On LENR Forum, Wyttenbach wrote one of his typical posts. Wyttenbach has a PhD in math, so he is likely to understand the Murray testimony — about the simulations — better than an ordinary bear. But he focuses on something that he is not highly experienced with, the human interactions, making unwarranted inferences and drawing conclusions that he’s pulling out of the air, or perhaps out of a confined, smelly, and dark space.
Why did Darden introduce Murray into this story?
In fact Darden played with poor Murray and You now will read how Anesser played with Murray. Darden feed Murray with all the FUD he later gave JED. Darden never gave Murray any e-mail/phone number of Rossi/Pennon/Fabiani. Even worse he did hide all factory/test plans from Murray eyes. Murray had to organize a conspiracy meeting with Barry West, just to get some data he eagerly wanted and IH had all the the time!!
Murray learns from Anesser about what IH new… (e.g. the correct position of the flow meter.. Feb. 2015)
and then quotations from the Murray deposition followed. We have the complete deposition as DE 215-3. Thanks, Andrea. It has a total 370 pages including 4 pages of front matter, plus post-deposition material, including a 47 page index, one of which is blank, a total of 422 PDF pages. Unlike some writers, Wyttenbach does give the deposition pages he quotes from: “p.182/215/3,” however, I’m not sure what that means. He also did not give the document number. I’d assume that if he wrote a successful PhD thesis, he was not nearly as sloppy. But I know it’s the deposition of Murray, and there are multiple copies, and one of them is complete, DE 215-3, so I am using that.
The deposition is text-searchable by browser, so the first quote is from PDF page 183 (document page 182). It is far more convenient for a student or reader to have a link to the specific page, than a page reference from the original document, which is, in this case, one less than the PDF page (because of a cover page). To find the original page, one must page through or enter it in a search. I found the page by entering “IH00011097.”
I am trying to get this message across to writers on this case: cite the documents with a URL to the copy here, and, if it will be helpful, include the “#page=[n]” suffix, see the page 183 link. Just giving the “google archive” document number (“DE”) leaves a lot of unnecessary work for the reader. (There are some copies of OCR’d documents on thenewfire that can be cited this way, I don’t think the googledocs copies can. Someone correct me if they can. But using the googledoc archive, if one wants something that is not recent and not nearly the beginning of the archive, is very difficult. It often breaks for me, trying to scroll down to where the file might be.)
Wyttenbach appears to use ellipses in weird and nonstandard ways. He has many ellipses when nothing has been omitted. (There are no ellipses in the original; double-hyphens are used, a common convention for an em dash.) When I use ellipses in a quotation, I’m careful — at least I intend to be — to distinguish between my ellipses, which indicate something omitted, from those in an original, i.e., I will usually enclose them in brackets, and may italicize them to make them stand out. However, in fact, what Wyttenbach uses are not ellipses, they are an artifact of the copying process, see below, I have left them in. His incorrect page number reference confused me, I thought this was to more than one page (as the start point for a quotation).
Then there is the second segment of what he has quoted. There is a page break in the original, Wyttenbach has left it as a blank line with no explanation. The lawyers cite depositions by original page number and then line number, and that is why we see line numbers in documents intended to be cited in arguments, etc. Wyttenbach has edited them out, so it was not obvious what he did. His page number reference is apparently incorrect, this was merely p. 182-183. Here is the full quote, as I’d hope I would quote it, staring with doc. page 181, which gives some context (to truly understand this sequence, it would be necessary to go back further). I am collapsing some lines, shown by missing line numbers.
·2· · · · Q.· · Okay.· So, so this first document, IH00011096, which is identified as E-Cat MW1 Energy Plant in Miami, Plant Start-Up?
·5· · · · A.· · Uh-huh.
·6· · · · Q.· · Correct?
·7· · · · A.· · Yeah.
·8· · · · Q.· · You had seen this?
·9· · · · A.· · I had, I had seen a version or some variant of it.· I don’t know that I had seen this exact document.· Excuse me.
12· · · · Q.· · Do you have a reason to believe that there was some other version of it?
14· · · · A.· · Well, all of the documents kind of had the same template and form.· And, you know, every, every time that Mr. Penon would submit a document they were, they were kind of similar.· So he would repeat the ·diagrams and, you know, keep sending them in.· So I couldn’t say if I saw this one or if I saw, you know, the one that was submitted in April or whatever, but one of them.· It was very similar to this, yes.
