New Cold Fusion Device Successfully Generates Heat -- What does it mean?

A new cold fusion claim was made by the Indian company HYLENR. I had a look -- and I have some comments.

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#sciencenews #science #tech #technews #coldfusion

[johanlundstrom]

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."
—Richard Feynman

[davidconlee]

"they should consult some chemists". In my time studying physics, nothing was more abundantly clear than that practically every physics research team needed a chemist.

[anoobis]

I can generate heat with pure hydrogen as well if I just light it on fire

[vylbird]

You can look at it all you want as a physicist, but I look at their demonstration as an electrical hobbyist and I can tell you right away that those power meters are /not/ precision instruments. They don't have the guaranteed stability or calibration for the measurements they claim. There's an easy way to handle that though: A switch between the meters and test rig that can transpose the connections, so you can quickly switch the meters around. Any error from the meters will be easily revealed that way. You still have to construct all the electrical connections with care to ensure equal resistance on each side too.

[jeffryborror]

So, they put hydrogen in and measure excess heat and conclude it must be nuclear fusion. I am not a physicist, nor do I play one on Youtube, but even my feeble mathematician brain immediately said, Show me the Helium! Hey, maybe they'll find a new way to compute pi.

[cvdm]

I have the same degree of confidence in this demonstration that I have in those videos on Facebook where an Indian gentleman demonstrates multiple free energy machines that he has built with lightbulbs, a fan and a few random components.

[DW-indeed]

My first thought: is it a mystery box that no one is allowed to look inside?

[amos]

In the 1980's there was a guy who'd go to all the electronics shows and demonstrate a device which would double the processing speed of any computer, without requiring more energy. He couldn't explain how the device worked, as he barely spoke English (I think he was from Singapore), but it worked! All speed tests which were run, would finish in half the time than they took on the same setup without this device!

That is, until someone tried running the tests while measuring time on an external clock. It turned out that the guy had discovered that effect when putting voltage on an input port of the CPU board, which he had no idea what it was for -- it was a flag telling the board's internal clock to run at half the normal frequency....

[dropshot]

Nothing is more refreshing thn a cold bath, thank you Sabine. Seriously though, just going by a temperature a few degrees higher than expected and not even over a prolonged period is a bit thin to use as evidence of cold fusion.

[baloka]

I was at the original Pons & Fleischmann "cold fusion" announcement (the video of the announcement seems to have disappeared from the internet, so I don't have to tell you which one in the audience was me). None of the people in the first generation were scammers by any means. In the case of P&F, it was a combination of hubris, the unexpected difficulty of measuring accurately the heat output of their device, and their unfamiliarity with the techniques used to measure the high-energy radiation and neutrons that would have been produced by any fusion reaction. Under normal circumstances, the D+D reaction produces 3He and tritium in basically equal amounts. But in the case of "LENR, " no neutrons were observed. In the end, they concluded that they were observing D+D -> 4He. The problem with *that* hypothesis (I mean besides the lack of any plausible explanation for how a chemical interaction can affect the branching ratio of a nuclear reaction) is that the excess energy in D+D -> 4He is given off as a gamma ray - and the gamma rays were not observed (at least not by anyone who knew how to measure gamma rays). So the "cold fusion" supporters had to invoke not one, but two miracles - that the branching ratio of the reaction was mysteriously affected by the Pd, and that despite the limitations that Special Relativity places on how fast the energy from the reaction could dissipate, all of the excess energy from the nuclear reaction magically went into phonons.

The other first generation CF / LENR researchers of whom I am aware were likewise not scammers, but like P&F had deluded themselves and were not competent to make the measurements they claimed to be making - some of the original reports of alleged helium detection by mass spectrometry were quite obviously ludicrous to anyone who knew anything about mass spectrometry.

At the time, P&F claimed that they had a prototype water heater based on "cold fusion." 35 years later, we're still waiting to see it.

As for the term "cold fusion, " at the time of P&F's announcement, the term was already in use to describe an actual phenomenon that really occurs at room temperature, namely, muon-catalyzed fusion. The problem (still unsolved) is that the muons do not catalyze enough fusion reactions before they decay to compensate for the energy necessary to produce them.

[Dr_Do-Little]

I wouldn't bet they are 100% honest. Too much money to "find" in the promise of free energy.

[filippolipparini]

As a chemist, I appreciated the last comment. Physicists tend to never even consider the option of talking to a chemist, and I'm pretty sure that if anyone mentioned "high temperature + Palladium + heat" to a chemist, they would never even think of nuclear fusion...

[AnkhArcRod]

I am an Indian and I hate it when people like this crop up. We put in incredible amounts of effort to publish in good journals because we are constantly second guessed! And just as we become credible, another blow comes from quacks. Hate these guys with a passion.

[nixternixter]

I checked, a few groups are working on Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) that are considered to be scientifically valid:

ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy): This U.S. government agency has funded several LENR projects, indicating a level of scientific credibility.

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF): Researchers here study LENR using advanced techniques like palladium nanoparticles.

George Washington University: Researchers, including David Nagel, actively participate in LENR research and believe in its potential.

There are some genuine LENR research ongoing that has been done by reputable groups.

[arnswine]

Just need a hot fusion reactor to supply enough electricity to split H2O's to make enough 99.9% pure H's for the cold fusion reactor warm up and some party balloons to recycle the excess helium.

[MicrchiP]

Reminded me of a indian dude some years ago that also had a free energy engine that he started with hitting it with a hammer on a specific place.
All of these are the same.... a magic box that "works" but they always need some more money to improve it and no, you cant see the inside of the box, it works bro ! are you calling me a liar ?

[fCauneau]

It's quite easy to measure the power generated : this is the 3457th publication on LENR. Giving an average of 4.5 man-month per paper. And giving an average of 80 W per scientist, this makes DW=3457x4.5x30x0.5x86400x80 = 1.5 TJ...

[siddharthadurai]

Thanks and an interesting way to decipher. Incidentally, we also measured helium and hence the conclusion that it’s a fusion. Happy to discuss further.

[phvaessen]

Andrea Rossi e-cat has announced a similar device ... since 2012 ... but always failed to proof it worked.

[grumpystiltskin]

I haven't studied these guys carefully but I know the field.
Obviously the way they know it's not mostly hydrogenation heat is they run the experiment much longer than it takes to fully load the metal matrix with hydrogen. Unless you believe in magical teleportation, there can't be significant hydrogenation heat.
These experiments routinely make orders of magnitude more energy than combustion with available chemicals, or hydrogenation energy, during their closed operation. You don't learn much glancing at the power meter for moment, any more than you can measure a car's MPG by noting that it's making 500 horsepower.