Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Explaining the LENR Pdisaster


The Pdisaster
MOTTO
“I am Psmith," said the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, and phthisis.”  (P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith, Journalist)
Special thanks to my British readers because the unforgettable lectures about the hero from the Motto, 60+ years ago, have inspired me to invent the new concept, wordplay, blasphemy from the title. Without British humor the world would be a duller place. Please do not confound Pdisaster sith PDisaster or Perfect Disaster- that is a rap artist.
Actually this is  only my n-th attempt to convince my LENR friends to re-focus their efforts and hopes on more healthy and promising systems instead of insisting to use the unmanageable, Unpredictable and incognoscible Pd-D system as source of deep theoretical truth and knowledge re LENR.
My fight has started long ago, perhaps with my first CF paper saying that topology is first. After more cycles of hope - this is the solution, (we will have a system generating energy at a commercial level soon) and disillusion (no, it does not work well you even cannot get significant excess heat all the time) I became deeply discontented and have decided that an explanation of the weakness and tragically low reproducibility of the the results has to be found, on a causal basis. It is inadmissible that all the results are so bad and unreliable. It seemed that we are confronted with an occult phenomenon and I dislike a lot the idea of occult phenomena in science and even more in technology. During my career in the chemical industry I have examined many accidents and even in the most mysterious casesm we have always found an explanation, have discovered a hidden parameter, some superposing of very improbable events or some  incredible human error in design or exploitation and we were able to determine what to do in order to avoid such unhappy events in the future. Perhaps CF/LENR is madness but it is some logic in it.
I have analyzed the global experimental results and found they are mostly dead, a few weak and ill and short-lived and very, very few quite good and knowing that it is about some systems similar to those catalytic I concluded that the CF/LENR Pd based systems are all poisoned, inactivated more or less, usually more.. All are in contact with air therefore air contains the poison I will not repeat here what I have written in many, many messages, perhaps my story is described well and in context, here:
http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/318theories.html  The cathode is exposed to air, the heavy water is saturated with air- so co-deposition would not change much the situation..

I wanted to convert irreproducibility from a trouble (something generating only complains) to a problem (something that has a solution to be found and applied) but my poisoning hypothesis is perhaps my most unsuccessful idea ever. If it is about technology, PdD is a highly unsuccessful system; is this only a coincidence? Due to some professional memes (nobody is perfect) first I thought that only the polar impurities from air are really harmful but later I have learned from professor Piantelli that any trace of alien gases (those that are not hydrogen isotopes i.e. nitrogen and oxygen to have to be removed from the LENR system otherwise they simply do not work.. Read please about deep degassing in his patent EP2368252B1/2013 or see it as still application in my “Piantelli Taxonomy”                                                                    Yiannis Hadjichristos also states it clearly that Defkalion’s generator also “needs a completely dry and airless environment to get triggered”

 

Actually the PdD system has only two choices: to be anaerobic or zombie- as it usually is. The situation is worse than a simple Pdisaster because this system will continue to remain the most popular for scientific studies despite the experimental situation even when the competing H-transition metal system will go commercial. PdD was the cradle of LENR and our founding fathers have worked with it, there it would be antiscientific and kind of sacrilege to abandon it. And it will deliver no good theories, no ideas and only a unique certainty: it exists.


Our very knowledgeable LENR colleague Axil has found a good analogy for the inherent debility of PdD:
It is unfortunate the Fleischmann Pons Effect was the first instance of the LENR reaction’s manifestation.                                
I liken the FP effect to the analogy of starting a fire in a flooded forest drenched in a perpetual downpour. Dry firewood is hard to find and if found, it continually gets wet.                                                       It is better to start a fire in a very dry place filled with dry tinder.

Ed Storms is building a LENR theory starting from this unhappy system. I think he is actually right in essence and the active sites or NAE where the nuclear reactions take place are indeed voids, cracks holes of some very specific sizes in the nano domain, and not the Pd lattice. It is easy to imagine that great and slow say oxygen atoms and small, very fast hydrogen atoms are competing for these “burrows” like pigs and rabbits. Once the fat atoms occupy a site hydrogen has no chance. However, if a new site is formed or opened during the process hydrogen’s high speed will be a decisive advantage. However the in-situ formation of NAE appears as impossible for Pdisaster working at low temperatures but quite handy for the hot Ni-Nike process due to the increased dynamics of the atoms of metal.                                                                                                             
We all still have much to learn and much to forget. And even more to do.
Peter

18 comments:

  1. I can easily see how current day nuclear and plasma physicists think that cold fusion is impossible and ridiculous on its very face because of all the embittered self-imposed problems both huge and insurmountable that they suffer daily in their futile efforts to get hot fusion off the ground.

    Oftentimes their experiments are as big as sports stadiums fed by electric power sources that can light an entire city, and yet they are not successful in getting that investment in power back to any substantial level… or even a little.

