Saturday, June 29, 2013

HOW LENR TECHNOLOGY FIRST?



An answer in part   to my old question; “Why Technology First?” put in Infinite Energy 1st issue, March-April 1995, p 26

In the most recent two Ego Out publications I have tried to demonstrate that closed minded Scientism is equal to death of progress in LENR. If Scientism is an anti- or non-solution, then it is my duty to offer a viable alternative; I am a technologist, but the solution is in no way closed minded Technologism the idea that technology can solve all our problems. Or, thinking that LENR can be converted, first in LENR+ and then in a working energy technology without understanding thoroughly some advanced scientific principles. The problem-solution is more complex, more interesting and even more beautiful.  

Yesterday, my friend Yiannis Hadjichristos wrote: “we need not to think technology in use as a sum of certain engineering (mechanical, chemical, electric, electronic etc) issues as most people believe. Technology includes also culture, business, ethics etc as always applying within a certain society and political framework.”

This morning I read about a great conference for emergent technologies: “EmTech MIT is where technology, business, and culture converge.”  This conference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emtech has a section for energy too,
and I bet that soon there LENR will be a serious rival in popularity there to shale gas/oil. A bit of patience, please.

It is kind of ‘best practice’ for the Defkalion R & D team.
Just to mention en passant, recently, after Prof Y. Kim,  an other  very prestigious Cold Fusion-LENR personality has visited their labs and his essential conclusion was: “it is obvious you have a robust device which generates heat on demand”. More at ICCF-18

It is not a mystery why the technological awakening of what has appeared as Cold Fusion came so slowly and why, even today it is understood and acknowledged by so few. The history of CF/LENR is a series of alternatives and options.
The first one was birthplace and parents. Exactly as for humans
for scientific fields also, geography broadly defined, is destiny. You need to have great care with choosing well your parents. the country, town and house where you start your life because these
circumstances are determining if you get privileges or misery.

I dare to say that unlucky Cold Fusion had chosen a non-technological place electrochemistry- and I say this despite the fact of having worked near to huge electrolysis plants (Borzesti, OLTCHIM), having a over 20 years collaboration with the Romanian lead acid battery industry and being good friend with
Prof. Liviu Oniciu- once our best fuel-cell specialist. But let’s consider the facts, electrochemistry the branch of chemistry that deals with the chemical changes produced by electricity and the production of electricity by chemical changes- it can be technological for chemistry or for electric current, but NOT for thermal energy. Plus, electrochemical systems are impure and overly impure. Temperatures are limited due to the presence of water, while high temperature electrolysis systems with molten salts proved to be unmanageable- very early in the history of the field- I remember a discussion about this with Liaw at ICCF-2.

Cold Fusion was discovered in an electrolytic cell- bad luck! Why not in a gas-phase system, say a catalytic reactor? Perhaps because it would be difficult to observe some (first weak) excess energy there.
Could it be better if, say Piantelli had discovered cold fusion first and not Fleischmann and Pons? Impossible to answer and also useless- the great merit of the two great electrochemists is understanding and announcing the immense potential and possible future of cold fusion as a new energy source. They had a dream despite of making the discovery in a place- that in retrospective is perhaps the worst alternative possible.
Piantelli has discovered the unexpected heat effect in the frame of a biophysics experiment 146 days after F&P- however a few years later his cell was quite technological- gas phase, high temperature,
hydrogen in contact with a “processable”, clean(able) nickel surface. He had allies- Focardi and Habel plus their teams but no
followers with creative ideas i.e. the sort that considers the achievements of their model just a starting point from which they have to discover new ways. Piantelli has applied systematically the Scientific Method http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/08/how-does-apply-prof-piantelli-rules-of.html and has obtained results of paramount importance- but still in isolation and with no real scale up to LENR+, the enhanced process. In the field, the Pd D effort was
 much, much greater than that on the Ni-H gas phase line. Electrochemistry used for nickel is not more technologizable than the F&P Cell. Randell Mills CIHT method is an exception in principle- it produces electric energy- however it seems the way from mWatts to MWatts is long.
Just to remark that new technologies besides being cultural can be very difficult wicked problems with traps.

