Comments on: Cold Fusion Is Hot Again

60 Minutes: Once Considered Junk Science, Cold Fusion Gets A Second Look By Researchers

[JedRothwell]

I don't want to argue any more, bu samuelblack asks good questions:

"'A chemical reaction often goes a lot faster (producing a lot more power), but a nuclear reaction such as fissioning uranium in a fuel rod or Pd-D in a cold fusion cell keeps going and going, long after the chemical fuel is exhausted.'

Hold on. The chemical reaction produces a lot more power than the alleged CF reaction; the power from fissioning uranium in a fuel rod is pretty comparable to the power in coal-burning plant."

No, it isn't. If it were, the temperature would approach coal combustion (1,500 deg C - 3,200 deg C). Core temperature can reach such high levels, but only in an accident, such as at Three Mile Island where a third of the core melted. At around 1,200 deg C the pressurized water system would fail. In a controlled reaction the temperature is held much lower.


"I understand that these cells produce anomalous heat that is not easy to explain by chemistry, but I don't understand why people don't accept that it is even more difficult to explain by fusion. One order of magnitude is less than 20 orders or 30."

It is not 20 or 30 orders of magnitude. The heat has reached only 2 or 3 orders of magnitude below fusion and the helium is right where it should be. Only the neutrons are well below expected levels. Some theoreticians believe they can explain why.


"It is interesting that when there is an energy deficit, it is immediately assumed to be an artifact, or instrument failure, as in this quote from your essay "Butter-side down":

Rothwell in Butter-side down: 'He will look for negative heat excursions, in which the temperature drops below the calibration point. This "anomalous cold" proves the instruments are malfunctioning, because a large burst of anomalous cold violates the laws of thermodynamics."

That would only apply after the expected endothermic formation of Pd-D with electrolysis. The total energy deficit from this is well known and easily observed. I did not want to go into that much detail. The point is, there are no known massive endothermic effects on the scale of nuclear exothermic effects (hundreds of MJ per gram). An endothermic effect far larger Pd-D formation, occurring when the Pd is already loaded (where loading is measured), would be an instrument artifact. Such errors are occasionally observed and the cause is quickly discovered.


"In the same way, one could assume that anomalous heat proves the instruments are malfunctioning because they violate the laws of thermodynamics, and fusion violates the laws of nuclear physics."

Anomalous endothermic effects (heat vanishing into a black box) might violate the laws of thermodynamics, but nothing about cold fusion experiments do. On the contrary, they are predicated on these laws. Many experts believe they do not violate any laws of nuclear physics, either, but assuming they do, then in a sense we are forced to choose between most of the laws and instruments going back to 1784 (thermodynamics and chemistry) and a much smaller, less-well established body of laws going back to the 1940s (plasma physics). I would vote for the former. If something has to be revised, it would be plasma fusion laws, not the whole of chemistry and physics going back to Lavoisier and Laplace.

If we say cold fusion is chemical, then we have to redefine a "chemical reaction" as one that can produced 10,000 times more energy than burning coal without consuming even 1 microgram of fuel and without producing any measurable chemical changes. I would say that makes the term "chemistry" meaningless. On the other hand, many aneutronic nuclear reactions are known, and it would not be a huge surprise if a new one has been found in a domain that no ever thought to look at carefully before 1989.

[samuelblack]

JedRothwell wrote:
>"A chemical reaction often goes a lot faster (producing a lot more power), but a nuclear reaction such as fissioning uranium in a fuel rod or Pd-D in a cold fusion cell keeps going and going, long after the chemical fuel is exhausted."

Hold on. The chemical reaction produces a lot more power than the alleged CF reaction; the power from fissioning uranium in a fuel rod is pretty comparable to the power in coal-burning plant. I guess it's higher, because for a 1 GW plant, it seems to me the size of the reactor is smaller than the coal furnace, but I didn't look it up.

>"As Robert Duncan pointed out in his recent lecture (April 23, 2009, The Missouri Energy Summit), the total chemical energy in the systems he examined was about 100 J, whereas the cells produced millions of joules."

I understand that these cells produce anomalous heat that is not easy to explain by chemistry, but I don't understand why people don't accept that it is even more difficult to explain by fusion. One order of magnitude is less than 20 orders or 30.

It is interesting that when there is an energy deficit, it is immediately assumed to be an artifact, or instrument failure, as in this quote from your essay "Butter-side down":

Rothwell in Butter-side down: "He will look for negative heat excursions, in which the temperature drops below the calibration point. This ?anomalous cold? proves the instruments are malfunctioning, because a large burst of anomalous cold violates the laws of thermodynamics."

In the same way, one could assume that anomalous heat proves the instruments are malfunctioning because they violate the laws of thermodynamics, and fusion violates the laws of nuclear physics.

[samuelblack]

JedRothwell wrote:
>"Let me once again strongly recommend that you read the literature before making assertions about this research. When I say "read the literature" I do not mean you should one review paper about one unusual experiment, and then jump to confused and unwarranted conclusions. I mean you should sit down and read papers by McKubre and others and THINK CAREFULLY before reaching any conclusions. "

I'm not going to wade into that 3000-paper swamp. Whether I believe CF is neither here nor there, as far as the field is concerned. And I maintain that after 20 years, it should no longer be necessary for the man on the street to read scientific literature to believe a source of infinite heat is real. I'm quite prepared to wait until they can show me CF's burning log, but I don't expect it will happen.

I was prepared to look at one or two specific papers because you made some specific claims of indefinite heat with no input, which seem to me would be a big milestone, but all I got was one report on a shoddy Japanese paper that reported 7 g of Pd 2 degrees above ambient for 48 hours.

I think I get it now. You know I'm not going to read 3000 papers, so that gives you the freedom to make wild claims here. If you cite a specific paper to support a specific claim, as I have requested repeatedly, you're afraid I'll read it, and find out how soft the data really are, or how much you've exaggerated the claims of the authors.

>"Do not assume you know more than people like Arata or that they are making huge and obvious mistakes. If you get that impression, it is certain that you are the one making mistakes."

Again, an appeal to authority works against you. There is far more authority on the other side.

(And remember, you found an order of magnitude mistake in Arata's work. He's not perfect.)

