Jed Rothwell points out how conservative the assumptions are in this paper.
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-
Jed Rothwell Mon, 20 May 2013 19:10:00 -0700
I just read this paper for the third time. This is a gem. These people
think and write like engineers rather than scientists. That is a complement
coming from me. They dot every i and cross every t. I can’t think of a
single thing I wish they had checked but did not.
In ever instance, their assumptions are conservative. Where there is any
chance of mismeasuring something, they assume the lowest possible value for
output, and the highest value for input. They assume emissivity is 1 even
though it is obviously lower (and therefore output is higher). The add in
every possible source of input, whereas any factor that might increase
output but which cannot be measured exactly is ignored. For example, they
know that emissivity from the sides of the cylinder close to 90 degrees
away from the camera is undermeasured (because it is at an angle), but
rather than try to take that into account, they do the calculation as if
all surfaces are at 0 degrees, flat in front of the camera. In the first
set of tests they know that the support frame blocks the IR camera partly,
casting a shadow and reducing output, but they do not try to take than into
account.
Furthermore, this is a pure black box test, exactly what the skeptics and
others have been crying out for. They make no assumptions about the nature
of the reaction or the content of the cylinder. They make no adjustments
for it; the heat is measured the same way you would measure an electrically
heated cylinder or a cylinder with a gas flame inside it. It is hands-off
in the literal sense, with only the thermocouples touching the cell, and
the rest at a distance, including the clamp on ammeter which placed below
the power supply. You do not have to know anything about the reaction to be
sure these measurements are right. There is nothing Rossi could possibly do
to fool these instruments, which the authors brought with them. They left a
video camera on the instruments at all times to ensure there was no
hanky-panky. They wrote:
“The clamp ammeters were connected upstream from the control box to ensure
the trustworthiness of the measurements performed, and to produce a
nonfalsifiable document (the video recording) of the measurements
themselves.”
They estimate the extent to which the heat exceeds the limits of chemistry
by both the mass of the cell and the volume of the cell. In the first test,
they use the entire weight of the inside cell as the starting point, rather
than just the powder, as if stainless steel might be the reactant. In the
second test they determine that the powder weighs ~0.3 g but they round
that up to 1 g.
They use Martin Fleischmann’s favorite method of looking at the heat decay
curves when the power cycles off. Plot 5 clearly shows that the heat does
not decay according to Newton’s law of cooling. There must be a heat
producing reaction in addition to the electric heater.