User talk:Kirk shanahan/Archives/2008/December

Weighing validity of opposition

copied from Talk:Cold_fusion#Weighing_validity_of_opposition --Enric Naval (talk) 20:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

As the person originally posing this question, I ask that it take place on Talk:Cold fusion. 69.228.201.246 (talk) 21:59, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Shanahan, I want to repeat a question to you which you may have missed above, based on your reply to subsequent comments. You said that your method of theoretical opposition to cold fusion is potentially applicable to forms of which do not involve electrolisis. You said your "calibration constant shift" method includes to "reverse engineer the constants required to force Storms' data to produce 0 excess power." I asked if that means starting with the assumption that there is no excess power, and then designing a general theoretical argument in support of that assumption. You said yes, but "it also includes evaluating that argument and reanalysis for credibility." Again, how do you select among a set of arguments in support of a selected hypothesis for credibility? 69.228.201.246 (talk) 19:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Shanahan's assertions about experiments are not in evidence. See: Storms, E., Comment on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion. Thermochim. Acta, 2006. 441: p. 207-209.

Don't forget to look at the paper immediately following that one. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean: Shanahan, K., A Possible Calorimetric Error in Heavy Water Electrolysis on Platinum. Thermochim. Acta, 2002. 387(2): p. 95-101.

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ShanahanKapossiblec.pdf

See also: K.L. Shanahan, Comments on Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co-deposition, Thermochim. Acta 428 (2005) 207. We do not have this one, regrettably.

Ah, ha. It is here:

http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/ms2004528/ms2004528.pdf

See also: Shanahan, Kirk (2006), "Reply to 'Comment on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion', E. Storms, Thermochim. Acta (2005)" (PDF), Thermochimica Acta 441 (2): 210-214

http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/2005/ms2005556.pdf

Will add the latter to the database.

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.54.221 (talk) 20:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEcommentonp.pdf

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.54.221 (talk) 19:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, I'm not sure all of this discussion is appreciated by the others using this talk page, who have already complained about this kind of discussion being OR, but I will try to keep it short so as to minimize the impact. Secondly, I'm not sure I am quite following your question, but I will try to answer it as best I can.

I determine the credibility of a 'reversed engineered' (RE) hypothesis based upon its conformance to any available experimental data and to general expectations based upon general quality control knowledge. In the case of my reanalysis, actual reproducibility numbers were available from Storms' own report. He reported both the calibrations constants obtained by eletrolytic calibration and Joule heating calibration, AND, he reported different calibration constants obtained from different electrolytic calibrations done in different time frames. These individual points are then assumed to roughly represent a 1 sigma span for comparison to the RE constants (they were on the order of 1.5%). My results were that changes of 1-3% were needed to zero out the apparent excess heat. That compares directly and favorably to that reported by Storms. Furthermore, based on my experience in chemical laboratory statistical process control, I know that biases of 1% and RSD's of 1% are obtainable with effort, so again the RE results compare favorably to general expectation. Thus the CCS mechanism is equally accurate to the CF mechanism, but the CCS mechanism does not require new revolutionary physics, which makes it the preferred explanation for a mainline scientist. If I apply this RE method to another technique, I would have to make these same kind of considerations to try to decide if the RE approach provided reasonable results there. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:09, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Papers now added. A clerical error on my part caused them not to show up previously. Let me know if there are others. And please give me permission to upload the draft versions. Pretty please!

Contact directly at JedRothwell@gmail.com (new ISP).

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.54.221 (talk) 21:30, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

It is not my perogative to give anyone permission. When I write papers, the copyright permissions are issued by my employer, not me, per my employment agreement. My employer executes a non-standard copyright agreement with journals also. You should check with OSTI about the right to distribute the papers you get from there, and with Thermochimica Acta about the others. I am out of the loop. I will say that the one manuscript I supplied to you of my first paper was submitted to you before it was entered into the OSTI database, and it was submitted to prove one point, that I had the paper written and 'in the works' in October of 2000. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:35, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed's rebuttal

Hi Dr. Shanahan. If you don't mind me dumping all this on your talk page, I would like to ask you what is your response to Jed's rebuttal of CCS, quote:

The CCS effect cannot generate palpable heat, or boil water with no input power, or cause a thermoelectric chip to generate enough electricity to turn a small motor. Therefore, it cannot explain cold fusion heat. Perhaps if it were true, it might show that some low level cold fusion heat is an artifact, but I do not know any experts in calorimetry who agree that it is true.

He then goes on:

Shanahan's hypothesis resembles the claim by Jones that all cold fusion heat can be explained as recombination. This cannot be true for several reasons, mainly: many cells use gas instead of electrolysis; many cells include recombiners, so recombination always occurs and is accounted for; most open cells without recombiners include gas flow meters and other methods of accounting for the gas; many cells have produced excess heat far above the limits of recombination (hundreds of times above it). Jones, if correct, could explain only a tiny fraction of all cold fusion results and yet he claims that he can explain them all. He has repeated this countless times and never acknowledged that his explanation cannot possibly apply to most experiments. This is intellectual dishonesty. Shanahan is also intellectually dishonest, or confused, when he refuses to describe how his proposed artifact could cause a thermoelectric generator to turn a motor, or a cell to remain so hot a person cannot touch it for days on end, with no input power. He hypothesis is not an "alternative" unless it can explain these events.

