THE DEATH OF WET PdD WAS HIGHLY EXAGGERATED. OR NOT?

It is about the death for technology, not science.

As you perhaps remember, I did not liked the idea of Scottish independence- because I thought it could be imitated in much more harming ways in Europe and worldwide and this could lead to conflicts and… blood.

Therefore I wanted to celebrate the NO with a Motto of an author with a typical old Scottish name. I found:

The death of what's dead is the birth of what's living. (Arlo Guthrie)

The name is 100% Scottish the author not- he belongs to an American mixture mirabilis of nationalities and religions.

Being obsessed –but sanely I hope- by LENR I am applying the Motto to wet PdD – for me it became an axiomatic truth , certainty that that LENR system is dead for technology, unable to technological progress that necessarily comprises Reproducibility, Scale up and Control. I stubbornly continue to claim that because LENR is similar to catalysis, poisons can kill

reproducibility- and any gases except hydrogen isotopes will act as poisons- inactivating the active sites; therefore deep and relatively long time degassing is a must for functional LENR systems.

My idea can be proven to be false (and it is justified to use “stupid” too) only by experiment. A wet PdD experiment giving perfectly reproducible results will be a stake in heart (much used nowadays in LENR circles) for my idea.

Now positive gossip is circulated that the Italian ENEA Group has now a method to achieve 100% reproducibility in this system. My inerrancy goes to the guillotine?

To put this in context and in perspective:

 

ICCF 18 organized by Missouri U. and SKINR had as leading idea of applying the Scientific Method to Understanding Anomalous Heat Effects: Opportunities and Challenges.”

ICCF 19 with ENEA as ideological leader will use “New Approach on Material Investigation”

ICCF-18’s way was noble, scientific 100% but (I think so) idealistic, incomplete and actually impossible. I know I will make angry some of my best friend, but I consider that accepting LENR is anomalous is a fatal error scientifically, psychologically, diplomatically – LENR is aimed to be a new source of energy not some weird , anarchic, unusual phenomenon. Everybody who thinks the Building of Science – Physics is finished, we know what is important- and any surprise coming is not scientific- should make only routine research and should eliminate immediately any new facts and ideas. LENR is normal science, prematurely discovered.

ICCF-19 – my unique remark that approaches would be more effective and realistic because it is about a broad range of old and new methods- the slogan is smartly open for any method. It is again based on the Scientific Method. Material changes, transformations are the key to useful energy- I am convinced that engineering is the key.

Back to the news re 100% reproducibility –it seems that the ICCF’s leaders are in the frontline of the war for what I interpret as technological and scientific survival of PdD. They probably think differently- discovering truth, most advanced research, progress. Life is complicated, research is more complicated so it is possible they are right but me too.

There are two seminal research reports regarding this subject:

ENEA: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/36833/ExcessPowerDuringElectrochemical.pdf?sequence=1

SKINR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWL6VUPSqKQ

Excellent, scientific, high level publications; what makes them especially enjoyable to me is that they are both in great part about “morphology” I have published on this Blog; “Technology- on amour” and “Taxonomy - mon amour:; not yet “Morphology- mon amour” My PhD thesis finished in 1982 after 11 years of hard work is about the correlation of the morphology of a polymer- suspension poly-vinyl chloride and its processing ability. This polymer has an uniquely complex many staged morphology. Morphogenesis is also captivating.

I will now try to extract the essence of the first paper by ENEA.

Excess power is obtained as known – at high loading D/Pd > 0.9) and good (rather slow) loading speed but only if materials are showing specific characteristics There were samples (experiments) with high excess heat, low excess heat and lack of excess heat and the results can be correlated with some contaminants that seem to have direct or indirect effect on the excess heat.

Contaminants: a lot of Pd having as impurities Zn, Zr, Pt, Rh, Bi, Si, Sn gave over 60% reproducibility, excess power>100% while an other, unhappy lot with Pt, Rh, Sn as impurities gave only <20% reproducibility and <20% excess heat. No causal relationship seems possible- other factors of great interests are: grain size, grain boundary surface morphology.

All these parameters have one thing in common, they cannot be changed easily in a difficult to define, describe and measure direction. We can invoke the example of transistors- success attained by transistors- purification plus smart doping, but it is not very relevant: the Know How and Know Why of transistors were more advanced in the 1950s than it is for LENR in 2014.

(If you disagree please use facts)

What are the roles or effects of those impurities that depend mainly on the composition of the source and extraction and purification methods of palladium but also on the setup-cell

It is quite difficult to predict or obtain specific trace impurities. Impurities can be important but their presence is clearly a non-actionable parameter. In the case of transistors doping with some impurities determined by theory and experiment helps. This can be tried for the Pd cathodes too, but will it be effective? The influence of all the parameters tried in this study seems to be limited, there will be progress but I guess it will have a strongly asymptotic character, never intersecting the target but stopping at lower values.

The last sentence of this fine study sounds demoralizing to me:

By applying the scientific method future work should be oriented towards the definition of the effect rather than its demonstration

 It is elegantly formulated but it is definitely not encouraging for a technologist.

The SKINR work is about similar factors and includes a professional scientific study of a real miracle the cathode 64 of Energetics (Israel) 2004 that gave 2500% excess heat for 17 hours and at repletion 1500% heat excess for 80 hours- a performance that could be not repeated, unfortunately.

It is possible that the “success” has changed the parameters that made it possible.

It is a most remarkable study and it analyses similar factors as the first work- contaminants again, morphological features, grain orientation but also black spots and inductive resonances.

Admirably professional work however my impression was that there are other hidden, still unknown parameters with a more decisive influence over the reproducibility of the excess heat.

For the time given, I don’t think that full reproducibility will be obtained for wet PdD electrolytic cells.

I think it is impossible …and because I am old this leads to the following revelation:

Technology is not like science – e.g. physics. Let’s consider:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is   possible, he is almost certainly right.  When he states that something   is impossible, he is very probably wrong."  (Arthur C. Clarke's First Law)

This is NOT true for technology. Why?

The old scientist says “This is impossible. (full point)”

The old technologist says: “This is impossible, (comma)”

and continues “in this way, but must be made possible in an other,

better, smarter way! We have to find it!”

Peter

There is no serenity prayer for technology- including LENR technology.

I think everybody knows the Serenity Prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,

The courage to change what can be changed,

And the wisdom to know the one from the other

In technology everything can be changed, if something cannot be changed then it has to be changed completely and an other way has to be used. The wisdom has to be used to change the things well.

Peter