Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
In reply to Horace Heffner's message of Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:57:47 -0900: Hi, [snip] BTW, I see the referenced medical web site uses KeV. The prefix k (small k) is the standard prefix for kilo-, even though M is the standard prefix for mega-. Necessary, because lower case m is the prefix for milli. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk All SPAM goes in the trash unread.
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
At 3:20 PM 12/5/4, Robin van Spaandonk wrote: In reply to Horace Heffner's message of Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:57:47 -0900: Hi, [snip] BTW, I see the referenced medical web site uses KeV. The prefix k (small k) is the standard prefix for kilo-, even though M is the standard prefix for mega-. Necessary, because lower case m is the prefix for milli. Only absolutely necessary to get single character prefixes. They could have used M for kilo- and MM for mega- or some other multi-character arrangements like those used in the petrolium industry. It was the objective of the standardization to get rid of just those kinds of things, so yes, it was necessary. After M the abbreviations are all capitalized for the positive exponents, whether the negative exponent abbreviatons match on first letter or not. For example, 10^18 is exa- or prefix E, yet 10^-18 is atto or prefix a. Similarly true for peta- and femto-, tera- and pico-, and giga- and nano-. All the negative exponent prefixes have small letters. Regards, Horace Heffner
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
Horace Heffner writes I have done plenty of tritium counting using liquid scintillation counting. I think it is more difficult to count water borne tritium by other means. Scintillation couters can reliably and automatically discriminate between tritium and say carbon 14. There is almost no penetrating power for 20 keV beta particles, so counting 201 Tl without interference from tritium is easy. Despite your expertise, your conclusion is debatable, depending on the sophistication of the detector... and perhaps depending on an operator with less extenisive background ;-) . See below. BTW, my handbook shows 201 Tl decaying by electron capture (1.36 MeV) with Hg and K shell x-rays of 135.28 keV and 167.40 keV. This stuff should stand out like the sun on a clear day. Let me direct your attention to Thallium online http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/thallium.htm You will see that over 95% of the gammas in this situation would have a mean energy between 68-80 KeV but are coming from the transitory mercury isotope as the Tl life is so short. After an extended run, and with such a small amount used, and with a starting half-life of only 70+ hours, there is almost no Tl left to measure at the end of the run. As you say, the end point for tritium betas is around 20 KeV and nearly all would be absorbed in the water. The Radiation Yield (Y) from bremsstrahlung can be calculated using the following Y=(6x10^-4(ZT))/(1+6x10^-4(ZT)) Where Z is the atomic #; T is the Kinetic E. of the beta in MeV. for an average energy of 6keV you get: Y=(6x10^-4(4*.006)/(1+6x10^-4(4*.006)) =1.44x10^-5 Which is the fraction of the 6 keV converted to photons as the Beta particle slows down. ...or, the standard approximation is ZE/3000 where E is the maximum beta energy i.e. 0.0186 MeV. From Evan's The Atomic Nucleus ... This gives (for Be) 4 x 0.0186/3000 or 2.5 E-5, roughly twice the value above. Anyway if lots of tritium was being produced, a fair amount of the bremsstrahlung gamma photons of about 3-6 keV would be seen. This should be easily discriminated from the Tl emission, but not necessarily so - depending on the detector used and how the results were interpreted. That is why I asked the question. Jones
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
At 9:16 AM 12/3/4, Jones Beene wrote: [snip] Let me direct your attention to Thallium online http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/thallium.htm You will see that over 95% of the gammas in this situation would have a mean energy between 68-80 KeV but are coming from the transitory mercury isotope as the Tl life is so short. After an extended run, and with such a small amount used, and with a starting half-life of only 70+ hours, there is almost no Tl left to measure at the end of the run. OK, I see you were referring to the Hg gammas at 80 keV. Yes, these too have a good penetraing power and are readily discriminated from tritium betas. They too can be counted by ordinary geiger counters. Also, a 70 hour half-life is plenty good for a tracer for water drops. A test of whether a cell is vulnerable to water drop entrainment shouldn't take more than an hour. BTW, I see the referenced medical web site uses KeV. The prefix k (small k) is the standard prefix for kilo-, even though M is the standard prefix for mega-. [snip] ...Anyway if lots of tritium was being produced, a fair amount of the bremsstrahlung gamma photons of about 3-6 keV would be seen. These gamms have almost no pentrating power in water. This is why organic solvents are used for liquid scintillation counting. The water is kept to a few percent in the counting vials. This should be easily discriminated from the Tl emission, but not necessarily so - depending on the detector used and how the results were interpreted. That is why I asked the question. I think it would be nearly impossible to confuse tritium with either 201Tl or 201Hg. You don't even need a multi channel analyser. I think the important thing here is not to lose sight of the fact that Cirillo's and various other boil-off enthalpy data may be suspect due to the problem which P.J van Noorden so kindly pointed out. This is an important fact to consider when designing future boil-off experiments. Regards, Horace Heffner