    Far too late, they come home at knight drained by these continual problems they face during their forlorn day, one setback after the other, one glitch worse than the next, in a raising crescendo of failure, like a troupe of gladiators facing their fates in front of the screaming crowd in bloodlust anticipation, the gall of terror rising in their throats; time is growing short, a title wave of depression batters them as they float repeated requests for additional funding ever increasing from their sponsors as they promise that success is just around the corner, but they fear that this never ending prevarication is growing thin.

    The cold fusion theorist states that he can do this fusion power generation better on a desktop device without any power input or at most power fed from a wall socket.

    To convince these jaded and discouraged martyrs to the misapplication of science to research and development is truly a hard sell, superhuman in magnitude, but never the less; we must show them how to paddle with the currents of nature rather than to fight against it.

    We are fighting against a tradition of belief much like a religion with its own doctrine and strengthen daily by continued frustration devoid of success.

    But the stubbornness of martyrdom endures more entranced each day like the biting teeth of the scourge driving deep into the flesh an flaying the bone; the pain so endured is extreme but the human spirit though tragically misdirected will struggle on blinded to reality nailed to the cross of the endeavor, and incapable of change.

    The practitioners of the Pdisaste religion show the same propensity for pain and the stubbiness of conviction born of decades of increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of veal to the Pdisaster faith.

    Their rehabilitation is more doubtful to common sense. I fear we must consign them to the consequence of their belief and it is rather for us born of a new generation to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.


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    1. Axil

      I enjoy many of your posts, but fear this one is somewhat melodramatic & rather negative.

      Portraying "current day nuclear and plasma physicists" this way in such a blanket fashion is really quite unkind and not really provable!. The challenge in being witty is to not end up appearing witless :)

      Cheers

      Doug M

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  2. Who is working in Pd-D electrolytic systems for technology?

    All commercial proto-proto-types that I know of are using gas-loaded, or pre-loaded, with either D or H.

    To continue looking at systems that have required a two-decades specialty may not work for technology, but science still remains. Utilize that experience, like Dr. Melvin Miles. He is not developing technology, but his experience with Pd-D co-deposition has answered questions and confirmed hypothesis. I hope someone will learn from him cause he's got skills that don't come easy.

    We all want technology, and there's plenty jumping in to do it. How long do we wait before that is a "disaster".

    It is not the metal that's the problem. It's the theory.
    When there is a theory, to make the topology may be done using other materials, including live ones.

    The Pd-D history is the stuff theories are made of.

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    1. Dear Ruby,
      Nobody has worked or works with PdD for commercial
      excess heat- this is simply not possible. However
      many people try to obtain results good for building
      a theory with PdD however this is also a very difficult
      task. Say I am dating with a girl who comes to our meeting 3 times from 10. What will I do? Dating with an other girl not with Miss Disaster (only metaphor last week we have celebrated the 47th anniversary of wedding. Philemon and Baucis are bad compared to my wife and me).
      But even masochists have limited patience.
      PdD not good for technology, bad for science too. It was the cradle of CF/LENR and it will be extremely difficult to
      attach new, other merits to it.
      Bur it is about a simple practical problem, LENR cannot work well when air is present.
      Peter

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    2. That depends entirely on what she does on that date. Three times out of ten might be *excellent*! In fact, *once* might be something remembered for the rest of one's life.

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    3. Everything is OK, as it is about feelings- metaphorically.
      When it is about something like starting you care or notraising of your helicoptre or not, lsnding of your personal jet or not, it is quite different.
      Unreliability of CF/LEMR MUST have a cuassal explanation beyond excessive complexity. I believe poisoning with any gases that can compete with deuterium or hydrogen is something quite plausible.
      Peter

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  3. @Peter Gluck: and then there are long-time cold fusion researchers like JP Biberian who openly say that they prefer "milliwatts" rather than "watts or kilowatts". With such attitude I don't think anything is ever going to change in this field.

    (that is, until somebody with LENR+ devices showing large signals with a large SNR will get scientific accolades and mainstream recognition. Only then, others who have always tried to chase butterflies with Pd-D will probably switch to more promising LENR paths)

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  4. Dear Tizzboom,
    I don't know where had Jean Paul said something like this.
    Such statements havve to be analyzed in context, possibly he wants first milliwatts in 100% of the cases, perfect repeatability
    and only after that to go a step (actually one stair further (higher). Anyway the idea of making pure science is not compatible
    with such a system that gives mainly inaudible answers.
    The LENR+ devices will take care of themslves, I have written a lot about the obstacles and problems on the way from enhanced excess heat to a practical energy source. Vederemo!
    Peter

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    1. Peter, Prof. Biberian said this in Eindhoven (in the Netherlands) a few weeks ago during a lecture I attended. He was explaining that as a scientist he did not care primarily for engineering purposes. Just the science of the fenomenon. Personally I think he is right. The problem is not the amount of heat generated but the instability of the replication. Once the fenomenon can easily be replicated at will the money will flow in and we can take this one step further.

