using steam tables or simplified equations (shown below - from the web page listed) will give the steam quality. So my question is this: Could Rossi's device use ultrasonic devices that convert liquid water into tiny droplets and then condense that into an exterior bucket or a drain pipe? Tiny droplets do not go through a heat of vaporization phase change and therefore it takes less energy to create them. Rossi's setup would have to heat the tiny droplets some amount so as to fool people into thinking that it is steam. Also, are they measuring both the amperage and the voltage into the 400 Watt heater? Or just the amperage but not the voltage becaue the the voltage could be higher than is standard? I will take a guess that a scammer could safely send in 400 volts at 15 amps for 6 kW of power through a high quality but still relatively small wire (something as thick as a typical 50 foot, 15 Amp extension cord bought at Home Depot would be plenty thick for 400 volts and 15 amps - someone please correct me if I am wrong). Is there any chance of a hidden wire that is feeding in more power that we don't know about? I believe that the professors helping Rossi are competent and not scammers - but did they go over the set up with a fine tooth comb or did they stay at a distance? What do they say? What are the facts of these previous long term experimental runs that lasted hours? = The rest of this email gives
RE: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
Stephen - There are a few other details in the big picture that are not common knowledge, but should be mentioned. This is not really a breakthrough in one sense, but that all depends on how public you think the demo is/was. After all, it did show up on the internet. Does that make you believe it was really an open demo? Mills (BLP) has already demonstrated almost the same kind of device to his investors and customers only - except that it is five times more robust, if not more. He claims that radioactivity does not result. Mills uses sodium hydride as the catalyst. Otherwise it is almost identical, yet ironically he will never be able to enforce his IP against Rossi. The operative word here is nuclear. That situation with BLP is the main reason it is hard for me to get excited about Rossi's demo. I am told that at least four dozen high-level executives have witnessed the Mills demo and several have signed contracts. I have not personally seen it, but it would not surprise me if a few of them are tuned into vortex, having signed strong NDAs, and unable to comment. Essentially this Italian Job would be too little, too late comparatively, if Rossi had not tried to make it appear to be a public event. In the end, however, it is almost as secretive as what BLP has already pulled off, but it is a lot less robust than the BLP 50 kilowatt demo. Mills, in contrast cannot afford to let the public see his so-called solid fuel reactor since the dirty little secret about the radioactivity cannot be hidden, and this essentially destroys his IP. I label that detail as an outright deception. As you can tell, I am not enamored with the BLP business strategy either. Going direct to grid may not be an ideal strategy from society's perspective, but it is the way Gordon Gekko would proceed, and Mills is on that course. It's too bad that all of this breaks down into being thoroughly tainted by greed/ego driven motivations, since it stifles the chance for others to add incrementally . but hey: that is the guts of our free enterprise system, and now we can see the inevitable result of science being ingested by the MBA/CPA, where the role of the general public is to sense only what comes out the other end. From: Stephen A. Lawrence Jones, I often disagree with you, but this time I have to say your suspicions ring a chord. Something doesn't smell right here. Please check me on this, because I'm not sure I've got it right. And feel free to yell at me; I realize I'm going kind of far on not much evidence. * The basic work for this process was done by other (clearly legitimate) researchers some years back, but the usual problems with reproducibility etc dogged them. * Rossi, apparently building on that earlier work, has found the Holy Grail: He can produce large quantities of high grade heat on demand with a reproducible process. Everybody in the field wants this. Heck, almost everybody on Earth who knows anything about energy wants this. * When answering questions about this, Rossi seems to downplay the truly earthshaking nature of this work, saying it's something that works, doesn't matter how, and he wants to sell heaters. (I think I got that right -- from a post of Jed's but I don't have it in front of me right now.) I have the impression that he never talks about how he's leapfrogged everybody and how fabulous this result is ... is that right? * I don't see any acknowledgment in Rossi's comments of the serious difficulties which may arise in attempting to go straight to a salable product. This all sounds so much like what we've seen of perpetual motion machine vendors ... they downplay the earth-shattering theoretical aspects and talk about how they're just going to sell devices. * Nobody knows the details of the process except Rossi. * Rossi is keeping the secret ingredient secret so nobody can steal his work. Failure to reveal all has interfered with getting a patent. It has also made it impossible for anyone to attempt a replication. If he says he's going to reveal it at the end of the patent process, that means another two years before he tells anyone what was in the box -- if I understood what I read on Vortex. And until someone has enough information to attempt a replication, there's no solid way to test his claims. * Rossi, unlike the earlier workers, is apparently not a trained physicist or electrochemist. In fact, from what I've read here, it's not clear what his degree is in, or if he's got one. By all means yell at me if I've got this wrong, but if I've got it right, it's an important point -- outsiders can make breakthroughs, and dishonest outsiders can make breakthroughs too, but darn, it's rare. * Rossi has a past which includes possible con-artist work. If this isn't a huge red flag I don't know the meaning of the word red flag. It seems to me there's just one piece missing from the puzzle: Is there a
Re: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
On 01/17/2011 12:52 PM, Jones Beene wrote: Stephen - There are a few other details in the big picture that are not common knowledge, but should be mentioned. This is not really a breakthrough in one sense, but that all depends on how public you think the demo is/was. After all, it did show up on the internet. Does that make you believe it was really an open demo? That's a semantic question, and it depends on what you mean by open. But in any case a demo (of any sort) by a single researcher proves nothing, unless you are convinced of that researcher's honesty. 10 kW output is too large to be an error. Either it's real or it's faked. If Ed Storms demonstrated a 10 kW reactor, it would be Game Over and Our Side Won, because I'm sure he would never fake anything. If David Copperfield demonstrated a 10 kW reactor I would be convinced it was a fake, and I'd be extremely amused that I couldn't see how he'd done it.
Re: [Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
I was going to mention this before I saw Peter's message, but he beat me to it. On 01/17/2011 11:14 AM, P.J van Noorden wrote: Hello Jed, How do we know that all the water ( 8.8 l) evaporated? Was the Rossi device weighted before and after the test? The diameter of the device is about 10 cm, so there could still be a few liters inside after the experiment. This is another example of the disastrous consequences of depending on a black box test. The stuff coming out could have been dry steam, or it could have been hot air. In fact, unless the dry steam was recondensed and the water which resulted was weighed, all we know for sure is that Rossi has demonstrated a device which made some quantity of water /vanish/. The person presenting the demonstration -- Rossi -- claims he turned it into steam. What proof is there of that? With a single demonstration, in which only one researcher knows what's inside the box, unless you have rock solid confidence in that researcher, you should take /nothing/ for granted. Once again, this is also probably not the trick. In fact, I don't know what the trick might be; chances are, if there's a trick, it's something far cleverer than any idea we'll come up with here. But without solid evidence to the contrary, there is no way to prove that there is no trick. Without full disclosure and independent replication there is no solid evidence. An easy way to measure the heat of this system more accurately would have been to increase the waterflow to e.g 100 ml /sec ( about 20 times higher as the flow that was used). If 12 kW was produced one would have measured a temperature increase of 30 degrees constantly, with a power input of only 700-800W. This would have been a very practical system because normally with 700-800 W you can not have a shower with hot water. You need about 10 kW. If Rossi had demonstrated that he could heat such an amount of water continously for an hour he could have convinced almost anybody. Why didn`t he do that? Peter - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Cc: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 3:20 PM Subject: [Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011 Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011 by Jed Rothwell The experiment has been underway at U. Bologna since mid-December 2010. It has been done several times. Several professors with expertise in related subjects such as calorimetry are involved. LIST OF MAIN EQUIPMENT IN EXPERIMENT A hydrogen tank mounted on a weight scale which is accurate to 0.1 g 10 liter tank reservoir, which is refilled as needed during the run Displacement pump Tube from pump to Rossi device (The Rossi device is known as an ECat) Outlet tube from the Rossi device, which emits hot water or steam Thermocouples in the reservoir, ambient air and the outlet tube An HD37AB1347 IAQ Monitor (Delta Ohm) to measure the relative humidity of the steam. This is to confirm that it is dry steam; that is, steam only, with no water droplets. Alternating-current heater used to bring the Rossi device up the working temperature METHOD The reservoir water temperature is measured at 13°C, ambient air at 23°C. The heater is set to about 1000 W to heat up the Rossi device. Hydrogen is admitted to the Rossi device. The displacement pump is turned on, injecting water into the Rossi device at 292 ml/min. The water comes out as warm water at first, then as a mixture of steam and water, and finally after about 30 minutes, as dry steam. This is confirmed with the relative humidity meter. As the device heats up, heater power is reduced to around 400 W. RESULTS The test run on January 14 lasted for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes the outlet flow became dry steam. The enthalpy during this last 30 minutes can be computed very simply, based on the heat capacity of water (4.2 kJ/kgK) and heat of vaporization of water (2260 kJ/kg): Mass of water 8.8 kg Temperature change 87°C Energy to bring water to 100°C: 87°C*4.2*8.8 kg = 3,216 kJ Energy to vaporize 10 kg of water: 2260*8.8 = 19,888 kJ Total: 23,107 kJ Duration 30 minutes = 1800 seconds Power 12,837 W, minus auxiliary power ~12 kW There were two potential ways in which input power might have been measured incorrectly: heater power, and the hydrogen, which might have burned if air had been present in the cell. The heater power was measured at 400 W. It could not have been much higher that this, because it is plugged into an ordinary wall outlet. Even if a wall socket could supply 12 kW, the heater electric wire would burn. During the test runs the weight of the hydrogen tank did not measurably decrease, so less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. 0.1 g of hydrogen is 0.1 mole, which makes 0.05 mole of water. The heat of