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
Hello Horace The condenser was made out of glass and had a length of 1.5 meter and was positioned vertically. It was cooled by water which flowed around the glass condenser. Best Regards Peter - Original Message - From: Horace Heffner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 1:23 AM Subject: Re: comments on the Cirillo paper At 12:06 PM 12/2/4, Jones Beene wrote: Horace, you seem to be saying that the condenser was air-cooled instead of water-cooled. Of course this would introduce major errors, and it still doesn't address the issue of tritium. Actually, there is no mention of a condenser in the Cirillio paper. The standard method of doing boiloff calorimetry is to measure the weight of water boiled off (that disappears) and then multply by the energy required to boil that water (which explicitly *is* the method used by Cirillo.) It appears the plastic cylinder with pyrex lid located above the cell does the condensing. There is apparently no intent to use the condensation heat (i.e. mass flow calorimetry on the secondary coil) as a secondary calorimetric means. Cirillo's method is definitely susceptable to entrained water droplets. I would assume P.J van Noorden (he can clue us in) used an ordinary laboratory condenser. Such condensers are typically made of glass and used in either straight through mode or reflux mode. In straight through mode the steam comes in through one (elevated) end and water comes out the other. In reflux mode the condenser is usually vertical and steam is admitted in at the bottom and water comes out the bottom into an attached flask. Unless you are trying to do dual calorimetry, it doesn't matter how the condenser is cooled, by gas, by water, or by ice. The heat measurment is via the mass of water lost in the reactor. Boiloff calorimeters are typically calibrated using boil-off runs using calibration resistors for heat and cool-off runs to determine the calorimeter constant for ambient losses. P.J van Noorden certianly makes it clear that such calibration runs may be invalid becuase ultrasound or other turbulence creates entraind droplets, and tthe calibration resistor will not cause droplet entrainment like a source of ultrasound does. One solution to this problem is to include an ultrasound device in at least one clibration run to test whatever water drop barrier is used. It would not be possible to calibrate the drop formation rate itself, so some kind of drop barrier would have to be utilized. These principles have ramifications *way* beyond the Cirillo paper. They are fundamental to all boiloff calorimetry. Only if it had been water cooled could all the heat be accounted for, and that is why I assumed it was water cooled and that the thallium was turning up in the second circuit. This is a very important comment. It means that boiloff calorimetry can be very suspect without proper controls. Yes, proper controls like a second circuit with dual calorimetry. You need to account for more than just the enthalpy of condensation. A radioactive tracer would be good in labs equipped to handle them. Not unless the possibility of tritium can be eliminated, I have done plenty of tritium counting using liquid scintillation counting. I think it is more difficult to count water borne tritium by other means. Scintillation couters can reliably and automatically discriminate between tritium and say carbon 14. There is almost no penetrating power for 20 keV beta particles, so counting 201 Tl without interference from tritium is easy. Technetium counting and even imaging is readily done using 180 degrees opposed scintillation couters to track positron annihilation photon pairs. I had this procedure done to image my heart. I was signifcantly radioactive for a day. It was a bit scary to turn on my geiger counter and hear it go wild near me. or unless your tracer has a far more energetic signature than tritium. Thallium is just too close IMHO. After all, your are doing cold fusion. Cold fusion often produces tritium. Isn't the cross-connection obvious? BTW even though tritium normally has a significant spread of energy, can we be sure that tritium produced via CF is not closer to being mono-energetic? What do you mean significant spread? The peak is fairly confined. BTW, my handbook shows 201 Tl decaying by electron capture (1.36 MeV) with Hg and K shell x-rays of 135.28 keV and 167.40 keV. This stuff should stand out like the sun on a clear day. At 4:14 PM 12/2/4, P.J van Noorden wrote: Hello We used 201 Thallium in our nuclear medicine department to study the perfusion of the heart.The energy emission of radioactive thallium is about 80 eV. Now we have a technetium based radiopharmacon which gives a better image quality.( 140eV) I don't see how 80 keV enters into the picture. Regards, Horace Heffner
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
