At 04:43 PM 4/10/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
On 4/10/2012 4:39 PM, Alain Sepeda wrote:
Defkalion on their forum gave a similar explanation,
talking about the heat caused by H2 breaking before loading and,
recombination after degasing...
It can't possibly be recombination! Both the power and energy far
exceeds that in many cases, as Fleischmann pointed out.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf
In heat after death, the deuterium gradually comes to the surface.
It is "presented" to the surface, as electrochemists say. This
surface is undergoing cold fusion because it happens to be ideal
nuclearactive material. The deuterons leaking out join into the
reaction, just as deuterons being pushed in during electrolysis does.
I am assuming the reaction occurs at surface layers, rather than in
the bulk. Fleischmann thinks it happens in the bulk. He used to,
anyway. Most people disagree.
The reaction may normally happen at or under the surface, based on
where helium is found. However, that may not be universal. I'd be
interested to know why Fleischmann thinks "bulk." Lenr-canr.org seems
to be inaccessible to me right now, if he mentions it in that paper.
As to recombination, there are two kinds of recombination. Defkalion
would have to be talking about recombination of atomic hydrogen to
form molecular hydrogen, H2. The process of absorption of
hydrogen/deuterium into metal hydrides (deuterides) is exothermic, so
the reverse process is endothermic. This kind of recombination cannot
explain heat after death. It should cause cooling. It's similar to
evaporation from a liquid (or sublimation of a solid, as may be more
accurate for the release of H from a hydride).
The other kind of recombination would only apply to the
electrochemical experiments, not to gas-loading, because it would be
the reaction of hydrogen/deuterium with oxygen to reform water. That
would be exothermic. The problem with this is the lack of adequate
oxygen in these cells to support more than a little of this. Atomic
hydrogen is present at the surface of hydrides, and it's highly
reactive. I'd assume that it would burn if an oxygen bubble contacts
the surface. Shanahan presents a vision of oxygen microbubbles
contacting the surface and exploding, he tries to use this as a way
to explain SPAWAR pitting on the other side of CR-39 near the
cathode, some kind of shock wave from the explosion blowing material
off the other side. Some skeptics are getting desperate....
An oxygen bubble contacting the cathode if it is releasing hydrogen
would indeed burn it, but it would not explode, because the "flame
front" could not spread through the bubble. If, however, the bubble
is an explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, you would get a pop.
Not much. And such bubbles probably don't exist. Oxygen bubbles were
formed at the anode as pure oxygen. And when the current is turned
off, that formation will stop.
What is truly astonishing, from the point of view of the scientific
method and normal scientific process, is that absolutely preposterous
theories of "artifact" to explain away the FPHE were allowed and
circulated, but no paper was ever published that actually
demonstrated artifact, as to the heat. A great deal of attention was
focused on the famous neutron error of Pons and Fleischmann, even
though that only reflected a small part of their finding, a
mysterious part, in fact, because those neutrons showed that
classical fusion could only explain -- even if the neutrons were real
-- a small fraction of the heat found.
The heat results were crucial, and fundamaental, and were never found
to be artifact. The contrary, later neutral analysis showed little
error, if any. This was, indeed, the Scientific Fiasco of the
Century, as Huizenga called it. He didn't know the half of it.
The big problem with cold fusion was the famous "irreproducibility."
That term was used broadly to imply that nobody could replicate. That
was, of course, a major misrepresentation or error. The effect was
replicated. What was difficult was replicating *exact results.*
SRI P13/P14 demonstrated the problem, and that finding, itself,
should have been considered conclusive on this point: the FPHE
depends on cathode conditions that were poorly controlled. Because
under the exact conditions, except for time sequence, the same
electrolytic current excursion (stepped increase over a small base
current that simply maintained loading levels) produced, the first
two times, no excess heat over the hydrogen control, only
(apparently) a small increase in noise, as would be expected from
increased activity. The third time, a very clear signal.
What I've noticed about cold fusion research in general is that
excess weight was placed on positive results (i.e., the skeptics are
right to claim publication bias! -- but don't understand the actual
impact). Only the positive result in P13/P14 was dignified with a
graph, a famous one. Looks beautiful. The first two excursions with
no excess heat look boring, eh? But those negative results were
crucial, because they represent a control experiment. The control
demonstrates what happens when the FPHE is not set up, and they
amount to proof that a negative result could be coming from
uncontrolled conditions.
Specifically, now, we can say that the process of loading and
deloading causes damage to the lattice, and the "damage" is crucial
to the FPHE. It doesn't happen in a pure lattice with no defects. It
also does not happen in a lattice that is excessively leaky, because
the effect requires high loading, and if the lattice is very leaky,
that loading cannot be obtained.
It has to be *just right*, perhaps. At least in a pure FPHE demonstration.
Codepostion may be able to get around this, but there is a problem
with codep. Again, we can see a publication bias. Increasingly, I
hear of scientists who have tried codep and didn't see anything.
Publication bias.
Cold fusion will leap ahead when we stop bemoaning the
pseudoskepticism and start building a solid structure of science.
They are right, in a way, and we need to address the way that they are right.
They are also wrong, of course, because, as Storms wrote in 2010,
evidence has accumulated that, in the FPHE, deuterium is being
converted to helium. If that evidence had been known in 1989, my
guess is that we would know by now what is happening in the heat
effect. That's why this was such a fiasco. Billions of dollars may
have been wasted on hot fusion research, compared to what might have
born fruit with less funding in cold fusion.
However, the 1989 and 2004 DoE reviews, flawed as they were, were
right on in one way. At neither point was the huge investment of a
*major program* appropriate. We need to know the basic science before
throwing money at it, or we will waste a lot of money! *Modest*
investment, by comparision, was appropriate then and now. Basic
science, to establish an understanding of the effect and how to
create it reliably, both for further study and, then, for possible
commercial applications.
What's "modest investment"? Whatever it takes to fund basic studies.
The field badly needs controlled replications. Because of the present
conditions, there is no glory or possibility of wealth from pure
replications, and that's been so for twenty years. McKubre has been
doing it, because he's funded to do it. We need a *lot* more like that.
W-L theory is getting some traction, in spite of its implausibility.
Okay, how about some actual testing of its predictions? For starters,
the helium Q should be nailed down. That is important work,
regardless of W-L. At the same time, *all* isotopic anomalies
resulting from an active cathode should be investigated -- and
compared with those from inactive cathodes.
It doesn't really matter what approach is used to create the FPHE as
long as it's reasonably "successful" in setting up a clear effect,
such that a good percentage of cells show it. I'm liking codep
because it could be cheaper, as one doesn't waste a lot of palladium
in the bulk. It's looking like the SPAWAR protocol is pretty
inefficient, because the initital palladium is *not* codeposited with
deuterium, and exploring codep to make it more efficient and more
reliable would, itself, be valuable.
This is for the science of it. If you want to get rich, work on Ni-H,
it's obvious. When Ni-H is established, as it may well be, that's a
different avenue to explore. *It is certainly a different reaction!*
There may or may not be a common mechanism.
Those who love science love anomalies, because they are signposts
indicating we have something to learn.
Those who love being right, and being secure in smug belief, are
threatened by anomalies and must reject them as "nothing to see here,
just some unexplained mistake, incompetence, or fraud."