>"On that note, I think I will stop. I would be pleased to let you have the last word. "

Since we're trading advice, I'll offer mine. Get out while you've got some of your career left. You've wasted too much time with these quacks. You know as well as I do that we could have had the identical argument 10 and 15 years ago, and someone will have it in another 10 years. If there was something in this stuff, there would be carts running on water. It would not be that difficult. Murphy's law is a joke. You're a prolific writer, and there are much better things you can spend your time on.

[samuelblack]

JedRothwell wrote:
>>>"'This has nothing remotely to do with fusion. It is the heat of formation of Pd-D or Pd-H.'

>>"That it has nothing to do with fusion was my point. The heats of formation predict the opposite effect, as you point out in the paper."

>"Not the opposite. The heat from Pd-H should be slightly higher but it is slightly lower instead. This is probably caused by how much Pd-D is there already present (not purged) and how absorbent the material is."

These things don't change the reaction enthalpy.

>"Plus there is probably some cold fusion heat ever before the material is fully loaded and the chemical heat stops."

At most it can contribute 2 degrees (the steady state temperature).

>"So, here's an unexpected effect that is not fusion, but can't be explained by chemistry."

>"Of course it can be explained by chemistry."

You haven't done it though, and in the paper, you called it unexpected.

>>"They are powders. It seems unlikely that heat conduction differs by a factor of 2. (Another possible explanation is sloppy data-fudging.)"

>"Heat conduction has nothing to do with it. "

The ratio of the differences depends only the rate of heat flow, and conduction is likely to dominate the heat flow, but it doesn't matter. The rates of heat flow by convection or radiation are also proportional to temperature differences and would also not be significantly different for two different powders consisting of mainly Pd.

>"If, as you claim, this is a chemical reaction, you should address the issues raised by Melich and Rothwell in our review of the 2004 DoE review:"

I don't know if it's chemical or physical or if the ambient temperature was not constant, or if it was some other artifact. I only know that any one of those are much more likely than fusion. Rather than addressing Rothwell's DOE response, I'll just use Rothwell's words from "butter-side down" to indicate just how likely artifacts are:

Rothwell in Butter-side Down:
"Most cold fusion experiments must be repeated many times because the effect is difficult to detect, and calorimetric errors and artifacts are more common that researchers realize. You can only feel confidence the heat is real when you have seen it many times, and taken steps to ensure it is real."

Judging by your review of Arata's work, you have no idea if necessary steps were taken.

>"The notion that 3.05 Watts (89/3), or 2 MJ in 48 hours (90/7), could come from some stored mechanical or chemical source within the cell does seem absurd.

Maybe, but the notion that the presence of Pd changes the fusion rate by tens of orders of magnitude is far more absurd.

>"Certainly, critics have a duty to try to elucidate possible storage mechanisms as disturbing artifacts, but they must work with actual experimental results, as above. In the opinion of those working in the field for sixteen years, that amount of energy can only come from a nuclear source; there is no other credible hypothesis."

In the opinion of nearly all physicists working in nuclear physics for 16 or 36 years, fusion is not a credible hypothesis. In fact, it is much less credible than artifacts, which as you yourself admit, are more common than researchers realize. I'm going with the consensus on this one.

>"Reviewers who deny that cold fusion is nuclear but stop there, without offering a credible alternative hypothesis, have not done their jobs as scientists."

You've got a strange idea of job descriptions. It is certainly not a scientist's responsibility to find explanations for other scientists' results, even if they criticize the others' explanations.

The inability to find a reasonable explanation for an observation does not mean we should accept the first unreasonable explanation someone has, especially when less unreasonable explanations (incompetence) exist.

The Greeks believed the sun was a god, because they had no other explanation. We have no explanation for abiogenesis, but that doesn't mean we have to accept the existence of a god.

I'm certain David Copperfield can perform tricks I can't explain. That doesn't mean they're magic. I can't explain how Uri Geller bends spoons. He says it's paranormal, but I don't believe it.

[samuelblack]

JedRothwell wrote:
>>>"'Believe me, it is already unmistakable. 1 deg C for 2 days with this material is way beyond any conceivable chemical reaction.'

Samuelblack wrote:
>>And according to others, way way way way way way way way way beyond any conceivable nuclear reaction."

>"Again, you (and these others you speak of) have confused power and energy. "

Yea. That must be it. All the physicists who are skeptical of cold fusion are confused about power and energy. If we could only get them to sit through freshman physics again, they would all convert, and the cold fusion people would be rolling in research funding.

No, the statement that the observed power is way beyond any conceivable nuclear reaction is a statement about the conceivable *rate* of nuclear reactions in Pd/D.

>"If you leave the Arata cell alone for a few years it will produce as much power as a uranium fuel rod of the same mass."

You're not making any sense whatsoever here. Presumably you mean energy, not power, and I assume you're talking about the energy content of a fuel rod in a reactor (because the natural decay power is only 0.1 W/tonne). But inside a reactor, the temperature of the fuel is more than 2500 C, and it lasts for 6 years. And the reactor is deliberately designed to *remove* heat as fast as possible. How can the same mass of Pd, 2 C above ambient temperature, in a cell without any coolant, produce the same amount of heat in a few years. Please explain.

>"Many cold fusion cathodes have been run at higher power and their energy output has come within an order of magnitude of a uranium fuel rod.

Really? Can you give me a reference? The energy content of uranium fuel rods is in the GJ/g range. As I said, they run for 6 years at >2500C, with coolant. To get a tenth of that, you'd need to run the same mass at 200C for 6 years with same cooling rate. And that would have to be over and above the input energy.

>"Therefore, the energy output is NOT way, way, way beyond a nuclear reaction."

Fission of U-235 in Pd/D is inconceivable, wouldn't you agree?

>"The helium production is smack on target with a fusion reaction."

The helium is in the background, and the gammas and neutrons are absent.

>>"Like I said elsewhere, 1000 dicey experiments is worse than one dicey experiment. The only thing reproducible in CF is irreproducibility."

>"How many of these other experiments have you read about? What errors in them have you discovered? What is the basis for your claim of irreproducibilty?"

I think we've been over this.

