Posted on 05/24/2013 6:35:28 PM PDT by Kevmo
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1563 ... ity-of-gas
Cold fusion reactor independently verified, has 10,000 times the energy density of gas By Sebastian Anthony on May 21, 2013 at 12:43 pm 338 Comments
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Against all probability, a device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists. The research paper, which hasn’t yet undergone peer review, seems to confirm both the existence of cold fusion, and its potency: The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is currently the best fuel readily available to mankind.
The device being tested, which is called the Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat for short), was created by Andrea Rossi. Rossi has been claiming for the past two years that he had finally cracked cold fusion, but much to the chagrin of the scientific community he hasn’t allowed anyone to independently analyze the device — until now. While it sounds like the scientists had a fairly free rein while testing the E-Cat, we should stress that they still don’t know exactly what’s going on inside the sealed steel cylinder reactor. Still, the seven scientists, all from good European universities, obviously felt confident enough with their findings to publish the research paper.
As for what’s happening inside the cold fusion reactor, Andrea Rossi and his colleague Sergio Focardi have previously said their device works by infusing hydrogen into nickel, transmuting the nickel into copper and releasing a large amount of heat. While Rossi hasn’t provided much in the way of details — he’s a very secretive man, it seems — we can infer some knowledge from NASA’s own research into cold fusion. Basically, hydrogen ions (single protons) are sucked into a nickel lattice (pictured right); the nickel’s electrons are forced into the hydrogen to produce neutrons; the nickel nuclei absorb these neutrons; the neutrons are stripped of their electrons to become protons; and thus the nickel goes up in atomic number from 28 to 29, becoming copper.
This process, like the “conventional” fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium, produces a lot of heat. (See: 500MW from half a gram of hydrogen: The hunt for fusion power heats up.) The main difference, though, is that the cold fusion process (also known as LENR, or low energy nuclear reaction) produces very slow moving neutrons which don’t create ionizing radiation or radioactive waste. Real fusion, on the other hand, produces fast neutrons that decimate everything in their path. In short, LENR is fairly safe — safe enough that NASA dreams of one day putting a cold fusion reactor in every home, car, and plane. Nickel and hydrogen, incidentally, are much cheaper and cleaner fuels than gasoline.
As far as we can tell, the main barrier to cold fusion — as with normal fusion — is producing more energy than you put in. In NASA’s tests, it takes a lot more energy to fuse the nickel and hydrogen than is produced by the reaction. Rossi, it would seem, has discovered a secret sauce that significantly reduces the amount of energy required to start the reaction. As for what the secret sauce is, no one knows — in the research paper, the independent scientists simply refer to it as “unknown additives.” All told, the E-Cat seems to have a power density of 4.4×105 W/kg, and an energy density of 5.1×107 Wh/kg.
If Rossi and Focardi’s cold fusion technology turns out to be real — if the E-Cat really has 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline — then the world will change, very, very quickly. Stay tuned; we’ll let you know when — or if — the E-Cat passes peer review.
Now read: Nuclear power is our only hope, or, the greatest environmentalist hypocrisy of all time
Research paper: arXiv:1305.3913 - “Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device”
The short answer is yes. This has been done to death EXTENSIVELY. Just because you aren't aware of it doesn't mean that it hasn't happened.
"Or was it simply destruction by way of a thermal reaction or controlled burn."
And the simple answer is no. Not enough space available to hold a sufficient amount of reactive chemical to account for the total heat produced.
Generally no, not a free running one in any case. The reactions I have seen use up their available fuel or catalyst pretty quickly in a flash in the pan effect. But that's not what we have here which is why I still consider it.
We have resistive heaters, we have a reaction that has stability in a narrow range of temperature so I can't discount a controlled exothermic reaction. And a pretty hot one at that. Either that or there is more material than we are aware of.....kinda hard to say since it's sealed, we don't know what actually was used and we don't know what was left.....all we know was the weight at the start and weight at the finish.
I can't even pretend to be comfortable with that. I actually wish I could be...
I said that it was obvious to me that a reaction took place.
