1995.10.22 / John White /  Re: Hilarious 'skeptical' handwaving awards
     
Originally-From: jnw@lys.vnet.net (John N. White)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Hilarious 'skeptical' handwaving awards
Date: 22 Oct 1995 00:01:37 -0500
Organization: Vnet Internet Access, Inc. - Charlotte, NC. (704) 374-0779

jedrothwell@delphi.com writes:
| jnw@katie.vnet.net (John N. White) gets the Science Fiction award for
| inventing the most number of unobserved "facts" and improbable reactions in an
| experiment about which he knows nothing:
| 
|     "The CETI calorimeter uses the extremely dubious method of running the
|     active electrolyte outside the cell and through the pump. Here is a
|     specific mundane explanation of what might be happening."
| 
| "Mundane" he calls it! Ha! If one-tenth of his confabulations were true, he
| would win the Nobel Prize for originality.

Thank you for the Science Fiction award, and for the nomination for the
Nobel Prize. I am deeply honored. Unfortunately, I am unlikely to win this
prize, as there is nothing very original about my proposal. The properties
that I am assuming for the Hydrate are all very commonplace and ordinary.

| He begins by inventing a new magical salt, and then he makes a
| few micrograms of this lithium salt perform amazing wonders, in defiance of
| Thermodynamics and A Lot Else:

I suppose the salt may seem new and magical to one who is unfamiliar with
chemistry, but all the assumed properties are old hat to chemists.

But "a few micrograms of this lithium salt"? The ICCF5 Demo is said to
have used 1M Lithium Sulphate. That's fairly concentrated. Sodium Sulphate
likes to form a decahydrate (Glauber's salt). If my proposed salt is
also a decahydrate then close to a fifth of the electrolyte could convert
to this form. That is far more than is needed to explain the observed heat.

(BTW, a solution of Glauber's salt has been proposed as a way to store
heat from a solar collector because of the large amount of energy it
can store at around 32degC. In fact, this is what gave me the idea for
my proposal.)
 
What concentration did the SOFE demo use?

|     "First I assume that there is a Lithium Sulphate Hydrate salt that is
|     not currently known. The reason it is not known is that it is very
|     difficult to nucleate its formation, and its surface assumes a state
|     that is hostile to further growth.
| 
|     In the CETI cell, however, when the concentrated Lithium Sulphate
|     electrolyte comes in contact with the nickel surface and overpotential
|     at the cathode, nucleation of the Hydrate occurs easily. The surface
|     area of the cathode is very large, so large amounts of the Hydrate will
|     form . . ."
| 
| A few micrograms of lithium are going to carry energy and catalyze very large
| amounts of Hydrate!?! What will they think up next?

Again, there is a lot more than a "few micrograms of lithium" involved
(see above). And it is the nickel cathode that catalyzes the nucleation
of the hydrate.
 
|     "When the sol is pulled from the cell and enters the warm pump, the
|     Hydrate crystals will dissolve back into solution, removing heat from
|     the pump in the process. Then the electrolyte re-enters the cell,
|     repeating the cycle.
| 
| How amazing!!! And it works even though the pump is not a bit warm. In fact,
| the part of the pump that comes in contact with the solution is room
| temperature.

Are there any actual measurements to back this up?
Pumps that I am familiar with do warm what flows through them.

| You can put your finger on it (it is a thin, transparent plastic
| chamber), ...

That is not a very accurate method, especially as the plastic won't
conduct heat to your finger very well.

| ... or you can put a thermocouple just downstream from it while
| circulating pure water through the loop, as they did during calibration.

What does "just downstream" mean here? did they have another thermocouple
in the flow just before the pump? They used pure water during calibration?
Why didn't they just do it right and use pure water for the run, separated
from the electrolyte by some sort of heat exchanger? That would avoid all
these problems.

|     "The above is just one of many such explanations of what may be
|     happening in the CETI calorimeter, given their extremely dubious
|     practice of running the active electrolyte out of the cell and through
|     the pump."
| 
| One of many!?! I cannot imagine what the others must be like.

