At 01:54 PM 5/27/2011, Alan J Fletcher wrote:
Tip to : Peter Ekström: "Kall fusion åter i hetluften"
<http://energycatalyzer.blogspot.com/2011/05/peter-ekstrom-kall-fusion-ater-i.html>
Points to
http://www.fysikersamfundet.se/Fysikaktuellt/2011_2.pdf (in Swedish).
(Too large to translate, says google)
Google translation, a bit edited by me, not
knowing any Swedish but simply making some
guesses for readibility. To see the original
Google translation, just paste pieces of the
orignal PDF -- not the whole PDF! -- into
Google's translation box. I found that Google
could handle the whole article, in fact, but I
had to add in the introductory paragraph, it didn't select with the rest.
Swedish to English translation
Cold fusion again under fire
In recent months,
reporting on the Italian
"energy catalyst" has been
Black [Sw. diger, "thin" or "not very visible"?]. The secret apparatus
delivers a net power
over ten kilowatts. Inventor
Andrea Rossi argues that it is
based on fusion of nickel
and hydrogen.
cold fusion came in 1989 when
chemists, Martin Fleischmann and
Stanley Pons at a big press conference held by
the University of Utah described a
a device that would, in principle, produce infinite
very cheap energy,using electrolysed
heavy water with palladium electrodes.
The idea was that deuterium would gather
in palladium and the matrix would compress
deuterium nuclei so they could merge
(fuse). The final product is helium
much stronger bound than deuterium, so the
reaction would release energy.
Fleischmann and Pons, however, managed to
Never show up a functioning unit,
so the research was stopped and the two chemists
left Utah rather disgraced.
Cold fusion is similar to the reactions to
In normal fusion (tokamak or laser),
but the constituent particles have a kinetic
energy corresponding to room temperature
instead of the usual hundreds
keV (equivalent to millions of degrees).
The problem with the physical understanding of cold
Fusion is that all nuclei have a positive
charge that creates a barrier that
must be overcome or tunneled through
for particles to be merged. To have sufficient probability of tunneling
through the barrier is required an energy of
hundreds of keV. In order to explain cold fusion
one must find a way around these
problems.
The U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) made a very comprehensive
investigation of cold fusion, and
concluded that nothing indicated that the process
worked. DOE has given, since then, no appropriation
for research on cold fusion. This is the
case in many countries, including the Research Council
in Sweden even if they do not have
a clearly stated policy. See link 1 for more
about this first attempt at cold fusion.
Despite the failure of the first
experiment, continued research continued on a limited
level in several places. Especially, Japan
has focused a lot on cold fusion
or "low-energy nuclear reactions" which
we [?] prefer to call it because the concept
cold fusion has a questionable reputation.
There are several examples of energy inventions
used to attract investors.
The best known is probably Randell
Mills and Blacklight Power, see link 2. Mills
invention is based on a completely new physics.
He produced a book of over a thousand pages:
The Grand Unified Theory of Classical
Quantum Mechanics. There he tries to
show that the traditional quantum mechanics
is completely wrong.
One result of the new theory is that it
traditional ground state of hydrogen is not
the lowest state. There is therefore a
lower state can be achieved by using
special catalysts. Hydrogen in this
new ground state is called hydrino, and
one can extract energy by
making hydrinos. Blacklight Power has
until 2009, received $ 60,000,000
in venture capital without having been able to show
a functioning hydrino set! Most
Physicists now believe that Mills ideas are nonsense.
There is still
much research on cold fusion or
low energy nuclear reactions. Research
typically occurs in small teams
without direct public funding.
[researchers]
also organize regular conferences,
publishe articles in specialized journals
and there are many books on the subject. So,
despite meager useful results it cannot be said
that cold fusion is dead.
in mid-January this year the Italian
engineer Andrea Rossi invited [people to] a
demonstration of an invention he
called energy catalyst, or E-Cat. This
is a compact device that, if one
can rely on the demonstration, develops a
net power of more than ten kilowatts.
On March 29, 2011, there was a demonstration
with a smaller E-Cat. At this
time, two Swedish physicists, Hanno
Essén and Sven Kullander, independent
observers [were present, shown]
an E-Cat containing a small reaction chamber
with nickel powder and a secret
catalyst.