I'm not a chemist, but I do have some experience with catalysts and catalytic reaction behavior. When working, they react evenly and always the same unless you screw it up or change it. They can run for days with very little fuel or catalyst.
It's getting the reaction stable that requires a lot of testing attempts but once you have it....you can repeat it endlessly. But I don't have experience in heat storage chemistry....As I said, I am a electrician...a retired one at that..and I'm too old to have had much experience with thermal imaging. I don't therefore know it well and I don't have a trust relationship with the tech as to what weaknesses it has or how cameras can misread and therefore be used to come to the wrong scientific conclusions. But it appears to me that 500C of the total temp was produced by the reaction and it continued for some 4 days...
Not getting into the weeds on what should be expected because we don't know what went into it and until you can get down to heating a volume of water in a controlled environment to count BTUs, I can't say if the estimates they derived from thermal imaging is correct or not. That painted coating put on the vessel is there for some reason...but I guess that's a secret as well.
Not saying the coating is to significantly change the thermal measurements. I think it's used to shield the optics from seeing a thermal image inside the vessel. A heat signature....if you will that might cause speculation. So you paint the windows ......
To be frank, if they were not hiding so much, I would not be commenting about it.
I doubt I'll ever be commenting on it again since I don't generally keep up with stuff in this category. I am busy enough playing in the stock markets...
Yes, it's to give the reactor a KNOWN emissivity (that of the paint). ALL information about the specific paint is given and known. The whole "emissivity error" thing is complete fabricated FUD garbage.
And I don't have a whole lot of direct experience with thermal cameras myself, but I "have" used their predecessors that were used to monitor high temperatures optically, and know that the cameras are much more precise and accurate than those, and that those were used to control critical processes like steel production furnaces and many, many other hi-temp industrial processes. I also know that such cameras are routinely used by engineers to do heat balances around unit operations. Perfectly straightforward technology. Well understood and proven tech. No mystery there whatsoever.
I know nothing about emissivity....
Sounds like a lot of high brow hooey to me...
Been around a lot of heat in my day....mostly heat treatment, testing, steel alloy experimentation foundry work.
In all those years of setting up themocouples, monitoring devices, programmable logic controllers to maintain, time and log heating cycles we never painted a test piece. Not ever for any reason. There never was a need and it eliminates a visual clue or indications that there is a problem developing. Metals change color and texture just prior to failure or structural bonding issues arising...and we did a lot of stuff for the government and private companies in all sorts of areas to include Woods Hole Oceanographic, Northrup, Lockheed and others.....So we tested metals and made parts and structures to certain design tolerances of temperature, pressure and stress.
Never painted a piece that was undergoing heat cycles or testing. We used thermal optics but relied on multiple thermo couples. Once the structures were completed and checked, they got painted, usually white. Special bonding paint used for under coat or primer.
From my experience the only thing that a dark or black heat resistant paint on the vessel that is essentially a one off, one use container, is to obscure the heat signature, not to enhance it. It would muddle the picture making hot or cold spots disappear which makes the use of such a accurate digital camera more or less a waste of time. All they could see was the average heating of the vessel with no details of what was emanating from inside or where. At least you see that with multiple thermocouples.
That was not needed. What little reflection they would have seen in the camera could have been compensated for by adjustment and they did say that they shot the vessel at a low angle to prevent this yet the piece was painted.. so was the second but with a different paint. Must have run out and according to the observer they did a crappy job of painting with thin areas and thick ones.
It was enough to get my attention. I think what they were trying to show is exactly what they did show. A high heat output and a low power input to make the result impressive. But nothing more or less. That is why the paint and the waveform doctoring which I can only assume was pulsating DC...as it would be the lowest power way of heating those coils. It also reduces the probability of failure of a ni-chrome element over the length of the test.
If they are going to these length’s to test better, then what would happen if and when someone tries to duplicate it. Or perhaps this was not a test at all and was just a show for the testing people.
Then there is the matter of the reactor being started before the witnesses even arrived on the first test. Why did they not wait?....what were they trying to avoid...?