Nature is not limited by your imagination.

| Ah, but like so many "skeptics" White has forgotten that CETI and others
| have run these cells in a static configuration, with no pump, no circulation,
| no Magical Microscopic Dilithium Energy Crystals capable of transporting
| impossibly large burdens of chemical energy.

All the static runs that I am aware of gave only low levels of excess heat,
easily explained by recombination. There were no wonderful results with
many times total I*V input. I (and others) have asked for details of the
static runs you keep mentioning, but I haven't seen a reply.
 
|     "Doing this makes the pump part of the system, and so the electrical
|     energy used by the pump must be considered as part of the energy put
|     into the system (and it's large compared to the "excess heat")."
| 
| How amazing! Call the Nobel Committee at once! White has found a way to make
| waste heat from a pump motor jump around to the other side of the pump,
| concentrate itself, enter the chamber that moves the water, and hop right into
| his 'Magic Power Crystals'

Thanks for the second nomination, but it is normal for most of the energy
wasted by a pump to end up as heat in the fluid.

Results from the flawed flowing-electrolyte "calorimeters" will
never be convincing. As improbable as you think my proposal is,
it, and others like it, are many orders of magnitude more probable
than radiationless light water fusion or "zero point energy".
-- 
jnw@vnet.net
cudkeys:
cuddy22 cudenjnw cudfnJohn cudlnWhite cudmo10 cudqt4 cudszL cudyr1995 
------------------------------
1995.10.22 / John Logajan /  Re: Cold Fusion Demo at SOFE '95 Worked Well
     
Originally-From: jlogajan@skypoint.com (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Cold Fusion Demo at SOFE '95 Worked Well
Date: 22 Oct 1995 05:53:46 GMT
Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc.

Bob Sullivan (bsulliva@sky.net) wrote:
: Both points are well taken. Given the construction of the Patterson cell, the 
: weight of the evidence points to recombination of oxygen and hydrogen within 
: the cell.

Neither of the demos (ICCF5 and SOFE) needed to use corrections for losses
due to dissociation and so the actual heat output was indeed greater in
absolute uncorrected terms than energy input.

: ... Bruce Klein's raw experimental results (via Victor Lapuszynski, associate
: editor "Cold Fusion") from a Patterson cell along with the "excess heat"
: calculations.

Bruce Klein's data was gathered early this year when he and Dennis Cravens
visited the CETI labs and did a preliminary series of tests to verify the
patent claims.

Unfortunately the thermal efficiency of the calorimetry was very low in
those tests (varying around 35% and occasionally as low as 17%.)  The
data is also taken with gas corrections and none of the Pd/Ni tests
exceed the absolute input power minus gas correction.  Only the Ni/Pd/Ni
test in attachement seven exceeds the absolute power.

Better tests were run later when Cravens took the device to his own
lab and boosted the thermal efficiency of the calorimetry into the
95% region.  He was able thereafter to bring the demo unit to ICCF5
in France.  In these later Cravens' tests and in the demo at ICCF5
the uncorrected input power was exceeded by the output power -- thus
eliminating recombination as the explanation.

The Miley demo increased the margin of excess to about 80-160 times
that explainable by recombination.

--
 - John Logajan -- jlogajan@skypoint.com  --  612-633-0345 -
 - 4248 Hamline Ave; Arden Hills, Minnesota (MN) 55112 USA -
 -   WWW URL = http://www.skypoint.com/members/jlogajan    -
cudkeys:
cuddy22 cudenjlogajan cudfnJohn cudlnLogajan cudmo10 cudqt4 cudszM cudyr1995 
------------------------------
1995.10.22 / John Logajan /  Re: Data
     
Originally-From: jlogajan@skypoint.com (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Data
Date: 22 Oct 1995 06:11:07 GMT
Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc.

Robin van Spaandonk (rvanspaa@netspace.net.au) wrote:
: ... asking someone like Cravens, if he would be prepared to allow you
: to post the data from one of his earlier experiments to the net?

