At 05:50 AM 4/6/2010, Michel Jullian wrote:
Ok, Jed and Abd, you have convinced me that a helium free environment,
or a highly helium impermeable cell, would be difficult to get, and
more importantly that it would be disputable.
Then how about letting a not-so-impermeable (e.g. sealed plastic)
closed PF cell, with recombiner inside, run in ambient air for a
sufficiently long duration for helium to build up to an indisputable
*above ambient* concentration? Jed says this has never been done.
A single current source could drive hundreds of identical test cells
at a time (in series arrangement) for weeks or even months. Finding
helium above ambient in only a single cell among those hundreds would
be an indisputable proof of LENRs wouldn't it?
No, 'fraid not. First of all, getting the helium above ambient isn't
easy. Secondly, if you find a single cell out of a hundred, what is
going to be asked is, "What guarantees that this single result isn't
an error?" And, indeed, at that level, nothing would even point to
other than error. Sure, if the result were indisputable helium well
above ambient (not close, and the highest "above ambient" result I
recall is about double ambient; getting that result was rare, and
might even be an errot.
Unless that is correlated with, predicted by the heat. And there will
be quite a bit of heat in that cell. Looking for helium without
having some measure of heat is not the most efficient way to do this.
It doesn't have to be a "calorimeter," i.e, an accurate measure of
heat. Just monitoring cell power input and cell temperature, if all
the cells are identical, could be enough. (This, then, isn't going to
be good for determining accurate heat/helium ratio, but it might
still be useful, i.e., the normal response of the cell to power
input/generation could be calibrated. For proof of fusion, the
correlation alone establishes the matter. For investigation of the
mechanism, the exact heat/helium ratio would be important.)
Now, my cells, all things considered, including something for labor,
would cost maybe $50 (in quantity 100, perhaps!). But these are very
low-output cells (assuming that they even work). To meaure helium, I
believe that far higher output would be needed. That's going to take
a lot more palladium and a lot more heavy water. So the cell
materials might cost, let me guess, $1000. A hundred cells, $100,000.
Maybe something less. Then there would be the monitoring equipment
for each cell, and the power for them. That's quite a bit cheaper,
actually. Might be able to do the whole thing for 100 grand. Got that
sitting around?
(yes, it would probably be ideal if the entire assemblage is in
series, so the current is constant in all cells. But that would
definitely create problems (like very high voltage at some
substantial current), so, instead, there would be limited numbers of
cells in series. Some of the cells should be control cells, with
ordinary water, say, in place of heavy water. Even better would be
deuterium depleted water.)
Oh, forgot something huge. How do you measure the helium? I'd be
interested if anyone knows the lowest cost for a decent measurement
of helium from a sample. Miles took samples from the effluent gases,
I think. Still, this would be a significant cost.
And what would be gained? *We don't need more evidence to prove that
cold fusion is real.* It already exists. Each element of the proof
can be challenged, but some of the elements are very difficult to
challenge, and the most difficult is heat/helium, and that's been
done adequately for proof. Not for accurate measurement of
heat/helium ratio. One single exhaustive and careful result of about
25 MeV +/- a few isn't enough. So there will be, I assume, more. But
not massive searches for helium.
We do need more work to develop experimental techniques that are
cheap and easy for replication. And then a boatload of work to
develop the parameter space in far greater detail. That's what I'm
hoping to stimulate, in a narrow area (codep, small-scale, very cheap
comparatively, and hopefully reliable. The neutrons prove, assuming I
find them, that a nuclear reaction is taking place. I'm hoping to see
other signals of the reaction, perhaps a little heat (I'm simply
monitoring temperature, comparing the experimental cell with a light
water cell in series with it. And one experiment will not show much,
I'll need to do many, but, by that time, I'm hoping others are
repeating the exact experiment, helping pay for the whole thing by
doing (and paying for) their part. Or donors might help, one already
has provided a gift.) Once there is a standard cell, and if it
produces reliable results (always shows neutrons, in roughly the same
quantities), then there is a standard to use to look for variables.
This is why I'm going for small rather than big. It's the opposite of
what most seem to have reached for. But a few neutrons is like being
a little pregnant. I suspect I'll see more than a few, i.e., I'll
see, in a run of about three weeks, hundreds of proton tracks on an
SSNTD, mounted on the outside of the cell, concentrated in an area
close to where the cathode, inside the cell, against the cell wall,
is located. And not anywhere else.
If I don't find tracks, the most likely conclusion will be that I
didn't get NAE. But the alternate hypothesis would be that the SPAWAR
work is bogus. If I suspected that, I wouldn't be trying to do this.
So the result of "no neutrons" will be, "WTF did I do differently?"
This could be such a valuable result, if I can find it, that I almost
hope I fail first. On the other hand.... sometimes "boring" is very nice.
I want to sell nice, boring, predictable, very-low-level neutron
sources..... what, maybe a neutron a minute?
And I'm telling all of you about it in advance for two reasons:
first, it's getting embarassing that I haven't put the cells together
yet. I might need it to get more embarassing before I actually do it.
Second, I want you all to know that I'm going to report the results
no matter what they are, with all the gory details so that any of you
can repeat my mistakes. Or my success. I am *so* wishing that this
had been done with all the unreported attempts to reproduce the F-P
experiment. What a waste! We'd be years ahead, my guess, of where we are.
We don't need more proof of helium. These reactions (F-P cells, and
codep) produce helium. Some work should be done to compare helium
with other products. (There are other products in small quantities.)
This doesn't take large numbers of cells.