The functional theory of technologies

In the good old times before the information revolution technologies were mainly mono-functional – doing an unique thing-as well as possible- transport, transfer or transformation
of matter and energy. For information technologies the Swiss Army knife multi-functionality is the rule- see PCs or smartphones
for example. However multi-functionality is a major global trend, a definitory technological virtue. DGT has started collaboration in an early stage with a diversity of major industries for applications

For classic LENR the main desired function- generation of excess heat is not fulfilled well being weak, incontrollable and evanescent.
Weak thermal signals could be treated in two ways:
1) enhancement by empirical trial and error using radical methods and changes- first of all abandonment of the “cradle” and of the culprit metal, palladium,
2) improvement of calorimetric measurements; calorimetry owes a lot to cold fusion; the reverse is not exactly true. The very precise
measurements have proved beyond any doubt the existence of LENR (science) but have not helped LENR to scale up and become a technology. Metrology has consumed too many resource es despite its passivity as solution of the weakness problem...

However it would not be justified to call this option an error. The immediate aim was to demonstrate that the excess heat exists- fast
so the longer. The longer http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html less traveled way (enhancement) could not be taken from practical reasons, cold fusion being engaged in uphill battles
for survival.
The general option for PdD and the relative lack of popularity of NiH system again cannot be qualified as error; the story is much too complex, multilevel, multifaceted and multi-egotistic...
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. (Henry Kissinger)  Please try to understand what can a clear mind do- really not much.
It is too much for me too; therefore I will use an other quotation here:
Mistakes are a part of being human. Precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” (Al Franken)
Even more, mistakes are a part of being a researcher and being unavoidable when you do not have all the data and you never have them all- you are working and creating in highly non-ideal
circumstances. This non-ideality, endemic for the LENR field
leads to a limitation of the scientific method- as also shown here:
The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.  (Robert M. Pirsig)

As more options are available now, errors become possible- I have written a lot about these. And unfortunately errors are more than additive:
But slight mistakes accumulate, and grow to gross errors if unchecked. (Jacqueline Carey)

I dare to say that both Scientism and any form of myopic Technologism would be very costly errors (as long as we accept that Energy- plenty, clean, healthy cheap is the aim. The only correct approach is hybrid- scientific and technological.
applied inventive and smart complementarity. 
Also it has to be accepted both continuity and discontinuity. similarity and difference between LENR and LENR+
Very soon facts will demonstrate that insisting in considering
the Scientific Method as panacea for the troubles and difficulties and problems of the field can be described by:
To err is human; to persist in error is diabolical. (erroneously attributed to many authors, actually a Latin proverb borrowed from the Greeks)

Once a psychologist friend has tested my personality. One of the conclusions was that I have many weak points but naivety is the most dangerous of them.
I believe that at ICCF-18 a paradigm change will take place and
a new era of collaboration and progress will start.


Peter

13 comments:

  1. "Why I am still using a Bosch 3000W heater and not a LENR+ based generator?"
    -
    Yes, Peter. Why, exactly, is that?

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    Replies
    1. @Anonymous

      Answer: the entire network of causation surrounding LENR, of course.

      Did you have something more specific in mind?

      Delete
    2. Bad karma, great delay for our scientific field
      that has to be converted in a technological and
      commercial field too. This will happen in a very near future- two three years. Then if I am still around
      I will buy a LENR+ heater
      Peter

      Delete
    3. Dear Jim
      surely I tend to a more and more holistic image of LENR
      but this is not easy- myriads of facts, herds of contradictions, low quality data
      Peter

      Delete
  2. From Brian


    Peter, your desire for an LENR future has outpaced the field. DGT and Rossi can bring it forward (perhaps). I am not certain of how things will evole but my recent magnetic experience is hopeful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Years ago, more precisely starting in Feb 1986 I have founded POrumology, the science of technological optimismn.
      I wrote a few papers, have spoken at conferences, succeed
      to undertnd my own ideas- now I am using/applying these here.
      Peter

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    2. Brian, I would like to comment on your vision of magnetism.

