I hope you do not suppose that after being for over 21 years a faithful coldfusionist I do not know the necessary conditions to obtain some decent and modest levels of heat excess.
The problem is that our champions cannot obtain consistently say 300% heat excess and please do not forget this is a minimum to get real excess (1KWh electric energy needs 3 kwh thermal electricity). The 4 basic conditions are known in theory, in principle but the manufacturers of Pd do not master the technology, metallurgy and nanotechnology to make such materials batch after batch- so at least for me it is obvious that it is some hidden parameter at play here. Plus as you well know, palladium is very scarce- and cannot be the basis of a really great energy source. We should ask Mike what is "consistent levels of excess heat" And can this level be increased? As regarding Energetics and ENEA they have really obtained some excellent results- but are they able to obtain 10 or 100 or 1000 times repeatedly the same level of energy as in the historical cathode No. 64? Or is it only about condition No 5- some smart method of stimulation? With a limited potential....improving but not sooo much. Your analogies from aviation and rocket science are inspiring but do not much for solving the problem which can be formulated simply as Cold Fusion is not yet technologically reproducible. If the problem can be solved only with huge amount of money this can be translated in pragmatese - the problem will not be solved. I think creative, new ideas can do it, hopefully. *What I am not able to understand: *we have got information that a technologically reproducible system of LENR exists- nickel and hydrogen based- the original Piantelli system for which the necessary know-how elements were found and this is developed both by the author, Prof PIantelli and his former coworker Sergio Focardi plus the inventor Andrea Rossi and the results are encouraging if true- and nobody from our community has taken this seriously (?) despite the fact that our situation is what it is. I have serious health problems (not mental, what I have told there is true!) but I will try to pay a visit to Piantelli's lab and to see the technology and know about the future. Anyway, we have a serious reproducibility problem and we will not solve it with slogans and forced analogies. But I still hope one day our now unhappy tenor will sing on the stage of the MET and will conquer the audience Peter On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Peter Gluck wrote: > > I wish you are right here but the problem of reproducibility is a bit more > complicated. > It is about what kind of reproducibility we are speaking- and it is obvious > that it is about > scientific, qualitative reproducibility-in-principle. See e.g. the results > in Mike McKubre's presentation p. 21 - heat excess always but very variable > from 1% to 300% without an explanation- what is the reason for this > variation. > > > You are incorrect. It is not as complicated as you think. The reasons for > the variability shown on p. 21 and the failures are well known. McKubre > himself described them in several lecturers and in this slide collection. > Storms, Miles and others have also described some of the reasons. > > The main reason is poor Pd material, such as material that will not load, > or that cracks apart when load. The conditions necessary to produce the > effect are shown on p. 14: > > Necessary conditions: > Maintain High *Average* D/Pd Ratio (Loading ) > For times >> 20-50 times Tau D/D (Initiation) > At electrolytic i >250-500mA cm^-2 (Activation) > With an imposed D Flux (Disequilibrium) > > See also p. 18, which clearly shows: "Electrodes made from the same lot of > materials (Pd) produce consistent levels of excess heat." > > You have to make a clear distinction here: > > To achieve a large reaction, the researchers know what the control > parameters are. They know what conditions must be met. HOWEVER they do not > always know how to achieve those conditions. > > This is analogous to rocket scientists in the late 1950s who understood how > to make rockets, understood how to control them, and knew they could put a > rocket into orbit successfully . . . yet their rockets such as the Vanguard > series often exploded or flew out of control. They knew what they were > doing, but not very well. They needed more practice. They needed to do more > experiments. They needed buckets and barrels and then truckloads of money -- > which they soon got. I have no doubt that if McKubre and the others were > given lots more funding, materials and people to help them, they would make > good progress controlling and scaling up the reaction, just as the rocket > scientists of the 1950s eventually learned to make fairly reliable rockets. > > Note however, that to this day rockets often explode. Insurance rates > remain very high for communication satellite launches. The Space Shuttle is > still extremely dangerous, and likely to explode approximately once in 50 > flights. Rockets are nowhere near as reliable as jet aircraft, fission > reactors, or other high energy, large-scale technology invented in the 1940s > and 50s. Perhaps if we put hundreds of billions of dollars more into rocket > technology it would become reliable, but then again, perhaps not. It may be > inherently dangerous because rockets are barely controlled explosions of > massive amounts of chemical fuel. Rockets may be a dead-end technology. > > It may be that bulk Pd cold fusion with electrolysis is also a dead end > technology. I am sure it can be improved. The people at ENEA and Energetics > Technology are gradually improving reproducibility, the ratio of input to > output, and they are raising the absolute power levels. Progress is slow but > their cathodes are far better than most of the ones from the early 1990s. > Bulk Pd can be improved, but can it be made practical? How much can it be > improved, at what cost? I do not know. My guess is that other materials are > more promising, and are more likely to lead to practical devices. I think > the best candidate is nanoparticle Pd suspended in other materials to > prevent sintering (or whatever it is that causes the particles to clump > together). > > > > Cold fusion is or wants to be a source of energy not some lab curiosity so > the kind of reproducibility we need is quantitative (reasonably), at mucher > higher levels of energy, upscalable - it has to be technological. If we want > to "sell" cold fusion. > > > Most experts I have spoken with believe this cannot be accomplished without > huge sums of money, probably hundreds of millions of dollars. On the other > hand, if the money is provided they have confidence that it can be > accomplished. Other technologies, such as rockets, transistors and > solid-state Aegis radar were given hundreds of millions when they were still > at that the laboratory curiosity stage. It is irrational not to fund cold > fusion. Withholding the funding is a political ploy by academic rivals. If > we are going to succeed, we are probably going to have to overcome those > politics without the benefit of a scaled up device. > > Anyway, if they could scale it up or control it now, we wouldn't need > funding. > > It is possible that someone will find a way to control and scale up without > hundreds of millions of dollars. You never know. People are making > remarkable progress with nanoparticle materials with only noise-level > funding. > > - Jed >
