Cold Fusion

John Creighton · 2004-09-05 13:45:13

The following quotes from:Cold FUsion Back From the Dead, pg 26 IEEE Spectrum|Setember 2004

March 1989. Stanly Pons and Martin Fleischmann, both electrochemists working at the University of Utal in Salt Lack City, announced that thy had created fusion using a patter connected palladium electrodes immersed in a bath of water in which the hydrogen was replaced with its isotope deuterium—so –called heavy water.

Later this month the U.S. Department of Energy will receive a report from a panel of experts on the prospects of cold fusion

Because of such attitudes, science has all but ignored the phenomenon for 15 years. But a small group of dedicated researches have continued to investigate it. For them, the DOE’s change of heart is a crucial step toward being accepted back into the scientific fold.

Menlo Pard, Calif., a respected researcher who is influential among those pursuing cold fusion, says that the effect can be reliably seen only once the palladium electrodes are packed with deuterium at ratios of 100 percent—one deuterium atoms for every palladium atom. His work shows that if the ratio drops by as little as 10 points, to 90 percent, only 2 experimental runs in 12 produce excess heat, while all runs at ratio of 100 percent produce excess heat.

Conference observers were struck by the careful way in which various early criticisms of the research were being addressed. Over the years, a numberof groups around the world have reproduced the orginal Pons-Fleischmann excess heat effect, yielding sometimes as much as 250 percent the energy put in.

Evidence of these byproducts ,has been scant though Antonella de Ninno and colleagues from the Italian National Agency for New Technologies Energy and the Environment, in Rome, have found strong evidence of helium generation when the palladium cells are producing excess heat but not otherwise.

Stainislaw Szpak and colleagues from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command have taken infrared video images of palladium electrodes as they produce excess energy. It turns out that the heat is not produced continuously over the entire electrode but only in hot spots that erupt and then die on the electrode surface. This team also has evidence of curious mini explosions on the surface.”

MarsDog · 2004-09-05 14:30:06

Might turn out to be similar to the search for high temperature superconductors. Different compositions, giving better results.
-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … esearchers are reporting new evidence supporting their earlier discovery of an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions
-
Combining several techniques such as bubbling gas into molten metal,
and creating a shock wave to increase the reaction ?

John Creighton · 2004-09-05 14:32:17

So there seems to be new evidence that cold fusion works. The DOE is taking it seriously. The obvious application I see is very good batteries. I suspect it would take along time to use up all the heavy water in the batteries. What I don't know is how to keep the palladium saturated with deuterium. I also don't know how hard it is to extract palladium and to produce the necessary heavy water.

MarsDog · 2004-09-05 14:43:49

Might be a convenient way to make a very small bomb,
similar to the http://unisci.com/stories/20012/0409011.htm]laser exploded pellet concept of nuclear fusion.
-
http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/palladiump … ]Palladium is not that expensive

John Creighton · 2004-09-05 14:48:05

Palladium is not that expensive

Well at 209 dollars an ounce I am not going to put such batteries in a remote control. Maybe I would put them in a laptop if I was really rich and the lap top had a really good cooling system or could operate at a high temperature. Perhaps the surface of some ellectrode could be coated with palladium instead of making the whole electrode out of it.

John Creighton · 2004-09-05 18:53:08

There seems to be a better alternative for batteries. There are batteries that use nuclear isotope. They are being made to power mems and can have energy densities 25,000 times that of lithium ion batteries.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-05 19:31:36

Hi John!
Thanks for the 'heads up' about this article, which concerns an area I've been trying to keep tabs on ever since 1989.
I had occasion to speak with Dr. Mike McKubre of SRI International, by phone, back in 1997 and I was struck by his absolute certainty that the Pd/D2O reaction was real and that excess energy was being produced, though only sporadically and unreliably.
Dr. McKubre is no wild-eyed amateur. He is a respected scientist (not to mention a very pleasant and approachable man) and he left me in no doubt whatever that 'cold fusion' was and is an area worthy of further investigation and funding.
I have been non-plussed by the extraordinarily hostile way in which 'cold fusion' has been treated by the DOE and many prominent physicists and engineers. It seems that the idea has had to fight an arduous uphill battle against scientists who have been overtly venomous towards it from the outset. Such behaviour always makes me suspicious that, somewhere in the background, either money, power, or personal reputations are at stake. Only these factors, in my experience, can cause such negative emotions to run so high.
My opinion, for what it's worth, based on my reading around the subject and my brief personal interaction with Dr. McKubre 7 years ago, is that 'cold fusion' represents a new scientific field which cries out for more and better research ... not stonewalling by people intent on their own vested interests for their own selfish reasons.
:rant:
End of rant!

