As you say, people have been "working" with "cold fusion" since 1989, has anyone generated even 1 watt of electrical power with the subject technology?Earlier this week, Kevmo posted THIS article, commenting on a public demonstration of a cold fusion reactor at MIT. The best run produced 0.08 Watts for about 102 minutes.
CERN is also holding a conference about LENR (in March, I believe). They made a point of saying that coffee and tea would be served afterwards. Using the above device as an example, if they could store the heat it generated perfectly, it would take about 10 days to produce enough energy to brew a cup of tea. So, at this time, LENR is not yet ready to make a cup of tea.
The part I find most amazing is that the Rossi fan boys who believe that Rossi is really generating 10,000W of power with his gadget are, nevertheless, getting all excited about Swartz generating 0.08W. Either Swartz's demonstration is totally trivial, or Rossi's is totally fraudulent.
I have a BS in mechanical engineering and an associate in internal combustion engine design. The latter featured more thermodynamics, chemistry (fuels & lubricants), heat transfer than what was required for the BSME. That is I got to do calorimetry studies to measure the heating value of various fuels.
It is quite awhile since I actually did one of those studies but it still sticks in mind all of the factors that need to be recognized and accounted for when measuring heating values. The procedure required a closed "bomb" which contained the carefully weighed fuel sample along with an enough oxidizer to permit full combustion. Before closing the bomb, a small piece of nicrome wire was connected between two terminals in the wall of the bomb container to allow ignition of the sample. The assembled bomb was then placed in a large cylindrical tank of of water which had been weighed as the cylinder was filled. Temperature probes were then placed to measure both water and ambient air temperature. A stirring apparatus was used to induce a slow circulation of the water bath. Temperatures were observed until the water bath with the bomb achieved observed room temperature for a specified period (10 minutes typical). After achieving equilibrium, the circuit to the nicrome igniter was closed and periodic observations (every 15 sec. typical) of both water and air temperature commenced. These observations continued until the water temperature returned to room temperature.
Knowing the weight of the water in the bath and the sample weight you then were required to calculate the heating value of the sample fuel. The actual calculation required you to make allowances for the heat input from the igniter wire and from the mechanical work performed by the stirring apparatus. To arrive at the correction factors required a separate calorimeter runs w/o a fuel sample to measure the input from the igniter and another run to observe any correction needed for stirring.
Oops, I almost forgot! After the actual calorimeter run w/ fuel sample achieved equilibrium w/ room temp the bomb was removed from the water bath and carefully opened. The residual ash was removed and carefully weighed. The ash sample was then placed in a desiccator and thoroughly dried and then weighed again. Knowing the weight of the sample (fuel & oxidizer) before combustion and the wet ash weight after allows you to calculate the weight of the CO2 produced. Knowing the dry weight allows you to calculate the amount of water vapor produced by combustion. The last correction factor is to calculate the heat released by the condensation of the water vapor into liquid water, knowing that the heat of vaporization of water is 540 Calories/gram.
That is how small quantities of heat are measured. Careful attention to experimental design, actively looking for procedures which could introduce error, performing calibration runs to observe any such errors and either reduce them to zero or identify them so that corrections may be applied to the experimental values. I would venture that the CERN people are familiar with all of this, my doubts are that the people peddling these devices are not so scrupulous.
Regards,
GtG
PS Last time I did one of these experiments JFK was shot during the equilibrium phase of the experiment (no kidding).