How would you reply to the first quote, and what are your comments on the second quote? Thank you for your time. Dr.K. (logos) 19:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

In response to the first quote Jed is completely correct. The premise of the CCS is that there really is no cold fusion heat. The problem is that his claims for ‘other’ evidence of cold fusion heat are anecdotal and not subject to scientific scutiny, In other words, he’s asserting something that is not true as if it was, and people buy it. In all cases where I have tried to track down the technical basis of such assertions, I cannot confirm the claim.

With regards to the second quote, I have no need to defend Steve Jones, so I will skip to the part where Jed insults me. You may note that what he says is a repeat of the prior quote, so just reread my response to it.. (Jed seems to believe in “If you repeat it enough times it becomes true…”)

Seriously though, Jed’s attack on Steve Jones demonstrates several typical tactics CFers use. First, they mix significantly different experiments without any proof the same base effect is at work, i.e. F&P type electrolysis vs. gas (I assume he means the D2-through-membrane experiments, but that’s not perfectly clear either). When you get an anomaly in one experimental setup, you need compelling evidence to explain it. Once you have that you can potentially see the same underlying phenomenon in another setup, but the generic criticism of CF is that they have no such proof in any experiment. So their lumping all these anomalies together as ‘proof’ of CF is wrong. Second, Jed delibeately blurs the line between the electrochemical recombination vs. non-electrochemical. Jones (and Hansen) were looking at a parasitic electrochemical reaction, while I talk about simple H2+O2 ‘burning’ occuring in an unexpected place. But the key is that the CFers showed the electochemical form drops off in importance as current is increased, and since they typically operate at higher currents, the problem is not important. The CFers hope to take this success and transfer it to the CCS problem (“Shanahan’s hypothesis resembles…”), but they can’t legitimately do that as it is completely different.

Thirdly, as I noted above, the claims being made about what has been shown are grossly inflated. There actually are very few studies where good measurements on gas flow out of the cell were accomplished, and those usually have error bars on them larger than the CCS, so they offer no proof the CCS is not active. If you want to seriously consider Jed’s claims, make sure you pin him down to something you can examine, and don’t buy the exaggerated assertions he continuously makes. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:46, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much Dr. Shanahan for taking the time to explain this. Your explanation was very informative. I am very interested in your CCS theory as it currently is the main alternative to cold fusion claims. I think that your contributions to the CF article are very important and needed and your CCS theory goes to the heart of the matter, since it focuses on and directly accounts for the phenomenon of excess heat production. If you don't mind I may have a few questions from time to time which I guarantee, from now on, to be substantially shorter than this. I hope I'll see you around and it was a pleasure meeting you. Take care. Tasos (Dr.K. (logos) 17:57, 12 December 2008 (UTC))

No problem. I will hang around for awhile, but eventually I will probably stop following these pages. I'm still a little concerned that what hapened the last time will happen again, namely that all my contributions (which were bundled into a subpage before) will end up disappearing again, but I can't do a daily watch to prevent that. So, we'll see. My email is public info if you go to the sci.physics.fusion Usenet newsgroup, so if I don't respond here you can try that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:24, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Your contributions should remain in the article because they add much needed scientific balance. I will be watching as well. Also thank you very much for the information. It will be a pleasure talking to you again. Tasos (Dr.K. (logos) 19:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC))

Jed and Cold Fusion

You might find WP:SHUN a useful way of dealing with this guy. Verbal chat 16:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Always good advice for Jed, except that a) it was Dr. K and "69.228.201.246" who asked for a comment here, and b) as I noted previously, I wanted to alert Wiki editors to who Jed is and his tactics. That latter objective has been accomplished. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:22, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

You might also find it opposed to transparency and the free exchange of data and their interpretation necessary to make any headway in this debate. 69.228.201.246 (talk) 21:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

As simple as the Faraday Efficiency?

Forgive me for getting lazy and asking you to help me cut to the chase. Are these bursts periods of perceived excess energy entirely accountable by postulating that for one reason or another the electrolytic efficiency drops during the periods of anomoly? Would the gas evolution rate settle the point and is there any data? Are the faithful reduced to challenging your mechanism for efficiency loss and pointing to their sketchy nuclear data? ~Paul V. Keller 19:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

First off, the Faradaic Efficiency (FE) concern is only applicable to electrolysis cells. In Storms' 2007 book, Table 1, he has 8 pages of excess heat claims from 4 different experiment types. Only two are electrolysis, open and closed cell F&P type cells. FE would not apply to the other two types (which are plasma and flow-through-membranes I think). FE is also not an issue in closed F&P cells, because theoretically recombination is 100%. So we can only be talking about open F&P cells if we are talking FE. In that case, measuring accurately evolved gases would potentially identify the increased recombination in the cell that I claim would cause a CCS BECAUSE if introduces a new, improperly calibrated heat source in the cell. So the CCS is not related to FE, but FE in an open cell can help prove a CCS has occurred, if the mass and heat balances work out. In the other types of apparati however, a CCS still could occur, leading to apparent excess heat. In a closed F&P cell, I postulated that the place where the recombination location patially changes, causing the CCS, but that is speculation that needs to be proved. That a CCS can explain Storms' 2000 results and Szpak and Fleishmann's 2005 results is unambiguous however. If the calibrations of the other types of apparati are time variant to some level, a CCS effect can be present. This means the CFers MUST supply calibration stability information to prove the effect is not explainable by a CCS.