[P.S. There seems to be a discrepancy with one of the figures about energy production. Has the energy-out/energy-in ratio been as high as 250x (! ) or 'only' 250% ? ??? ]

Euler · 2004-09-05 19:43:40

I am still skeptical. I would take cold fusion more seriously if I saw a working prototype power generator.

There seems to be a better alternative for batteries. There are batteries that use nuclear isotops. They are being made to power mems and can have energy densities 25 000 times that of lithium ion batteries.

We are still a long way from having practical nuclear isotope batteries. Both the charging and the discharging of nuclear isotopes are currently extremely inefficient.

Martian Republic · 2004-09-05 20:31:30

The first link is hot fusion and what going on with that.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/a … ...ew.html

//

This link is dealing with cold fusion and where we stand on that. What called cold fusion there may be three or four different chemical processes going on that causing excess heat and not just one process or thing happening. But, most of those experiments appear to be repeatable with some certainty that they are repeatable.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/a … ...on.html
//

Larry,

MarsDog · 2004-09-05 21:45:05

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/re … nfus.html] IEEE - Spectrum - Cold Fusion Back From the Dead

http://world.std.com/~mica/cft.html]Cold Fusion Times

http://www.google.com/search?q=cold+fus … f-8]Search Google

John Creighton · 2004-09-05 23:01:56

From the popular mechanics article:
http://popularmechanics.com/science/res … ...t.phtml

Two of the more popular ideas for how cold fusion works involve the way the palladium electrode reacts with the hydrogen in heavy water. One school of thought holds that the metal in the electrode somehow stores energy over time, then releases it at once to split a neighboring nucleus. Others believe that cold fusion experiments are in fact tapping the so-called dark matter or dark energy that astronomers believe is distributed around the universe. Yet a third theory poses that the energy arises from the "quantum vacuum" that occupies seemingly empty spaces within atoms themselves.
Although critics have seized on the absence of a single explanation as a weakness of cold fusion research, it is useful to remember that in earlier times confusion over how to interpret seemingly "impossible" experimental data led to electromagnetic theory, special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics.

It is this hard to explain stuff that really moves science forward. Recall at the end of the 19th century physicists thought they just about had every thing figured out. Then came relativity and quantum mechanics.

John Creighton · 2004-09-05 23:04:58

BUILDING BOMBS
The ability to construct a nuclear weapon is currently limited by the billion-dollar investment needed to develop the technology to convert naturally radioactive metals into highly purified or weapons-grade material. Cold fusion experiments in Japan have shown that it is not only possible to create the tritium that boosts the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but also the enriched uranium. Uranium can substitute for plutonium in building the atom bomb needed to detonate a hydrogen bomb. Cold fusion could potentially replace these bomb-making technologies:

I guess cold fusion is not all roses yet. If these dangers are real, are we ready for such technology. Should such research be classified?

John Creighton · 2004-09-05 23:08:25

[P.S. There seems to be a discrepancy with one of the figures about energy production. Has the energy-out/energy-in ratio been as high as 250x (! ) or 'only' 250% ? ]

opps. I guess it is only 250 percent. I didn't realize the link to spectrum was online. Thanks for the links MarsDog. I guess that will make it more difficult to use for power generation.

