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The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project is a group dedicated to researching Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (often referred to as LENR) while sharing all procedures, data, and results openly online. We rely on comments from online contributors to aid us in developing our experiments and contemplating the results. We invite everyone to participate in our discussions, which take place in the comments of our experiment posts. These links can be seen along the right-hand side of this page. Please browse around and give us your feedback. We look forward to seeing you around Quantum Heat.

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Dear world, 

We have an admission and an apology to make, on the upside, some very important developments have occurred as a result.

When we first started seeing a correlation of sorts between Pxs and Pressure in the US cell, I asked for this to be investigated more deeply and Malachi, Ryan and the team did fantastic further work and analysis showing a potentially challenging finding. We are going to investigate this further and have made extra calibrations in US and EU cells to do exactly that moving forward.

What we did not say was that Celani had already been challenged at NI week and ICCF17 and subsequently on this exact potential issue and had carried out specific experiments to test for a measurable effect and reported back to his critics his findings which did not, in his cell, show the kind of relationship have seen. We had received this email a little after the 7th October 2012, but in the pressures of everything had simply forgotten about it, in hindsight, it was probably the reason we pushed for the investigation. Having said that, we were not given permission to share emails between MFMP and Celani openly, had we been able to then the community watching our journey would have surely reminded us. 

Some have suggested that Celani had not considered this, but as you can see below he had and we could have made this clear without being specific. For this oversight, we apologise.

Here is a version of Celani's email, copied to us around the 7th October, in which I have adjusted the English for readability on Celani's request – the original is available below as a PDF so people can confirm the meaning is the same.

Subject: CMNS: Further tests on Pressure reduction and temperature variation in Celani reactor.
From: Francesco Celani
Date: Sun, October 7, 2012 1:49 pm

Dear Colleagues,

Some people, inside and outside of our community have made some STRONG CRITICISMS of the report I presented at ICCF17 and the 2 DEMOS held at Austin (National Instruments Week, 6-10 August 2012) and Daejeon (ICCF17, 13-17 August, 2012).

* The key point of the critics is the possibility that the slow pressure reduction of Hydrogen and temperature fluctuations of the experimental room could greatly affect the high temperature (about 150°C) measured OUTSIDE the wall of our glass reactor to invalidate the claimed excess power. 

They think that the large, as expected, temperature increasing INSIDE the reactor (due to changing of convective motions) can have some notable effects on the OUTSIDE temperature of the reactor, supposed by me to behave like a Black-Body.

In other words, they think that the thick-walled (3mm) Borosilicate Glass tube (Schott-Duran) didn't behave as a Black-Body in the temperature ranges of our interest (100-170°C outside, 160-240°C inside).

* In particular: 

a) They had big reservations about the Fig. shown on pages 33 and 38 of my report (enclosed) at ICCF17.

b) They dismissed as meaningless the positive results shown on pages 29 and 31.

c) Moreover, they considered it just pure coincidence the effect of the apparent excess power increasing and the R/Ro ratio of submicrometric Constantan decreasing by a large amount (up to 30%!!!!). Other examples were shown on page 38. 

* In order to adress such possible doubts, in the last week [ first few days of October 2012 ] I decided (also under the "strong" suggestion/ recommendation/ control of one of our external Collaborators) to deload, as much as possible, the special Constantan wire from Hydrogen.

It was exactly the same wire that had been working, continuously, from July 10, 2012 and, from that date, the reactor had NEVER been opened.

The deloading procedure was quite difficult and took several days. By considering the R/Ro measurements it is thought that there was still some residual (i.e. at very low concentration) Hydrogen present in the Constantan lattice.

* The measurements performed were as follows:

a) The Reactor was kept without external thermal insulation, in a condition that was as similar as possible to the DEMOs held in USA and Korea (and previously at INFN-LNF, Italy).

b) The power applied was about 48W, as typical in such demos. 

c) The power was applied to the "Active" special Constantan wire.

d) The only difference was the gas: He (supposed inert) instead of Hydrogen (supposed active). We know that the thermal conductivities of such gases are quite similar. 

e) We simulated, as close as possible, the previous real experiments under H2, the behaviour of the "spontaneous" gas pressure decreasing (due to some gas leakages of our reactor with internal volume of, only, about 250cc).

