Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
On 01/21/2011 01:37 AM, Harry Veeder wrote: Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 01/20/2011 01:29 AM, Harry Veeder wrote: Would weighing the entire apparatus before and after reveal a concealed chemical reaction? I don't think so. The sort of reaction proposed here replaces the reactants with solid ash, which remains on the spot, so the weight of the apparatus won't change. Really, what's needed is for the observers to be able to see inside the thing -- that, by itself, certainly would not reveal the nature of the 'secret ingredient'. Absent this sort of deception, there's no obvious reason for Rossi not to allow it. If the reactor has, indeed, been inspected by someone other than Rossi, before and after the run, that would be very good to know! What about odors? Could you easily contain all the smell of burning thermite or burning magnesium? I have no idea. If he did burn something I bet he would have destroyed several vessels before he got it to work to just right. Yes, and maybe had a nasty lab fire or two. Hmmm.
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
On 01/20/2011 01:29 AM, Harry Veeder wrote: Would weighing the entire apparatus before and after reveal a concealed chemical reaction? I don't think so. The sort of reaction proposed here replaces the reactants with solid ash, which remains on the spot, so the weight of the apparatus won't change. Really, what's needed is for the observers to be able to see inside the thing -- that, by itself, certainly would not reveal the nature of the 'secret ingredient'. Absent this sort of deception, there's no obvious reason for Rossi not to allow it. If the reactor has, indeed, been inspected by someone other than Rossi, before and after the run, that would be very good to know! Harry *From:* Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com *To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com *Sent:* Wed, January 19, 2011 11:35:12 PM *Subject:* Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents On 01/19/2011 05:37 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: It is already clear that he [Rossi] had no means of faking the experiment. Some time in the last couple days, you asked me for a scenario under which Rossi could have faked it without the cooperation of anybody else present, and I came up dry but later, I observed to a friend that Rossi couldn't have faked it without help from the U of B staff, and tje friend's response was, Sure he could. With the dual assumptions that * Only Rossi ever got to look inside the reactor * There have been no demonstrations lasting significantly longer than half an hour (unsubstantiated rumors of extremely long runs aside -- rumors are cheap) the friend wrote the following: I don't see any need for an inside job. The main portion of the reactor is a horizontal cylinder that looks about 6 in diameter by 30 long. That's 10 or more liters of usable volume. Lots of chemical reactions give you about 2 kCal/cc of reactants. You'd like one without the inconvenience of gasses in or out, so the thermite-type come to mind. These react aluminum powder with a metal oxide to give aluminum oxide and the free metal. Magnesium powder also works if you don't need a neatly fluid product, which we certainly don't here. Screw feed the material into a cavity in an aluminum block, and pull the heat away with drilled channels that boil water to steam. The cavity might need a refractory liner, but I doubt it. The conductivity of solid Al is so high, and the amount of reactant at any time so small, that the products will go solid before they wreck the cylinder. Besides, shortly after you start, you're just dumping a little more wildly hot stuff on top of the previously solidified products. You'd need some kind of sensor looking at the block temperature or steam production, and use this to control either the reactant or water feed-rate, and you'd want something (electric arc?) to start the reaction. The easiest way to maintain control might be to keep delivering small, discrete quantities of reactant, each of which might need to be ignited (some of the 400W?) So, how far can you go with this? 12 kW net for 1/2 hour is 5.16 MCal. Since thermites can give about 2 kCal/cc, this is about 2 1/2 liters of reactants. If you need separate initial volume for the reactants and the products-to-be, then you need ~5 liters, plus space for the chamber/boiler and controller. So 1/2 hour may be getting near the easy-to-reach upper limit of chemical chicanery for 12 kW in a device this size. I'm sure there are other reactions, though, and cleverer constructions, so perhaps a few times longer might be achieved. Take it for what it's worth, or leave it alone entirely ... it seems to provide an existence proof for a means by which Rossi, acting alone, could have faked the result. /Unless the reactor is open to inspection, inside and out, before and after the run, it's hard to rule out this sort of cheating -- short of demonstrating a run lasting so long no chemicals could provide enough energy for it. /
