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Subpage of barry-kort

This page collects miscellaneous comments by Barry Kort, some copied from spam pages preserving old video comments. Where the comment was simply a copy of another document, that is stated and the copy is not repeated, it should be on the page supra.

Wired Cosmos, copy of “Analysis” and a comment: October 22, 2014

I have no theory to offer regarding claims of helium production. My depth is in electrical engineering and telephony (signal and noise power).

I’d love to have Peter Hagelstein check the work that I did with Dieter Britz and others to model the omitted AC power term arising from transient voltage fluctuations that appear during the phase when the Pd lattice is fully loaded, when the drive current is jacked up, and when bubbles are rapidly forming and sloughing off the surface of the electrodes. This is the condition which McKubre and Storms both say are present when excess heat is produced.

Do you see all those bubbles forming on the surface of the electrodes and then sloughing off? What that does is produce a random time-varying resistance in the circuit.

It is well known (from first principles in electric circuit theory, as well as in telephony) that when you drive a time-varying resistance with a regulated current (whether regulated DC or SuperWave), the load generates its own AC current that has the characteristics of burst noise.

Because the regulated power supplies are trying to maintain a regulated current, they have to work hard to suppress and cancel these noise signals that are being transmitted out of the cell. In doing so, the regulated power supplies must inject an equal and opposite signal, so as to maintain the specified regulated current profile (whether DC or SuperWave).

In the reports that I’ve had access to, I found the experimenters were relying on an energy budget model that ignored the additional energy being pumped into the cells so as to maintain a regulated current in the face of a rapidly fluctuation load resistance.

In the cases where the experimenters had published enough data for me to apply the correct model from AC circuit theory, I found that the “anomalous excess heat” was exactly accounted for by the overlooked AC power injected into the cells to countermand the noise power being transmitted out.

The hypothesis of “censorship” is trivially falsifiable. TED is not silencing them. TED is encouraging them to speak their theses under the marquee of their own name, rather than under the name of TED as an endorsing sponsor.

There are many who speak their theses sans endorsement from me, even on my own personal blog. Here is an example from the dubious field of “Cold Fusion” …

“Excuse me sir, but exactly how did you falsify the Null Hypothesis?”

http://moultonlava.blogspot.com/search?q=Excuse+Me+Sir

Peter, you begin describing Mike McKubre’s experiments at around 90 minutes into the video. There is something about McKubre’s assumptions that troubles me. As you know, he drives his cells with a constant current power source, and he makes an important assumption (as spelled out in his EPRI paper) that all the electrical power going into his cells is DC power with no AC power contribution. He therefore only measures the DC power, by multiplying the average DC voltage by the value of the constant current. McKubre notes that when the electrodes start bubbling (which doesn’t happen until the palladium lattice is fully loaded), the ohmic resistance of his cells begins fluctuating as bubbles form and slough off the electrodes. He notes the corresponding rapid voltage swings across the cell terminals as his constant current power supply ramps the voltage up and down to track the rapidly time-varying resistance. He makes the crucial assumption that there is no resultant RMS AC power to reckon. But if one applies 2nd year EE circuit analysis, one finds that there is some AC power contribution that goes as the square of the fluctuations in cell resistance. If you work out the math, you find that if the ohmic resistance is fluctuating R±r from the bubbles forming and sloughing off the electrodes, then PAC ≈ α²PDC, where α = r/R. So, for example, a 17% fluctuation in load resistance would produce an additional 3% of AC power over and above the baseline DC power. One should be able to demonstrate this effect straightaway by driving an old-style desk telephone (the kind with a carbon-button microphone) with one of McKubre’s constant current power supplies and show that the telephone handset still works, and the AC audio signal power level can be measured with a VU meter. I ran the numbers for two of the singular experiments highlighted in McKubre’s EPRI paper and found that the AC power contribution closely matches his reported excess heat.