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: It's not impossible to draw that from a simple wall plug, but it takes some preparation. While I doubt that's how it was done, unless someone inspected the plug and the cord, it can't be ruled out as being impossible, particularly if the 12 kW can be shaded a bit. Shading a bit would not work. You have to shade it by a factor of 10. Frankly, that's impossible. If the person doing the demonstration is not honest, you cannot take /anything/ for granted. And that is why issues with Rossi's background are so important. If all of the people doing the demonstration are dishonest then you cannot take anything for granted. If Rossi alone is a crook that would make no difference. The calorimetry was designed by the others and the instruments are their property. Rossi cannot fool a thermocouple or a power meter. To engineer the 54 A wall socket, Rossi would have to go to the lab secretly and rewire the place, and then substitute a superconducting wire for the heater power supplies so that the wire does not burn up, and then he would have to replace professors power meter with one that looks exactly identical but gives the wrong values. That sort of thing might happen in a pulp thriller or James Bond movie, but not in real life. This kind of scenario falls in the rats drinking water in Mizuno's lab category. Regarding the quality of the steam, if it is dry that makes the computation simple. If it is wet that reduces the excess enthalpy somewhat, but it does not eliminate it. Assuming the heater is at 400 W, that's 400 W * 60 s = 24,000 J/min, or 5,714 calories. The flow rate is 292 ml/min so the water temperature would rise 20°C, to 33°C. Not even close to boiling, wet or dry. The outlet temperature was measured at 101°C, by the way. Let me add that fact to the description in the News section . . . I have encountered genuine energy scams and incompetent researchers. It is obvious they are wrong. They do not begin to fool me, and it is inconceivable they would full experienced professors who have been doing calorimetry and electrical measurements for 50 years. As I said, when people who propose the hypothesis that this might be a scam or a trick, I think it is incumbent upon them to explain how this trick might work. All hypothesis must be rigorously supported. This is a simple physics experiment, albeit one with a black box in the middle. There are some complicated cold fusion experiments with iffy results that might be faked, or at least shaded. Some are shaded, by wishful thinking. This is not among them. The laws of physics are well defined in this case. I do not see how it could be something like a staged magic trick. Such tricks fool the eye, in any case. They never fool instruments. Penn and Teller cannot change the values displayed by a power meter. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
Remain detached. I'm not convinced either way. harry From: Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Mon, January 17, 2011 12:18:29 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era? Salut, Jed. I'm not Peatbog but this whole thing really bothers me, and I'd love to be convinced that it's real. On 01/17/2011 10:05 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
[Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
Check List for LENR Validation Experiments David J. Nagel The George Washington University 17 January 2011 Focardi and Rossi demonstrated a boiler device on 14 January 2011, which converted water at about 13 C to steam at 101 C. It was said to involve nuclear reactions between nickel built into the device and input hydrogen gas. An electrical heater in the device consumed about 1000W at startup. Later, once the reactions started and provided heat, the input power was reduced to about 400 W. Consumption of hydrogen gas was essentially negligible. Given (a) the input water flow of about 150 grams each half minute and (b) the measurements of the input and output temperatures, plus (c) a measurement that the steam was dry, the device delivered about 10 kW of thermal energy to the water. That would indicate power and energy gains of more than 10. Although the Focardi-Rossi test has not been thoroughly documented yet, it is already clear how such performance validation tests should be done. The following is a list of needed actions for validation tests: 1. The tests should be designed, conducted and analyzed so rigorously that they will withstand all anticipated questions and criticisms. 2. Persons experienced in the types of measurements and instrumentation employed should participate in all three phases of the tests. 3. Redundant, well-calibrated sensors and systems will be employed to measure all streams of energy and matter entering into and coming from the device being tested. 4. Signal-to-noise ratios of ten or more are required for all measurements to exclude the possibility of cumulative errors leading to a wrong conclusions. 5. The test should be repeated at least three times, with each conducted for a continuous period of sufficient duration to strongly exclude the possibility of the measured exit energy being from chemicals stored within the device and then releasing energy. 6. A thorough statistical data analysis should be conducted in order to take the error bars associated with each measurement and compute an overall uncertainty in the energy gain. 7. The tests should be fully documented in a report containing all the key aspects of tests, including full calibration data and all raw data, and the report should be publicly available soon after the tests. 8. A red team of persons experienced in related laboratory measurements should be used to critique the design and execution of the tests, and the analysis of the measured results. Once Focardi and Rossi report the details of what they did and found during the demonstration, their report should be compared with this list of desirable actions above to identify any shortfalls. It is likely, but uncertain, that item #5 was not satisfied. Whatever the result of the comparison, additional complete tests should be planned, executed and reported. This assertion is not to imply that the tests on 14 January 2011 were entirely unsatisfactory, or conclusions based on them were wrong.
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
On 01/17/2011 02:04 PM, Harry Veeder wrote: Remain detached. I'm not convinced either way. Neither am I, Harry. I'm obviously leaning /against/ at this point but I know perfectly well I'm no expert. I'm still reading the discussion with deep interest. I've slung some mud, it's true, but largely in the hope that my points would be answered. (The unfortunate thing is, if this is not on the up-and-up, then it's in the world of con games, and nobody on this list is an expert at them. Furthermore, I would guess that nobody at Bologna is an expert on con games. Thus, appeal-to-authority doesn't work here.) harry *From:* Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com *To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com *Sent:* Mon, January 17, 2011 12:18:29 PM *Subject:* Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era? Salut, Jed. I'm not Peatbog but this whole thing really bothers me, and I'd love to be convinced that it's real. On 01/17/2011 10:05 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
On your following list, it appears that item #3 may not have been satisfied. Unless the steam was collected, condensed, and weighed, one significant matter stream was not properly accounted for. The device itself should also be weighed, before and after, in order to further assure that all streams are being accounted for (but that, by itself, still won't guarantee all the missing water came out as steam). On 01/17/2011 02:15 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments David J. Nagel The George Washington University 17 January 2011 Focardi and Rossi demonstrated a boiler device on 14 January 2011, which converted water at about 13 C to steam at 101 C. It was said to involve nuclear reactions between nickel built into the device and input hydrogen gas. An electrical heater in the device consumed about 1000W at startup. Later, once the reactions started and provided heat, the input power was reduced to about 400 W. Consumption of hydrogen gas was essentially negligible. Given (a) the input water flow of about 150 grams each half minute and (b) the measurements of the input and output temperatures, plus (c) a measurement that the steam was dry, the device delivered about 10 kW of thermal energy to the water. That would indicate power and energy gains of more than 10. Although the Focardi-Rossi test has not been thoroughly documented yet, it is already clear how such performance validation tests should be done. The following is a list of needed actions for validation tests: 1. The tests should be designed, conducted and analyzed so rigorously that they will withstand all anticipated questions and criticisms. 2. Persons experienced in the types of measurements and instrumentation employed should participate in all three phases of the tests. 3. Redundant, well-calibrated sensors and systems will be employed to measure all streams of energy and matter entering into and coming from the device being tested. 4. Signal-to-noise ratios of ten or more are required for all measurements to exclude the possibility of cumulative errors leading to a wrong conclusions. 5. The test should be repeated at least three times, with each conducted for a continuous period of sufficient duration to strongly exclude the possibility of the measured exit energy being from chemicals stored within the device and then releasing energy. 6. A thorough statistical data analysis should be conducted in order to take the error bars associated with each measurement and compute an overall uncertainty in the energy gain. 7. The tests should be fully documented in a report containing all the key aspects of tests, including full calibration data and all raw data, and the report should be publicly available soon after the tests. 8. A red team of persons experienced in related laboratory measurements should be used to critique the design and execution of the tests, and the analysis of the measured results. Once Focardi and Rossi report the details of what they did and found during the demonstration, their report should be compared with this list of desirable actions above to identify any shortfalls. It is likely, but uncertain, that item #5 was not satisfied. Whatever the result of the comparison, additional complete tests should be planned, executed and reported. This assertion is not to imply that the tests on 14 January 2011 were entirely unsatisfactory, or conclusions based on them were wrong.
