On July 3 I ridiculed Kirk Shanahan for writing:
"Dardik et al, of Energetic Technologies have slides from ICCF12
and a paper
from ICCF14 (2008) posted on Rothwell's web site. In both, they
show an
artist's drawing of their calorimeter, which contains the
thermocouples,
which are designated Tcell and Tjacket. The drawing and these
designations
are for what is known as isoperibolic calorimetry. In the text of
the ICCF14
paper, the claim to be using a flow calorimeter, but what they show
is NOT
that. Isoperibolic calorimetry is what F&P originally did and were
criticized about in the '89 DOE review. Storms has written several
times
that flow calorimetry is superior to isoperibolic . . ."
This refers to Fig. 1, p. 3 here:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DardikIultrasonic.pdf
It turns out he was right. This is an isoperibolic calorimeter. I
just read
McKubre's paper in the book "Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook"
carefully, and that is what it says. (I read it three times!) See
equations
1 and 2, and: "The calorimeter is isoperibolic in the sense that two
aluminum cups constitute the calorimetric boundary perimeters at
constant
temperature: the inner wall at temperature T4, and the outer wall at
temperature T5. Separating the two boundaries is a barrier of
alumina powder
having a well-characterized (and constant) thermal conductivity."
The term "flow calorimeter" in Fig. 3 of the Dardik paper probably
refers to
the fact that the water flows through the outer jacket of this cell
to
maintain a constant reference temperature. I think this is a
problem with
English. I will ask Dardik et al.
The situation is complicated by the fact that two independent
replications
of the effect have been performed, at SRI and ENEA, and the latter
definitely did employ a flow calorimeter. McKubre: "A parallel but
independent set of experiments was performed at ENEA using a mass
flow
calorimeter and employing Energetic's superwave stimulus protocals
and
palladium foils fabricated by ENEA." (p. 231).
I disagree with the assertion that "flow calorimetry is superior to
isoperibolic." I doubt that is exactly what Storms said. It is
superior in
some ways; for example, it is less dependent upon calibrations.
However,
isoperibolic is fine as long as you have "well-characterized (and
constant)
thermal conductivity." I do not know anyone who has found a problem
with the
isoperibolic calorimeters used Fleischmann and Pons, or Miles. But
both
methods have their strengths and weaknesses. I think it is best to
use
several methods, which is what Energetics Tech., SRI and ENEA
collectively
have done.
This is a good paper and a good book. I wish it was available on the
Internet. I think it is a bad idea to publish scientific papers on
paper.
All scientific information should be made available free of charge to
everyone on earth via the Internet. This is the philosophy of the
PLoS
journals (http://www.plos.org), and I agree, even though it costs
publishers
and some researchers income. Going back to the 17th century
universal access
to basic scientific information has been the goal -- or direction
-- of the
Royal Society and others. It has finally come to fruition with the
Internet.
I have copied this mea culpa to Shanahan, to what I hope is his
current
e-mail address.
- Jed
