http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/34/345revisions.shtml
After careful review of an experiment by the
group led by Antonella De Ninno (ENEA Frascati),
reported in its 2002 paper [4], New Energy Times
retracts all of the MeV/4He values we reported
in Issue #29 for this experiment.
The original paper: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DeNinnoAexperiment.pdf
Issue 29 of NET:
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2008/NET29-8dd54geg.shtml#FROMED
Antonella De Ninno (ENEA Frascati) 103, 88, 124,
103, 103 (MeV per Helium-4 atom)
However, the measurements of helium in this
experiment hold strong. We are retracting only
our statements about the measured excess heat relative to the measured helium.
To their credit, the authors never stated claims
of specific MeV/He values in their paper. This
was our own interpretation based on the data
presented in their paper and our communication with the authors.
Hence what Krivit is retracting is data that was
actually way too high, data that formed part of
his conclusion that the 23.8 MeV figure was
wacky. He doesn't mention this. Of course, that
data didn't come from De Ninno, it came from Krivit's analysis of the report.
I found with Krivit's analysis of the Violante
report that he completely misunderstood and
misinterpreted the data to come up with his own
values. He's aware that he's missed something, he
comes up with various figures under various
scenarios, none of which seem to be correct. In
fact, the report, read with sufficient care, was
reasonably clear; the errors in interpretation
that Krivit made lead to obvious inconsistencies.
(I can sympathize with Krivit's difficulties, I
went through some of them myself in analyzing that paper.)
What did he do here?
We have learned, through a better understanding
of their paper, that the authors did not perform calorimetry.
If not, they lied. Instead, Krivit has perhaps
misunderstood part of the paper in the same way
as he misunderstood the Violante paper. They did
only rough calorimetry, and they conclude that
most of the energy generated escaped undetected. I get to that below.
Rather, they used the helium measurements to
back-calculate the excess heat they would have
expected from the amount of helium they
measured, assuming the hypothesis of a D+D > 4He + 23.8 MeV (heat) reaction.
They did that as well. Here is what they say on
the topic in their conclusions at the end:
From our theoretical prejudice that almost
all fusion occurring in the Pd lattice should
produce 4He, we derive that the easiest way to
evaluate the energy output is to count 4He
atoms in the cell gases. Apart from providing
the proof of the presence of nuclear processes,
such helium calorimetry is most reliable since
the erratic thermodynamic regime of the cell
prevents any credible stationary calibration. A
calibration in real time (isoperibolic
calorimetry [9,10]) could be used but this
technique is quite difficult when the cell
temperature fluctuates. At this stage of the
research we have chosen to couple to a reliable
helium calorimetry a still unreliable thermal
calorimetry which provides us only with an
indicator that excess of heat is being generated
by the cathode. The presence of a positive
difference between the helium calorimetric and
thermal calorimetric results would be a
confirmation that a fraction of the output
energy escapes the thermal calorimeter.
It's an approach. However, they did do
calorimetry, and they did report the results in
their paper, but *also* reported what they call,
above, "helium calorimetry," which they consider
reliable. Obviously, that is a kind of
calorimetry that is valid only insofar as the
reaction takes in deuterium and spits out helium,
with no other major fuels or products. They are
explicit that this is a "theoretical prejudice,"
and they are indeed proposing a reaction of D+D
-> He-4, but under special conditions. I do find
all these attempts to be shaky, but I also say
that they cannot be ruled out. The heat-helium
results are "cooperative" with that theory, but
also with other theories that don't involve hot
fusion, and the explanation of why standard
branching ratios don't apply is thin. That,
however, has nothing to do with their
experimental results, except, to a minor degree, with how they presented them.
What results did they get?
Well, they don't present excess energy data. They
present "excess calorimetric power" data, at
seven times during the experiment, five of them
during the critical phase. Krivit considered that
there were five data points, but this was a single experiment, not five.
The experiment was quite significant in this way:
they show, in their chart on page 15, a
preloading and loading time, about 2.8 hours.
They measured helium at the beginning of this
time and at the end of it, the level found was
low, about 0.2 x 10^14 "atoms in storage volume."
Excess power in this time is shown as about zero.