C M Edwards · 2004-09-07 14:23:17

In my opinion, Pons and Fleischman got what they deserved for trying steal Steven Edward Jones's research. It sickens me that they might receive credibility from this! :realllymad: :rant:

Jones was working on a similar phenomenon independently - trying to find evidence for accelerated spontaneous fusion under extreme pressures in a molecular matrix. (An infinitesimal trickle of spontaneous nuclear fusion happens all the time in nature, just like nuclear fission, spin transitions and everything else affected by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.) He found it. When he submitted his article for publication in Physical Review Letters, Pons and Fleischman were selected as reviewers. Two days later, unable to trip over themselves fast enough, they held their infamous press conference to claim credit for the discovery of cold fusion, only now, instead of detecting the acceleration of spontaneous fusion, there were claims of intense heat and promises of nuclear batteries. Physical Review fired those two clowns and a few months later Jones was published - the only article on the subject of cold fusion to ever pass peer review at that magazine.

Jones's work isn't all that hard to explain or reproduce. Taking Pons & Fleischman seriously, now THAT'S difficult to comprehend. Unfortunately, it's not very difficult to reproduce. :down:

SpaceNut · 2004-09-07 19:45:10

The suns fusion raction is 4 H atoms squashed under intense pressure and heat to make He. Atomic fision uses either uranium or plutonium with a little H thrown in to start it going.

We also know that H2O under electrical current with the paladium rods for electrolysis breaks the bonds.

What if D2o(deutrium) and He3 where used instead under electrical current or under ultra sonic waves. How would that work out in terms of cold fusion?

Shaun Barrett · 2005-03-25 05:35:39

This is probably nothing new to all the cold fusion enthusiasts here but New Scientist is keeping the pot boiling (<groan> ) in its 19th March '05 edition:-

After 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. ..
... Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers. ..
... With controllable cold fusion, many of the world's energy problems would melt away; no wonder the US Department of Energy is interested. In December, after a lengthy review of the evidence, it said it was open to receiving proposals for new cold fusion experiments.
That's quite a turnaround. ..
... The snag is that fusion at room temperature is deemed impossible by every accepted scientific theory.
That doesn't matter, according to David nagel, an engineer at George Washington University in Washington DC. Superconductors took 40 years to explain, he points out, so there's no reason to dismiss cold fusion. "The experimental case is bulletproof", he says. "You can't make it go away."

Arthur C. Clarke has backed cold fusion from the start and, as I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, I once had occasion to speak to a scientist who's been 'at the coal-face' for years on this subject, Dr. Mike McKubre of SRI International at Menlo Park, California. His conviction that cold fusion is real, though not well understood, made a deep impression on me at the time. And, with what I've read and heard since, I've never given up on the concept and I think it will likely come to fruition in the near future.

As and when it does, the dream is that each household would become independent of the power grid, maintaining a cold fusion generator in the attic or basement to supply power. At one point, they were talking in the newspapers about the possibility of a unit no bigger than a small mains-pressure hot water cylinder - maybe 600mm (2 feet) in diameter and 750mm (2ft 6in) tall, which would easily power a household for many years at almost zero cost (not sure about the electrode material and associated cost, though). In fact, the unit would theoretically produce enough power to supply the grid itself with electricity, if a grid were still needed.
Such units would bring all the benefits of 1st World energy consumption levels to all the people of the world - and no significant pollution.

Keep your fingers crossed! :up:

Shaun Barrett · 2005-03-25 05:51:42

Discovered http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/re … .html]THIS ARTICLE just now. It's better than the New Scientist article, too.
Looking good!

srmeaney · 2005-03-25 06:06:56

Perfect Palladium structures as an export commodity

Considering that flaws in the Palladium rod cause heat differentials in the rod and therefore unsafe energy potentials, the growing of perfect palladium crystals in space will be big business. Certainly the cold fusion reactor will be a lot more popular than the hot variety especialy when we start knocking about on overcrowded space stations.

dicktice · 2005-03-25 10:22:48

Bravo, Shaun: Nothing about muons in the article, but the "hot spots" detectected by infrared (I assume) imaging was an eye opener, since that was my field of development from the 1960's on. It says a lot for the improvement in IR-image resolution as well. Keep up the good, persistant work!

Shaun Barrett · 2005-03-25 20:00:16

Dicktice:-

Bravo, Shaun: Nothing about muons in the article, but the "hot spots" detectected by infrared (I assume) imaging was an eye opener, since that was my field of development from the 1960's on. It says a lot for the improvement in IR-image resolution as well. Keep up the good, persistant work!