Re: [Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: How do we know that all the water ( 8.8 l) evaporated? That's what the RH meter is for. (May have answered already.) This is another example of the disastrous consequences of depending on a black box test. The stuff coming out could have been dry steam, or it could have been hot air. No, for two reasons: 1. You can tell the difference between steam and hot air. 2. The volume of the machine is much smaller than the 18 liters of water injected into it over the course of an hour. There is no place inside it to hide the water. The fact that it is a black box does not reduce the certainty of this particular factor in any way. In fact, unless the dry steam was recondensed and the water which resulted was weighed, all we know for sure is that Rossi has demonstrated a device which made some quantity of water /vanish/. That would be even more remarkable than cold fusion. Vanish were? How? Into a 5th dimension? The person presenting the demonstration -- Rossi -- claims he turned it into steam. What proof is there of that? The profs who designed the experiment made sure there was proof. They -- not Rossi -- confirmed it was steam. With a single demonstration, in which only one researcher knows what's inside the box, unless you have rock solid confidence in that researcher, you should take /nothing/ for granted. Maybe, but you should also not assume that someone can magically make 18 liters of water vanish into thin air. Once again, this is also probably not the trick. In fact, I don't know what the trick might be; chances are, if there's a trick, it's something far cleverer than any idea we'll come up with here. The only people who could engineer a trick would be the profs who designed the experiment. They would do this with something like a secret hose from the device that runs under the table, through the table leg and through the floor, with a secret hose bringing in steam. I can think of a dozen ways to fake this. If this were a stage trick or a movie I could easily come up with ways to make it look real. HOWEVER, the key point is, the professors who did this experiment have no motivation to set up that kind of stage trick, and Rossi himself is physically incapable of doing it. Do you think they let him into the lab for a week with a team of special effects experts, so they could drill holes in the table and floor for tubes, or so that they could change the electric sockets? As long as you trust the people who designed, implemented and operated the experiment, the black box in the middle is irrelevant. The whole point of an experiment is to reveal the nature of a sample (or black box if you like). Even if you know exactly how the sample works -- for example, if it is a Nicad battery attached to a resistor -- your experiment should treat it as a black box that might yield any answer, even an endothermic reaction. You wouldn't want to make a calorimeter that automatically rejects or hides an endothermic result, even if you have no expectation you will see one. A experiment that requires you understand what the test sample is and what it is doing is not, strictly speaking, an experiment at all. All cold fusion experiments are block box tests. No one knows how the effect works, or in detail what causes it. This particular test happens to be a single-blind test, where one person knows the content of the device and the others do not. Actually, this is a more reliable way to confirm heat than a test where everyone knows the sample content. This reduces bias, or wishful thinking. The single-blind tests for helium conducted by labs in cooperation with Melvin Miles were more convincing precisely because the people testing the samples had no idea of the sample history, and no preconceived notions about what they might find, or what they were supposed to find. Miles sent them blank samples such a laboratory air, to help eliminate bias. - Jed
[Vo]:Leonardo Corp Appears Involved
From Sterling Allan's site: http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/ excerpt: Licensees are mentioned, with contracts in the USA and in Europe. Mass production should escalate in 2-3 years. Presently Rossi says they are manufacturing a 1 megawatt plant composed of 125 modules. In his forum, Rossi wrote: We have passed already the phase to convince somebody. We are arrived to a product that is ready for the market. Our judge is the market. In this field the phase of the competition in the field of theories, hypothesis, conjectures etc etc is over. The competition is in the market. If somebody has a valid technology, he has not to convince people by chattering, he has to make a reactor that work and go to sell it, as we are doing. Inquiries about purchasing are to be directed to i...@leonardocorp1996.com end excerpt Would this change anyone's opinion? T
Re: [Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
On 01/17/2011 02:39 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: How do we know that all the water ( 8.8 l) evaporated? That's what the RH meter is for. (May have answered already.) Mmmm? I didn't see that mentioned, and I didn't realize that's what it was doing. In fact I thought that was being used as part of the verification that it was dry steam. If it's pure steam, presumably the RH is 100% -- right? And was the flow rate of the /output/ measured, and integrated to obtain a total volume? I don't recall that being mentioned. This is another example of the disastrous consequences of depending on a black box test. The stuff coming out could have been dry steam, or it could have been hot air. No, for two reasons: 1. You can tell the difference between steam and hot air. You mean one can tell It was not clear to me that the check to see that it really was steam was being done. You are apparently asserting it was, indeed, done; that's good! 2. The volume of the machine is much smaller than the 18 liters of water injected into it over the course of an hour. There is no place inside it to hide the water. The fact that it is a black box does not reduce the certainty of this particular factor in any way. In fact, unless the dry steam was recondensed and the water which resulted was weighed, all we know for sure is that Rossi has demonstrated a device which made some quantity of water /vanish/. That would be even more remarkable than cold fusion. Vanish were? How? Into a 5th dimension? Same place the Statue of Liberty went. Heck, Jed, you've surely seen stage magicians -- making things vanish is an illusionist's stock in trade. Just because I can't tell you where it might have gone doesn't mean it didn't go somewhere other than where we're told it went. Trying to prove otherwise is trying to prove a negative. Again, the issue is trust. If we haven't got it, it's a problem. And as I've observed ad nauseum, Rossi's secret ingredient makes it impossible for anyone to replicate this, which makes it impossible to check the results. And that would absolutely serve his purpose if he really is cheating. The person presenting the demonstration -- Rossi -- claims he turned it into steam. What proof is there of that? The profs who designed the experiment made sure there was proof. They -- not Rossi -- confirmed it was steam. I hope so. Note well: If they trust Rossi, then there would be no /a priori/ reason for us to assume they'd check to be sure the water that went in all came back out. They'd want to know it was /dry/ steam, of course, but that's just guarding against a /mistake/ on Rossi's part, not intentional deception. So, it's good to hear that they verified it really was steam, /and/ that they measured the total volume which came out -- right? With a single demonstration, in which only one researcher knows what's inside the box, unless you have rock solid confidence in that researcher, you should take /nothing/ for granted. Maybe, but you should also not assume that someone can magically make 18 liters of water vanish into thin air. Once again, this is also probably not the trick. In fact, I don't know what the trick might be; chances are, if there's a trick, it's something far cleverer than any idea we'll come up with here. The only people who could engineer a trick would be the profs who designed the experiment. They would do this with something like a secret hose from the device that runs under the table, through the table leg and through the floor, with a secret hose bringing in steam. I can think of a dozen ways to fake this. If this were a stage trick or a movie I could easily come up with ways to make it look real. HOWEVER, the key point is, the professors who did this experiment have no motivation to set up that kind of stage trick, and Rossi himself is physically incapable of doing it. Do you think they let him into the lab for a week with a team of special effects experts, so they could drill holes in the table and floor for tubes, or so that they could change the electric sockets? /I have no idea what they allowed him to do/. Do you know, for sure, whether he was allowed to set things up in the lab, by himself, ahead of time? (Perhaps to assure that the reactor would work correctly, or something was properly adjusted, or to add the secret ingredient?) I sure don't, and as I've also said, repeatedly, if there is a player involved whom you don't fully trust, you should /assume nothing/. As long as you trust the people who designed, implemented and operated the experiment, the black box in the middle is irrelevant. That is true /if/ the creator of the black box isn't the one running the experiment. But that's not the case here, unless I'm seriously mistaken. Others worked on the design, but Rossi ran the show -- right? The whole point of an experiment is to reveal the nature of a sample
Re: [Vo]:Leonardo Corp Appears Involved
On 01/17/2011 02:42 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: From Sterling Allan's site: http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/ excerpt: Licensees are mentioned, with contracts in the USA and in Europe. Mass production should escalate in 2-3 years. Presently Rossi says they are manufacturing a 1 megawatt plant composed of 125 modules. In his forum, Rossi wrote: We have passed already the phase to convince somebody. We are arrived to a product that is ready for the market. Our judge is the market. In this field the phase of the competition in the field of theories, hypothesis, conjectures etc etc is over. The competition is in the market. If somebody has a valid technology, he has not to convince people by chattering, he has to make a reactor that work and go to sell it, as we are doing. Inquiries about purchasing are to be directed to i...@leonardocorp1996.com end excerpt Would this change anyone's opinion? Yeah -- sure would. It indicates /for sure/ there's somebody investing in this. It is, of course, what I was expecting: The piece missing was the financial incentive to stage a demo. And there it is. Licensees and Inquiries about purchasing mean money's involved, and probably changing hands right now, today, well in advance of the expected ship date for products. All this means Rossi's got a really big incentive to be staging a working demonstration. And, if the thing doesn't really work, he's got an even bigger incentive to assure that nobody can double check his results -- and refusal to reveal the secret ingredient does that very neatly. Two to three years to market, with no chance of embarrassing replication failures any time soon, means there's lots of time to come up with an exit strategy. T
Re: [Vo]:Brief Description of the Calorimetry in the Rossi Experiment at U. Bologna, January 14, 2011
