I am not a chemist, but have some familiarity with materials science. You
can take this with an appropriate grain-of-salt.
Zirconia would not, itself, be a catalyst. I specifically mentioned
zirconium - the metal. Nano-Zr could be a catalyst that would have a high
sintering temperature as a nano material because it melts at such a high
temperature (1855C) in bulk that its sintering and melting temperature at
nano scale would be high (sintering probably near 600-700C and melting at
900-1000C).
Most catalysts are not fully oxidized metal oxides - they are partially
reduced metal oxides. The best catalysts have nano-scale features and
partial oxidation. These catalysts are usually (but not always) formed as
fully oxidized metal features and subsequently processed to partly reduce
the metal oxides. Reduction of small particles actually sharpens their
features. The partial reduction sets up electrochemical behavior at the
catalyst site that makes it active. Partly oxidized metals will not
readily sinter - or at least not until much higher temperature.
In the case of zeolites, I understand that the zeolite material is not LENR
active itself. Zeolites have porous micro-scale gas permeable cells which
are used to "house" nano-scale activated materials inside the cell. The
zeolite cell prevents the nanoparticles housed inside adjacent cells from
sintering at temperatures above where the nano-particles themselves would
have sintered. Zeolite encapsulated LENR powder can be nano-scale and
still operate at a temperature that would otherwise sinter powders of that
scale. I don't think the zeolite itself otherwise contributes to the LENR.
I would be happy to have someone with greater chemical background
straighten me out if these understandings are wrong.
Bob Higgins
On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 10:22 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 6:54 PM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> Miley's zirconia reactor came to mind since Bob mentioned zirconia at the
>> same time I was writing a piece on perovskites.
>
>
> Does anyone know where George Miley's recent engine project is at? I
> noticed a patent in the article which I had not seen before [1]:
>
> Techniques to form dislocation cores along an interface of a multilayer
>> thin film structure are described. The loading and/or deloading of isotopes
>> of hydrogen are also described in association with core formation. The
>> described techniques can provide be applied to superconductive structure
>> formation, x-ray and charged particle generation, nuclear reaction
>> processes, and/or inertial confinement fusion targets.
>
>
> In the LENR device describe in the original article (which may or may not
> be related to this patent), the substrate ("fuel") is zirconium dioxide, a
> high-k dielectric. What I like about dielectrics is that I suspect they
> provide a good basis for arcing at the microscopic level. The same
> consideration applies to zeolites.
>
> Eric
>
>
> [1]
> http://www.google.com/patents/US8227020?dq=%22Low+Energy+Nuclear+Reaction%22&ei=qEROUKH4JsjSrQHKmIGoBw#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
>