Unfortunately Dennis Cravens has an extremely low opinion of the spf
group.  I spoke with him early this spring and his displeasure with
spf was obvious.  Ironically I don't think he's ever logged on to
the internet, so what he knows about spf must have come from tales told
to him by others.

By the way, I believe Cravens work on the CETI devices is in part financed
by ENECO.  Cravens was approached by ENECO to test the CETI devices based
upon Cravens reputation as a skillful experimenter.  ENECO is, of course,
the company that has gone around buying up all the cold fusion patents
and patent applications it can get in hopes that one or more of them will
payoff someday.  So it is in ENECO's interest to get a true account of
the potential of their own and other's patents in the field.


--
 - John Logajan -- jlogajan@skypoint.com  --  612-633-0345 -
 - 4248 Hamline Ave; Arden Hills, Minnesota (MN) 55112 USA -
 -   WWW URL = http://www.skypoint.com/members/jlogajan    -
cudkeys:
cuddy22 cudenjlogajan cudfnJohn cudlnLogajan cudmo10 cudqt4 cudszM cudyr1995 
------------------------------
1995.10.22 / John Logajan /  Re: Hilarious 'skeptical' handwaving awards
     
Originally-From: jlogajan@skypoint.com (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Hilarious 'skeptical' handwaving awards
Date: 22 Oct 1995 06:21:15 GMT
Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc.

John N. White (jnw@lys.vnet.net) wrote:
: Results from the flawed flowing-electrolyte "calorimeters" will
: never be convincing.

I think you are presuming the conclusion.  You've suggested the
flowing electrolyte calorimetry is flawed, but you've done so on
the basis of a heretofore unknown salt.

The properties of this unknown salt are that when it flows near a pump it
picks up 20 non-thermal joules per cc of solution and then in the presence 
of a electrolysis current and only in the presence of an electrolysis
current, it releases 20 joules per cc of solution.

Sorry, but I'm not ready to leap to the conclusion of "flawed" calorimetry
based on this level of arm waving.

--
 - John Logajan -- jlogajan@skypoint.com  --  612-633-0345 -
 - 4248 Hamline Ave; Arden Hills, Minnesota (MN) 55112 USA -
 -   WWW URL = http://www.skypoint.com/members/jlogajan    -
cudkeys:
cuddy22 cudenjlogajan cudfnJohn cudlnLogajan cudmo10 cudqt4 cudszM cudyr1995 
------------------------------
1995.10.22 / John Logajan /  Re: Cold Fusion Demo at SOFE '95 Worked Well
     
Originally-From: jlogajan@skypoint.com (John Logajan)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Cold Fusion Demo at SOFE '95 Worked Well
Date: 22 Oct 1995 06:41:18 GMT
Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc.

Bob Sullivan (bsulliva@sky.net) wrote:
: (Nor do I have much confidence with implausible precision: 14.28 ml/min.)

I believe it is a target number.

It takes 75J to heat one mole of pure H2O one degree C.
There are 18.08 ml of H2O per mole.
So to heat one ml of H2O one degree C takes 75J/18.08 = 4.148J.
Or it takes 1J to heat 1/4.148 = 0.241 ml water one degree C.
Over sixty seconds, that would be 60*0.241 = 14.46 ml/min -- pretty close.

What this does for you is to simplify the demo because now a one degree
rise in temperature equates to one watt of thermal energy.  Thus you try
to adjust the flow rate to 14.46 (for pure H2O) to get the nice easy
conversion factor.

By the way, the specific heat of the electrolyte is, I believe, 0.95,
so the flow rate should really be 14.46/0.95 = 15.22 ml/min.

In the end, though, take the measured flow rate and calculate the results.
It should be pretty close to the nice conversion factor, but one can deal
with it even if it doesn't fall out so neatly.

--
 - John Logajan -- jlogajan@skypoint.com  --  612-633-0345 -
 - 4248 Hamline Ave; Arden Hills, Minnesota (MN) 55112 USA -
 -   WWW URL = http://www.skypoint.com/members/jlogajan    -
cudkeys:
cuddy22 cudenjlogajan cudfnJohn cudlnLogajan cudmo10 cudqt4 cudszM cudyr1995 
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