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: How do we know that all the water ( 8.8 l) evaporated? That's what the RH meter is for. (May have answered already.) This is another example of the disastrous consequences of depending on a black box test. The stuff coming out could have been dry steam, or it could have been hot air. No, for two reasons: 1. You can tell the difference between steam and hot air. 2. The volume of the machine is much smaller than the 18 liters of water injected into it over the course of an hour. There is no place inside it to hide the water. The fact that it is a black box does not reduce the certainty of this particular factor in any way. A relative humidity sensor does not measure the dryness of the steam. Here are links to ultrasonic foggers - they make tiny water droplets that look like steam. These droplets are liquid water - these are not using glycol, mineral oil or other fluids. It is water being exposed to a 1.6 MHz piezoelectric vibrating surface. They don't go through a phase change from liquid to gas. So if the droplets condense in a bucket or a drain pipe then the energy transported is a tiny fraction of boiling water. If these tiny droplets were heated to 80 C or 100 C then someone feeling them would think they were being exposed to pure vaporized (gaseous) water. from the website: The fog units of an ultrasonic fogger use a piezoelectric transducer that has a resonating frequency of around 1.6MHz. These high energy vibrations cause the water to turn into a fog-like cloud, thus generating fog. These foggers use ultrasonic waves to produce fog that consists of water particles of the size of less than 5 microns. This fog can penetrate to the minutest of spaces, thus eliminating chances of any free water. The ultrasonic fogger circuit is not very difficult to design. These foggers have very few moving parts and require no special temperature and pressure conditions. This kind of design and working of ultrasonic foggers makes them a low-maintenance and economical appliance. Moreover, they are easy to install and use. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ultrasonic-fogger-how-does-it-work.html http://www.mainlandmart.com/foggers.html here is a link to the glycol or mineral oil type foggers - which is not based on ultrasonics but on heating and cooling (and obviously not what Rossi would be using) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_machine
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: I'm still reading the discussion with deep interest. I've slung some mud, it's true, but largely in the hope that my points would be answered. (The unfortunate thing is, if this is not on the up-and-up, then it's in the world of con games, and nobody on this list is an expert at them. Furthermore, I would guess that nobody at Bologna is an expert on con games. I think you should propose a method by which a con game would be physically possible without the cooperation of the people who designed the calorimetry, brought the instruments, and operated them. Imagine, if you will, that an Interstellar alien gives you a small indestructible box that cannot be opened, and tells you only that if you input 400 W, it will produce 12 kW. Even though you cannot see inside it, and you have no idea how it works, please describe it might be a con if you yourself test it, or if a group of distinguished expert professors test it. In what sense could it be wrong? A calorimeter by its very nature knows nothing about the source of the energy. All calorimeters are inherently black box testing machines. They see all heat the same way, be it nuclear, chemical or mechanical friction. They do not NOT see heat that is not really there, and there is no way you can fool one. There are no hidden inputs or outputs to this device. It is small enough and portable enough to confirm that. The only inputs are electricity, hydrogen gas, and water, and the only output is hot water which turns to steam. I do not think it is physically possible for this to be con. If you do, please describe the general nature of this con. If you cannot suggest any plausible con, then your assertion is like saying: I think it is magic. That is to say, your assertion cannot be tested or falsified. If an invisible, undetectable, unspecified con is possible, any experiment might be one. As I said, anyone could think of ways to make a stage magician trick, or a movie special effect version. That's trivial. But that would be instantly apparent to the professors. They would see an extra hose or a heavy-duty electric wire. You cannot hide such things from people who are right there, looking at and arranging the equipment (which they did), when those people understand the nature of electricity, water, steam, physics and chemistry. There is no conceivable way you can make them think that hot air is steam. I assume you are not asserting that the professors are in cahoots with Rossi. If they are, all bets are off. By the way, a wire capable of conducting 12 kW is MUCH thicker and heavier than an ordinary 1.5 kW wall socket wire. See the wires on electric water heaters or clothes driers. If you tried to draw 12 kW with an ordinary wire it would burn up instantly. I am not necessarily ready to believe this claim. I think Nagel's criteria should be applied. But I am even less ready to reject it on the basis that calorimetry might not work for unspecified reasons which no one can define, test, or falsify. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Leonardo Corp Appears Involved
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Licensees and Inquiries about purchasing mean money's involved, and probably changing hands right now, today, well in advance of the expected ship date for products. Well, further down in the article, Rossi apparently claims shipment of limited quantities in 2 to 3 months. But, then again, Mills would have power plants on line if he made his schedules. T
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
I wrote: I think you should propose a method by which a con game would be physically possible without the cooperation of the people who designed the calorimetry, brought the instruments, and operated them. As a practical matter, you cannot do that until you have had time to study the technical details of the experiment. You have to look at the photos and configuration. I hope to upload these soon. Or at least a photo. I am having the usual problems with files generated on Macs and PCs in Europe and the U.S. For now I am only saying there is no evidence for a con and on the face of it, a con is physically impossible. So you are premature suggesting that hypothesis. You have to have a defensible reason for any hypothesis. The assertion that the guy may be crook is not a scientifically defensible argument, since it cannot be tested or shown to have any plausible connection. Even if Rossi was a world famous magician or Macavity the mystery cat, the Hidden Paw, he would have no ability to change the laws of physics or prevent calorimeters from working. Magicians tricks ALWAYS interfere with human perception, with sleight of hand, hidden devices and the like. They never interfere with instrument readings. I do not think there are any examples in the history of 20th or 21st century experimental science in which a con-man was able to fool experimentalists. In the 19th century I recall there was a perpetual motion scam that turned out to be driven with air hoses, attached to the equipment tables. The modern equivalent would be hidden electric wires or induction. Very easy to arrange, but impossible to hide from an expert who physically present looking at the equipment and attaching thermocouples and pumps to it. I am pretty sure you cannot use hidden induction to power something at 12 kW! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
OK, Jed, you've made a lot of good points. I will admit that you've made a very good case, and shut up about this. With ... er ... just one or two last comments: On 01/17/2011 04:00 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: I'm still reading the discussion with deep interest. I've slung some mud, it's true, but largely in the hope that my points would be answered. (The unfortunate thing is, if this is not on the up-and-up, then it's in the world of con games, and nobody on this list is an expert at them. Furthermore, I would guess that nobody at Bologna is an expert on con games. I think you should propose a method by which a con game would be physically possible without the cooperation of the people who designed the calorimetry, brought the instruments, and operated them. Imagine, if you will, that an Interstellar alien gives you a small indestructible box that cannot be opened, and tells you only that if you input 400 W, it will produce 12 kW. Even though you cannot see inside it, and you have no idea how it works, please describe it might be a con if you yourself test it, or if a group of distinguished expert professors test it. In what sense could it be wrong? A calorimeter by its very nature knows nothing about the source of the energy. All calorimeters are inherently black box testing machines. They see all heat the same way, be it nuclear, chemical or mechanical friction. They do not NOT see heat that is not really there, and there is no way you can fool one. There are no hidden inputs or outputs to this device. It is small enough and portable enough to confirm that. The only inputs are electricity, hydrogen gas, and water, and the only output is hot water which turns to steam. I do not think it is physically possible for this to be con. If you do, please describe the general nature of this con. If you cannot suggest any plausible con, then your assertion is like saying: I think it is magic. That is to say, your assertion cannot be tested or falsified. If an invisible, undetectable, unspecified con is possible, any experiment might be one. As I said, anyone could think of ways to make a stage magician trick, or a movie special effect version. That's trivial. But that would be instantly apparent to the professors. They would see an extra hose or a heavy-duty electric wire. You cannot hide such things from people who are right there, looking at and arranging the equipment (which they did), when those people understand the nature of electricity, water, steam, physics and chemistry. There is no conceivable way you can make them think that hot air is steam. I assume you are not asserting that the professors are in cahoots with Rossi. If they are, all bets are off. By the way, a wire capable of conducting 12 kW is MUCH thicker and heavier than an ordinary 1.5 kW wall socket wire. See the wires on electric water heaters or clothes driers. If you tried to draw 12 kW with an ordinary wire it would burn up instantly. Right, dissipated power = I^2 * R. You can draw 30 amps from a 15 amp rated wire without an instant disaster, but (50/30)^2 = 2.8 times the heating effect of the 30 amp overload, or about 11 times the rated carrying capacity of the wires, and that's going to melt down pretty quickly. In any case input power was measured, so playing games with that is not a viable option. I am not necessarily ready to believe this claim. I think Nagel's criteria should be applied. But I am even less ready to reject it on the basis that calorimetry might not work for unspecified reasons which no one can define, test, or falsify. OK, but if you're /not/ ready to accept the claim, what reason could you cite for rejecting it? It seems to me there are only three possibilities here. 1. It's all true. 2. Rossi is fooling the scientists who are on site and running the show. This, I think you have said, is not plausible. 3. They're all in cahoots. This seems pretty implausible, even to me. So, what other possibility is there? The signal is too big for the result to be a mistake. Rejecting it on account of criterion #5 -- saying it hasn't been replicated or run long enough to rule out magic chemicals inside the box -- seems pretty thin. It sounds a lot like saying something was wrong with the demo but I don't know what. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
On 01/17/2011 04:36 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: I do not think there are any examples in the history of 20th or 21st century experimental science in which a con-man was able to fool experimentalists. Uri Geller, 1975, SRI.
