On July 3 I ridiculed Kirk Shanahan for writing:
"Dardik et al, of Energetic Technologies have slides from ICCF12 and
a paper from ICCF14 (2008) posted on Rothwell's web site. In both,
they show an artist's drawing of their calorimeter, which contains
the thermocouples, which are designated Tcell and Tjacket. The
drawing and these designations are for what is known as isoperibolic
calorimetry. In the text of the ICCF14 paper, the claim to be using a
flow calorimeter, but what they show is NOT that. Isoperibolic
calorimetry is what F&P originally did and were criticized about in
the '89 DOE review. Storms has written several times that flow
calorimetry is superior to isoperibolic . . ."
This refers to Fig. 1, p. 3 here:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DardikIultrasonic.pdf
It turns out he was right. This is an isoperibolic calorimeter. I
just read McKubre's paper in the book "Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions
Sourcebook" carefully, and that is what it says. (I read it three
times!) See equations 1 and 2, and: "The calorimeter is isoperibolic
in the sense that two aluminum cups constitute the calorimetric
boundary perimeters at constant temperature: the inner wall at
temperature T4, and the outer wall at temperature T5. Separating the
two boundaries is a barrier of alumina powder having a
well-characterized (and constant) thermal conductivity."
The term "flow calorimeter" in Fig. 3 of the Dardik paper probably
refers to the fact that the water flows through the outer jacket of
this cell to maintain a constant reference temperature. I think this
is a problem with English. I will ask Dardik et al.
The situation is complicated by the fact that two independent
replications of the effect have been performed, at SRI and ENEA, and
the latter definitely did employ a flow calorimeter. McKubre: "A
parallel but independent set of experiments was performed at ENEA
using a mass flow calorimeter and employing Energetic's superwave
stimulus protocals and palladium foils fabricated by ENEA." (p. 231).
I disagree with the assertion that "flow calorimetry is superior to
isoperibolic." I doubt that is exactly what Storms said. It is
superior in some ways; for example, it is less dependent upon
calibrations. However, isoperibolic is fine as long as you have
"well-characterized (and constant) thermal conductivity." I do not
know anyone who has found a problem with the isoperibolic
calorimeters used Fleischmann and Pons, or Miles. But both methods
have their strengths and weaknesses. I think it is best to use
several methods, which is what Energetics Tech., SRI and ENEA
collectively have done.
This is a good paper and a good book. I wish it was available on the
Internet. I think it is a bad idea to publish scientific papers on
paper. All scientific information should be made available free of
charge to everyone on earth via the Internet. This is the philosophy
of the PLoS journals (http://www.plos.org), and I agree, even though
it costs publishers and some researchers income. Going back to the
17th century universal access to basic scientific information has
been the goal -- or direction -- of the Royal Society and others. It
has finally come to fruition with the Internet.
I have copied this mea culpa to Shanahan, to what I hope is his
current e-mail address.
- Jed