      The whispering gallery is located in the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, London, and has the curious property that if two people stand at opposite sides of the gallery, at a distance of 42 meters, and one whispers into the wall of the dome, then the other person can hear what is being said. If the two individuals face one another and continue the conversation across the expanse of the dome they can no longer hear the words and have to resort to shouting. The reason for this strange effect is that the sound bounces along the wall of the gallery with very little loss, and so can be heard at a greater distance than if the curved wall had not been present. It can be viewed that there is a narrow region near the edge of the dome where the waves propagate most efficiently, and this is known as a 'whispering gallery mode' in honor of the gallery where it was discovered.


      In recent times whispering gallery modes have found new fame with the development of nano-optics. In the modern version of this effect light is made to bounce around the edge of a glass sphere. This setup appears to be very similar to that already depicted, although there are some subtle differences. Under normal conditions when light reaches an interface some of it will be reflected and some will be transmitted. However, if the light is in glass and is travelling back into air there is an angle at which the light can no longer be transmitted and it suffers total internal reflection - exactly 100% of the light is reflected, a very useful effect to reduce losses. When light is travelling around the edge of a sphere it will be total reflected at each bounce, and so propagate with little loss (in fact a very small amount of light leaks out with each bounce due to the curved surface, but this get very complicated so it will be ignored for now. It involves the hydrogen nanoparticle/structure surface interface layer). Since the light will make many millions of circulations of this interface before being absorbed, it will undergo interference with itself. This means that only whole numbers of wavelengths of light can 'fit' around the edge of the sphere. This selectivity causes discrete modes, known as whispering gallery modes, to exist in the cavity, and these modes are of the lowest loss anywhere in existence.

      The problem when engineering whispering gallery modes, it is that the low loss makes it very hard to get light into- or out of- these modes. From the spectra of this light we discover that only certain wavelengths are strongly present, as expected, each corresponding to a different number of bounces around the spheres circumference.



      In a Ni/H reactor, infrared light goes into the whispering galleries and goes around and around with little attenuation. But light is lost and strengthen because of self-interference and resonance. What remains in these carefully engineered nano-resonators (AKA nuclear active environments) is ultra-strong blue light but this light is far more than just light. This hybrid EMF is plasmons. Plasmons are light and electrons whose waveforms have joined together because of heat driven dipole excitations.

      The ring of light becomes an intense plasmoid of electric charge that emits anaopole magnetic radiation, a very special type of magnetism right on the atoms of the nano-resonators. This magnetism which keeps the nucleus together or can tear it apart is what produces the LENR effects of quark recombination inside the nucleus of the atoms.



      Delete
    3. Axil
      Very interesting observation. Such an explanation in regard to NAEs sure paints a picture of extraordinary complexity as to how the tunneling is able to occur (as assuming that is what the effect allows).

      Thanks

      DSM

      Delete
  3. DSM, I am happy that you are interested is such things. Here is some more; It may be more than you really want.

    In the latest theories of the nucleus, Anapole magnetic fields are produced by monopole field magnetic generation by quark/antiquark pairs inside nuclear subatomic particles. In the latest standard model theories of the nucleus, quarks are monopoles.

    This idea comes from the newly developing theory of quantum chromodynamics called the dual superconductor model.

    For more background on this theory see as follows:

    http://ccdb5fs.kek.jp/tiff/2012/1227/1227046.pdf

    Non-Abelian dual superconductivity and Gluon propagators in the deep IR region for SU(3) Yang-Mills theory.

    In this theory of quantum chromodynamics, the dual superconductor model attempts to explain confinement of quarks in terms of an electromagnetic dual theory of superconductivity.

    According to this theory,the strong force is just works in reverse of electromagnetic behavior when EMF is active inside the nucleus of the atom.

    In this electromagnetic dual theory, the roles of electric and magnetic fields are interchanged. In standard EMF theory, the BCS theory of superconductivity explains superconductivity as the result of the condensation of electric charges into Cooper pairs.

    In a dual superconductor nuclear model, an analogous effect occurs through the condensation of magnetic charges generated by quarks (also called magnetic monopoles). In ordinary electromagnetic theory, no monopoles have been shown to exist.