22· · · · Q.· · Well, you were, you were saying you, you·know, as of July 18th when you had that meeting with Barry West, you had no idea where the or how the test was set up or how the plant was set up?
[page 182]
·1· · · · A.· · No, I didn’t say I had no — what I said was ·I had no idea where the volume flow meter was and if·there was a steam flow meter.· This is the document that·subsequently, and I believe it was actually when·Mr. Penon sent this to me that I found the flow meter·Adaptor M, MWN130-80NC.· Had I seen this before, that·would have been a great question to ask, you know —
·8· · · · Q.· · So why —
·9· · · · A.· · — what is this.
10· · · · Q.· · Why is it that Industrial Heat didn’t show that to you before?
12· · · · A.· · I have no idea.
13· · · · Q.· · They had it —
14· · · · A.· · Yeah.
15· · · · Q.· · — clearly.
16· · · · A.· · I mean it may have been one of the documents ·that was provided in the, you know, in the information I·had, but I did not notice that.
19· · · · Q.· · Turning to the second page of this document,·bates number IH00011097, not only does it identify the·flow meter down at the bottom, does it not?
22· · · · A.· · It does, yeah.
23· · · · Q.· · But it also points to the location of the·flow meter.· Do you see that in the diagram above?
25· · · · A.· · Yeah.· That’s weird.· I actually have never
[page 193]
·1· ·noticed that before.
·2· · · · Q.· · So had, had you wanted to, you could have· ·taken a look at that and called Barry West and said,·hey, look on the pipe, but you didn’t?
·5· · · · A.· · No.· We did not.
Wyttenbach sees this conversation through tinted lenses, actually deeply colored lenses. What he claims (that Darden deliberately misled Murray) is unsupported by any evidence. Rather, Murray acknowledges that the document might have been included. What I see here is an indication of just how powerful a witness Murray might be. Those who are personally attached to looking good may think that Murray was squirming, but there is no sign of that. He is asked plenty of questions in the deposition where the detached answer is like those have here, and he uses phrases like “I have no idea,” when he actually has no idea. He is in no rush to resolve any apparent controversy, he patiently awaits questions he cannot clearly and with expertise answer. This is an ideal witness to have on one’s side. He obviously cares about accuracy, he is careful. He readily admits what might seem damaging. He doesn’t rush to make excuses, but patiently attempts to explain where it would complete his answers.
This is a line of questioning that Annesser probably thinks very important. In fact, the Murray thermal analysis is crucial. What Murray did, as I see it now, not having thoroughly studied this document:
He used available sophisticated thermal analysis software to simulate the environment at Doral. While he did analysis assuming 1 MW — showing ridiculously high temperatures, with the large doors closed, the roof vent open, he doesn’t even remember the result, because he knew that it involved possibly incorrect assumptions. What if there were some major overlooked heat path or process? What he focuses on is the 100 KW analysis, considering that highly conservative, i.e., what if what was in place did handle a large fraction of the heat, there would nevertheless be leakage into the warehouse space, so that is what he modelled. And he found intolerable temperatures at 100 KW.
Annesser pokes him again and again over the large back doors possibly being open. However, Murray is firm: he was modelling what he observed on the first day he was allowed to visit: the Plant was in operation, supposedly producing high heat, the back doors were closed, the roof fans were not operating, and the room was apparently reasonably comfortable. This would generate wonder and doubt in the mind of any sane observer who thought of the issue (it is sometimes amazing what we can overlook, that will be completely obvious in hindsight).
Yes, obviously, the temperature would be lower with the back doors open, but the increased air flow that this would foster would not handle a 900 KW increase! However, there is this possibility: the plant was running with greatly reduced capacity on that day. I would need to look at the Penon Report and other documents, but Murray also makes the point that, if the Penon Report and other claims are accurate, the Plant will not immediately shut down when power is removed. He wonders at the phenomenon of COP increasing when power is reduced. Yes, he understands the math. If energy generation remains constant, and does not decline with reduced input power (and what Rossi claims as “SSM,” self-sustain mode, is with input power reduced to zero), then of course COP will go up with reduced input power. However, then, the idea that the Plant output drastically declined with power shut-down is contradicted. It’s a contradictory mess, all created by setting up a narrow measure of power, all with obvious assumptions that could be incorrect, such as dry steam (simply having a pressure gauge and temperature sensor are not enough, without major precautions, such as a steam trap, and this has been obvious since 2011).