Horace, ...Anyway if lots of tritium was being produced, a fair amount of the bremsstrahlung gamma photons of about 3-6 keV would be seen. These gamms have almost no pentrating power in water. This is why organic solvents are used for liquid scintillation counting. The water is kept to a few percent in the counting vials. First, I understand the point about boil-off calorimetry, but this is hardly news. People have been issuing similar warnings for some time. However, once again I think you may be missing the obvious. IF (big if) tritium were being produced, then you would not necessarily be comparing Tl 80 keV gammas against almost undetectable tritium gammas. This is because some of the tritium begins to outgas immediately and then can shed 20 keV radiation directly into the monitor, whereas all of the Tl (which is still immobilized in the water) would have its gamma output attenuated. So you see, to really get down to brass tacks one needs to know how these reading were taken and what the raw data showed, or else assume (as I will now do) that the experimenter knew that tritium could possibly be present and took all the necessary precautions to eliminate any possibility of a tritium signal. I see from the post just now from Peter that his condenser was water cooled, but I must assume that the Tl did not cross the pyrex glass boundary or else he would have mentioned it specifically. Jones
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
At 12:31 PM 12/3/4, Jones Beene wrote: I see from the post just now from Peter that his condenser was water cooled, but I must assume that the Tl did not cross the pyrex glass boundary or else he would have mentioned it specifically. The was no mention of the Tl showng up in the cooling water, ie. secondary coil. I have assumed the Tl showed up in the distillate, since any other possibility seems to me to be unlikely in the extreme. Regards, Horace Heffner
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
- Original Message - From: P.J van Noorden It was very interesting to see that during evaporation a significant amount (25%) of the radioactive Thallium could be found in the second vessel, where you only would expect destillated water. So I suspect that during violent boiling of the electrolyte a significant amount of small dropplets liquid water ( with radioactive Tl ) was transported through the condensor into the second vessel. This could lead to a significant overestimation of the produced heat by about 25 % Well, first a caveat - it should be mentioned for the benefit of any younger readers contemplating CF experiments, that it takes a knowledgeable researcher to experiment with thallium (a.k.a. rat poison), which some chemists believe to be among the most toxic in the periodic table... and that is the less-radioactive variety. Thallium does occurs in the environment naturally in trace amounts; and is responsible for many more deaths than is commonly known because the human body absorbs thallium very effectively, especially through the skin, lungs and the digestive tract. Just touching it can be dangerous. but as to the unusual transport mechanism (if it did indeed cross a metal boundary) this anomaly seems to be similar to what has been witnessed over the years with Bismuth, which is a similar heavy metal in many ways and which was the subject of messages last month (below)... it would be enlightening to understand the dynamics of this transport mechanism, and whether or not it is somehow related to gravity, but there appears to be little reliable information available. Nick Reiter wrote: It [bismuth] also was or is one of the most promising stars in the odd half integer spin nucleon kinemassic gravity claims of Wallace, RC Macaulay wrote: Once knew a man that spent his days during WW2 on the Manhattan project that remained puzzled by bismuth. Such an oddity that he considered the element unexplainable. (which may have been mentioned in the Rhodes book on the Manhattan project), I remember hearing about some definite peculiarities concerning bismuth during the LMBR and MSR (liquid metal and salt cooled reactors) days at Oak Ridge in the 60s... the problem was containment of the molten bismuth. It seem that you can have a bismuth alloy or eutectic in a *sealed* circuit - completely encased in SS tubing... but miraculously it will somehow seep through metal and appear in the adjoining circuit - Jones
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
Hello We used 201 Thallium in our nuclear medicine department to study the perfusion of the heart.The energy emission of radioactive thallium is about 80 eV. Now we have a technetium based radiopharmacon which gives a better image quality.( 140eV) The amounts of thallium we used was about a few nanograms. Therefore you can inject it in a patient beacuse in this concentration it is not toxic.The amount I used for this experiment is 1% of the amount we inject into a patient. Peter - Original Message - From: Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 3:51 PM Subject: Re: comments on the Cirillo paper - Original Message - From: P.J van Noorden It was very interesting to see that during evaporation a significant amount (25%) of the radioactive Thallium could be found in the second vessel, where you only would expect destillated water. So I suspect that during violent boiling of the electrolyte a significant amount of small dropplets liquid water ( with radioactive Tl ) was transported through the condensor into the second vessel. This could lead to a significant overestimation of the produced heat by about 25 % Well, first a caveat - it should be mentioned for the benefit of any younger readers