(1) I read a 2007 review of the field by a proponent, which indicated irreproducibility;

(2) I am aware of experts who have examined the results, and described them as irreproducible;

(3) I read your butter-side down paper, and it is nothing if not a description of just how irreproducible CF experiments are (more on this below).

(4) Some of the people working on CF are pretty smart, and after 20 years, they have not succeeded in making a self-contained, self-sustaining unit that produces energy indefinitely by consuming only D2O. If the heat was reproducible, even if it's not fusion, and even if it's not understood, the rest is well-established engineering. They should have been able to succeed at that. As you put it, they have not been able to make the results stand out. The best they could do for 60 minutes is show an incomprehensible maze of tubes and wires, and hire a physicist to crunch numbers for two days.

Your Butter-Side Down essay is a litany of excuses for this failure, which are so contrived and trivial that I if I hadn't read your diatribes here, I would have thought you were parodying the CF community. CF hasn't been scaled up for want of power supply above 200V (e.g.). You actually claim that nature is conspiring against CF the way it does to make toast fall butter-side down. Sad.

In any case, it was all about calorimetry, so none of the excuses apply to Arata's gas-loading, or to the heat-after-death experiments you claim go on forever. Your excuse about controllability doesn't apply either, because if you look at Arata's temperature plots, they're perfectly flat at long times. So use 10 or 100 times the Pd, and get 10 or 100 times the effect. (Start with 10 if you're afraid.) There is no conceivable reason this shouldn't work, except that the effect is not real. Maybe that's one reason it hasn't been published in English. A decent referee would demand that larger amounts of Pd be used to see if the effect scales.

[JedRothwell]

Now I went and confused power and energy!

I meant to say:

If you leave the Arata cell alone for a few years it will produce as much ENERGY as a uranium fuel rod of the same mass. (Not power!)

The power of the cold fusion reaction is lower than the initial chemical reaction (heat of formation of Pd-D) but it lasts indefinitely longer. The cells have turned off after a while but if they were not, there is no question you could run one for years.

In most experiments with bulk Pd, the power from the cold fusion reaction is much higher than the heat of formation of Pd-D, because it takes much longer to load bulk Pd. Even though this chemical reaction is small, it is readily observable. With liquid electrolysis, during this phase the overall heat balance is negative because free oxygen escapes (with an open cell) or gathers in the headspace (closed cell).

Power is analogous to speed, and energy is analogous to the distance you drive. A chemical reaction often goes a lot faster (producing a lot more power), but a nuclear reaction such as fissioning uranium in a fuel rod or Pd-D in a cold fusion cell keeps going and going, long after the chemical fuel is exhausted. They keep going until they have produced thousands or hundreds of thousands of times more than a chemical reaction. (If all of the atoms in the sample underwent a reaction it would be millions of times more.)

Most Pd-D samples do not go on that far only because the researchers deliberately quench the reaction, in order to examine the cathode and do the next experiment.

As Robert Duncan pointed out in his recent lecture (April 23, 2009, The Missouri Energy Summit), the total chemical energy in the systems he examined was about 100 J, whereas the cells produced millions of joules.

[JedRothwell]

Samuelblack wrote:

"'Believe me, it is already unmistakable. 1 deg C for 2 days with this material is way beyond any conceivable chemical reaction.'

And according to others, way way way way way way way way way beyond any conceivable nuclear reaction."

Again, you (and these others you speak of) have confused power and energy. If you leave the Arata cell alone for a few years it will produce as much power as a uranium fuel rod of the same mass. Many cold fusion cathodes have been run at higher power and their energy output has come within an order of magnitude of a uranium fuel rod. Therefore, the energy output is NOT way, way, way beyond a nuclear reaction. The helium production is smack on target with a fusion reaction.


"Like I said elsewhere, 1000 dicey experiments is worse than one dicey experiment. The only thing reproducible in CF is irreproducibility."

How many of these other experiments have you read about? What errors in them have you discovered? What is the basis for your claim of irreproducibilty?


"'This has nothing remotely to do with fusion. It is the heat of formation of Pd-D or Pd-H.'

That it has nothing to do with fusion was my point. The heats of formation predict the opposite effect, as you point out in the paper."

Not the opposite. The heat from Pd-H should be slightly higher but it is slightly lower instead. This is probably caused by how much Pd-D is there already present (not purged) and how absorbent the material is. Plus there is probably some cold fusion heat ever before the material is fully loaded and the chemical heat stops.


"So, here's an unexpected effect that is not fusion, but can't be explained by chemistry."

Of course it can be explained by chemistry.


"They are powders. It seems unlikely that heat conduction differs by a factor of 2. (Another possible explanation is sloppy data-fudging.)"

Heat conduction has nothing to do with it.

If, as you claim, this is a chemical reaction, you should address the issues raised by Melich and Rothwell in our review of the 2004 DoE review:

We do not assert that cold fusion is unquestionably a nuclear effect and only a nuclear effect. As noted already in this Appendix, we assert that a chemical effect or experimental error is ruled out, and that the heat beyond the limits of chemistry, helium commensurate with a plasma fusion reaction, tritium and heavy metal transmutations all point to an unknown nuclear reaction. In short, the nuclear hypothesis best fits the facts, but until a detailed nuclear theory is worked out and broadly accepted, this will remain only a working hypothesis.

It is conceivable that cold fusion is caused by an unknown effect even more powerful than nuclear fusion that triggers some nuclear changes as a side effect of the main reaction, just as fission reactor heat triggers chemical changes as a side effect of fission.

Several [DoE] reviewers asserted that the effect cannot be nuclear, mainly because they feel it violates the laws of nuclear physics. As Baudette wrote in his response to Reviewer 7:

"The notion that 3.05 Watts (89/3), or 2 MJ in 48 hours (90/7), could come from some stored mechanical or chemical source within the cell does seem absurd. Certainly, critics have a duty to try to elucidate possible storage mechanisms as disturbing artifacts, but they must work with actual experimental results, as above. In the opinion of those working in the field for sixteen years, that amount of energy can only come from a nuclear source; there is no other credible hypothesis."

Reviewers who deny that cold fusion is nuclear but stop there, without offering a credible alternative hypothesis, have not done their jobs as scientists.