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    2. Dear Bettingman,
      Thanks, that is approximately so as I guessed. Till the experiments are cursed by instability, non-repeatability,
      unpredictability,lack of control- we can call it with many
      names but it is the same unlucky affair- you simply cannot think about engineering.
      However in order to find a way you can start on two opposed ways;
      a) to try to reinforce the heat excess, to increase it;
      b) to increase the sensivity of measurement to its very limits
      I think all PdD systems are poisoned this problem has no real solution and LENR has to be searched for in vapor phase, high temperature, transition metal-light hydrogen systems.

      Peter

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    3. For me the big error is to try to organize too much, to give an order, precedence, priority.

      Parallel approach seems the best way, with moderate funding for each.
      The big error in government, of big physics, is to put billions in one idea instead of millions in many.

      Of course some ideas are better than others, but experience is that often ousiders win.

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    4. DEar Alain,
      Thank you, but please have the very kindness to explain
      this in context.
      What is the situation for governments and what for the LENR community?
      I think what we need most is FACTS, solid reliable experimental - or even better practical commercial fact
      To build bridges between experiment and theory linking theory with practice. In some way DGT shows that theory and practice are indistinguishable.
      Peter

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    5. Maybe I exaggerate a little because I'm fed up with the crazy exclusive focus today on theory, and good order, and putting the horse before the cart...

      problem today ate too coupled, to cycled, that you can find the horse.

      Michel on linked in raised an interesting position, it is that industrial developments should be chosen so they produce good scientific progress, not the opposite...

      It is true that just looking for results not trying to understand, is not the best way to get results. but refusing to take risk, to use phenomenological method, is not so productive either...

      a controlled quantity of mess, of crazyness, of risk... and a bounded quantity of commonsense, prudence, and organization, orf planning...

      avoid extreme position, and what look perfect... or you get perfect failure.

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    6. Dear Alain, I have written much about the practical impossibility to go on the way of theory and about the necessity to use a hydrid techno-scientific approach.
      And to move the focus on vapor-phase, high temperature
      transition metal sysstems.
      Peter

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  5. meson catalyzed fusion occurs at room temperature, so it is possible to have fusion at room temps. the hitch with meson catalyzed fusion is that it is hard to get the mesons to use (no, not those Masons, lol).

    So what if WL is right and the electrons of these single proton hydrogen atoms are being excited by the latice they are loaded into, into becoming enlarged similar to a meson?

    then the acceptance of the meson-proton pair wouldnt be so difficult, would it?

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    1. Dear A,
      can you please tell a bit more? Where are the mesons coming
      from? How could be such a process controlled ore topped?
      Peter

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  6. I have often read the postings of retired Patent Attorney named David French. He writes in a way that is very readable to us humble lay people. He has covered Rossi's and Piantelli's patents. His most recent post is a very interesting one because he states "The year 2013 will be the year in which the dam of disbelief respecting the Fleischmann & Pons phenomena will finally break". IMHO the above statement from him makes what he then says, to be very interesting.

    http://coldfusionnow.org/conclusively-demonstrating-the-new-energy-effect-of-cold-fusion/

    I take David French's position, to be not unlike our blog host Peter Gluck's. It is very interesting to read thoughtful articles written by people who have had a long and in-depth association with this technology.

    If anyone wants to read all of David French's recent writings on LENR patents they can be found here.
    http://coldfusionnow.org/patents/

    I certainly find David's and Peter's writings to be far more inspiring and informational than those of the well known poster who goes by the name of 'Mary Yugo'. Mary Yugo can be very logical and very precise in terms of logic.

    The single biggest difficulty I face in reading Mary Yugo posts is how clinically logical they are whilst at the same time being depressingly negative, as they are about even attempting research on LENR let alone believing there may be unknown phenomena we still don't grasp in relation to energy and that 'insurmountable' Coulomb barrier.

    But my challenge to Mary Yugo is that if Mary Yugo can offer a scientific explanation of the effect called 'ball lightning' I may begin to believe Mary Yugo et al may have insights deserving of great respect. But on the other hand, if anyone says ball lightning is an illusion and has never been proved to exist and therefore doesn't deserve any explanation, then I might think we are right back to discussing the CF/LENR challenge.

    In summary, I believe Peter's faith in LENR+ is well placed and the David French link at the top adds meaning to Peter's credibility and faith that progress *is* being made.

    Doug M


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    1. Thanks dear Doug!
      David French is indeed anmore than excellent professional;
      I had and will have fine communication with him. I have learned much from him.
      However nobody can have a clear vision of Rosssi's so called
      patent strategy that is a terrible mess of truth, lies, ambition and secrets.
      As regarding Mary Yugo she has discovered my secret and therefore I am not more interesting for her Nor she for me.

      I am grateful for your support for LENR+ and I hope you will not be disappointed.

      Peter

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