    However, in quantum chromodynamics — the theory of color charge which explains the strong interaction between quarks — the color charges can be viewed as (non-abelian) analogues of electric charges and corresponding magnetic monopoles are known to exist. Dual superconductor models posit that condensation of these magnetic monopoles in a superconductive state explains color confinement — the phenomenon that only neutrally colored bound states are observed at low energies.

    Color confinement is the area of nuclear activity where the LENR reaction operates.

    Qualitatively, confinement in dual superconductor models can be understood as a result of the dual to the Meissner effect. The Meissner effect says that a superconducting metal will try to expel magnetic field lines from its interior. If a magnetic field is forced to run through the superconductor, the electric field lines are compressed in magnetic flux tubes.

    In a dual superconductor the roles of magnetic and electric fields are exchanged and the Meissner effect tries to expel electric field lines.

    Quarks and antiquarks carry opposite color charges, and for a quark–antiquark pair 'electric' field lines run from the quark to the antiquark. In a pion, the quark–antiquark pair is immersed in a vacuum based dual superconductor (aka the Higgs field), and then the electric field lines get compressed into a flux tube.

    The confinement energy carried by the tube is proportional to its length, and the potential energy of the quark–antiquark is proportional to their separation. The energy of colored objects gets large if quark/antiquark pair moves apart by any significant distance. A quark–antiquark will therefore always bind regardless of their separation, which explains why no unbound quarks are ever found.

    Dual superconductors are described by (a dual) the Landau–Ginzburg model, which is equivalent to the Abelian Higgs model. The MIT bag model boundary conditions for gluon fields are those of the dual color superconductor.

    Based on these theories, it is posited that a monopole field (aka anapole) will disrupt the duel superconductive mechanism that keeps the nucleus and the nucleons that make it up together.

    End of part 1

    ReplyDelete
  4. How can this monopole magnetic field disrupt a nucleus?

    The Higgs theory is a superconductive magnetic mechanism of QCD and states that quarks are monopoles. The pions are can be interpreted as the magnetic gauge boson.

    http://phys.cts.ntu.edu.tw/si2012/files%5CRyuichiroKitano.ppt.pdf

    Hadron physics as Seiberg dual of QCD

    Ryuichiro Kitano (Tohoku U.)

    http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.7114.pdf

    see also

    Origins of Mass by Frank Wilczek

    Page 12: One cannot tolerate, for example, anomalous color magneticmoments, for either quarks or gluons.

    If anomalous quantum chromodynamic magnetic Moments can be induced inside the nucleus, we can perturb inner workings of the nuclear mechanism.

    This is what the Ni/H reactor does; it introduces anomalous color magnetic moments, for both quarks and gluons through projecting a briefly formed monopole field into the nucleus.

    One type pion that keeps the nucleus together is made of one up quark and one down antiquark.

    If we can find a source(s) of a monopole field in the Ni/H reactor, we may be able to explain transmutation of elements via disruption of the strong force mechanism.

    The duration of this anaopole field is a few picoseconds in length before the hotspot decomposes. By that is more than enough time for nuclear disruption to occur.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Axil

      I really appreciate you taking the time to try to explain these aspects. It will take me a few re-reads to wrap my mind around the parts of the proton being described. I find I need to read multiple times to put the terms into perspective, but it is doable.

      Again thanks

      DSM

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    2. These links are, for example, helping me.

      Am also trying to memorize the parts and roles of a hadron (baryons & mesons).

      I have an electronics background & thus can relate aspects of this to mental images built up in that environment. A lot to grasp & follow.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pion
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadron



      DSM

      Delete
  5. " In a Ni/H reactor, infrared light goes into the whispering galleries and goes around and around with little attenuation. But light is lost and strengthen because of self-interference and resonance. What remains in these carefully engineered nano-resonators (AKA nuclear active environments) is ultra-strong blue light but this light is far more than just light. This hybrid EMF is plasmons. Plasmons are light and electrons whose waveforms have joined together because of heat driven dipole excitations. "
    I was good with the whispering gallery analogy, resonance conditions, and some of the chromo stuff... Need more good analogies to wrap my head around this stuff.

    ReplyDelete