Let me once again strongly recommend that you read the literature before making assertions about this research. When I say "read the literature" I do not mean you should one review paper about one unusual experiment, and then jump to confused and unwarranted conclusions. I mean you should sit down and read papers by McKubre and others and THINK CAREFULLY before reaching any conclusions. Do not assume you know more than people like Arata or that they are making huge and obvious mistakes. If you get that impression, it is certain that you are the one making mistakes.

On that note, I think I will stop. I would be pleased to let you have the last word. I think your messages have made my case for me, possibly better than my own.

[samuelblack]

Samuelblack wrote:
>>"Just because you draw a dashed line on the graph doesn't mean the chemical heat stops there."

JedRothwell wrote:
>"The graphs show that the chemical heat stops there. Obviously it does. Anyone who has loaded Pd nanoparticles with hydrogen knows that."

Again proof by assertion. Others assert, with equal confidence, that it's obviously not fusion. Maybe the rules of chemistry change when deuterium gets close to Pd.

>>"And there's no evidence that the slightly elevated reading is the result of fusion."

>"Of course it is. No chemical reaction with this mass of material can continue at that power level for 2 days. (Whatever power level it is -- very hard to determine. No macroscopic, sensible reaction could continue this long, in any case.)"

None that you can think of. But others say no fusion process could possibly occur in that situation. Which impossible explanation should we choose? One that's unlikely by an order of magnitude, or one that's unlikely by tens of orders? Or maybe we should reserve judgement, and admit that, like the unexpected higher temperature of the D2 chemical reaction, we just don't understand it. The effect as reported here is not practical, and the only way to imagine scaling it up is to attribute to fusion, and so that influences the way people interpret it.

>>>"'That?s absurd. J. P. Joule could measure 0.01 deg C back in 1840. Arata can measure 0.001 deg C without breaking a sweat.'

>>"Hey. You called the accuracy of Arata's temperature measurements into question in the paper you gave me."

>"No I did not. I called into question his estimate of the heat of formation of Pd-D and Pd-H. I have no doubt his thermocouples and thermometers are right."

You wrote:
"In order to accept the conclusions made by Arata, we are required to accept the temperature measurements as being accurate and that the reference temperature remained constant."

That calls the temperature measurements into question. Plain and simple.

[samuelblack]

Samuelblack wrote:

>>"(1) The temperature increases to a higher value when the D2 is injected compared to when H2 is injected, by about 10 degrees, even though the reaction enthalpy for D is lower. If this is attributed to fusion . . ."

JedRothwell wrote:
>"This has nothing remotely to do with fusion. It is the heat of formation of Pd-D or Pd-H."

That it has nothing to do with fusion was my point. The heats of formation predict the opposite effect, as you point out in the paper. So, here's an unexpected effect that is not fusion, but can't be explained by chemistry. It just shows that not everything going on in there is easily explained. You ignore one unexpected effect, because there is no promise of infinite energy in it, but cease on another unexplained effect, because it seems to promise infinite energy.

>>"(3) A third anomaly that you don't mention is the ratio of the temperature differences at long times (3000 min). When equilibrium is reached, the ratio of the sample-to-vessel difference to the vessel-to-ambient difference should be the same for the two samples, but in one case it is 2 and the other 4."

>"The samples are of different sizes and probably different composition. More about this is in publication now, in Japanese."

They are powders. It seems unlikely that heat conduction differs by a factor of 2. (Another possible explanation is sloppy data-fudging.)

>>"All of these things indicate that, as you say in the discussion, " many questions remain before this work can be fully understood", and cast doubt on any conclusions jumped to about fusion."

>"You cannot consider these results in isolation, without taking into account the other experiments in this field."

Like I said elsewhere, 1000 dicey experiments is worse than one dicey experiment. The only thing reproducible in CF is irreproducibility.

>"If the effect is real, and fusion produces a 1 degree temperature increase in the vessel using 7 g of Pd, then why not do it with 70 g of Pd or 700 g of Pd."

>"That is an interesting question. [...] harder to work with, and they produce less accurate data [...] Some other people [...] plan to test larger samples..."

Typical. Somehow, the experiment just seems to conspire to make scaling it up impossible. The definitive, convincing results that might be practical are always just around the corner, just out of reach.

>"It may be too expensive as a space heater, but boy, a persistent 100 degree elevation would make a much more impressive demonstration for 60 minutes."

"There have been plenty like that with bulk Pd, in heat after death. They are impressive, as you say."

But it is in the paper whose reference you dare not reveal. Or is it in Japanese?

>>"Or thermally insulate the cell better. If the chemical energy can raise the temperature by 40 degrees, then if the fusion energy is higher, and you don't let it out, the temperature increase would exceed 40 degrees."

>"That idea has merit, [...] makes the instrument more and more difficult to deal with, and much more complicated. Plus high temperatures sometimes destroy nanoparticle material, but hopefully not this material. I would love to know how this material works at high temp, say 400 deg C, but I doubt that Arata or the PRC will tell me."

Typical. Somehow, the experiment just seems to conspire to make scaling it up impossible. The definitive, convincing results that might be practical are always just around the corner, just out of reach. Anyway, why jump from one degree to 400 if the material is at risk? Obviously, it survives at 70 degrees (the temp of the chemical reaction), so start with that. Get a sustained temperature higher than that of the chemical reaction.

>>"It seems to me that indefinite heat production with no input energy should be easy to scale up to make it unmistakeable . . "

>"It may be surprisingly difficult to scale up. "

It's not surprising to me. If there is no fusion, it will be impossible to scale up.

>"Believe me, it is already unmistakable. 1 deg C for 2 days with this material is way beyond any conceivable chemical reaction."

And according to others, way way way way way way way way way beyond any conceivable nuclear reaction.

[JedRothwell]

[Comment continues . . .]

"Anyway, it's not so much the accuracy of the measurement, but the size of effect. A one or two degree elevated reading in experiments doesn't seem all that unusual in these kinds of experiments."

One that lasts for days or months is unusual.


