Pasting this from the Fusor.net board, Tom. Hope you don't mind. This... makes sense.
Duane
Cold fusion became such a pariah it was hard to get serious researchers to look at it. A few researchers have continued looking into it.
We keep hearing noises that people are making some quiet progress with it. Dr. Bussard believed he knew what was behind the phenomenon, which he considered to be quite real, just not what the people behind the original brou-ha-ha thought it was.
I'm not an expert at this field ... somewhere I have a paper Dr. Bussard published on it, and I'll see if I can find that and reference it.
Pons and Fleishman were supposed to be partnering with another researcher who was much more low-key, and thought the phenomenon was something which had been know to nuclear physics for a while, and totally predictable from known physics. The basic notion was the nuclear reaction was between deuterium (or hydrogen, for that matter) and the nuclei of the metal electrodes. It was not DD fusion at all. If this is correct, all the experiments trying to prove DD fusion were a total waste of time.
The electrodes are not a catalyst (but certain of the behaviors that makes them good catalysts for electrolysis are involved). The electrodes are part of the fuel.
Platinum and palladium work in part because they load up with hydrogen, which slips into the lattice easily. Once in the lattice, the protons or deuterons are in a sea of electrons, and don't see the metal nuclei until quite close. This tosses most of what we think we know about Coulomb repulsion in a rarified plasma right out the window. Coulomb repulsion becomes very short-range, and it supposedly becomes possible to fuse with the heavy nuclei with a little help from quantum mechanics.
I have seen results reported in which wholesale, unambiguous transmutation of electrode metal has been measured. How reliable these reports are I don't know.
Dr. Bussard concluded platinum and palladium were the wrong choices due to cost, and the same thing could be done with nickel. My understanding is the reaction has been seen with nickel electrodes.
From what I've seen, cold fusion might make dandy sock-warming technology. It may be limited to low-grade heat, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that it is real, and may prove useful.
I believe Dr. B said a few words about Cold Fusion on his last "radio" interview. He thought it was real but that the limitations were those of any thermal fusion processes.
There is a link to the last interview at IEC Fusion Tech. Some time after March? May? of last year and before his death in October.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
I caught Tom's post also. Fascinating stuff. There must be some sort of metal-hydrogen reaction cross section involved, even if the reaction is collisionless. Also curious about predicted products, and if this reaction is exothermic or not.
If any one is interested, a friend of mine sent me a pdf copy of "The Science of Cold Fusion Phenomena" by Hideo Kozima. The math is a little light for me to take it seriously, but it does have a chapter devoted to the quantum arguments. Send me an email address via the PM and I'll forward it to whoever is wants to take a look.
I have been following the cold fusion stuff sporadically since around 1995. Personally, I think its bunk. There have been a large number of self-financed people involved in this, including Blacklight Power (even though they do not like to be associated with "cold fusion"). To date, no one has been able to show repetitive demonstrations of the effect. The field is filled with self-delusion and flakiness.
After 18 years, someone should be able to demonstrate a repetitive positive experiment of this effect.
The Earthtech people ( www.earthtech.org ) have debunked every cold fusion claim to date.
None the less, I would really like to see a copy of Bussard's paper on this effect.
kurt9 wrote:I have been following the cold fusion stuff sporadically since around 1995. Personally, I think its bunk. There have been a large number of self-financed people involved in this, including Blacklight Power (even though they do not like to be associated with "cold fusion"). To date, no one has been able to show repetitive demonstrations of the effect. The field is filled with self-delusion and flakiness.
After 18 years, someone should be able to demonstrate a repetitive positive experiment of this effect.
The Earthtech people ( www.earthtech.org ) have debunked every cold fusion claim to date.
None the less, I would really like to see a copy of Bussard's paper on this effect.
I believe the latest work shows something like 1/2 the experiments tried work and it is dependent on the batch of metal used. Some batches work others don't.
Which say there is more to be learned.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
kurt9 wrote:I have been following the cold fusion stuff sporadically since around 1995. Personally, I think its bunk.
I'd thought the same until the Naval Research Lab results a few years back. Seemed to indicate that there was an anomalous fusion reaction, with products (showing up as contaminants in the electrolyte solution) similar to DD fusion. I doubted it would ever produce power, but the apparently anomalous nature of the fusion appeared to raise questions about errors or oversights in standard fusion theory.
Tom's account blows that away in seven seconds flat. Wisdom.
I attended a particle beam conference in Tennessee in fall of '97. This was while I was working for a Japanese company where we were trying to develop PSII (plasma source ion immersion) process thin-film deposition. It turned out that most of the attendees there were ex-fusion people. I asked several of them during an evening BBQ (this is the South - with Southern hospitality) what they thought about "cold fusion stuff". All of them were convinced that the phenomenon that P&F had discovered was real, but that it was not fusion as currently understood.
Some of the papers I read in the mid 90's (the few that seems semi-real) suggested as Bussard does that it is a fusion between a metal atom (Pd, Pt, Ni) and hydrogen rather than DD or DT fusion, which is what all of the cold fusion people keep trying to replicate.
fusion between Pd, Pt, or Ni and hydrogen would be endothermic, not exothermic. Thus not a viable energy source unless it's a catalyst effect, like protons and carbon, where helium or the like is produced.
The absence of reproducible results does not look good for the field.
Here are a couple of results that can be attributed to cold fusion. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MizunoTanomalouse.pdf http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZhangXontheexplo.pdf
I don't think they analyzed the purity of the anodes that were in use when these events occurred. If not, then it should be done because only a very few cases like this happen, and the answers are somewhere within the specific setups where it did happen.
hanelyp wrote:fusion between Pd, Pt, or Ni and hydrogen would be endothermic, not exothermic. Thus not a viable energy source unless it's a catalyst effect, like protons and carbon, where helium or the like is produced.
The absence of reproducible results does not look good for the field.
From what I understand the results are semi-reproduceable and are dependent on the batch of metal used. Some batches work - others don't and so far no one knows why.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