contemplating CF experiments, that it takes a knowledgeable researcher to experiment with thallium (a.k.a. rat poison), which some chemists believe to be among the most toxic in the periodic table... and that is the less-radioactive variety. Thallium does occurs in the environment naturally in trace amounts; and is responsible for many more deaths than is commonly known because the human body absorbs thallium very effectively, especially through the skin, lungs and the digestive tract. Just touching it can be dangerous. but as to the unusual transport mechanism (if it did indeed cross a metal boundary) this anomaly seems to be similar to what has been witnessed over the years with Bismuth, which is a similar heavy metal in many ways and which was the subject of messages last month (below)... it would be enlightening to understand the dynamics of this transport mechanism, and whether or not it is somehow related to gravity, but there appears to be little reliable information available. Nick Reiter wrote: It [bismuth] also was or is one of the most promising stars in the odd half integer spin nucleon kinemassic gravity claims of Wallace, RC Macaulay wrote: Once knew a man that spent his days during WW2 on the Manhattan project that remained puzzled by bismuth. Such an oddity that he considered the element unexplainable. (which may have been mentioned in the Rhodes book on the Manhattan project), I remember hearing about some definite peculiarities concerning bismuth during the LMBR and MSR (liquid metal and salt cooled reactors) days at Oak Ridge in the 60s... the problem was containment of the molten bismuth. It seem that you can have a bismuth alloy or eutectic in a *sealed* circuit - completely encased in SS tubing... but miraculously it will somehow seep through metal and appear in the adjoining circuit - Jones
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
- Original Message - From: P.J van Noorden We used 201 Thallium in our nuclear medicine department to study the perfusion of the heart.The energy emission of radioactive thallium is about 80 eV The amounts of thallium we used was about a few nanograms. Therefore you can inject it in a patient beacuse in this concentration it is not toxic.The amount I used for this experiment is 1% of the amount we inject into a patient. Hello Peter, Since this tiny amount of thallium works out to only a few one-hundredths of a nanogram, one must suspect that this cannot be measured reliably (by mass) on any kind of a precision scale, so one must further suspect that you measured it by assuming that any radioactive emission was due to the thallium... ...but, that raises another problem. What if the species which you measured in the second vessel, where you only would expect distillated water was NOT the Thallium? That is, it was not the thallium which had migrated through the walls of the condenser, but instead was Tritium, which was the ash of the adjoining CF reaction? Tritium of course, easily is transported through most metals, such as your condenser. I can find no reference on the web to thallium crossing a metal boundary. Also the 80 KeV is characteristic of tritium as well as thallium, but tritium would have a broader spread (did you do spectrometry ?) Although it is somewhat of an affront to Occam, you could conceivably have witnessed both radioactive remediation (of the thallium) and at the same time the LENR cold-fusion (ala Claytor) of the tritium-ash variety, in this cell. But since the total radioactive reading on your meter of the combined two sources added up to nearly what you were expecting from just the thallium, you assumed the simplest underlying situation? Jones
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
Peter, Thank you for having carefully considered this. We analysed the reaction product with a multi channel analyser and we where convinced that it was 201 Tl. However... in order that others can dispose of any lingering questions, especially about the ability of thallium to migrate across a heat exchanger, is any of your data and/or instrumentation info (Beckman LS ? etc) from this experiment available online? Jones
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
At 6:51 AM 12/2/4, Jones Beene wrote: - Original Message - From: P.J van Noorden It was very interesting to see that during evaporation a significant amount (25%) of the radioactive Thallium could be found in the second vessel, where you only would expect destillated water. So I suspect that during violent boiling of the electrolyte a significant amount of small dropplets liquid water ( with radioactive Tl ) was transported through the condensor [snip] but as to the unusual transport mechanism (if it did indeed cross a metal boundary) [snip] Jones, there is no metal boundary indicated. The suggestion is that water droplets (carrying thallium) were entrained with the steam by violent boiling. When the steam was condensed in a condenser the water droplets, like fog into dew, condensed out too. This is a very important comment. It means that boiloff calorimetry can be very suspect without proper controls. The water droplets constitute missing water which was not boiled, i.e. vaporized. If the heat of vaporization is applied to the total water missing in the reactor vessel (and/or condensed into the second vessel) then an over unity condition might be indicated where none exists. Proper controls might mean placing a tracer in the electrolyte and condensing out the vapor, doing dual calorimetry, and including a barrier to water droplets. A radioactive tracer would be good in labs equipped to handle them. Measuring the conductivity of the condensate, as compared to distilled water, would be a minimum level of required check. An accurate pH check might be useful too. Some kind of non-volatile tracer in the elecrolyte should be looked for in the condensate. Regards, Horace Heffner