"The temperature plots have other anomalous features not explained by fusion, two of which you identify:

(1) The temperature increases to a higher value when the D2 is injected compared to when H2 is injected, by about 10 degrees, even though the reaction enthalpy for D is lower. If this is attributed to fusion . . ."

This has nothing remotely to do with fusion. It is the heat of formation of Pd-D or Pd-H.


"(2) In your words: "the temporal shape of the curves indicate that conditions within the cell were not the same between the several studies"

This indicates that the loading rates and total loading varied from one test to the next, and from one sample to the next. Plus I wonder if the samples are completely degassed. This chemical behavior may tell us something interesting about the cold fusion reaction that follows.


"(3) A third anomaly that you don't mention is the ratio of the temperature differences at long times (3000 min). When equilibrium is reached, the ratio of the sample-to-vessel difference to the vessel-to-ambient difference should be the same for the two samples, but in one case it is 2 and the other 4."

The samples are of different sizes and probably different composition. More about this is in publication now, in Japanese.


"All of these things indicate that, as you say in the discussion, " many questions remain before this work can be fully understood", and cast doubt on any conclusions jumped to about fusion."

They cast doubt about some aspects of the work and some claims. Particularly his claim that this can be made into a high power density, practical reaction. Giving Arata?s previous work and all the other gas loading results I do not think there is any doubt this is cold fusion, and there is no doubt whatever that cold fusion is fusion. You cannot consider these results in isolation, without taking into account the other experiments in this field.


"If the effect is real, and fusion produces a 1 degree temperature increase in the vessel using 7 g of Pd, then why not do it with 70 g of Pd or 700 g of Pd."

That is an interesting question. It is beyond the scope of the discussion but I addressed it partially in a paper titled "Butter Side Down." The gist of it is that larger samples are actually harder to work with, and they produce less accurate data, with good calorimeters. However, Arata?s calorimeter is lousy, as I said in the paper. Some other people working with this material plan to test larger samples, but it is harder than you might think.


"It may be too expensive as a space heater, but boy, a persistent 100 degree elevation would make a much more impressive demonstration for 60 minutes."

There have been plenty like that with bulk Pd, in heat after death. They are impressive, as you say.


"Or thermally insulate the cell better. If the chemical energy can raise the temperature by 40 degrees, then if the fusion energy is higher, and you don't let it out, the temperature increase would exceed 40 degrees."

That idea has merit, because higher temperatures (or laser stimulation) will probably produce a much larger reaction. It does with bulk Pd. However, lots of insulation makes the calorimeter response time long which makes the instrument more and more difficult to deal with, and much more complicated. Plus high temperatures sometimes destroy nanoparticle material, but hopefully not this material. I would love to know how this material works at high temp, say 400 deg C, but I doubt that Arata or the PRC will tell me.


"It seems to me that indefinite heat production with no input energy should be easy to scale up to make it unmistakeable . . "

It may be surprisingly difficult to scale up. Believe me, it is already unmistakable. 1 deg C for 2 days with this material is way beyond any conceivable chemical reaction. Two months or 20 years would be mere icing on the cake, and would not prove anything more.

[JedRothwell]

Samuelblack wrote:

"See refs 1, 2 and 3 (in Japanese). I did not include the motor because it is unimportant."

I don't read Japanese, and important or not, that's the claim you made."

Look, if you want to see the motor, you have to look in the Japanese refs. It hasn?t been published in English as far as I know. I don't see why you care about this motor but that's the only place you will find it.


"Just because you draw a dashed line on the graph doesn't mean the chemical heat stops there."

The graphs show that the chemical heat stops there. Obviously it does. Anyone who has loaded Pd nanoparticles with hydrogen knows that.


"And, according to the paper, the sample remained 2 degrees above ambient temperature (assumed to be constant) for 2 days. That's not what you claimed."

I was referring to later results. But 2 days is much longer than 15 minutes.


"And there's no evidence that the slightly elevated reading is the result of fusion."

Of course it is. No chemical reaction with this mass of material can continue at that power level for 2 days. (Whatever power level it is -- very hard to determine. No macroscopic, sensible reaction could continue this long, in any case.)


"All I'm saying is the energy needed to start the reaction has to be considered if you want to make an energy profit."

The energy used to pump out the vacuum never reaches the cell, as you see from the blank run. Therefore you do not need to consider it. Adding this in to the "energy profit" makes no more sense then adding in the energy for overhead lights, as I said.


"'Learn Japanese.'

That's it? You're going to make claims here supported only in papers written in Japanese. That gives you a lot of freedom."

You are the one who keeps demanding information that has not been published in English! That gives you the freedom to ignore the papers that are in English.


"'That?s absurd. J. P. Joule could measure 0.01 deg C back in 1840. Arata can measure 0.001 deg C without breaking a sweat.'

Hey. You called the accuracy of Arata's temperature measurements into question in the paper you gave me."

No I did not. I called into question his estimate of the heat of formation of Pd-D and Pd-H. I have no doubt his thermocouples and thermometers are right.

[samuelblack]

Samuelblack wrote:
>>>"This is not a simple extrapolation unless the tiny little motor is running on a self-contained box that consumes only D2O."

JedRothwell wrote:
>>"Which is the case."

>"Reference?"

"THE PAPER I JUST GAVE YOU for crying out loud. "

Nope. The one you gave me does not support the claim.

>"I read Hubler's review of 2007, which made no such claim, and now, regrettably, I've read yours of 2008, which also makes no such claim."

"I do not recall if Hubler discussed gas loading and heat after death, but I am sure he knows about them."

He cites a 1994 paper by Arata in his Table 1, but does not discuss the results in the text, or make any claim similar to yours in the summary or abstract.

>"Because the more I engage you, the less sense you make, the more fantastic your claims become, and the more dead-certain you claim to be."

"These claims are made by Arata, not me. You have utterly failed to understand them."

So far, you have not given me a single specific reference that supports your claims of indefinite energy, or motors that go on forever.

>"What is your aversion to citing actual references."

"What is your aversion to using a library?!? "

None. Give me the reference, and I'll get the paper from the library. You made specific claims. You should be able to cite specific references that support them.