Re: [Vo]:Rossi Responds
In reply to Roarty, Francis X's message of Mon, 17 Jan 2011 08:02:40 -0500: Hi, [snip] Andrea Rossi January 15th, 2011 at 5:05 AM Dear Mr Daniel Zavela: Watts in: 400 wh/h Watts out: 15,000 wh/h [snip] Watts of heat are not expressed in wh/h (where presumably the second h stands for hour), just wh. Or is this Watthours/hour? Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
In reply to Jones Beene's message of Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:55:36 -0800: Hi, [snip] First off, he will sell not a single unit in the USA without an NRC license, which is complicated, costly and takes years. [snip] BTW note that were it not for the Cu then the whole shebang would be quite consistent with pure Hydrino creation, and no (or few) nuclear reactions. That would certainly explain the apparent lack of ionizing radiation, and also the thermal output. It might however mean that they would need to pay a royalty to Mills. ;) I'm also missing the Ni-59 which should be the primary product of the fusion reaction they propose. In the Focardi-Rossi paper, they suggest a whole chain of fusion reactions which eventually converts the Ni isotopes into Cu-63, however they fail to mention that the Cu-59 initially created (which soon decays to Ni-59) would be in such small amounts that it would be lost amongst the ever present Ni, and have almost no chance of reacting until the device were quite old and a fair percentage of the original Ni had reacted. IOW there should be trace amounts of Ni-59, in the after material that they had tested, and they should have made a big deal of this because Ni-59 doesn't occur in nature, so it would have been indisputable proof of a nuclear reaction. However it could also be confused with Co-59 (stable) which might have been present as a contaminant. What's really needed is a clear before and after assessment, to allow comparison. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
[Vo]:Rossi reactor
[The Rossi reactor] Bologna, January 14, 2011 by Jed Rothwell The experiment has been underway at U. Bologna since mid-December 2010. It has been done several times. Several professors with expertise in related subjects such as calorimetry are involved. LIST OF MAIN EQUIPMENT IN EXPERIMENT A hydrogen tank mounted on a weight scale which is accurate to 0.1 g 10 liter tank reservoir, which is refilled as needed during the run Displacement pump Tube from pump to Rossi device (The Rossi device is known as an ECat) Outlet tube from the Rossi device, which emits hot water or steam Thermocouples in the reservoir, ambient air and the outlet tube An HD37AB1347 IAQ Monitor (Delta Ohm) to measure the relative humidity of the steam. This is to confirm that it is dry steam; that is, steam only, with no water droplets. Alternating-current heater used to bring the Rossi device up the working temperature METHOD The reservoir water temperature is measured at 13°C, ambient air at 23°C. The heater is set to about 1000 W to heat up the Rossi device. Hydrogen is admitted to the Rossi device. The displacement pump is turned on, injecting water into the Rossi device at 292 ml/min. The water comes out as warm water at first, then as a mixture of steam and water, and finally after about 30 minutes, as dry steam. This is confirmed with the relative humidity meter. As the device heats up, heater power is reduced to around 400 W. RESULTS The test run on January 14 lasted for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes the outlet flow became dry steam. The enthalpy during this last 30 minutes can be computed very simply, based on the heat capacity of water (4.2 kJ/kgK) and heat of vaporization of water (2260 kJ/kg): Mass of water 8.8 kg Temperature change 87°C Energy to bring water to 100°C: 87°C*4.2*8.8 kg = 3,216 kJ Energy to vaporize 10 kg of water: 2260*8.8 = 19,888 kJ Total: 23,107 kJ Duration 30 minutes = 1800 seconds Power 12,837 W, minus auxiliary power ~12 kW There were two potential ways in which input power might have been measured incorrectly: heater power, and the hydrogen, which might have burned if air had been present in the cell. The heater power was measured at 400 W. It could not have been much higher that this, because it is plugged into an ordinary wall outlet. Even if a wall socket could supply 12 kW, the heater electric wire would burn. During the test runs the weight of the hydrogen tank did not measurably decrease, so less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. 0.1 g of hydrogen is 0.1 mole, which makes 0.05 mole of water. The heat of formation of water is 286 kJ/mole, so if the hydrogen had been burned it would have produced less than 14.3 kJ. I uploaded that to the News section. I was tempted to add: Hey, Richard Garwin: here's your cuppa tea, big guy! I will soon upload a more detailed description by Mike Melich, and I hope I can add Prof. Levi's report. I think it is all but certain these results are real. They cannot be a mistake, and fraud seems unlikely to me. - Jed - Jones wrote: Here is the website of the company founded by Andrea Rossi and others a few years ago. This company funded and owns the technology in question. http://www.lti-global.com/index.php However, apparently there has been some kind of falling-out with Rossi, and as you can see there is no mention of any of this on the website. It seems he is being marginalized. The company has changed focus to so-called clean-coal. Sad. They have no comment about Rossi, who was operating out of a different branch (New Hampshire). They have large DARPA grants, unrelated to the LENR cell, and do not want to compromise those. You may or may not agree, but it is clear to me that this drama in Bologna was hastily staged, not ready for prime-time, and will end up being a disaster for Rossi and LENR in general - when all of the details emerge. First off, he will sell not a single unit in the USA without an NRC license, which is complicated, costly and takes years. As for Europe, where the need for inexpensive energy is greater, who knows? The best thing that could happen, IMHO, is that the Italian military, their Pentagon equivalent, will take over the program and work something out with LTI as to the IP. Jones --- Jed wrote: I revised the H2 flow measurement part already. The first report I will upload today is by Melich. This week or next we should have one by Prof. Levi. These people are busy, which is why it took so long for them to give my report the once-over, and even they overlooked the part about weighing the H2 bottle. That is what they told me -- I have the handwritten notes, but it is clearly wrong. The part about the electric wires I observed myself, from the video and photos. It is just a reality check observation. I would like to know more about how the steam was condensed. They must have flushed it out of the room, down a drain. Otherwise they would end up with a very hot large
RE: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
-Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell Nagel: Given the input water flow of about 150 grams each half minute ... OK, here is one more suspicious detail to check on, for anyone inclined - the flow rate. This assumption of 300g/min above could be way off. According to an excellent experimentalist, all the water being circulated through the reactor is being pumped by the yellow pump shown in the second section. That yellow pump is made by LMI and is a model LMI-AA-xxx. They have a website, and specify the maximum and minimum pumping capacities for all AA models. The minimum capacity is based on 1 cycle/minute, and Focardi's pump was operating at approx 1 cycle/sec, so an upper limit can be placed on the volume of water pumped. Using LMI's highest volume AA model pump at 1 cycle/sec yields .9 liter/hour, or approx 900 grams/hour. This far less than claimed. From there it is easy to determine the amount of energy necessary to heat and boil 900 grams of water. The result is 328 Kj/hr to heat (Delta t = 87 C) and 2031 Kj/hr to boil. Dividing the sum of 328+2013 by 3600 yields the power in watts or about 656W. This number is ~10% or Focardi's energy claim. Could someone please pass this on to whoever is looking into this kind of discrepancy. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
Jones Beene wrote: Nagel:Given the input water flow of about 150 grams each half minute... OK,here is one moresuspiciousdetail to check on, for anyone inclined- the flow rate.This assumptionof 300g/minabove could beway off. Nope. As you will see in the photos, if I can manage to untangle them and upload them, the reservoir is sitting on a weight scale. (It wasn't the H2 bottle, it was the water reservoir.) You can monitor the decrease in water. Also, it is not hard to confirm that 18 liters per hour is being pumped through. You can't miss it; you have to replenish the reservoir, which is a large transparent plastic box. This is a lot like Mizuno seeing that his plastic bucket is empty. You'll see -- as soon as I can Bring to Heel the Demons of Microsoft and Adobe. - Jed
[Vo]:Brief Technical Description uploaded
Okay! Finally. See: Rothwell, J., ed./Brief Technical Description of the Leonardo Corporation, University of Bologna, and INFN Scientific Demonstration of the Andrea Rossi ECat (Energy Catalyzer) Boiler/. 2011, LENR-CANR.org. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJbrieftechn.pdf As you see, I am the editor because this is a compilation of stuff from various people. It took me a while to get it all together and okay'ed. Some photos here. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Brief Technical Description uploaded
