From: Peter Gluck
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2015/03/hardcore-lenr-palladium-still-shining.html Palladium may be still “shining” at a few conferences, but the glow has tarnished considerably in the race for commercial viability. “Classic LENR” in general is: 1) Low power – typically subwatt 2) Based on electrolysis of heavy water at low temperature 3) Poor to very poor reproducibility 4) Expensive electrodes - $1000/gram range 5) High COP – but only if the experiment is kept well below one watt 6) Inverted economy of scale – lower COP at higher temperature In contrast, nouveau LENR (aka dogbone) version is 1) Three to four orders of magnitude higher power output 2) Based on solid state -> gas phase at elevated temperature 3) (Apparently) more reproducible, even without precisely following earlier work 4) Low cost materials 5) Modest, but usable COP 6) Threshold for maximum gain appearing near 1300k-1400k. It is easy to see why “Classic LENR” is essentially on its last legs as far as commercial relevance goes – and yet there are a few lessons, generally overlooked, which can be applied to the newer efforts. Of significant but controversial importance is the one common denominator in both technologies: lithium. It is arguable, in retrospect, that the classic LENR of the P&F is a lithium reaction which is triggered by deuterium… instead of deuterium fusion. Of course, it could be a little of both, and thermal gain can happen with other electrolytes and with protium. But lithium is preferred, and the interlocking parameters suggest that the reaction is more complex than we have ever imagined, since there is little high energy radiation. Plus, if and when helium is seen in the ash – it could as easily derive from lithium, as opposed to deuterium fission. In fact, deuterium fusion should produce tritium, so when that isotope is not seen, the best evidence for the key to the reaction shifts to lithium – instead of D+D fusion. This failure to understand that LENR is primarily a lithium reaction could relate to 3) above which the poor reproducibility of classic LENR. The reason for this relates to weapons, National Labs, and the need to extract the important isotope – lithium-6 which is only 6-7% of natural lithium. Natural lithium is rare and expensive, and if the US Military had to pay the true price of enrichment of the needed lithium-6 – by writing off the entire inventory of Li-7, then it would have put the country at a great disadvantage against our enemies. Therefore, and given that lithium which is depleted in lithium-6 works just fine for the main present use of the element - which is in advanced batteries, then what we see is that all of this gigantic inventory of lithium, which was depleted to extract Li-6 – went out on the lithium market for batteries. No one was the wiser, until recently. Consequently, until recently, when a researcher bought the common electrolyte – lithium hydroxide, and did not specifically order and pay for natural isotopic balance – then there was little assurance that he was not getting a product which had already been depleted of the active isotope for LENR. The result is poor reproducibility – to the extent that the reaction is a lithium-6 fueled reaction. This is one explanation for the poor historic reproducibility, but there are others.
