On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected]>wrote:
> There are actually some technical difficulties with a "blank run" in the > Rossi E-cat. > > Wet cold fusion researchers sometimes have used H2O in a "blank" run, and > compared evolved heat using D2O with the blank output. If the D2O produces > a heat measurement value higher than the H2O then they can conclude, with > good certainty, that something interesting happened. That sort of yes/no > blank comparison run is harder to arrange for the E-Cat. > > The trouble is that H2(gas)+Ni(powder) reacts exothermically, as the > hydrogen is adsorbed onto the nickel. This means that a blank run using, > say, nitrogen in place of hydrogen can be expected to produce *less* > *measured* *heat* than the H2 run, even if there's no new chemistry or > physics taking place in the "loaded" E-Cat. And that leaves you right back > where you started, trying to do precise calorimetry on the "loaded" run to > determine exactly how much "excess heat" was produced, and comparing it > with a theoretical value for heat of adsorption. > I don't really see an exothermic reaction with hydrogen as a problem. The error would be in favor of Rossi and I am happy to accept it if (and only if) he runs so long that it's accounted for along with any other non-nuclear source of energy. There's nt need to run D2O or to try removing the nickel as I agree, that would be problematical.