Just using you as a sounding board because you more or less prompted me into it. As you can see, I don’t rust anyone. And that mistrust pays off frequently.
So no...I don’t know anything about emissivity, but I do know that the paint was not necessary for the test. Without it you would have seen in the image any hot spots, cold spots etc...With a high temp coating on the test piece you are looking through a dirty lense and you cannot discern details that might be needed for evaluation. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying the excuse. Just like I don’t buy a lot of things that occurred with this experiment.
It’s either not ready for prime time, and they are hiding this fact, or what they have is smoke and mirrors... or they are paranoid schizophrenics..You pick it because I can’t tell much when everyone is not being truthful, hiding the truth, or simply faking it...
One more thing.......lol...(Fox 5)
Yesterday when I read the PDF I noted another anomaly with the control test. In addition to it not being painted (if I read that right) They did not even put the end caps on it!
This too created a wider deviation between what the heating elements alone were providing to the heat output and the reaction. If I recall the estimate for the dummy control was in the neighborhood of 300C. Take the 800C for the total, subtract the electrical elements and you have about 500C of reaction heat over the course of the run.
That’s a lot, but what if the end caps were installed, the dummy painted black and all the testing was done equally on the control as it was on the experiment reaction to achieve a more accurate picture of exactly what the reaction was providing...
Wouldn’t that be a novel idea! But that’s not how they did it...and any off the street mechanically inclined garage mechanic could have seen that error.
I don’t think I’m being overly critical here...I may have even missed a few things as I have not redone their MOH calculations....not my field, but with some trial and error I could. I wonder if they took the high side on any other calculations in addition to the test parameters, But I don’t think it was the testing people, assuming they did not set out the test parameters that were used in the end.
I’m betting they fought to get more but ended up with what they got or were told this is what we will do.
But I can say without much reservation that what they did will not be nearly enough to satisfy many people..maybe a few dreamers...
Either that or there is more material than we are aware of.....
***You can measure the volume of the cylinder — the 7 scientists did. That’s all there is to work with. Whatever chemical you are looking at, it has to fit within that volume and burn for 116 hours and produce that much heat.
There is always the cylinder inside the cylinder. It’s supposed to be stainless....it does have nickel in it and it has mass as do the heating coils, but they never open this thing up so who knows....
Reminds me of a joke told at most work places about two guys finally getting caught stealing stuff from the plant. Everyday they walked right past the guard house with wheelbarrows full of dirt. The guard would check the dirt and found it to be just what it looked like and waived them through.
It was weeks before they figured out that they were stealing wheelbarrows and not dirt.
Kev, they could be cooking RDX in that thing for all we know...and we don’t...not really...
Gotta have a better review....much better review...
If they’re cooking RDX (not sure what that chemical is) then do the calculations for energy density over that volume and 116 hours; you’ll see that the measured energy density is at least 10X.
There is always the cylinder inside the cylinder. It’s supposed to be stainless....it does have nickel in it and it has mass as do the heating coils, but they never open this thing up so who knows....
***Regardless, it would still be a chemical. The energy density measured was 10X of any known chemical. Cute story but not particularly relevant unless they somehow stole 15 adult elephants each time there was supposed to be a wheelbarrow full of dirt.
In the US they call it composition 4 or C-4 for short. It was invented in Europe as RDX.
Have no idea what the energy density is. If you know where to find it, it would be interesting...
Ummmm.....OK...Ya...
I think that from the graphs I saw, they were comparing to common fuels used today for power generation or batteries. I did not see references to all chemicals or compounds that release energy.. Never the less, I never said the test as described was not interesting in the way they did it. Just not convinced it was transmutation of nickel into copper. I say that because they seem to be hiding something. It could theoretically be true that they found something, but they are still hiding something. And because it's so obvious to me, I can't begin to buy into it.
The RDX was just a off the cuff remark regarding a compound that has a great deal of explosive energy for it’s low weight and volume. about twice that of TNT and it’s totally stable as it is. You can light it on fire and it burns good. Like a powered up up plastic.
But it can be played with to do all sorts of burn rates for different applications. It just no good in space....too cold I guess...