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
At 9:13 AM 12/2/4, Jones Beene wrote: Peter, Thank you for having carefully considered this. We analysed the reaction product with a multi channel analyser and we where convinced that it was 201 Tl. However... in order that others can dispose of any lingering questions, especially about the ability of thallium to migrate across a heat exchanger, That should be through a condenser not across a heat exchanger. is any of your data and/or instrumentation info (Beckman LS ? etc) from this experiment available online? Jones Regards, Horace Heffner
Re: comments on the Cirillo paper
At 12:06 PM 12/2/4, Jones Beene wrote: Horace, you seem to be saying that the condenser was air-cooled instead of water-cooled. Of course this would introduce major errors, and it still doesn't address the issue of tritium. Actually, there is no mention of a condenser in the Cirillio paper. The standard method of doing boiloff calorimetry is to measure the weight of water boiled off (that disappears) and then multply by the energy required to boil that water (which explicitly *is* the method used by Cirillo.) It appears the plastic cylinder with pyrex lid located above the cell does the condensing. There is apparently no intent to use the condensation heat (i.e. mass flow calorimetry on the secondary coil) as a secondary calorimetric means. Cirillo's method is definitely susceptable to entrained water droplets. I would assume P.J van Noorden (he can clue us in) used an ordinary laboratory condenser. Such condensers are typically made of glass and used in either straight through mode or reflux mode. In straight through mode the steam comes in through one (elevated) end and water comes out the other. In reflux mode the condenser is usually vertical and steam is admitted in at the bottom and water comes out the bottom into an attached flask. Unless you are trying to do dual calorimetry, it doesn't matter how the condenser is cooled, by gas, by water, or by ice. The heat measurment is via the mass of water lost in the reactor. Boiloff calorimeters are typically calibrated using boil-off runs using calibration resistors for heat and cool-off runs to determine the calorimeter constant for ambient losses. P.J van Noorden certianly makes it clear that such calibration runs may be invalid becuase ultrasound or other turbulence creates entraind droplets, and tthe calibration resistor will not cause droplet entrainment like a source of ultrasound does. One solution to this problem is to include an ultrasound device in at least one clibration run to test whatever water drop barrier is used. It would not be possible to calibrate the drop formation rate itself, so some kind of drop barrier would have to be utilized. These principles have ramifications *way* beyond the Cirillo paper. They are fundamental to all boiloff calorimetry. Only if it had been water cooled could all the heat be accounted for, and that is why I assumed it was water cooled and that the thallium was turning up in the second circuit. This is a very important comment. It means that boiloff calorimetry can be very suspect without proper controls. Yes, proper controls like a second circuit with dual calorimetry. You need to account for more than just the enthalpy of condensation. A radioactive tracer would be good in labs equipped to handle them. Not unless the possibility of tritium can be eliminated, I have done plenty of tritium counting using liquid scintillation counting. I think it is more difficult to count water borne tritium by other means. Scintillation couters can reliably and automatically discriminate between tritium and say carbon 14. There is almost no penetrating power for 20 keV beta particles, so counting 201 Tl without interference from tritium is easy. Technetium counting and even imaging is readily done using 180 degrees opposed scintillation couters to track positron annihilation photon pairs. I had this procedure done to image my heart. I was signifcantly radioactive for a day. It was a bit scary to turn on my geiger counter and hear it go wild near me. or unless your tracer has a far more energetic signature than tritium. Thallium is just too close IMHO. After all, your are doing cold fusion. Cold fusion often produces tritium. Isn't the cross-connection obvious? BTW even though tritium normally has a significant spread of energy, can we be sure that tritium produced via CF is not closer to being mono-energetic? What do you mean significant spread? The peak is fairly confined. BTW, my handbook shows 201 Tl decaying by electron capture (1.36 MeV) with Hg and K shell x-rays of 135.28 keV and 167.40 keV. This stuff should stand out like the sun on a clear day. At 4:14 PM 12/2/4, P.J van Noorden wrote: Hello We used 201 Thallium in our nuclear medicine department to study the perfusion of the heart.The energy emission of radioactive thallium is about 80 eV. Now we have a technetium based radiopharmacon which gives a better image quality.( 140eV) I don't see how 80 keV enters into the picture. Regards, Horace Heffner