Pressure drop from 6.3 to 4.3 bar, time about 60000s. Overnight test, no strong variation due to variation of convective component to the heat dispersion because NO people in the Laboratory. Exp.#1

f) We kept the pressure constant at 6.6 bar: studies of room temperature spontaneous changing, 1 full day test, i.e. day-night cycle. Exp.#2

g) We studied the effect of slow pressure changing at the low region of pressures: 4.4-->2.8bar. Again overnight test, from 19:30 (Saturday) to 11AM (Sunday). Exp.#3

Results

e1) Exp.#1

  • Room temperature variation: 23.2-->21.8;
  • Pressure variation: 6.3-->4.3 bar;
  • Input power: 48.05W
  • Internal temperature variation: 220-->233°C
  • External temperature variation: 154+-0.5°C==> No detectable variation. 

f1) Exp.#2

  • Room temperature variation: 23-->21.6-->22.6. Day-Night-Day;
  • Pressure variation: 6.5 bar, almost CONSTANT
  • Input Power: 47.9W
  • Internal temperature variation: 220+-1°C ==> Stable
  • External temp. variation: 152+-0.5°C =No detectable variation. The temperature difference, in respect to Exp#1, due to small reduction of input power.

g1) Exp.#3

  • Room temperature variation: 22.9-->21.7-->22.5°C
  • Pressure variation: 4.5-->2.8bar
  • Input Power: 47.95W+-0.05W
  • Internal temperature variation: 235-->240°C
  • External temp. variation: 154°C+-0.5°C

Comments and Conclusions 

Because the variations of external temperatures in the previous experiments with Hydrogen were of the order of 10°C, the effect due to the large pressure variations, as indipendently measured by Helium gas, are almost not significant when compared to the results obtained by our reactor and specific sub-micrometric Constantan starting from June 06, 2012. 

  • If there are some errors in the measurements which is always possible and can be somewhere, they are not related to pressure variations.
  • Only independent testing using a "reactor" that is VERY DIFFERENT from ours, can enable a final judgement/decision these kind of intriguing results, for several aspects quite interesting
  • In the next days I will make graphical elaboration of the last 3 experiments and I will send to all of You [sent in Ryan's last post]

  • Many thanks for Your time and patience on reading so long mail. 

Francesco CELANI

When we published the pressure drop findings of our Celani inspired (but quite different) QUARTZ based cell. Even though we drew attention many times to the key differences in our cell, this still caused problems, quite understandably, for Celani at a time when he was not in the best position to respond to our findings.

There was several subsequent events, first, Celani copied an email to us that he had sent to the CMNS community rightly defending his position in relation to our set-up and findings.

From: Francesco Celani
Date: Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 11:52 AM
Subject: Again about pressure reduction and possible results mis-interpretation. CMNS: Further test on Press. reduction and temp. variation on Celani reactor.
To: Mathieu Valat
 

Dear Colleagues,

In the very recent days, I got information that AGAIN there was some discussions going on about possible mis-interpretation of our previous experimental results due to the effect of pressure reduction inside the reactor. They made an experiment with the mixture Ar@75%-H2@25%, as I used in the previous experiments. They studied the effect of pressure reduction and found that such pressure variation affected in a large way even the output temperatures.

I would like to note the following: 

  1. they used QUARTZ tube, NOT borosilicate, as in our experiments. The quartz is transparent also to IR, borosilicate behaves as a Black Body at lambda >2.5 micron.

  2. I made calibration on such effects both on July 10, 2012 and later, very long, at the beginning of October. I used concentrated He. In short, for a temperature variation INSIDE the chamber of about 20°C, the temperature variation OUTSIDE the chamber was only 1-2°C, in the condition of wall temperature of about 150°C and input power of 48W. So, the effect is in the limits of experimental error.

  3. The experiment presented in my presentation at ICCF17, pg.38, where it is shown the CONTROLLED effect of pressure reduction on possible increase of anomalous heat, was performed in CONCENTRATED H2, time 520000-660000 seconds. I recall that the thermal conductivity of He and H2 are quite similar. 

* Considering such experimental facts I am convinced that the effect dectected from our Colleagues is obtained in conditions very different from ours. 

Thanks for the kind attention and, again, I would like to tank the Colleagues that made in deep attention to our experimental set-up and data analysis.

BTW. I am resending also the old mail of October were such results were discussed [as above]

My best,

Francesco CELANI

It was at this point that we realised we had forgotten the previous email, never the less we did another run in pure He.