Copy of Hagelstein MIT video, comment About 2014 or 2015

About a year after CBS 60 Minutes aired their episode on Cold Fusion, I followed up with Rob Duncan to explore Richard Garwin’s thesis that McKubre was measuring the input electric power incorrectly. It turns out that McKubre was reckoning only the DC power going into his cells, and assuming (for arcane technical reasons) there could not be any AC power going in, and therefore he didn’t need to measure or include any AC power term in his energy budget model. Together with several other people, I helped work out a model for the omitted AC power term in McKubre’s experimental design. Our model showed that there was measurable and significant AC power, arising from the fluctuations in ohmic resistance as bubbles formed and sloughed off the surface of the palladium electrodes. Our model jibed with both the qualitative and quantitative evidence from McKubre’s reports: 1) McKubre (and others) noted that the excess heat only appeared after the palladium lattice was fully loaded. And that’s precisely when the Faradaic current no longer charges up the lattice, but begins producing gas bubbles on the surfaces of the electrodes. 2) The excess heat in McKubre’s cells was only apparent, significant, and sizable when the Faradaic drive current was elevated to dramatically high levels, thereby increasing the rate at which bubbles were forming and sloughing off the electrodes. 3) The effect was enhanced if the surface of the electrodes was rough rather than polished smooth, so that larger bubbles could form and cling to the rough surface before sloughing off, thereby alternately occluding and exposing somewhat larger fractions of surface area for each bubble. The time-varying resistance arising from the bubbles forming and sloughing off the surface of the electrodes – after the cell was fully loaded, enhanced by elevated Faradaic drive currents and further enhanced by a rough electrode surface – produced measurable and significant AC noise power into the energy budget model that went as the square of the magnitude of the fluctuations in the cell resistance. To a first approximation, a 17% fluctuation in resistance would nominally produce a 3% increase in power, over and above the baseline DC power term. Garwin and Lewis had found that McKubre’s cells were producing about 3% more heat than could be accounted for with his energy measurements, where McKubre was reckoning only the DC power going into his cells, and (incorrectly) assuming there was no AC power that needed to be measured or included in his energy budget model. I suggest slapping an audio VU meter across McKubre’s cell to measure the AC burst noise from the fluctuating resistance. Alternatively use one of McKubre’s constant current power supplies to drive an old style desk telephone with a carbon button microphone. I predict the handset will still function: if you blow into the mouthpiece, you’ll hear it in the earpiece, thereby proving the reality of an AC audio signal riding on top of the DC current.

Copy of Hagelstein video, comment About 2014 or 2015

Barry, there is something about the NANOR device that I don’t understand.  According to the slides (if I am reading them right), Schwartz is sampling the voltage and current once every 4 seconds.  Why isn’t he sampling at the Nyquist Rate corresponding to the slew rate of his regulated power supply, as would be necessary to properly integrate v(t)*i(t), so as to capture the AC power as a function of fluctuations in resistance as bubbles form and slough off the surface of the electrodes?

See this analysis of AC Burst Noise for McKubre’s cells.

ac burst noise | barrykort

Copy of video 2014

Do you see all those bubbles forming on the surface of the electrodes and then sloughing off? What that does is produce a random time-varying resistance in the circuit. It is well known (from first principles in electric circuit theory, as well as in telephony) that when you drive a time-varying resistance with a regulated current (whether regulated DC or SuperWave), the load generates its own AC current that has the characteristics of burst noise. Because the regulated power supplies are trying to maintain a regulated current, they have to work hard to suppress and cancel these noise signals that are being transmitted out of the cell. In doing so, the regulated power supplies must inject an equal and opposite signal, so as to maintain the specified regulated current profile (whether DC or SuperWave). In the reports that I’ve had access to, I found the experimenters were relying on an energy budget model that ignored the additional energy being pumped into the cells so as to maintain a regulated current in the face of a rapidly fluctuation load resistance. In the cases where the experimenters had published enough data for me to apply the correct model from AC circuit theory, I found that the “anomalous excess heat” was exactly accounted for by the overlooked AC power injected into the cells to countermand the noise power being transmitted out.

Facebook  September 23, 2016 (at the bottom and see “more replies”)

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