The one paper you cited provides surprisingly poor support for your cause. It doesn't actually make the claims you make, and the work reviewed was so sadly lacking in detail and quality, that you yourself were quite critical of it. If it had been written (or performed) in 1990, as a preliminary exploration of the field, it would have made sense. But Arata's been in the business for 20 years, and that's what he chose to present in 2008, not the earlier work you claim is better. If that's the sort of thing the DOE panel was presented with, their report was too kind.

[samuelblack]

Samuelblack wrote:
>"Not in the paper you cited. There was no motor."

JedRothwell wrote:
"The papers I cited are Refs. 1, 2 and 3, in Japanese. (Referenced in my paper, RothwellJreportonar.pdf.) Of course there is a motor."

The paper you cited cites papers that describe a motor, but they're in Japanese. Convenient.

>"The cell didn't run on D2O, and it required massive input energy."

"The cell runs on D2, not D2O and there is no input energy. If there was input energy, that would show up during the blank run, my Fig. 7."

The D2 has to be produced and compressed. That's input energy. And it's released when it reacts with the Pd. The excess energy has to be measured above the chemical heat.

>"But that brings us back to experiments that need input energy. At this stage, if CF wants to get the world's attention back, it needs to build something that generates sustained energy from D2O without additional energy input."

"Why are you hung up about the input energy, anyway? Cells have run with 0.5 W in, 25 W. Proton conductor cells the ratio is 1 to 70,000. The input energy is a trivial matter."

Because in Hubler's review of excess heat experiments, he presumably selects the best examples, and only claims 50 to 200% energy excess (heat out over electricity in). That is not enough to be practical, because the producing electricity is at best 35% efficient. Why doesn't he mention the more impressive demonstrations you talk about?

If the output is 50 times the input, it should be trivial to close the cycle. Supply the input with the output, and build a cart that drives forever.

Can you give me a reference that supports this claim?

"Look at his previous stuff. Look at other gas loading. Look at SRI?s replication of Arata. Okay, no motor, but who cares? Just do a few google searches on the main page and you will find dozens of papers, or in the index you will find hundreds more that I cannot upload."

Again, I don't want dozens or hundreds. You've read them. Which one is best?

>"And if it's peer reviewed literature, how come, when I've asked for references, you cite your own unrefereed, unpublished reviews?"

"I gave you what I have. I have 500 papers on line. There are 3000 others off line in my files, and hundreds more in Japanese, which I doubt you can read. Look up Arata in the main index and you will see that I have only 7 out of the 30 papers he has published in English. Check out Chubb's paper "In Honor of Yoshiaki Arata." It is a lot easier to understand than Arata's."

You don't have to give me the paper, just the reference. Author, journal, volume, page. The best one, in your opinion, that supports your claims.

You know that 3000 papers reporting marginal results are not better than one; they are worse.

>"(And forget about those gas cells; they never come close to making up the energy needed to produce and compress the D2.)

"Are you kidding? Gas cells have produced 50 MJ, and electrolysis cells 300 MJ. You could make a ton D2 gas with that much energy. That is the equivalent of 7.4 kg of gasoline."

Wow. My car can drive 100 km on 7.4 kg of gasoline. If there are cells that produce that much energy, why can't you power a car on it? Anyway, a specific reference that claims 300 MJ would be appreciated. Just the author, journal, volume, page.

>>"'But I can only succeed with people who are willing to read and think.'

>"And duped, maybe."

"Do you seriously believe the authors of these papers are trying to dupe the public? "

No. I think most of the authors are True Believers, but I think you will only succeed in convincing people who are predisposed to being duped. There are a lot of people like that.

"Is that the best you can come up with? Thousands of professional scientists have devoted 20 years of their lives to this research . . . to dupe people?"

No, as true believers, they really think they have a good chance of vindication, followed by fame, glory, and wealth. Or at least they think it's worth the gamble.

[samuelblack]

Samuelblack wrote:

>"The fusion rates are believed to be some 10^30 times higher than conventional theory, but one less order, and you wouldn't see it, but if they were similar to the chemical reaction rate, Arata would've been blown to smitherenes. Two different experiments, but both produce excess heat right in the noise of the chemical or electrical heat. Stunning coincidence."

JedRothwell wrote:
"You are confusing power and energy. "

No, I assure you, I get the difference.

"The heat (power) ..."

But you seem to be confused. Heat is energy, not power.

"...from an impure sample of uranium is far lower than the heat from a burning match, "

That depends on the size of the sample. The decay heat from uranium is a major contribution to the elevated temperature of the interior of the earth. A burning match wouldn't contribute much at all on that scale.

"but it goes on for thousands of years."

Billions, actually. Don't you know anything.

"The heat from the chemical reaction in this cell ends in 15 minutes. The nuclear heat that follows will continue for days or months, until you stop it. "

According to the paper, it goes on for 2 days. But I think you missed my point. It was that the fusion rate by conventional theory is some 10^30 times lower than necessary to account for the observed heat. So, the assumption is that the presence of Pd changes the rate. As it happens, it changes it by just enough to make the effect small: a temperature elevation less than one fifth the "unexpected" difference between D2 and H2 during the "chemical" phase; an effect small enough that one of CF's greatest cheer-leader has to give the scientist the benefit of the doubt. Now, one order less, and in that experiment, you wouldn't detect it. One order more and it would not require the benefit of the doubt. Two or three orders more, and it becomes dangerous.

And it's not just this experiment. In other labs, with other types of experiment, with other types of Pd samples, and other ways of introducing the deuterium, the increased fusion rate is never enough to be dramatic, to say power a small cart on D2O, let alone be dangerous. It's always right in that range where it takes a trained physicist 2 days of number crunching to be sure there is excess heat.

"Compare a uranium fuel rod to a burning match: "

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this comparison. You don't need the burning match to observe decay heat from uranium. And if you did put them both in a calorimeter, you'd have to wait one hell of a long time to see the decay heat from uranium over the noise from the match, if you could ever see it. The decay heat from uranium is only about 0.1 W / tonne, giving about 20 J in one year from a 7 g sample. So, the natural decay rate in uranium doesn't somehow magically fall within the noise level of an ordinary calorimetry experiment. It's far, far lower, and even so, the nuclear reactions are trivial to identify from the alphas, betas, and gammas.