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Playing devil's advocate in situations like this serve a useful purpose. Honoring our skeptical bones hopefully help keep our feet firmly planted on the ground, particularly when our wings would love to start flapping right now! ...to soar into the stratosphere is everyone's dream. Nevertheless, and for the sake of argument, assuming this is a scam, it seems to me that there is a crucial item that hasn't been explored to any great length. What would Rossi and Focardi's exit strategy be? The lecture circuit? Ha! Ha! We fooled you all? How could they possibly make a penny (and expect to keep their winnings) orchestrating a scam of this magnitude, especially when the cards started falling down. Granted, I bet there are some out there who might think pulling the wool over everyone's eyes for several weeks (or months) would be a dandy way to gain popularity, to be the life of the party. Not my cup of tea, no pun intended. IOW, most of the scam scenarios I've read so far only seem to concentrate on how to pull off the act. They don't seem to have much of a clue as to what is likely to happen after the curtain comes down - and there WILL be an encore of sorts to face. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Rossi on his blog explains that the heat output during the demo came from the nuclear reaction of several picograms of Ni -- about 3 X 10E-12 gm ... a millionth of a microgram, while the mass of the nuclear reacting H would be 1 atom of H for each atom of Ni reacting, with the most common isotope being Ni62, so the H mass used would be several times (1/62) = about 3 X .016 picogram = about 5 X 10E-14 gm. So computers, cars, trucks, railroads, boats, subs, planes, high altitude airships, and spaceships can operate with very tiny food tanks -- but the reaction may alter or disrupt the nanoparticles of Ni, and make cumulative reaction poisons -- his plan is to replace the Ni every 6 months in the 1 MW commercial plant this year with 125 units similar to the 10 KW demo, which had about 1 gm Ni nanopowder. A square of 125 units will be about 11 X 11 units, perhaps 5.5 X 5.5 m for .5 m size units. A few feet of dirt would easily provide enough radiation shielding. In aircraft, the reactor can be placed at the back end, far away from passengers, while in seacraft, the reactor can be in a pod in the water behind the craft. Desalination of seawater and deep ground water for fresh water and minerals on a huge scale allows quality food production in vast greenhouses with added electric lights, providing employment for millions of new villages everywhere. There is plenty for all world citizens to have a right to live in nonurban, self sustaining, free and unique communities that can express the best of their traditional cultures with minimal social disruption, while cities can be as modern as they please. Note that each personal iPad type computer in a decade will have about 100 to 10,000 times more speed and memory for the same hundred dollars, along with software and more game-changing Web innovations, like Google, Wikipedia, Second Life, Facebook the last decade, that facilitate the actual emergence of a positive global democratic generous social order. It will be possible for every family to have an individual automatic flying escape pod in case of earthquakes, storms, fires, tsunamis, and terrorism...
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
On 01/20/2011 10:48 AM, Rich Murray wrote: Rossi on his blog explains that the heat output during the demo came from the nuclear reaction of several picograms of Ni -- about 3 X 10E-12 gm ... a millionth of a microgram, while the mass of the nuclear reacting H would be 1 atom of H for each atom of Ni reacting, with the most common isotope being Ni62, so the H mass used would be several times (1/62) = about 3 X .016 picogram = about 5 X 10E-14 gm. Sure, but the question was whether weighing it would pick up a chemical scam, as outlined about four messages back in this thread. Chemicals which don't produce gaseous reaction products would show the same undetectably small mass change a true nuclear process would show, so weighing the device wouldn't help. All the reasoning about this device depends critically on the question of whether there was a chemical reactor inside the cylinder. As far as I know, only Rossi knows the answer to that. ... It will be possible for every family to have an individual automatic flying escape pod in case of earthquakes, storms, fires, tsunamis, and terrorism... Unless the secret ingredient is thermite, in which case, it won't be possible. (See earlier message for an outline of how this might have been done.) Black box tests with an untrusted invention are very dicey affairs.