To start the appliance,
they let hydrogen at quite high
pressure. The reaction chamber is [first] heated
up with a current in a resistor. This
current must flow even when the unit is
running and producing energy.
However, the hydrogen is sufficient
for a very long time.
Rossi says the device is based on
fusion reaction between hydrogen and nickel. This is
energetically reasonable, clearly, because
capture of a proton in the nickel would
releasing more than 8 MeV, which is the typical
binding energy per nucleon about
mass 60.
However, there are a number of nuclear physics
problems with Rossi's statement, the
last two because measurements show that no
gamma rays exit from the apparatus,
either during operation or when
disassembled afterwards:
How do the protons through the repulsive
Coulomb barrier?
How will the product (a copper isotope)
release its excitation energy
without sending out gamma rays?
Several of the copper isotopes that should
formed are radioactive and should send
the gamma rays and annihilation radiation
(511 keV from positron annihilation).
It may be that there are other
explanatory models, but the claimed
effect can only be explained by nuclear reactions,
so it is difficult to explain away
all nuclear physics problems.
This was, moreover,
an important argument even against
Fleischmann and Pons cold fusion:
overcoming the barrier and the absence of
detectable radiation.
Whether we nuclear physicists can
explain what is happening or not, the
fundamental question: what is producing E-Cat
energy? The problem here is that Rossi for patent reasons
not want to show off how the apparatus
is [internally) constructed.
The power output is
calculated as the difference between the power out
(Heating and evaporation of cooling water)
and the input electrical power. As for
power balance, there are a few problems:
Can you trust the instruments
showing current and voltage into the ECAT
really shows the correct values so
that the input power is less than 400 W?
They measures the flow of cooling water in;
but they do not measure the amount of water vapor
out. If not all the water exits from the apparatus as water vapor
the calculation of the effect of [boiling will be]
completely wrong because the majority
of energy involved is the heat of vaporization.
Essence and Kullander's review of
E-Cat brought not really anything new:
one must still rely that Rossi
did not fiddle with the instruments, nor the
cooling water.
In contrast, Kullander initiated
a very interesting analysis of the
nickel powder used in the E-Cat.
Kullander has let colleagues at Uppsala
University do isotopic analysis of two samples
of "fuel," an unused sample and one that
ran for a few months in the E-Cat.
It turns out that the unused sample only
contains nickel. The used
sample contains in addition to nickel also
copper (ten percent) and iron (eleven percent).
The isotope ratios of copper
are those of the natural
copper, whereas with copper produced
by fusion this would be an
unlikely coincidence. The isotopic composition
for nickel in the used sample
under analysis was the
same as natural.
This is
at least curious, as transmutation
should increase (in production)
or reduce the content of the various
isotopes. Nickel-59, which is not present
naturally, should, for example, be produced
and thus be detected. The detection
of iron in the used sample is
even stranger: there is no reaction
with positive Q-value, i.e. positive
developed energy, which leads from the nickel
to iron. It is possible that iron is the secret
catalyst. Whether or not other elements were sought
is not clear from the very summary
accounting for isotopic analysis.
e-cat acts would completely change
world's energy supply. Rossi
says he will deliver a facility
on a megawatt to a Greek company in
October 2011. Credibility problem
here is that the company partly owned by Rossi and
seems to be a front that consists of only one
website.
There are too many uncertainties
with the E-Cat to
to believe that this is something more than a
scam, probably ultimately intended to get
into venture capital. This is now pretty
common ploy, not only in the energy sector
but subjects in areas such as IT and
Nano.
E-Cat has been described in several articles in
New Technology (link 3). These have generated
a very lively discussion in the newspaper
forums. See link 4 and 5 for more details
about E-Cat.
Peter Ekstrom
dept. of Nuclear Physics, Lund University
National Centre for Physics
Links
1st http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
2nd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklight_Power
3rd http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/
energi/article3144772.ece
4th http://fragelada.fysik.org/index.asp?id=17662
5th http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer
Cold fusion again under fire