When you optimize the conditions for fission (perhaps analogous to using Pd), by enriching the U-235, and adding a moderator, the rate also doesn't magically fall in the calorimetry noise range; it exceeds it by many orders of magnitude, and then the temperature in the inside of the fuel pellets typically exceeds that of a candle flame. No benefit of the doubt necessary.

"and please do not assume that Arata is an idiot who does not understand the fundamentals of chemistry and nuclear physics."

Wait. First you want me to read the papers for evidence of CF. When I read the paper you give me, and question the results, you fall back on the stature of the scientist. If I'm just supposed to trust Arata, then why bother telling me to read the paper?

And anyway, you seemed to assume Arata is an idiot when you questioned his ability to determine the chemical heat to within an order of magnitude.

[samuelblack]

Samuelblack wrote:
>"1) There's nothing in that paper about a motor. Just temperatures."

JedRothwell wrote:
"See refs 1, 2 and 3 (in Japanese). I did not include the motor because it is unimportant."

I don't read Japanese, and important or not, that's the claim you made.

>"2) There is no electrical power to the cell, but you pump D2 into it. D2 is chemical fuel, and as the paper admits, there is abundant chemical energy released as the D2 reacts with the Pd. So the energy is clearly not all "excess energy" if by excess you mean non-chemical."

"The burst of chemical heat lasts 15 minutes. The nuclear heat lasts for days, and if they left the cell alone it would probably last for decades."

Just because you draw a dashed line on the graph doesn't mean the chemical heat stops there. And, according to the paper, the sample remained 2 degrees above ambient temperature (assumed to be constant) for 2 days. That's not what you claimed. And there's no evidence that the slightly elevated reading is the result of fusion.

>"4) This doesn't even start to take account of the energy needed for the vacuum pump, which presumably is plugged in, or the energy required to compress the D2 to at least 30 atm. By the way, the energy required to pressurize a 1 L cell to 30 atm would be enough to run a small camera motor for about 4 months."

"You cannot measure that. Too small. It would show in the blank experiments if you could."

All I'm saying is the energy needed to start the reaction has to be considered if you want to make an energy profit.

>"5) None of the graphs in that paper go beyond 3000 minutes (about 2 days)."

"Learn Japanese."

That's it? You're going to make claims here supported only in papers written in Japanese. That gives you a lot of freedom.

>"6) It is amazing that just like in the electrolysis experiments, the heat from the fusion falls right in the same ballpark as the chemical energy, so that the temperature is elevated by maybe a degree, right in the marginally detectable range."

"That?s absurd. J. P. Joule could measure 0.01 deg C back in 1840. Arata can measure 0.001 deg C without breaking a sweat."

Hey. You called the accuracy of Arata's temperature measurements into question in the paper you gave me.

Anyway, it's not so much the accuracy of the measurement, but the size of effect. A one or two degree elevated reading in experiments doesn't seem all that unusual in these kinds of experiments.

The temperature plots have other anomalous features not explained by fusion, two of which you identify:

(1) The temperature increases to a higher value when the D2 is injected compared to when H2 is injected, by about 10 degrees, even though the reaction enthalpy for D is lower. If this is attributed to fusion, then the fusion rate would have to be higher in the initial loading stage by a factor of 5 or so, and then decrease with time. But if the fusion is enabled by the Pd, then it should increase from zero to a saturation value as the D becomes adsorbed or otherwise integrated in the Pd. So, there is a 10 degree anomaly that contradicts chemistry, and can't be explained by fusion.

(2) In your words: "the temporal shape of the curves indicate that conditions within the cell were not the same between the several studies"

(3) A third anomaly that you don't mention is the ratio of the temperature differences at long times (3000 min). When equilibrium is reached, the ratio of the sample-to-vessel difference to the vessel-to-ambient difference should be the same for the two samples, but in one case it is 2 and the other 4.

All of these things indicate that, as you say in the discussion, " many questions remain before this work can be fully understood", and cast doubt on any conclusions jumped to about fusion.

If the effect is real, and fusion produces a 1 degree temperature increase in the vessel using 7 g of Pd, then why not do it with 70 g of Pd or 700 g of Pd. It may be too expensive as a space heater, but boy, a persistent 100 degree elevation would make a much more impressive demonstration for 60 minutes. Or thermally insulate the cell better. If the chemical energy can raise the temperature by 40 degrees, then if the fusion energy is higher, and you don't let it out, the temperature increase would exceed 40 degrees. Or do both: Use 700g Pd and insulate the cell better. It seems to me that indefinite heat production with no input energy should be easy to scale up to make it unmistakeable; so that you would not have to give it the benefit of the doubt.

[samuelblack]

Samuelblack wrote:
>"Reference? [showing all the energy is excess, and that it is fusion]"

JedRothwell wrote:
"The paper itself! It is obvious."

In this forum you use proof by assertion.

But in the (unrefereed and unpublished) paper you gave me, you express reservations about the accuracy of the temperature measurement, you decry the lack of details, you suspect that Arata's measurement of the chemical energy is wrong by an order of magnitude, you call the helium measurement shaky, and finish by giving Arata the "benefit of the doubt".

Do you know the meaning of "obvious"?

>>"It is NOT plugged in. It is gas loading. Patterson and Cravens turned off the power."

>"But one of them died and the other got out of the business leaving no record of this miracle?"

"Plenty of people have gas loading! I don?t know any others who used thermoelectric chips and LEDs but I have not seen every single experiment. There are thousands."

I just want one that backs up your claim. One. Specific. Reference. (In English, please.)

>>>"To repeat, make a self-contained toy running on D2O, and I'll invest in CF."
>>"That's what I said it is, for crying out loud! Read what I write."
>"I know you claim it. I want to see the reference that makes the claim. Anything?"

"Look up GAS LOADING or HEAT AFTER DEATH. We have 83 papers on the latter. Do your own homework! Stop asking me to spoon feed you every detail."

Just a reference. That's not spoon-feeding. As I understand things, it's pretty standard practice in science, that when a claim is made of someone else's work, the work is cited. Or is it common in the literature to see:

An anti-gravity machine has been developed [1], using electro-gravity field divergence effects [2], to transform dark matter into anti-matter [3].