Re: EXTERNAL: Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
I found this comment. Dear Pierre, Thank you for your important questions, here are the answers: 1- the Ni powder I utilized were pure Ni, no copper . At the end of the operations in the reactor the percentage of copper was integrally bound to the amount of energy produced. A charge which has worked for 6 monthes, 24 hours per day, at the end had a percentage of Cu superior to 30% 2- About the Ni isotopes: the isotopes after the operations were substantially changed in percentage. We are preparing a campaign of analysys with a Secondary Ions Mass Spectrometer at the University of Padua (Italy), at the end of which the data will be published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics. Warm Regards, Andrea That is a lot of ash.
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
He admits on his website that they have not tried components from other suppliers. From: Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, January 20, 2011 10:37:28 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents On 01/20/2011 09:57 AM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote: Playing devil's advocate in situations like this serve a useful purpose. Honoring our skeptical bones hopefully help keep our feet firmly planted on the ground, particularly when our wings would love to start flapping right now! ...to soar into the stratosphere is everyone's dream. Nevertheless, and for the sake of argument, assuming this is a scam, it seems to me that there is a crucial item that hasn't been explored to any great length. What would Rossi and Focardi's exit strategy be? Erm -- Rossi, not Rossi and Focardi. I haven't read anything indicating Focardi knows what the secret ingredient is -- as far as I know, only Rossi knows. And as far as I know, it's only Rossi whose background and integrity have been impugned. As to his exit strategy, I don't know, but IMO it really doesn't matter. Exit strategies are often apparently not planned in advance, and the lack of an obvious, viable exit strategy is not a sufficient argument for concluding it can't be a scam. Consider the fact that every pyramid scheme is *guaranteed* to collapse, yet people start them without a workable exit strategy, and get caught. There must be an immediate financial incentive, or it's not going to happen. But an exit strategy ... nah. All that said, an exit strategy is trivial in this case: All he needs to do is lose the process, and voila, Rossi's off the hook, and nobody can prove there was ever anything sleazy going on. Processes in this area are so flaky, and so ill-understood, that it's really not a problem. Did anyone try to arrest Patterson when he lost his process? No, of course not -- as far as anyone could see, it was a legitimate case of Jekel/Hyde syndrome -- there must have been one more secret ingredient in the first batch of beads, unknown to everyone including the experimenter. Did anyone try to claim Intel was lying about it, 30 years or so back, when they suddenly lost their process? (I forget which chip it was, and maybe it was actually Motorola.) No, of course not -- people just waited out the major schedule slip until they found it again. The difference is that in semiconductor manufacturing, you typically can find the process again if you work at it; in cold fusion, it doesn't always happen. And, of course, the original lost process was the process by which Hyde turned back into Jekel -- the original batch of chemicals had an unknown impurity, and later batches didn't work...
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Erm -- Rossi, not Rossi and Focardi. I haven't read anything indicating Focardi knows what the secret ingredient is -- as far as I know, only Rossi knows. Focardi stated that he indeed did not know the nature of the catalyst. T
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
On 01/20/2011 03:44 PM, Terry Blanton wrote: On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: Erm -- Rossi, not Rossi and Focardi. I haven't read anything indicating Focardi knows what the secret ingredient is -- as far as I know, only Rossi knows. Focardi stated that he indeed did not know the nature of the catalyst. Indeed. Rossi is the only one who knows. Rossi, AFAIK, is the only one who actually inspected the inside of the reactor before and after the demonstration. Rossi, AFAIK, is the source of the assertion that another reactor somewhere has run for six months and transmuted a third of the nickel to copper (an /absolutely/ conclusive event, of course). Short of proof (not rumors, not statements by Rossi) to the effect that long runs (several hours or more) have been conducted, then, it seems to come down to just one question: Is Rossi honest? If he is, it's for real. If he isn't, then a chemical scam, using thermite or some other high-energy-density fuel, hasn't been ruled out. Furthermore, in that case it may be the simplest explanation. In the latter case, one can assume there will be delays and unexpected problems with continuing to create the effect on demand a few months down the road... T