I don’t see that Murray falls for any of Annesser’s traps. He will be guided through his trial testimony, if this goes to trial, by lawyers who are highly skilled at communicating what they choose to the jury. Murray will not fall apart when aggressively challenged by Rossi counsel.
Smith seems even more powerful, to me, but I am not reviewing the Smith deposition yet. It also exists as the full document. I did start to read it. This is a full-blown expert on steam engineering. Rossi counsel will try to make the point that he has not studied nuclear engineering, but the Rossi technology does not fall into what would be studied in that field, Rossi’s insistence on Penon being a nuclear engineer, as if this were proof of relevant expertise, is pure fluff. It would probably be easier to fool a nuclear engineer than a steam engineer (a point that Jed Rothwell often makes).
One more point before bye-bye, the referenced IH documents. Do we have them?
IH00011096 and IH00011097 are apparently deposition Exhibit 8. Wyttenbach makes a reference to these documents (as email from Annesser to Murray) but does not give the document number. Folks, if you are looking at the document, these all have the document number at the top of every page. So not providing that is silly-sloppy, it would take seconds.
I had to look at a lot of files, but found this, marked as “Exhibit 8, 2-7-17 Murray.” That would be it. It has the two block diagrams, and the second shows the location of the flowmeter in the return line. It is only a block diagram and does not show necessary details. Murray’s point (about a “steam flow meter”) is confused in his deposition, as quoted above, by Annesser, who simply refers, then, to “the flow meter.” As if only one was involved — which is exactly Murray’s point –that meter is not a steam flow meter, it’s a water flow meter — which may also misread, even dramatically, if the pipe is not full, and there are other error modes such that it cannot indicate “steam flow.” One of these could be the effect of a pump in the customer area. (This then radically confuses the pressure issue, and this shows how and why knowing what is in the customer area was, in fact, important, not irrelevant as Penon apparently assured — or Rossi assured, citing Penon — Mats Lewan.)
It has been argued that the sight glasses for the reactors shows that there was no flooding. However, two considerations: if there is a bypass where return water could flow up, say, the steam riser, the system could flood without affecting those sight glasses — and this could also occur with no bypass through a single reactor overflowing, all the rest might be generating a little steam that would prevent backflow.
Then there is the possibility of an air bubble in the return line causing flow meter over-reading. There is the issue of the flow meter being inappropriate for the application, as it was operating under the specified minimum flow. (Peter Gluck, in a tragic demonstration of his obsession, justifies this as not stressing the meter so that it would not fail, thus inventing a post-facto excuse for using something inappropriate — plus the lower significant digits of the meter were not reported, and there is a whole series of poor engineering practices seen in the study. A solid engineering study will not conceal data in the name of being “conservative.” It would collect and analyze accurate data, with accuracy exceeding necessity. That’s conservative. The steady figures for flow and pressure would raise the hackles of any engineer or scientist accustomed to studying data. One would want to collect data with a precision such that noise appears, and the lack of noise is a sign of poor practice, at best.
And then there is the possibility of a hybrid artifact or fraud. During the day, when operation was being observed, the sight glasses were clear, but flow may have been low enough that the system did not overflow. And at night the extra pump was operated to run water through the system to make up the “steady flow” that was based on daily totals. This would be deliberate fraud, not merely some error.
And then there are other possible failure modes. A customer area pump could introduce air, running foam through the meter instead of pure fluid. All of this points to understanding “demonstrations” as not being anywhere near as conclusive as independent tests. Given the total control of the site and process that Rossi (and Fabiani) had, data could simply have been fabricated. Penon’s data and Fabiani’s data match exactly — with a very few exceptions. This is not characteristic of truly independent measures, unless they have been so reduced in precision that normal variation is concealed. And if Penon’s data came from Fabiani — or Rossi — there we can see the problem of the inventor and alleged beneficiary of “test” success being in such high control.
This is not going to be overlooked by a jury, if it comes to that. These are all of ordinary interest and within ordinary understanding. One does not need to be a rocket scientist or nuclear engineer to understand these things.