[1] look it up yourself
[2] google it
[3] do you expect to be soon-fed?

[JedRothwell]

chiral-fella asks:

"Where is Stan Pons? What does he think about the current state of 'CF'?"

Pons is in France. He has taken French citizenship. I have not heard from him in some time but others tell me he is following developments with interest.

[chiral-fella]

Where is Stan Pons? What does he think about the current state of "CF"?

[JedRothwell]

I just realized what this weird assertion by Samuelblack means:

"4) This doesn't even start to take account of the energy needed for the vacuum pump, which presumably is plugged in, or the energy required to compress the D2 to at least 30 atm. By the way, the energy required to pressurize a 1 L cell to 30 atm would be enough to run a small camera motor for about 4 months."

The vacuum pump? How would that heat show up in the calorimeter? Look at the schematic and the photo, and explain how it might change the temperature in the cell. It is in another part of the room.

Or -- let me guess -- you are going to add in every joule of energy required to perform this experiment. Okay, how about the computer and the overhead lights? How about breakfast lunch and dinner eaten by the technicians and Profs. Arata and Zhang? Why stop there! How about the heating and airconditioning for the lab, there in Arata Hall? How about the energy required to mix the concrete and melt the steel used to build the lab, which is there in Arata Hall? HEY, how about the energy use to mine the ore to make the steel, to build the lab, to run the experiment, there in Arata Hall? HOW ABOUT the energy from the sun that grew the trees the formed the fossil fuels used to dig the ore . . .

We could do this all day. The point of a calorimeter is that it measure the heat of a process isolated from environment (by the Second Law) so that all of this other energy does not enter the picture. If any heat from the pump does magically defy the second law and make it into the cell, we would see that in the blank runs.

Savvy?

Ha! Why ask.

HOW ABOUT THE ENERGY used by the woodpecker who cut down the tree that turned into fossil fuel that dug the ore and made the coal to smelt the steel . . .

[JedRothwell]

Samuelblack wrote:

"Not in the paper you cited. There was no motor."

The papers I cited are Refs. 1, 2 and 3, in Japanese. (Referenced in my paper, RothwellJreportonar.pdf.) Of course there is a motor.


"The cell didn't run on D2O, and it required massive input energy."

The cell runs on D2, not D2O and there is no input energy. If there was input energy, that would show up during the blank run, my Fig. 7.


"But that brings us back to experiments that need input energy. At this stage, if CF wants to get the world's attention back, it needs to build something that generates sustained energy from D2O without additional energy input."

Why are you hung up about the input energy, anyway? Cells have run with 0.5 W in, 25 W. Proton conductor cells the ratio is 1 to 70,000. The input energy is a trivial matter.


"Fortunately, several other people now replicating this work use conventional calorimetry, and SRI and others who replicated Arata's previous gas loading also did."

"So why did you make me read the bad stuff? And where is the better stuff published?"

Because you asked about the the motor! Look at his previous stuff. Look at other gas loading. Look at SRI?s replication of Arata. Okay, no motor, but who cares? Just do a few google searches on the main page and you will find dozens of papers, or in the index you will find hundreds more that I cannot upload.


"And if it's peer reviewed literature, how come, when I've asked for references, you cite your own unrefereed, unpublished reviews?"

BECAUSE YOU ARE HUNG UP ON THE MOTOR. I gave you what I have. I have 500 papers on line. There are 3000 others off line in my files, and hundreds more in Japanese, which I doubt you can read. Look up Arata in the main index and you will see that I have only 7 out of the 30 papers he has published in English. Check out Chubb's paper "In Honor of Yoshiaki Arata." It is a lot easier to understand than Arata's.


"[Tokamaks] never produced excess energy, and consumed a lot more than CF has."

All fusion reactions produce energy. The PPPL produced 6 MJ in the last run.


"(And forget about those gas cells; they never come close to making up the energy needed to produce and compress the D2.)

Are you kidding? Gas cells have produced 50 MJ, and electrolysis cells 300 MJ. You could make a ton D2 gas with that much energy. That is the equivalent of 7.4 kg of gasoline.


"'But I can only succeed with people who are willing to read and think.'

And duped, maybe."

Do you seriously believe the authors of these papers are trying to dupe the public? Is that the best you can come up with? Thousands of professional scientists have devoted 20 years of their lives to this research . . . to dupe people?


"This is not a simple extrapolation unless the tiny little motor is running on a self-contained box that consumes only D2O."

"Which is the case."

Reference?"

THE PAPER I JUST GAVE YOU for crying out loud. Or any of the others by Arata. That is what they say. Evidently you don?t understand them but is what they show.


"I read Hubler's review of 2007, which made no such claim, and now, regrettably, I've read yours of 2008, which also makes no such claim."

I do not recall if Hubler discussed gas loading and heat after death, but I am sure he knows about them.


"I'm beginning to think you're not serious. That this is all a ploy to get people to click on your web site."

A ploy to get people to read hundreds of boring technical papers that most members of the public (including you) cannot make head or tail of? Why would I do that? What is the point? The LENR-CANR library is strictly for scientists. People who understand the difference between power and energy.


"Because the more I engage you, the less sense you make, the more fantastic your claims become, and the more dead-certain you claim to be."

These claims are made by Arata, not me. You have utterly failed to understand them. Your assertions about them are topsy-turvy.


"What is your aversion to citing actual references."

What is your aversion to using a library?!? I have 1.7 million visits and 1.2 million downloads and you are THE FIRST PERSON who has whined that he can't find papers. What is the matter with you? We have indexes by author, journal, title, and a Google index (for LENR-CANR only) by any method you like. I do not know what you want to see. You ask for Arata, I give it you and you say not that one some other one (which I told you is in Japanese). So look at the other Arata papers. Look up McKubre?s replication of Arata. Look up heat after death.


"'To disprove cold fusion YOU have to disprove the conservation of energy.'

No. There is nothing I can do to disprove CF to true believers."

People like Schwinger, you mean. Sure, just show us why calorimetry and x-ray film stopped working in March 1989.


"I would be delighted to be wrong, though."

You are not only wrong, you are hopelessly muddled.