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
In reply to Rich Murray's message of Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:48:32 -0700: Hi, [snip] Rossi on his blog explains that the heat output during the demo came from the nuclear reaction of several picograms of Ni -- about 3 X 10E-12 gm ... a millionth of a microgram, while the mass of the nuclear reacting H would be 1 atom of H for each atom of Ni reacting, with the most common isotope being Ni62, so the H mass used would be several times (1/62) = about 3 X .016 picogram = about 5 X 10E-14 gm. This is simply wrong. If the device produced 6kWh of energy during the test, then that would require the transmutation more like milli-grams than picograms of Ni. Rossi's sums are wrong in the patent too. However the actual mass would only change by the energy output divided by c squared. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: Is Rossi honest? If he is, it's for real. As of Friday, Jan. 14, this question no longer hangs on Rossi's honesty. Thank goodness! If he isn't, then a chemical scam, using thermite or some other high-energy-density fuel, hasn't been ruled out. Furthermore, in that case it may be the simplest explanation. That has been ruled out. Reliable people have observed the machine produce more energy than a hidden store of chemical fuel could produce. That was in previous tests, not in this particular one-hour run. I do not know whether Levi et al. observed any long-duration runs, but other people have. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Stephen wrote: In the latter case, one can assume there will be delays and unexpected problems with continuing to create the effect on demand a few months down the road... I think that is what happened with his grant with the DOD... perhap's Jones might know more about this, but I started reading the report which was the result of the DOD grant work. Apparently Rossi initially provided them with a 35% efficient thermoelectric device (TED) at the beginning, which is about 4 to 7 times more efficient that most TEDs (5%-10%), but they were unable to reproduce that level of efficiency in newly fabbed cells. There were problems with the place that was fabbing them, so they used a fab in Italy. Of the cells that they got from them, more than half were broken due to very poor packing, and the rest didn't perform any better than off the shelf units... Coincidence? Only Rossi knows If I might speculate a bit here... He was a man on a mission. He had already seen enough evidence that something unusual was happening and was finding very creative, albeit unscrupulous, ways to get the $ or materials to do the experiments that he needed to do to figure out enough to control the reaction. Why did he choose that company? Well, they already were using TEDs, and would be really interested in a 5x improvement, so he used them to get what he wanted... access to a lab and test equipment and a govt grant to fund his research. Not too mention a supply of Nickel -- turns out that Ni is one of the materials that has been used recently to make TEDs. The following from Wikipedia: Recently, skutterudite materials have sparked the interest of researchers in search of new thermoelectrics[17]. These structures are of the form (Co,Ni,Fe)(P,Sb,As)3 and are cubic with space group Im3. Again, this is all speculation, but certainly plausible... Not the most upstanding way to develop your product, but perhaps in his mind, the ends justify the means. And if he HAS done what he claims, drastic times require drastic measures. What is cheap, clean energy worth to you??? to the planet??? -Mark
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com wrote: That was in previous tests, not in this particular one-hour run. I do not know whether Levi et al. observed any long-duration runs, but other people have. In that case, the public demonstration on Jan 14 was unnecessary -- right? Au contraire, it was vitally necessary. But you cannot easily run a 12-hour public demo with members of the press there, to prove there is no chemical fuel secreted away. The Jan. 14 demo proved a number of things that I have been anxious to see brought out in public, such as the size of the reaction, and the fact that it can be controlled. Rossi and others told me months ago that they had 10 kW-scale reactors. I did not disbelieve it exactly, but I could not fully believe it, either. And even if I did believe it, what good would the information me without a public demonstration? No one else would believe it. Suppose I myself went to see it myself. I would probably be convinced as I was with Patterson, and pretty much with Griggs, but I would be Cassandra again, with knowledge of something that no one else believes. The proof was already in, if the earlier demos were sufficiently long and sufficiently tightly run. Where does the information come from that there have been longer tests, and how long were the tests? From confidential conversations with people I trust. I am sorry I cannot say more. Until Friday