The second thing that happened was Celani said we could start publishing some of our correspondance with him, such as the previous one Ryan posted and these two. This is fantastic news as it feeds right into our Open Science model and will prevent these kind of disclosure difficulties in the future.

The third thing was the release of the other independent researchers findings, that of ST Microelectronics. Whilst this may well have been unrelated, the research was originally due for release later. In any case we welcome this great step forward in verifying the New Fire being made open as soon as possible.

We intend to load the EU cell with special Constantan wire of the same type as the US cell used and be loading it with H2 by wednesday and go for a run shortly afterwards. Let's see if the live data can give a present to Celani for the Rome conference.

THE EMAILS


Ryan adds,

We are pleased to have these comparisons pointed out.  it is reassuring that his cell did NOT demonstrate this effect in Hydrogen, either.  We did not pay this much heed at the time because, well, it seemed to say that there was no reason to care - the gas and pressure didn't affect it much.The next step is to try our cells with the borosilicate glass which is happening on both sides of the pond, EU first then US. The test cell in Eurpope should be available to give us some data soon.

Another important difference is that his cell has Macor ceramic disks at the end of his mica wire supports that serve to block the radiant heat, convection, and some conduction of heat to the cooler metal flanges at the end of the tube.  Those may have made a big difference in susceptibility to the effect we observed. That is a function I did not fully appreciate till recently. Now we will work to add that function in the new test cells.

The US quartz based cell does change temperatures with all 3 gas combinations as the pressure changes. The purple line is the most recent test with Helium.  It is odd shaped.  That data was pretty noisy. Malachi took the 15 minute averages for these data points and it still gave quite an interesting shape. The green line is Hydrogen. The blue line is the H/Ar blend.

 

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0 #33 lab glass reactor 2015-02-26 05:41
In modern society, the lab glass reactor has important effects on many ways. Here: toption-china.com/.../.... Actually, this equipment is sometimes called ultrasonic cell grinder under many situations. At present, a lot of ultrasonic equipment suppliers begin to supply amount of related products. In fact, most people may not very unfamiliar with this product.
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0 #32 Ecco 2012-12-11 21:12
@Mathieu Valat: thanks for the info, but I think maybe you're writing in the wrong blogpost. Isn't the following one the latest one?

quantumheat.org/.../...
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0 #31 Mathieu Valat 2012-12-11 21:09
This run is not ment to be compared with calibrations. We are loading the wire.

You have here the current looking of the cell. I am varying the size of the sheet to adjust the temperature cell and get 175°C for Tmica.
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0 #30 Mathieu Valat 2012-12-11 20:48
Current temperature readings are biased because I had to put an aluminum foil on the top of the cell to increase artificially the temperature inside the cell with 10 more degrees that what I was able to do with my current power supply.
I had 165°C with 56V (max) and 0.9A. So I did try to find the sweet spot to reach maximum loading temperature.
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0 #29 Eric Walker 2012-12-11 06:57
Also, one more number, if I can impose -- what is the combined weight of the USA cell when loaded (e.g., with H/Ar)?
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0 #28 Eric Walker 2012-12-11 06:19
Out of curiosity, what are the weights of the two wires in the USA cell -- the constantan wire and the treated wire from Prof. Celani?
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0 #27 Paul Hunt 2012-12-11 05:37
@ Al Potenza
In this calorimeter design, we eliminate the need to know the exact mass of air flow or the exact specific heat by measuring the number of watts it takes to heat the air 1 degree. Then we measure the temperature rise in the air after flowing through the chamber. Then it is simple math.

In a perfect world the math is linear. In the real world it will have a curve due to any number of losses and imperfections. They are compensated by calibrating the unit with a test heater stepped through many different wattages. The resulting calibration curve compensates for most errors.

The unit is insulated, but for high resolutions it will still need to be in a pretty constant temperature environment.
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0 #26 David Roberson 2012-12-11 03:01
The increase of pressure to around 8 bar has caused the cell time constant to increase to approximately 423 seconds. This is substantially longer than the typical 344 that I have been measuring.

It is also noticed that the T_GlassOut is slowly rising as the pressure is slowly dropping during this test.

