[ Ahem ... I seem to be back... ] On 29 Jun 2009, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:15:39 -0700 > > Kowalski, L., S. Little, and G. Luce. Searching for excess heat in > Mizuno-type plasma electrolysis. in The 12th International Conference on > Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. 2005. Yokohama, Japan. > > http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/KowalskiLsearchingfa.pdf > > This paper reports a replication of plasma electrolysis heat that did > not produce any heat. I guess I should say a non-replication.
Couple observations about it. This was all done at Earthtech, and, of course, Scott Little is one of the authors, but only the second; Kowalski is lead. Is Kowalski also employed at Earthtech these days? It had always seemed to me like a one-man show. This paper also appears on the Earthtech website, same author list, same setup, same experiment, but a slightly different writeup, at: http://www.earthtech.org/experiments/Inc-W/Fauvarque/ I found the paper initially rather confusing because throughout, Kow. refers to their attempts at replicating the results of reference (8) (that's eight). They refer to reference (8) at least a dozen times. Reference (8) in their paper, however, is Cirillo et al, "Transmutation of metal at low energy in a confined plasma in water", which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Kowalski paper; Kow et al actually were attempting a replication of their reference (9), a paper by Fauvarque, Clauzon, and Lalleve. (Why can't these guys proof their papers as carefully as they design their calorimeters? This would not have been a hard mistake for them to spot, but it sure confused the heck out of at least one poor reader!) Anyhow with that little bit of confusion out of the way, I have to say this paper exhibits Little's usual over the top approach to building the equipment, and IMO they make a good case that Fauvarque may have been measuring an artifact. There was no calorimetry in this experiment; instead, both teams measured the weight loss of the water to determine how much energy came out, and compared that with power measurements going in. The energy-out calculation assumes all weight loss is due to evaporation of water (aside from pre-measured conduction losses). Kow/Little et al claim to have had a lot of trouble with loss of liquid electrolyte during early test runs, and the cell they finally used had a baffle in place to keep the liquid in while letting the vapor out. Of course any liquid which leaves the experiment is going to carry away only a fraction of the energy it would have carried off had it been vaporized, which will result in an overestimate of power-out. Kow/Little also ran a calibration run, boiling the cell with a joule heater, at the start of each "live" run, and their final measurements had COP within a few percent of 1 in all cases. That makes one think their baffle must have been doing the job. Fauvarque et al apparently used a setup with an open beaker, no baffle, no cover of any sort (see figure 2 of http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/FauvarqueJabnormalex.pdf) This makes it seem plausible that they could indeed have lost enough liquid H2O to skew the energy calculations. They say in section 2, "Experimental", that "few unboiled droplets of water sprayed outside the beaker" but particularly given how rapidly water at 212 degrees evaporates after hitting a countertop, and thus "hides the evidence" of the splash, it would have been nice if the evidence against this mechanism were a little more thorough than that rather subjective judgment. They calibrated with an Ohmic heater, but as far as I can tell they used it to measure conduction losses at boiling, but not to calibrate the rate of heat input versus the rate of weight loss *while* *boiling* the cell (which Kow/Little apparently did do, at the start of each run). This also brings to mind a claim I read somewhere (maybe Earthtech again? Not sure) that steam normally includes a significant fraction of entrained tiny droplets, which makes calculations of heat loss based on water weight loss somewhat suspect from the start; Little's baffle may have tended to catch the tiny droplets and hence give his team a more accurate reading (cf dust accumulating where an air current must turn a corner, commonly seen in houses around heating ducts and on fan blades -- when the vapor makes a sudden turn at the baffle the denser droplets tend to "understeer" and smash into it). I do also seem to recall that steam locomotives have a "dryer" in them to "dry" the steam, which implies that their designers were aware that freshly made steam tends to be "wet". It's quite possible that Fauvarque et al actually measured enough excess heat that loss of liquid water couldn't account for it, but none the less it's a point that would need to be addressed, either with calculations or with reruns using a better controlled cell, before one would tend to accept the results entirely at face value. Oh, whatever... **************************************************** By the way, if anyone's actually read this far, and if you're not too mad at me as a result of my rather sympathetic comments regarding Little's group, and if you have any interest in something so far off topic it's beyond off-topic, then you might be at least slightly amused at one of the things I was doing during my "vacation" from Vortex. Whatever you might be expecting, I am certain that this is *not* it: http://physicsinsights.org/iemy/