I could say nothing. And even if I had said it, a sensible person would have no reason to believe me. I could hardly believe it myself. Rossi had no credibility then. He has credibility now. I trust Levi and the others. And do we know what kind of security was present at the earlier tests? The Jan 14 test was before a live audience, and there could have been no games during the test. A test which mostly runs unattended, on the other hand, may be subject to serious gaming. These tests were attended. Anyway, if he interrupted the run it would show in the dataset. Whatever Rossi may have done in his business dealings or personal life, and whatever odd notions he might have about theory or about running Ni at 1500 deg C, I think it is fair to say that he has proved he is not lying about the big issues, and the performance of this system. Okay, I will feel a little more certain when a few more public demos have been done, and the data from Levi and others is published. Anyone would feel trepidation at accepting such a monumental result from what seems an unlikely source. But I would say that anyone who asserts there may be fraud has a large burden of proof at this point. In the 1-hour demo, aside from the hidden chemical hypothesis, all sources of hidden energy input were conclusively eliminated. Enough people have seen the workings of the machine and longer demos that I no longer take that holdout possibility seriously. Perhaps it will take you a little longer to agree. After all, I have been hearing about Rossi and this machine on and off for months. Not much depth of detail, but still, I was primed to take the demonstration at face value. Don't underestimate people like Levi, either. I am sure the hidden chemistry hypothesis occurred to them. These seem like extremely important questions at this time. Rossi knows that. I hope there will be other demos. But he may not care enough about public opinion to conduct them. I think he has little regard for what other people think. I am glad he was willing to do even this much in public. For months I thought he would not, and we would never know if the thing is real or not. Now, I think, we have all-but-certain proof that it is. And after all, there is a lot of support for this in previous experiments. Cold fusion is definitely real. Ni-H cold fusion has not been widely replicated, but I have been pretty much convinced it is real for many years, especially with Patterson and Mills/Thermonetics. Nanoparticles are a promising approach, with high reproducibility. All that adds up to indicate that this is not such a great leap forward. This is something we had a right to expect. Sooner or later, someone was bound to get serious and try making a commercial prototype scale device. The only unique ability here is control: Rossi can turn on, modulate, and turn off the reaction. That's a big thing. It is a triumph! But not unbelievable. People have demonstrated various ways to modulate reactions. These methods have not been reliable or fast enough. But we knew all along there has to be a control factor somewhere, because the reaction manifestly does turn on, turn up, and turn off, sometimes quickly. It must be responding to some stimulus. Another reason Rossi can scale up more easily than, say, Arata, is because his Ni material is dirt cheap compared to Pd or Pd-Zr. It would cost a fortune to build a 12 kW Arata device. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:31:38 -0500: Hi, [snip] But we knew all along there has to be a control factor somewhere, because the reaction manifestly does turn on, turn up, and turn off, sometimes quickly. It must be responding to some stimulus. [snip] According to the patent, the pressure can be caused to vary. My guess would be that the frequency and amplitude of pressure swings is his primary control mechanism. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: On 01/20/2011 01:29 AM, Harry Veeder wrote: Would weighing the entire apparatus before and after reveal a concealed chemical reaction? I don't think so. The sort of reaction proposed here replaces the reactants with solid ash, which remains on the spot, so the weight of the apparatus won't change. Really, what's needed is for the observers to be able to see inside the thing -- that, by itself, certainly would not reveal the nature of the 'secret ingredient'. Absent this sort of deception, there's no obvious reason for Rossi not to allow it. If the reactor has, indeed, been inspected by someone other than Rossi, before and after the run, that would be very good to know! What about odors? Could you easily contain all the smell of burning thermite or burning magnesium? If he did burn something I bet he would have destroyed several vessels before he got it to work to just right. Harry Harry