It would be interesting to correlate the time constant of the cell with the pressure. Perhaps the extra gas adds thermal mass to the system.
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0 #25 Alberto F. De Souza 2012-12-11 03:01
I wonder if it would not be better to do a simple comparison between cells... For that, one could build four cells (just to be certain): 2 exactly as Celani's; and 2 again exactly as Celani's, but without active wires. With proper mounting, the four cells would have wires almost identical (size and initial resistance). Therefore, they could power them up in series (only the wires used for heating).
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0 #24 Al Potenza 2012-12-10 18:43
I am not sure of the best place to discuss the new air flow calorimeter. It looks very nice and you have obviously thought about the design a lot.

I was wondering if you'd planned for some insulation on the exterior to shield it from air currents. Otherwise, you may have the same problems you had before of instability. And are you measuring the air flow? If so, you can have an independent "first principles" method of measuring the enthalpy from knowing the mass flow of air, the specific heat, and the temperature rise.

This is the difficult way to go. A liquid or even a Seebeck "perimeter" or "envelope" style of calorimeter would have been way easier in my opinion.
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+1 #23 Sanjeev 2012-12-10 17:56
@Ecco

No, because the glass will have same IR transparency during calibration period also. It's the excess that matters, not the absolute value of radiated power. Celani's setup is not suitable for accurately measuring the energy the glass radiates, his setup only shows that it radiates more than expected, hence the anomaly.

It's pointless to calculate power and all, if all variables are kept constant, the rising temperature will be proof enough.

If its not possible to keep the variables absolutely constant, then the temperature rise must be shown to be much more than that due to variables alone.
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0 #22 Ged 2012-12-10 17:02
@Ecco,

From my use of the black/gray body equation, any time you assume emissivity is less than 1, you decrease the watts you calculate based on the heat you detect. The equation for a gray body (anything with emissivity less than 1) is P/A = es(Tglass^4 - Tambient^4) , where P is power in Watts, A is surface area, s is the Boltzmann constant and e is emissivity.

If not all of the IR is being absorbed by the glass, then we'll have a lower Tglass, which'll lower the calculated power. There's no way losing IR detection could increase the calculation.
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+1 #21 123star 2012-12-10 15:33
Question: are the thermocouples on the glass just touching the glass or is there some thermal grease?
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0 #20 Ecco 2012-12-10 13:59
@Sanjeev: with the curve fit method used by MFMP, that's what I thought too. After all, the US cell, which uses quartz glass (which is more transparent to IR than borosilicate), is showing less excess power than expected. However the criticism I read was about the irradiated power calculation with the Stefan-Boltzman n law, as used by Dr.Celani. That the borosilicate quartz tube isn't an ideal black body at those wavelengths is supposedly causing an overestimation of excess heat in his case. Do you think it's actually the case?
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0 #19 Sanjeev 2012-12-10 13:33
Quoting Ecco:

As Dr.Celani is assuming that at those wavelenghts the glass tube is behaving like an ideal black body, shouldn't this have some implications on the expected results?


Yes. Less radiation absorbed will result in lower temperature of the outer surface and hence will show less excess energy.
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0 #18 Ecco 2012-12-10 12:43
Following a tip in a different forum, today I learned that Schott-Duran 3mm thick borosilicate glass as used by Celani might not exactly be completely opaque to IR wavelengths of interest (>2.5 micron / >2500 nm as mentioned by him in the email published above).



As Dr.Celani is assuming that at those wavelenghts the glass tube is behaving like an ideal black body, shouldn't this have some implications on the expected results?
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0 #17 Mathieu Valat 2012-12-10 08:52
@David
I did a wrong manipulation on the 12/8. I shut down the power supply believing the scrip crashed.
Then I realized I was reading wrong values. So I quickly changed the script to start it at the time I did this wrong move.
That is why you have this variation for a couple of minutes.
Sorry for that.
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0 #16 Robert Greenyer 2012-12-10 05:41
Sure David, will do
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0 #15 David Roberson 2012-12-10 04:18
I have a couple of issues that I would like to discuss directly with you by private email. These concern my time constant determining program and how to best put it to use. Could you give me email contact information which I have been unable to locate on this site.

Sorry for the inconvenience.
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0 #14 Ecco 2012-12-09 22:22
@MFMP: maybe off-topic in this blog post, but seeing the data from the EU cell, was a new wire (an active wire?) installed? I see it's currently running at about half the normal power, is this because you are already using hydrogen and you don't want to cause the impedance anomaly (and subsequent excess heat) occur just yet?
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