Hey, Dicktice, that was very nice of you to say that! It's much appreciated.
Thanks, old man.
[Sorry, but there aren't that many people here I can legitimately call "old man", being pretty ancient myself! :laugh: Besides, I actually meant it in the British way - a term of endearment.]

And yes, the infrared evidence of 'hotspots' on the electrodes is very telling, in my opinion. There's definitely something going on. :up:

dicktice · 2005-03-25 23:24:57

I'm counting backwards from now on, each birthday, until people stop saying "you don't look that old," so watch out we don't pass each other for the switcheroo without knowing it, kid.

Shaun Barrett · 2005-03-26 01:29:42

:laugh: O.K., I'll be vigilant!

John Creighton · 2005-03-26 13:57:22

As cool as at would be I don’t think it is realistic for every house or car to have a cold fusion generator. Palladium and deuterium are fairly expensive.

... The snag is that fusion at room temperature is deemed impossible by every accepted scientific theory.
That doesn't matter, according to David nagel, an engineer at George Washington University in Washington DC. Superconductors took 40 years to explain, he points out, so there's no reason to dismiss cold fusion. "The experimental case is bulletproof", he says. "You can't make it go away."

I don’t think this is really true, doesn’t fusion happen spontaneously in nature all the time due to the uncertainty principle. There is just no enough heat to sustain any of the spontaneous reactions. I think the palladium and deuterium act as kind of a nuclear catalyst by keeping the deuterium in close proximity with each other.

reddragon · 2005-03-28 18:50:26

doesn’t fusion happen spontaneously in nature all the time due to the uncertainty principle.

Interesing, I don't think I'd heard that before. Do you know how it is supposed to work?

I think the palladium and deuterium act as kind of a nuclear catalyst by keeping the deuterium in close proximity with each other.

I don't know much about the properties of deuterium or palladium so I can't really comment on that. The general premise of this, though, seems rather different from normal fusion. The article speaks of "hot spots that erupt and then die on the electrode surface." This doesn't seem to be a sustained reaction of any sort (the goal of most research into normal fusion). It seems to imply a process that occurs spontaneously in small amounts in the cell. Each reaction then has no effect on the other. This is quite different from normal fusion in which the heat of the reaction keeps it going.

Honestly I think the jury is still out on cold fusion. It's an intriguing possibility, and there is certainly some interesting evidence in its favor, but there are also a lot of hurdles to overcome. Most important is that it is not adequately explained by any theory. That's no reason to dismiss it though. I'd say we should keep up the research until we get an answer one way or another.

SpaceNut · 2005-04-28 05:14:57

Well it has been awhile since the last post for these related topics;
Cold Fusion Is it real?

Cold Fusion

I can't believe this isn't big news! sonofusion now for sale!

new energy source and this one has the most in it so here goes.

This seems in the same vien as the topic implies.
Nuclear fusion on the desktop ... really! Mini-reactor yields neutrons, could power spacecraft

Scientists say they have achieved small-scale nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment, using tried and true techniques that are expected to generate far less controversy than past such claims.
This latest experiment relied on a tiny crystal to generate a strong electric field.
In the UCLA experiment, scientists placed a tiny crystal that can generate a strong electric field into a vacuum chamber filled with deuterium gas, a form of hydrogen capable of fusion. Then the researchers activated the crystal by heating it.
The resulting electric field created a beam of charged deuterium atoms that struck a nearby target, which was embedded with yet more deuterium. When some of the deuterium atoms in the beam collided with their counterparts in the target, they fused.
The reaction gave off an isotope of helium along with subatomic particles known as neutrons, a characteristic of fusion. The experiment did not, however, produce more energy than the amount put in — an achievement that would be a huge breakthrough.
In the Nature report, Putterman and his colleagues said the crystal-based method could be used in "microthrusters for miniature spacecraft." In such an application, the method would not rely on nuclear fusion for power generation, but rather on ion propulsion, Putterman said.

I guess that any other gas than what was put into the experiment is a success.

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#1 2004-09-05 13:45:13

Re: Cold Fusion

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