Then they show a "supercritical time," about 3.3
hours, during which helium rises at a fairly
linear pace, up to about 6.6 x 10^14 atoms at the
last measurement, they show about 6.8 x 10^14
would be the figure at the end of that period.
They show excess power at an average of 19 mW
during this time. They apparently shut down the
electrolytic power at the end of this phase. 12
hours later there is no excess power, and the
helium has remained at the 6.8 x 10^14 level.
They are showing a steady rise in helium during
the supercritical time, and no helium generation
either before or after. However, I regret the
missing data from the hours after shutdown. Did
some power generation continue? Did helium levels
continue to rise and then fall back? However,
they did state that the excess power and the generation of helium stopped.
I don't find it particularly useful to try to
come up with different MeV/He-4 values for the
five times in this experiment. Rather, I'll come up with a single figure.
Total helium generated: 6.6 x 10^14 atoms.
Average excess power during critical phase: 19 mW, 19 mJ/sec.
Time lapsed: 3.3 hrs., 11,880 seconds
Excess energy: 226 J., 1.41 x 10^15 MeV.
Energy per He-4: 1.42 MeV.
This is far lower than they expect, and they
explain this. They were doing calorimetry with a
Peltier junction in contact with the thin film
cathode substrate. This will work if the energy
is only being generated as heat, making the
substrate hot (and they had a calibration for
that). However, in a similar experiment (Case 3,
they call it), they found that portions of the
cathode were getting extremely hot, and part
melted, and from the heat necessary for that,
they know that instantaneous power generation was
far higher than what the junction was showing.
The ran another experiment, they call it Case 2,
the above being called Case 1, where they had low
power generation, about 10 mW (inferred from the
helium), and in that case the power estimated
from helium and the actual measured power were
close to each other. Unfortunately, they don't
give the data for Case 1, and their goal is not
to prove 23.8 MeV, rather it is to show the
linear relationship of helium with the time of
operation of this cell in supercritical mode. And
their data and the presentation of it do a great job of showing this.
This is a very clear experiment showing that
helium is generated in proportion to power
generated. From the Peltier junction numbers, we
can see that generated power (as seen in the
heating of the substrate) during the
supercritical phase was *roughly* constant. They
believe that at the higher power in this
experiment, most of the energy is escaping as
Stefan-Boltzmann radiation, which, in this setup,
will only be poorly captured. Other methods of
calorimetry would capture and show this heat,
such as the techniques being used by SRI and others.
The calorimetry they did was only designed to
show the presence or absence of excess heat, not
to accurately capture and measure all of it.
Krivit was correct to withdraw the numbers for
excess heat that he'd presented last year; they
were grossly off. It should have been noticed
that his conclusions were *very* different from
what they were stating. They were noting that
most of the energy generated (by their estimate
from helium generated and their assumption of the
23.8 MeV figure) was missing, not showing up in
their calorimetry, which would only work when
heat was being generated at levels that did not
cause large losses through radiated heat. Yet he
was showing higher energy, not lower. It was very clumsy analysis, then.
The authors suggest that they will use an
infrared camera to look for this radiated heat.
Krivit could not have made the error he made with
this had he read the article carefully; it
appears that he was looking for evidence on the
Scientific Deception Case of the Century, How a
Conspiracy of Scientists has Misled the Public
and the Government, and so he interpreted everything within that story.
De Ninno et al misled nobody. They did serious,
careful work, and reported it clearly. The truly
important thing, heat/helium correlation, is
definitively shown. Helium leakage or
contamination are not reasonable explanations here. Background is irrelevant.
I regret, as I often regret, what is not
reported, I'd really like to see *complete* data
published on experiments, on-line. The raw
skinny, with an abundance of explanation so that
it is all clearly understandable to anyone
willing to take the time to look at it all.
Really, a copy of the lab notebook! And then with
a summary paper published for those who want the
gist and who aren't going to sharpen their
pencils, so to speak, and look the horse in the mouth.
But what De Ninno reported was adequate to show
what he was claiming and this was merely a
conference paper, not a publication in an archival journal.
The authors appear to have performed a brilliant
experiment which demonstrates the nuclear
production of helium. As well, the melted
cathode from this experiment provides compelling
evidence of a nuclear energy process.
