I have continued to watch the Defkalion demonstration of their LENR cold fusion device today. As expected with argon the LENR device produced no surplus energy output. But after purging the argon and introducing hydrogen and an external high voltage charge the reactor slowly began to generate excess energy beyond input.
The number of viewers has almost doubled since this morning with over 900 now watching. Lots of people have been commenting during the live demo. Some have been people who have read my blog postings on cold fusion.
This part of the demonstration is not as painfully slow as the earlier demo using argon. But I agree with many who are posting in the chat session that there is nothing here that could be called an independent test of the technology being demonstrated.
At around 20 minutes after introducing the hydrogen and heating up the reactor to 179 Celsius the LENR readings display energy outputs exceeding inputs. In the screen below you can see that with 2 kilowatts of energy input, consisting of heat and high voltage, the reactor generates more than 4.8 kilowatts of output, a ratio of 2.4:1.
As the test progresses the ratios eventually exceed 3:1 energy output to input. The values constantly vary but as the reactor stabilizes it seems to get better output. There is no doubt in my mind that something is cooking inside the Defkalion LENR. But what?
I don’t know how this demonstration proves a nuclear or other type of interaction to explain the excess heat. And I think it has to be said that a demonstration is far from being an independent test, for as much as the moderator can claim “transparency” and invite a journalist to nose around there is no independent way to verify that the data screens we are seeing aren’t doctored in some way. That’s why, as I have stated in the past, an independent test by a neutral and recognized third party is the best way to validate Defkalion’s claims without revealing their trade secrets.
For those of you who missed the live demonstration you can view it on the Livestream site.
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Your latest link worked fine with my system. Thanks. I watched about an hour and a half of it, and found the presentation both interesting and inconclusive. The presenter seemed much more technically knowledgeable than Rossi. In fact, he seemed as intelligent and knowledgeable as would be needed to direct all Defkalion’s product development. He doesn’t come off as a snake-oil salesman, and he was surprisingly forthcoming with technical details.
There are, however, several highly problematic factors in the presentation.
(1)) Despite no accurate measurement of input power waveform, the possibility of large DC offset, and other reservations, the measurement and display of input power seems reasonably credible. However the indicated display of output power seems nearly preposterous. The gadget produces heat, not electricity. So some scheme of translating temperature rise and water mass flow rate into thermal kW equivalent is producing the output power signal. The indicated output temperature seems to be about 140 C. That’s well above liquid to gas phase change for water. Water is said to be the heat transfer medium in this demonstration. So where is all the screaming steam 5-kW should be producing? It’s the same problem Steve Krivit pointed out when he visited Rossi. The problem is in measuring steam quality. 5 kW produces a lot more steam than Rossi displayed, and as best I could judge what the Defkalion demonstration showed is about as much steam as would be expected from the input power alone. What percentage of the cooling water is actually converted into steam? The difference in calculated power might easily be a factor of as much as four or five. No way to tell from the demonstration.
(2)) The wall screen display is driven by a signal generated in a computer that Defkalion controls. Several analog instrument signals are fed into analog to digital conversion circuits connected to Defkalion’s computer, and then software that Defkalion controls massages normalized, massages, and shapes the digital signals. In effect, the big screen would display whatever Defkalion’s computer software tells it to display. Today’s demonstration was designed to make it seem as though Defkalion was using standard off-the-shelf National Instruments A/D converters and display software. Where is the provenance on that? Again the question is the indicated output power. Obviously the NI display software allows the user to implement algorithms to integrate input channels. That’s why I have always insisted on melting ice, and also why I suppose LENR promoters refuse the “melt some ice” challenge.
(3) I found it curious that the indicated hydrogen pressure in the reaction chamber was only ~ 50 psi; about 10% of what other investigators have reported. No one asked the obvious question of what happens if the pressure is increased to say 100-psi?
Yours is a distinctly minority report. Do you really think those guys are part of a scam? Remember science saying heavier than air flight is impossible. Well. Here you’ve been able to see it in flight and you still don’t believe it.
It is a fair question to ask. But I would prefer the alternative, an independent evaluation by a panel of scientists who would do the testing of the LENR without Defkalion or Rossi as intermediaries. I have no idea if these gentlemen are trying to perpetrate a fraud or not. An independent peer review, the tried and true method we use to verify discoveries would be the best approach to confirming excess anomalous reproducible heating results.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got all that ad hominem baloney, but I just didn’t see any ice melt! I’m sure a painting of an imaginary primitive airplane by its promoters would have convinced you that there was an actual heavier than air flight event. The heavier than air flight question was before my time. Had I been alive back then I would have likely noticed that birds are heavier than air so in principle it is possible, but a painting of an imaginary airplane in flight wouldn’t have convinced me. The opinion of all convinced true believer persons on earth wouldn’t influence my opinion one-way or the other. My opinion is based on my evaluation of public evidence, not on the opinions of others. And so it is with LENR.
I do assign a certain weight to the opinions of certified authority, and I’ll certainly consider their arguments, but I won’t believe the incredible just because the authorities proclaimed it.
If the promoters of LENR expect serious scientists and engineers to accept demonstrated results produced only by the promoters, they will need to supply a much better grade of snake oil than a computer screen display. The problem could be simply solved if the grid power supplier certifies total power consumption and a high school physics class weighs the amount of crushed ice melted. All they would need are a couple of plastic garbage pails, a roll of fiberglass building insulation, a couple of alcohol thermometers, a few plastic buckets, bathroom scales from Wal-Mart, and a $10 Mickey Mouse watch. The promoters well understand that would be the highly credible demonstration, yet instead they show us computer screens they alone control and say, “See there, look at the screen, the heater input power is 2 kW, the high voltage power is 240 watts, and the output power is 5 kW.
I have no way to honestly know what these Defkalion people are up to, or whether their gadget works as they claim, but I’m absolutely certain their demonstration didn’t prove their claims.
In effect, their demonstration was just a much sexier version of what Rossi showed Steven Krivit. But where was the 5 kW of screaming steam? I guess I’ll have to throw my lot in with all the snakes that won’t believe until they see the ice melt and the power company certify the power draw. (That doesn’t mean seeing a computer screen display of ice melting. That does mean physically draining or dipping water out of the crushed ice pail, and actually weighing it on the bathroom scales).
I do not say practical LENR is impossible, I just say as yet there has been no compelling public demonstration. If the LENR gadgets produce COP above two it would be really easy to prove just by melting ice. It’s hard to believe that companies spend years trying to develop practical LENR cells, yet don’t try to melt ice at least in house. To a R&D engineer it would seem an irresistible and perfectly conclusive experimental path.