On Apr 1, 2011, at 8:05 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
On 04/01/2011 11:27 AM, Jones Beene wrote:
This turned up on Peter’s Ego-Out blog:
An experimenter in Québec, Canada is working on a cold fusion
boiler to heat a house.
He limits the capacity at 1kw of electricity input and receive 4
kw of heating, using INEXPENSIVE ingredients.
You can visit his web site :
http://omael.com/!_HydroPlasmol/_le_projet_.htm
Hmmm... On the home page we have, "Nouveau en date du 22 avril
2009" ... two years ago.
On the Derniers Dévelopements (most recent developments) page, the
most recent date I see is June 2006.
On the Historique page we see that the inspiration came from the
film, The Saint (which I'm sure everyone here remembers), and the
direction the author has taken comes from good ol' Jean-Louis
Naudin's site, where everything always works and it all looks so easy.
See: http://omael.com/!_HydroPlasmol/_projet_page_1_.htm
The basic design seems to be JLN's version of Mizuno's incandescent
tungsten cell, but with a substitution of an iron cathode, due to
the high cost of the tungsten cathodes (which are burned up PDQ
when the cell's in operation). Anode is stainless steel.
Electrolyte is ... say WHAT? ... ashes from his fireplace ??
"Presqu'aussitôt je vis qu'il fallait utiliser de la cendre de
foyer et une cathode en fer. Je préparai donc une solution de
cendre de foyer dont la recette est bien simple. Vous remplissez
au tiers un seau de cendre tamisée que vous remplissez presqu'au
bord d'eau très chaude sinon bouillante."
This reads like the Seven Days article on how to build a hydrogen
bomb, which included such gems as centrifuging the uranium by
putting it in a bucket with a long rope attached to the handle, and
whirling it around and around over your head.
If there's any calorimetry going on, or any other evidence that his
device actually does anything besides use up electricity, I must
have overlooked it.
Oh, well, I got a grin out of it, at least...
An English PDF synopsis can be found at:
http://omael.com/!_HydroPlasmol_Telechargements/Resume/Projet_Hydro-
Plasmol_Anglais.PDF
The electrolyte appears to be sodium bicarbonate. Perhaps they are
simply pyrolyzing it to make NaOH, H2O, and CO2. Or ... perhaps this
amounts to a closed cycle water gas system.
The physics theory makes no sense at all. For example, they don't
realize that a stopped electron has a larger wavelength than even an
orbital electron, and thus can not fall into the nucleus. They
think anti-neutrino capture is feasible on a high wattage basis.
Just because the theory is nonsense of course does not mean the
gadget can not work. The problem, as you point out, is finding out
if sensible calorimetry has been applied. Fortunately, the device
uses a heat exchanger. Calorimetry should be easy, except maybe
accounting for chemical inputs.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