Second, the 'faithful' have no way to challenge the CCS. It is simple arithmetic. Their challenges to date have been to the proposed mechanism, which, while I think it is right, is not a necessary component of the CCS. Neither is the idea of a shifted heat distribution exclusively necessary. A shifted heat distribution is one way a CCS could occur, but may not be the only way, especially when you start talking completely different apparati. The 'true believers' as they are known think they have proven the speculative mechanism wrong (I disagree) but they also think that kills the CCS. It doesn't, but they won't admit that (even though I am sure Ed Storms understands, based on numerous emails). As far as I know, no nuclear data comments on excess heat. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes it looks to me like you are playing a game of wack-a-mole. I read above that you agree with the concept of dealing with one type of experiment at a time. Right now, I am content just looking at the open cell electrolysis system.

I am not used to your CCF terminology. The way I look at the system, putting aside possible accumulation/generation terms, your main variables seem to be the electrolytic efficiency (and thus flow rate out, wrapping this into recombination), the overall heat transfer coefficient, and the temperature measurement within the system.

I gather from what you have written above that temperature gradients within the vessel are large, and that the temperature of the outgas can be quite different from the electrode. Is that verifiably true? Is it really that hard to keep the gradients within the system small? Are the gradients big only if you have localized recombination? Seems these would be easy to check using multiple thermocouples.

With respect to the heat transfer coefficient, I wonder about a couple of things. What is the rate limiting step, does the coefficienct vary much, and have you shown that multiple steady states are possible?

As far as the electrolytic efficiency, I think you already answered. I find this the easiest explanation if there is truly an anomoly and am surprised those claiming reproducible sporadic effect have not pinned it down. I would think you could make something based on the concept of a positive displacement pump, hook it up to a counter, and easily check the hypothesis by comparing the flow data to the temperature data. At the very least it would seem a good way to run a more convincing experiment. I would think you could buy a suitable pump and control it with pressure feedback. ~Paul V. Keller 00:23, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

On "Whack-a-Mole" - Yes, especially when dealing with the CFers. We (skeptics) 'whack' a paarticular claim, and another pops up, 'whack', anotehr pops up, 'whack', ... After a while, you notice it's the same moles though that keep popping back up, i.e. the CFers never seem to learn. For example the CCS. Anyone can understand it. If you must translate a measurement via a calibration equation, using the wrong equation gives the wrong results. Why would they do that? Because their system has slight instabilities in it and has shifted between the time they calibrated and the time they measured. Pretty simple, yet they keep on saying it can't be. Of course it can. All I have done is show them that their 'noise' level in their experiments is 1-5% in the best cases, which is typical of a good-to-great chemical method.

On open cell electrolysis and gas evolution: In principle, if you accurately measure the off gas, however you would do that, it should reveal if the FE is <100%. If it is, that might cause a CCS. The CFers refuse to pin it down because they feel they already have. I believe this is incorrect, and that every result they have to date is subject to a conventional explanation (extend this to closed cells too). They disagree, and (key point) don't see the need to do anything about my disagreement, or in fact that of any reviewer they happen to run across who doesn't like what they write. They have lots of friends who tell them they are absolutely correct (all CFers of course). Do you see how the polarization of the field has killed the science? They don't need to respond because they are right, but they can't convince the majority of that.

On temp grads. - Just big enough to gove a false signal. That is dependent on appartus design.

Heat transfer coefficient? I have only talked about the heat capture efficiency of the calorimeter. If it is high, that minimizes the CCS impact, but as long as there are different heat loss pathways, it will be difficult to compeltely avoid some residual CCS effect, if the heat flow changes. I think I might see what you're getting at and what your problem is. To understand the CCS, you have to step up to a two-zone model of the system at a minimum. What you write above seems to treat the 'system' in the usual, homogeneous way. But that is not how the system is. There are multiple real heat loss pathways, and depending on how the heat generation points are distributed in the cell/calorimeter, differing amounts of heat can be lost, necessitating different calibration constants for each unique distribution. That's what I propose causes the CCS, a change in these heat loss (or capture, from the point of view of the calorimeter) pathways.

I hope this helps. I am going to be limiting my paticipation from now on. The article is being rewritten, and I don't have time to participate in that. I may come back later and edit if time allows. Merry Christmas. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:39, 22 December 2008 (UTC)