Is the black hose the steam output? There sure is a lot of dark stain on the floor. T On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 6:20 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Okay! Finally. See: Rothwell, J., ed. Brief Technical Description of the Leonardo Corporation, University of Bologna, and INFN Scientific Demonstration of the Andrea Rossi ECat (Energy Catalyzer) Boiler. 2011, LENR-CANR.org. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJbrieftechn.pdf As you see, I am the editor because this is a compilation of stuff from various people. It took me a while to get it all together and okay'ed. Some photos here. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
I wrote: Nope. As you will see in the photos, if I can manage to untangle them and upload them, the reservoir is sitting on a weight scale. (It wasn't the H2 bottle, it was the water reservoir.) You can monitor the decrease in water. Okay. I finally managed to upload the document. I refer to Fig. 1. The reservoir is the white plastic Jerry Can in the left of the photo, with the funnel on top. They told me that during the longer runs, they had to replenish it. So obviously the water is going out of it at a rapid rate. Also, in the video you can hear and see the pump periodically actuating and sending a pulse of water down the hose. That's a large gulp of water, not 900 g/hr. Constant displacement pumps are good because they remove a fixed amount of liquid at a fixed period. A flowmeter is less necessary than with a peristaltic pump, which tends to vary the amount it takes with each stroke. A flowmeter is not necessary at all when the reservoir is sitting on a weight scale. That's actually a lot better than a flowmeter, because in my experience, flowmeters are as ornery as computer printers. Regarding the H2 bottle, someone in the project just informed me that they * did* weigh it, at the beginning of the experiment and at the end. There was no measurable change. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
I would like to add another comment about what Jones Beene wrote: OK,here is one moresuspiciousdetail to check on, for anyone inclined- the flow rate.This assumptionof 300g/minabove could beway off. Beware of jumping to conclusions. Raising questions and wondering is essential, but do not assume these people never thought to check the flow rate. Seriously, don't you suppose that any scientist on earth would check the flow rate? The first thing you should be suspicious of is your own suspicion, because it is highly unlikely they would botch such a key measurement. It reminds me of Taubes and others who asserted the Robert Huggins measured voltage but not amperage in an electrochemical cell. That not something a top-notch electrochemist is likely to do, to say the least. Ed Storms often gets upset with people who come up with facile reasons why an experiment might be wrong, and just traipse off assuming the scientist never thought to check. I am sure Jones Beene did not do that . . . but it is bad form to look at a web site for model LMI-AA-xxx, read the the maximum pumping capacities and from that to assume that a group of 60 and 70-year-old professionals forgot they should measure the flow rate. Lemme put it this way. If you suspect something like that, try saying it in muffled academese: ORIGINAL: OK, here is one more suspicious detail to check on, for anyone inclined - the flow rate. This assumption of 300g/min above could be way off. CUT LOADED WORDS: suspicious, assumption and way off TRANSLATE TO ACADEMESE: I have some concerns or possibly confusion about the flow rate. The authors report 300 g/min. There appears to be discrepancy between this and the manufacturers website, assuming the pump is a model LMI-AA-xxx . . . etc., dither, dither, say nothing directly, use cotton-wool passive voice . . . That's the proper form even if you really mean: this is a bunch of garbage as anyone can see from the website. - Jed
[Vo]:PesWiki's report on Focardi and Rossi
In addition to Jed's recent, and highly appreciated, report on the Energy Catalyzer), I noticed that one of my latest Google news feeds keyed to Blacklight Power directed me to the pesn.com Pure Energy Systems (PesWiki) web site where a verbose (and HIGHLY optimistic and probably unrealistic) report on the Focardi and Rossi's device ensues. See: http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/ http://tinyurl.com/4vluzrt Excerpt samples: * This recent public demonstration alone is a huge development, but what's more, they also claim to be going into production, expecting to have these available for purchase commercially within a year.This would become the world's first commercially-ready cold fusion device.The first units are supposed to ship in three months, with mass production commencing by the end of 2011. ... Rossi estimates that the cost of energy made with this system will be below 1 cent/kWh, in case of electric power made by means of a Carnot cycle, and below 1 cent/4,000 M J in case of thermal power production for heating purposes. That is several times cheaper than energy from fossil fuel sources such as coal or natural gas. ... Rossi also says that they have had one reactor that has run continually for two years, providing heat for a factory. Also, the reactors can self sustain by turning off the input, but they prefer to have an input. The device will be scheduled for maintenance every six months. You control it just as you turn on and off your television set. ... Doing a lot of digging into Rossi's Journal of Nuclear Physics blog shows that scientists are posting and linking speculation that hydrinos (of Blacklight Power fame) or shrunken hydrogen atoms may be involved in this cold fusion and process and their formation may be the source of most of the energy released. * The last paragraph must have been the reason why the email showed up in my Blacklight Power news feed. I especially liked the part where they predict they will have mass production commencing by the end of 2011. Personally, I'd be ecstatic if we had verified independent replication by the end of 2011. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Brief Technical Description uploaded
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: Is the black hose the steam output? There sure is a lot of dark stain on the floor. So, obviously they had disconnected the steam condenser for some time. The stain is probably the steam literally taking off part of the hose and depositing it on the floor. I wonder how long the left the hose off the condenser? It would get hot in the small room really fast. Pity there's no image of the condenser. T
Re: [Vo]:PesWiki's report on Focardi and Rossi
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 7:06 PM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson svj.orionwo...@gmail.com wrote: Personally, I'd be ecstatic if we had verified independent replication by the end of 2011. I think Andrea Rossi has made it clear that there will be no replication. He says he wants to sell product. T
[Vo]:My inquiry to Society for Classical Physics Yahoo group rejected
Late in December of last year I sent an inquiry to the officially recognized Society for Classical Physics Yahoo group. I asked Dr. Mills if BLP was planning on assembling kind of a demonstration since certain news feeds I'd received earlier in the month seemed to imply that something would be demonstrated later in 2011. I sent the following inquiry: ** Hello Dr. Mills, I noticed in one or two of my recent Google News Feeds keyed to BlackLight Power that an interesting claim is being made. For example, from PBT Consulting, Strategic Marketing, Business Planning, Research, Venture Capital and Financing, one can read the following excerpt: - BLACKLIGHT POWER IS BACK IN THE NEWS, SAYS IT CAN GENERATE ELECTRICITY FOR $25 A KILOWATT, A PUBLIC DEMO IS SLATED FOR 2011 See: http://tommytoy.typepad.com/tommy-toy-pbt-consultin/2010/11/blacklight-power-is-back-in-the-news-says-it-can-generate-electricity-for-25-a-kilowatt-a-public-dem.html http://tinyurl.com/2awqfsm - According to this link I have found myself speculating that a possible public POC (proof-of-concept) demonstration of the CIHT (Catalyst Induced Hydrino Transition) process may in the works for next year, 2011. Can you confirm this, or at least clarify BLP's position on the matter? I thought it might be useful to go to the source for clarification. Thanks for your input. As always, wishing you and BLP the best of success in the coming years. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com ** I never heard back. I assumed my email might have gotten lost in all the holiday static. Well... Apparently not. I just received the following rejection letter: Hello, Your message to the SocietyforClassicalPhysics group was not approved. The owner of the group controls the content posted to it and has the right to approve or reject messages accordingly Hmmm. Was it something I said Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
As was mentioned by others, they should Insulate the black hose and drop it into 30 gallons of room temperature water and measure the temperature rise of the water. How can you use an indoor air quality meter (listed in Jed's email) to measure the dryness of the steam? (you can't) How was the dryness measured? Can it be faked the following way: Use an ultrasonic fogger operating at 1.6 MHz to create micron size droplets. Heat the droplets to 90 C and then send it down the black hose. Anyone touching this steam would feel it as being extremely hot but it is NOT vaporized (gaseous) water and did not go through a phase change. Letting it drift into the air out of the black hose would probably look just like real steam with no droplets hitting the floor. This would take 16% of the energy compared to boiling it. I'm using the numbers from Jed's report: 6.5 kJ/mol to heat the water from 13.3 C to 100 C. 40.9 kJ/mol to boil the water (heat of vaporization). This is a ratio of 6.5 / 40.9 = .16 which equals 16%. So, in this case, ultrasonic-fogging-heating the water would take 16% of the energy compared to truly boiling it. 16% multiplied by 12 kW equals 1.9 kW. Insulate the black hose and drop it into 30 gallons of water and measure the temperature rise of the water - this is the best way! here is a link to an ultrasonic fogger (using water) - it looks like steam! http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ultrasonic-fogger-how-does-it-work.html