Just saying that I have seen other chemicals with a lot of punch for the size and weight of it and they can be controlled.
Just saying that I have seen other chemicals with a lot of punch for the size and weight of it and they can be controlled.
***And ANY chemical would have at least 10x less energy density than what was measured. ANY chemical.
I did not see references to all chemicals or compounds that release energy..
***Then maybe you can find where they made some sort of mistake.
It could theoretically be true that they found something,
***to quote you yourself, “Ummmm.....OK...Ya...” but now you’re saying they “theoretically” found something. Either you accept the 10x figure or you don’t.
but they are still hiding something
***Industrial trade secrets. It happens far more often than you think.
I do not accept the 10x more than any chemical known....
I accept the test readings so far as they go, but I believe the 10X which is based of those readings to be exaggerated by multiple steps taken during the test.
So lets say it was 5X.......would that be so impressive to you.
But I can’t estimate it. The test was rudimentary and lacked even what I would call scientific methods of standard testing, starting with the dummy control vessel and continuing through to the paint and the lack of a testing environment.
So at best it’s only interesting to poke at and see what falls out. But to me it proves nothing about cold fusion. At least had it melted down I could have said it might be fusion of the hotter variety, or had they revealed what was in the device I would have taken some time with that before getting PO’d about the test.
As I said, chemistry is not my field. I would with it or did during my career, but running heat calculation estimates with a formula that takes the outside temperature in air and includes the outer area and from that gives you a time/MOH output is sometime that I used tables for and never had to do the calculations so I'm uncomfortable with it.
It's a calculation we electricians use to determine the maximum loading for wires in different environments and I probably could do it given time and the ability to make mistakes....or minor screwups until I got it right. So I might try it if I have time and there is enough info for me to plug into a formula. Not even sure where to find the formula I need but it's probably in one of my books. (been reading tables since I got out of school)
I really would like this project to bear fruit if it's economical. But I can't say it is over cheap nat gas, oil and of course nuclear. But if it works, and the chemicals needed are borderline efficient, it might be worth something. There would be a matter of emissions....I have sucked up enough nickel fumes to choke a horse and it's not good, but I can see possibilities in it vs the fuel cell tech which they cannot seem to get priced low enough to make widely usefull except for special purposes and they tend to be unstable at times.
So we will see.....But I see nothing yet but some sort of game of cat and proprietary mouse. and very little else.
I accept the test readings so far as they go,
***Good, then you accept that 7 scientists can read multimeters and thermometers.
but I believe the 10X which is based of those readings to be exaggerated by multiple steps taken during the test.
***Point out where, and how 7 scientists would miss what you say is so obvious.
So lets say it was 5X.....
***No. You’ve posted your belief, now back it up.
..would that be so impressive to you.
***not particularly.
But I can’t estimate it. The test was rudimentary
***If it’s so obviously based on exaggerated by multiple steps, point out those steps. Otherwise, you’re just engaging in vapid speculation.
and lacked even what I would call scientific methods of standard testing,
***Why would you call it that? These 7 scientists have credentials, go ahead and post yours to show how your position is superior so that when you say, “what I would call” then we have a reason to listen to you.
starting with the dummy control vessel and continuing through to the paint and the lack of a testing environment.
***Dummy control vessel is standard testing for a control; paint??? Who cares? Lack of a testing environment is just technospeak for you don’t like it. It’s standard black box testing.
So at best it’s only interesting to poke at and see what falls out.
***Then why bother even discuss it.
But to me it proves nothing about cold fusion.
***It proves that Rossi has something. If the tests turned out negative, he’d be hiding under a rock right now. Just treat it as if it’s some new chemical that gives 10X energy density.
At least had it melted down I could have said it might be fusion of the hotter variety,
***The first test DID melt down. This is the 2nd set of tests.
or had they revealed what was in the device I would have taken some time with that before getting PO’d about the test.
***Always going back to what’s-in-the-box, even though time & again it’s been pointed out that it’s an industrial trade secret and Rossi can’t get a patent, so it wouldn’t be in his best interest at all to open kimono on his $100Billion development.
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