2010/3/26 Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com>: > Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > >> Are there any published works showing nuclear phenomena such as excess >> heat, correlated with deuterium percentage? I'm starting with 99.9% D2O >> (atom percent D). What would be the difference I should expect with 98% >> D2O, which is substantially cheaper? I've seen rumors that ordinary water >> "poisons" the reaction. If so, at what level? > > With solid Pd in the conventional FP configuration, even a little light > water poisons the reaction. I think even 1 or 2% but I do not recall. Storms > says that with electrolysis the Pd preferentially absorbs the H atoms so the > concentration of H in the lattice is soon higher than in the starting > liquid.
Interesting. If this is true, it must be a purely electrochemical effect, probably related to the lower thermoneutral potential (1.48V for H2O vs 1.54V for D2O) as D is, unintuitively, both more soluble and more diffusive than H in Pd. Michel > Heavy water is hygroscopic. (Try saying that word three times in a row!) > Meaning it readily absorbs ordinary water from the air. You might say it > wants to get back to its natural ratio of 1:6,700 atoms. Anyway, people > sometimes leave bottles of heavy water open to the air during experiments, > and this ruins them by reducing purity. To prevent this with open-cell > experiments, Bockris recommended putting the heavy water reservoir in a > plastic IV bag with an IV tube leading down to the cell, with one of those > itty-bitty stopcocks at the top of the cell. You exclude air the whole way. > You dump and throw away the first small amount of little heavy water that > comes through the empty tube. Bockris also thought that CO2 poisons the > reaction. Or any kind of carbon. > > Storms also used an IV bag in some tritium studies, I assume for the same > reason: > > http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEastudyofel.pdf > > Those bags are clean and airtight and made to high standards, since air or > contamination might harm the patient. > > - Jed > >