Re: [Vo]:Rossi reactor
In reply to Taylor J. Smith's message of Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:13:17 +: Hi, [snip] During the test runs the weight of the hydrogen tank did not measurably decrease, so less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. [snip] This makes the assumption that there was no Hydrogen in the Ni before the run began. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Rossi reactor
mix...@bigpond.com wrote: During the test runs the weight of the hydrogen tank did not measurably decrease, so less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. [snip] This makes the assumption that there was no Hydrogen in the Ni before the run began. That was not an attempt to draw conclusions about the nature of the reaction or the material. It was a crude method to ensure that the heat was not coming from hydrogen combustion. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
Jeff Driscoll hcarb...@gmail.com wrote: How can you use an indoor air quality meter (listed in Jed's email) to measure the dryness of the steam? (you can't) Apparently you can. The person who did this is reportedly an expert in steam. I gather this meter measures RH in steam as well as air. Can it be faked the following way: Use an ultrasonic fogger operating at 1.6 MHz to create micron size droplets. Heat the droplets to 90 C and then send it down the black hose. The temperature of the steam out the outlet is measured with a thermocouple. It is 101 deg C. So it is definitely steam, or a mixture of steam and water. The RH meter ensures that is all dry steam. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Brief Technical Description uploaded
Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: Pity there's no image of the condenser. I am trying to get more photos. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
In reply to Stephen A. Lawrence's message of Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:17:24 -0500: Hi, [snip] Well, one proposal which seems to stand up is that the water didn't turn into steam, at all. Unless the steam was recondensed and the resulting water weighed, that can't be ruled out. Unless someone besides Rossi was privy to what was inside the reactor, /you just don't know/ what happened to the water. Weighing the reactor before and after would have helped, too -- was that done? If the weight scale were rigged, water could have been diverted through the scale to a hole in the floor. I wonder if anyone lifted it up to see if was in fact the free standing jerry can that it appears to be? Did the profs witness the actual setup of the equipment? Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 9:41 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: Did the profs witness the actual setup of the equipment? The story is that the profs set up and ran the entire demonstration. T
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: I do not think there are any examples in the history of 20th or 21st century experimental science in which a con-man was able to fool experimentalists. Uri Geller, 1975, SRI. Ah. I wasn't aware of that one. I gather that was something like a study of ESP. Puthoff and Targ concluded that the tests were successfully enough to warrant further serious study. I would not call that con a big success. It doesn't take much to get a scientist to say, I'd like to do more experiments. This about as difficult as convincing a cat to have another bite of filet mignon. ESP is difficult to study. It is psychological, and statistical in nature (assuming it exists at all). Puthoff is not a psychologist, so he is no expert. Calorimetry and measuring steam as about as different from ESP or psychology as branches of science can be. They are among the oldest, best established, and hardest of hard sciences. They do not depend on measuring behavior or having faith in a person. They are based on instrument readings. Just because it is possible to con a physicist into wanting to run additional tests, that does not mean you could fool an expert into thinking that hot air is steam. Conceivably you could do it for a short while with a device that the expert himself had no hand in building, with fake instruments or something, but this configuration was designed by the experts, and they brought their own instruments. Accusations of criminality have also been leveled against Dardik. Skeptics have concluded that he is a con-man who fooled many people, including: * McKubre, even though McKubre tested the technique in his own lab without Dardik or anyone else from Energetics Technology being present. * Duncan, even though Duncan wrote the book on calorimetry. These skeptics believe that Dardik has the power to deceive people from thousand of miles away, by tricks so powerful they affect instrument readings and computer data. In effect, they ascribe magical powers to Dardik. You might as well claim he could change experiments after he dies. McKubre is very careful. He calibrates. You cannot sneak into his lab in the middle of the night and push a few buttons or change a meter and produce a fake result. The people who ascribe this astounding ability to con men seem to have no grasp of what these experiments are like, or how careful someone like McKubre or Duncan is. One of them remarked to me that Duncan could have caught the fraud if he had secretly brought a helium detector into the lab at Energetics and surreptitiously captured a sample of gas from the cell. I pointed to this photo of a helium detector: http://lenr-canr.org/Experiments.htm#PhotosENEAFrascati I pointed out: 1. That is not something you can hide under your coat. 2. You have to design and experiment from the ground up to accommodate helium detection; most experiments are not leak-tight enough. 3. You don't just whip out a detector and attach it when no one is looking -- the process takes days or weeks. People who imagine cold fusion might be a combination of fraud and mistakes know nothing about the research, and nothing about science in general. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
That meter that was listed can measure Relative Humidity but it can not measure the quality of the steam. As you know, relative humidity just means how saturated the air is for for the given temperature - it says absolutely nothing about the quality (dryness or wetness) of the steam. The quality of the steam (a.k.a. dryness on Vortex) gives you the ratio of the mass of vapor to the total mass of water (liquid and vapor) in a given sample. It takes complicated expensive instruments to measure the quality of steam (one device is called a throttling calorimeter). A common or even expensive Relative Humidity instrument can not do it. If Rossi used an ultrasonic fogger in boiling water, he could get micron sized droplets at 100 C. That's close enough to 101 C with errors due to calibration. They should insulate the black hose and stick it in a barrel of water. 12 kW of steam that is fed into 50 gallons of water (or some number of gallons) will raise the temperature at rate that could be easily measurable. If it can be done, find out exactly what information rules out wet steam. Here is a photo of an ultrasonic fogger using water to produce what looks like steam, but is in fact micron sized water droplets: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ultrasonic-fogger-how-does-it-work.html Here is a link to a description of a throttling calorimeter which is a device that measures the quality (wetness) of steam. Basically the throttling calorimeter involves letting the pressurized steam expand into a cavity and measuring the temperature of the resulting gas. It only works with pressurized steam such as 30 psia steam or higher so that it can expand down to 15 psia or atmospheric pressure. http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2003/378.html?page=full On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Jeff Driscoll hcarb...@gmail.com wrote: How can you use an indoor air quality meter (listed in Jed's email) to measure the dryness of the steam? (you can't) Apparently you can. The person who did this is reportedly an expert in steam. I gather this meter measures RH in steam as well as air. Can it be faked the following way: Use an ultrasonic fogger operating at 1.6 MHz to create micron size droplets. Heat the droplets to 90 C and then send it down the black hose. The temperature of the steam out the outlet is measured with a thermocouple. It is 101 deg C. So it is definitely steam, or a mixture of steam and water. The RH meter ensures that is all dry steam. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: Did the profs witness the actual setup of the equipment? The story is that the profs set up and ran the entire demonstration. That's what they told me. Celani said: All the measurements were made, INDEPENDENTLY, from a Researcher (and Technicians) of Bologna University. Rossi made only supervision about key safety aspects. He did not actually mention setting up, but other people have. Anyway, the people who conducted the tests are writing up their work now. You can see that I got some preliminary notes from them. So you will get the story from them directly in a week or two. Have patience . . . say I, after spending the weekend hounding and hassling these people for information. I would like to point out how unlikely this con-man scenario is, for a couple of compelling reasons I have not enumerated -- Rossi is a strange dude. He is determined to protect trade secrets. But he knows that he cannot convince university profs. to do a test except on their own terms. I know many profs, especially elderly ones who used to be Presidents of the Chemical Society or the Indian AEC or what-have-you. Such people NEVER take orders from anyone. They never agree to do anything except on their own terms, with their own instruments and grad students and colleagues. They never take anyone's word for anything. They use techniques from 1943 even when electronic gadgets do it faster. They do not read computer manuals or learn how to use Microsoft Word. They wrote the book on measuring steam or OCV or neutrons, and they know that subject better than anyone else on earth. (Or they think they do.) You can't get them to write a memo, order lunch or tie their shoes except by methods they have fully investigated, tested, and confirmed. Reason two is pretty simple. Ask yourself, how likely is it that you persuade a professor to walk into a room, look at a few instruments, and say: Hey, whaddya know! It works after all! Ha! Cold fusion may seem to violate theory and it is the biggest controversy in history. Dozens of people who replicated it had their reputations trashed . . . But what the hell, I'll just sign off on this and tell everyone in the audience here that I am sure it works. Do you really suppose that professors are unaware of academic politics and the biggest death-match fight in the history of physics? I have met some stupid professors, but two things they always know are academic politics and who has the best parking space in the staff parking lot. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Dawn of a new era: NOT SO FAST
In reply to Jones Beene's message of Mon, 17 Jan 2011 09:52:35 -0800: Hi, [snip] Essentially this Italian Job would be too little, too late comparatively, if Rossi had not tried to make it appear to be a public event. In the end, however, it is almost as secretive as what BLP has already pulled off, but it is a lot less robust than the BLP 50 kilowatt demo. [snip] The huge difference between the two is that the COP of the BLP demo was not much larger than 1, and it was a one shot, whereas Rossi says he can run continuously with a COP 8. In that regard Rossi would appear to have the upper hand where heat generation is concerned. That may change if Mills can demonstrate a working CIHT, of if Rossi turns out to be a fraud. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:15:51 -0500: Hi, [snip] 5. The test should be repeated at least three times, with each conducted for a continuous period of sufficient duration to strongly exclude the possibility of the measured exit energy being from chemicals stored within the device and then releasing energy. [snip] Jed, in your report you quote: 30 second period (see #2). Was that the duration of the test?? (I had (perhaps mistakenly) gained the impression that it ran for at least an hour). If it only ran for 30 seconds, than that would easily explain why the there was no significant sauna effect. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
mix...@bigpond.com wrote: Jed, in your report you quote: 30 second period (see #2). Was that the duration of the test?? (I had (perhaps mistakenly) gained the impression that it ran for at least an hour). That's confusing, isn't it? The Jan. 14 test was about an hour. Not sure how long it took to reach the terminal temperature and dry steam, but after that they ran for 30 minutes exactly. I have a graph showing that. It shows the reaction quenching remarkably quickly. That's almost as good as starting up quickly. It would be nice to have a cold fusion reaction we can turn off. 30 seconds is how they quote the flow rate. It seems the pump setting is for 30 second intervals; i.e. 146 ml/30 s. In the video the pump makes a loud noise and sends a pulse of water every few seconds. I can understand just enough Italian that I think someone is saying that's the pump. A constant displacement pump grabs a precisely calibrated amount of water and sends it in a pulse, so you vary the flow by timing the pulses. Peristaltic pumps have a more even flow. Peristaltic pumps are an example of technology that by rights should not work, but they managed to pull it off. They overcame what seemed to be insurmountable problems with plastics. You have a wheel pressing down and squeezing the plastic tube thousands of times an hour for weeks or months. Early plastics quickly became brittle and broke. I don't recall who did this, but I read about it and I got the impression that person really, really, REALLY wanted to make peristaltic pumps work, driven by some inscrutable inner desire. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:The dawn of a new era?
On 01/17/2011 09:55 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com mailto:sa...@pobox.com wrote: I do not think there are any examples in the history of 20th or 21st century experimental science in which a con-man was able to fool experimentalists. Uri Geller, 1975, SRI. Ah. I wasn't aware of that one. I gather that was something like a study of ESP. Geller claimed to be able to bend spoons using mental powers, and perform other amazing feats of telekinesis. He was -- is -- a very slick operator, and fooled a lot of people. Using little more than misdirection and clever patter, he convinced a lot of people that they saw a spoon he was holding just, like, bend over, due to the power of his mind. He bent keys as well, and claimed to be able to print images on photographic film simply by thinking at it. It was, IIRC, James Randi (known more commonly as Mud on this list for various reasons) who first outed him, but Geller's a slippery dude and didn't stay outed. One of the major photography rags of the era (Pop Photo or Modern Photography, I forget which) ran an article on him, partly due to his claim to be able to think things onto film, which claim they didn't care for. Apparently the folks at SRI weren't as careful as the photography magazine's reporter, who found Randi unconvincing.
Re: [Vo]:PesWiki's report on Focardi and Rossi
Steven V Johnson wrote: In addition to Jed's recent, and highly appreciated, report on the Energy Catalyzer), I noticed that one of my latest Google news feeds keyed to Blacklight Power directed me to the pesn.com Pure Energy Systems (PesWiki) web site where a verbose (and HIGHLY optimistic and probably unrealistic) report on the Focardi and Rossi's device ensues. See: http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/ / http://tinyurl.com/4vluzrt Excerpt samples: snip Rossi also says that they have had one reactor that has run continually for two years, providing heat for a factory. The results of last week's demonstration pale in comparison to this claim. Harry
[Vo]:12 kW cold fusion reactor demonstrated; ramping up to take your order!
A link from LENR-CANR.org Harry http://coldfusionnow.wordpress.com/ 12 kW cold fusion reactor demonstrated; ramping up to take your order! By rubycarat 2011 is off to a great start. This past weekend, a cold fusion reactor was demonstrated in Italy by scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi. In this demonstration, about 18 liters of water went into the device, and turned into steam.Speak Italian?
Re: [Vo]:Nagel: Check List for LENR Validation Experiments
Dear Jed, Just re peristaltic pumps- I have worked with them in the lab from the 70 years of the last century and Nature uses then for a very long time, including in our digestive systems. Peter On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 6:24 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: mix...@bigpond.com wrote: Jed, in your report you quote: 30 second period (see #2). Was that the duration of the test?? (I had (perhaps mistakenly) gained the impression that it ran for at least an hour). That's confusing, isn't it? The Jan. 14 test was about an hour. Not sure how long it took to reach the terminal temperature and dry steam, but after that they ran for 30 minutes exactly. I have a graph showing that. It shows the reaction quenching remarkably quickly. That's almost as good as starting up quickly. It would be nice to have a cold fusion reaction we can turn off. 30 seconds is how they quote the flow rate. It seems the pump setting is for 30 second intervals; i.e. 146 ml/30 s. In the video the pump makes a loud noise and sends a pulse of water every few seconds. I can understand just enough Italian that I think someone is saying that's the pump. A constant displacement pump grabs a precisely calibrated amount of water and sends it in a pulse, so you vary the flow by timing the pulses. Peristaltic pumps have a more even flow. Peristaltic pumps are an example of technology that by rights should not work, but they managed to pull it off. They overcame what seemed to be insurmountable problems with plastics. You have a wheel pressing down and squeezing the plastic tube thousands of times an hour for weeks or months. Early plastics quickly became brittle and broke. I don't recall who did this, but I read about it and I got the impression that person really, really, REALLY wanted to make peristaltic pumps work, driven by some inscrutable inner desire. - Jed
