Michel Jullian wrote:
> McKubre et al. did this with the Case experiment. Passel et al. published a
> short paper that described a possible error in this, but I they were wrong.
Thanks Jed, the refs would be nice.
I don't have a copy. Tom Passell handed out printed copies at ICCF15
but I lost mine. I will ask him for a electronic copy.
Re Stephen's argument that it can be argued that He can leak in in
spite of positive pressure, we could easily bathe the cell in a He
free environment, or simply make the cell He impermeable (metal or
metal coated cell casing).
It is not easy to make a helium-free environment. You need to reduce
it to levels far below background, and as shown in the first study by
Morrey et al. the stuff tends to get everywhere. Metal is better than
glass but still not perfectly impermeable. I think it leaks in at the
cap and seals more than the walls. Miles used steel cells in the
second set of experiments. They were expensive and he handled them
great care to avoid contamination. Mainly he worried about hydrogen
and carbon contamination from things like skin oil.
Re Abd's argument that no "sizable" amount of He can be produced, it
seems to me that since a _measurable_ concentration has been found in
spite of high dilution in the gaseous output of open cells, then a
fortiori we should be able to accumulate a _sizable_ concentration in
the head space of a closed cell.
That is true, but it can be tricky using a closed cell. McKubre
reported helium above atmospheric concentration with the Case
experiment, and George reported it with the Stringham experiment. I
do not recall how much helium built up with Arata's closed
double-structured cathode (gas loading). I do not recall any
closed-cell electrochemical experiments with helium build-up.
Plus, it is easier to measure excess heat accurately in a closed
cell, for those who insist that heat should be measured too.
No, it is easier to measure it in an open cell for a short, fixed
period of time, because the gas purges the cell and collection flask.
With a closed cell you have to consider how much helium leaks into
the cell during the days or weeks you collect the gas in the
headspace. Helium will leak into most cells more easily than a
collection flask, because they have all those connections going into them.
No matter what you do, you have to worry about helium pre-existing in
the cathode and other components. Most people are confident that it
is locked into a cathode and will not come out over the course of an
experiment, but I wouldn't bet on that. You need to establish the
baseline with the kind of testing Morrey et al. did, which
was involved and expensive.
Helium is tricky stuff. It is -- literally -- the most slippery
element. I mean it is the most difficult to contain; it permeates
through materials most readily.
Helium experiments are difficult to understand and must be read
carefully. Given the ratio of heat to helium in cold fusion, heat is
far easier to detect and demonstrate convincingly. On this topic, Abd
ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Heat/helium is a far more powerful result than helium alone, unless
the helium found were so copious that it overwhelms all
possibilities other than new generation of helium in the cell.
As I pointed out, that is purely hypothetical. In real life helium is
always accompanied by heat with cold fusion. I suppose someone might
run an experiment without calorimetry, doing helium detection only,
but the heat would still be there.
- Jed