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Dear Jones, Have you read my answer to Ed Storms's message you have cited here? I do not agree with him regarding the main points. The things are always much more complicated than they seem to be. Re your point 1) what do you know about this nano-Ni work- what when was accomplished? Do you know from sure sources- the chronology of the events- who has contacted whom and when? This is anyway a secondary discussion as long as the device works and theory will be found sooner or later. I will ask Randy Mills what he thinks about this. Peter On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: * http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/19/rossi-and-focardi-lenr-device-probably-real-with-credit-to-piantelli/ *http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/19/rossi-and-focardi-lenr-device-probably-real-with-credit-to-piantelli/ But he is still giving the most credit to Piantelli, when probably that is completely wrong, and the three things which led to this breakthrough were(in order of importance): 1) The previous Rossi/Leonardo TEG work with nano-nickel 2) The published work of Randell Mills 3) The published work of Arata/Zhang, Kitamura, etc Obviously when you are a smart guy like Rossi, you find an anomaly in one field (thermoelectrics) with the same Raney nickel you had discovered as being so energetic that it caused two fires in you Lab … and then, as any good experimenter will do - you go to the internet to look for help or understanding in unrelated fields, then 2) and 3) above are the most authoritative help out there. Next, you apply what you have learned to a field that became bifurcated in the mid 1990s, due to ego problems, and WOW, suddenly you become the hero of that unrelated field. IOW – Rossi had his “Goodyear moment” at the expense of all of those in LENR, including Piantelli, who refused to acknowledge the gigantic advance of Mills, who himself was too egotistical to want to believe that he got a major part of CQM wrong – and that in the end the secret was nothing more or less than a subset of the “cold fusion” field that he dreaded so much… A short and fractured (fractal?) history of LENR in a brief reappraisal… Jones
RE: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Peter, As a humorous note, in an ethnocentric kind of way, you can probably appreciate this comment. The name Dr Andrea Rossi, has been around for some time in thermoelectrics, but prior to recently I had been under the impression that this person was a woman, since that name in the USA is generally feminine. The work was done here in the USA (New Hampshire), with no mention of Italy, and no picture of the person ever appeared in the literature. I am told now that some transplanted Italians use the name Andrew instead of Andrea, for this reason. As it turns out, the inventor is neither a real PhD nor feminine, but a definite creative genius, let me go on record with that comment before adding: like most creative genius, he is possibly bordering on the edges of what normal folks consider sanity. The same may be true to a lesser extent of Randell Mills himself. Jones
RE: [Vo]:Krivit relents
The Q and A between Krivit and Rossi (on the NET link that Jones refers to below) has Rossi giving many additional tidbits... One is that books by Greiner and Cooks were important to his success... This is what Rossi has to say about it: the more important books (for me, Greiner and Cooks) do not give solutions. He's referring to theoretical solutions... they were apparently very helpful for the experimental work. -Mark _ From: Jones Beene [mailto:jone...@pacbell.net] Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 7:40 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: [Vo]:Krivit relents http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/19/rossi-and-focardi-lenr-device-probably-real-with-credit-t o-piantelli/ http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/19/rossi-and-focardi-lenr-device-probably-real-with-credit-to -piantelli/ But he is still giving the most credit to Piantelli, when probably that is completely wrong, and the three things which led to this breakthrough were (in order of importance): 1) The previous Rossi/Leonardo TEG work with nano-nickel 2) The published work of Randell Mills 3) The published work of Arata/Zhang, Kitamura, etc Obviously when you are a smart guy like Rossi, you find an anomaly in one field (thermoelectrics) with the same Raney nickel you had discovered as being so energetic that it caused two fires in you Lab . and then, as any good experimenter will do - you go to the internet to look for help or understanding in unrelated fields, then 2) and 3) above are the most authoritative help out there. Next, you apply what you have learned to a field that became bifurcated in the mid 1990s, due to ego problems, and WOW, suddenly you become the hero of that unrelated field. IOW - Rossi had his Goodyear moment at the expense of all of those in LENR, including Piantelli, who refused to acknowledge the gigantic advance of Mills, who himself was too egotistical to want to believe that he got a major part of CQM wrong - and that in the end the secret was nothing more or less than a subset of the cold fusion field that he dreaded so much. A short and fractured (fractal?) history of LENR in a brief reappraisal. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Dear Jones, I have no problems with the masculinity of the name Andrea, I am very fond of opera music and Andrea Chenier by U. Giordano is one opera I like much. To be sincere I absolutely do not care if somebody is a PhD or not. Do you know Cipolla's Laws of Stupidity? One of these laws says stupidity is not depending an ANY other characteristics of a person I have met tragically stupid PhD's and very smart people inventors or in other creative professions. By the way I have a PhD in chemical engineering (1983) so it is basoultely certain that I am stupid or not, tertium non datur. (not true by the way) As regarding Rossi, it is obvious from his answers that he is intelligent. Have to hear his questions to know if he is wise. Peter On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: Peter, As a humorous note, in an ethnocentric kind of way, you can probably appreciate this comment. The name Dr Andrea Rossi, has been around for some time in thermoelectrics, but prior to recently I had been under the impression that this person was a woman, since that name in the USA is generally feminine. The work was done here in the USA (New Hampshire), with no mention of Italy, and no picture of the person ever appeared in the literature. I am told now that some transplanted Italians use the name “Andrew” instead of Andrea, for this reason. As it turns out, the inventor is neither a real PhD nor feminine, but a definite creative genius, let me go on record with that comment before adding: like most creative genius, he is possibly bordering on the edges of what normal folks consider sanity. The same may be true to a lesser extent of Randell Mills himself. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents
Would weighing the entire apparatus before and after reveal a concealed chemical reaction? Harry From: Stephen A. Lawrence sa...@pobox.com To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Wed, January 19, 2011 11:35:12 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Krivit relents On 01/19/2011 05:37 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: It is already clear that he [Rossi] had no means of faking the experiment. Some time in the last couple days, you asked me for a scenario under which Rossi could have faked it without the cooperation of anybody else present, and I came up dry but later, I observed to a friend that Rossi couldn't have faked it without help from the U of B staff, and tje friend's response was, Sure he could. With the dual assumptions that * Only Rossi ever got to look inside the reactor * There have been no demonstrations lasting significantly longer than half an hour (unsubstantiated rumors of extremely long runs aside -- rumors are cheap) the friend wrote the following: I don't see any need for an inside job. The main portion of the reactor is a horizontal cylinder that looks about 6 in diameter by 30 long. That's 10 or more liters of usable volume. Lots of chemical reactions give you about 2 kCal/cc of reactants. You'd like one without the inconvenience of gasses in or out, so the thermite-type come to mind. These react aluminum powder with a metal oxide to give aluminum oxide and the free metal. Magnesium powder also works if you don't need a neatly fluid product, which we certainly don't here. Screw feed the material into a cavity in an aluminum block, and pull the heat away with drilled channels that boil water to steam. The cavity might need a refractory liner, but I doubt it. The conductivity of solid Al is so high, and the amount of reactant at any time so small, that the products will go solid before they wreck the cylinder. Besides, shortly after you start, you're just dumping a little more wildly hot stuff on top of the previously solidified products. You'd need some kind of sensor looking at the block temperature or steam production, and use this to control either the reactant or water feed-rate, and you'd want something (electric arc?) to start the reaction. The easiest way to maintain control might be to keep delivering small, discrete quantities of reactant, each of which might need to be ignited (some of the 400W?) So, how far can you go with this? 12 kW net for 1/2 hour is 5.16 MCal. Since thermites can give about 2 kCal/cc, this is about 2 1/2 liters of reactants. If you need separate initial volume for the reactants and the products-to-be, then you need ~5 liters, plus space for the chamber/boiler and controller. So 1/2 hour may be getting near the easy-to-reach upper limit of chemical chicanery for 12 kW in a device this size. I'm sure there are other reactions, though, and cleverer constructions, so perhaps a few times longer might be achieved. Take it for what it's worth, or leave it alone entirely ... it seems to provide an existence proof for a means by which Rossi, acting alone, could have faked the result. Unless the reactor is open to inspection, inside and out, before and after the run, it's hard to rule out this sort of cheating -- short of demonstrating a run lasting so long no chemicals could provide enough energy for it.
