On Jan 4, 2009, at 2:21 AM, Michel Jullian wrote:
The argument is not conclusive I am afraid. Evaporation could conceivably have been 10cc instead of the 5cc assumed by Melvin (7.7cc - 7.2cc), in which case the 5cc "missing loss" would be due to internal recombination, which would then account for the excess heat. I don't think excess heat can be conclusively demonstrated in an open cell arrangement. Michel
Depending on the magnitude of excess heat involved, I think control experiments can be used to dismiss the entrainment and recombination debunking arguments.
In the case where water boil off is used to measure enthalpy, there is no difference between "evaporation" and "boiling" with regard to heat transport. Only the water droplet "entrainment" argument is valid, and that can be dismissed (or validated) via simple control experiments, even after the fact. Controls can consist of H2O vs D2O if that is relevant, or simply through change of electrode materials.
If an experiment produces energy "far beyond chemical", it should be feasible to show excess energy even when full recombination is assumed.
Best regards, Horace Heffner http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
