Re: [Vo]:Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium
One other post-script. Some people think that Fleischmann is misinformed about the J-M material, and it could not be their standard filter palladium, because that has too much silver in it to work well. Silver does prevent loading, but on the other hand, the people at BARC did report a dramatic result with the palladium filter. Anyway, I am not going to filter out comments by Martin Fleischmann! - Jed
[Vo]:Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium
Terry Blanton wrote: Has there been any progress on the Matthey Pd? As far as I know they stopped working on it after the IMRA project in France collapsed. The collapse was mainly caused by a fight over who would control the intellectual property rights to the palladium. I have no idea what Johnson Matthey (hereinafter J-M) learned from the collaboration or where the information ended up. Are they still keeping it secret? Probably. No idea, really. Why would not Fleischmann want to reveal the secret assuming he knows it. Fleischmann revealed all he knew to anyone who asked, on many occasions. This is a perennial subject, and attached below is my stock response. Briefly, what he called Type A is the palladium J-M developed in the 1930s for their palladium filters. As he said to me: Look at the data from Miles. What does it tell you? When Uncle Martin gives you palladium, it works. When you get the palladium from somewhere else, it doesn't work! Why don't people pay attention to that?!? He was referring to Table 10 in this document, which I have often referenced, and which -- as Martin says -- no one seems to pay any attention to: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf The material labeled JM (F/P) Pd is from Uncle Martin, and I think the JM Pd is the same material. Please note: anything labeled JM works better than other types, and the JM (F/P) Pd works spectacularly well. Also note that when the people at BARC tried using the filter palladium in situ (in a filter) it worked like nobody's business. As I recall the thing partly melted. There is no mystery to why this works well, or why Fleischmann selected it. It works because it has structural integrity and it survives high loading without cracking or distorting. As you will see in countless references this is essential to producing the cold fusion effect. Fleischmann selected it because when he began this research he knew that it was essential that the palladium load to high levels, so he called up J-M and asked: What kind of palladium would you recommend for very high loading? And they told him. End of story. He is sensible guy who, as he told me, is lazy at heart and likes to do things the easy way. When someone knows, why not ask? As I said, attached is a message I wrote about this in 2000, which I have sent to anyone who enquires about this subject. - Jed - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Type A palladium saga For many years Martin Fleischmann has been recommending a particular type of palladium made by Johnson Matthey for cold fusion experiments. He has been saying this to anyone who will listen, but very few people do. He handed out several of these ideal cathodes to experienced researchers, and as far as he knows in every case the samples produced excess heat. The material was designated Type A palladium by Fleischmann and Pons. It was developed decades ago for use in hydrogen diffusion tubes: filters that allow hydrogen to pass while holding back other gasses. This alloy was designed to have great structural integrity under high loading. It lasts for years, withstanding cracking and deformation that would quickly destroy other alloys and allow other gasses to seep through the filters. This robustness happens to be the quality we need for cold fusion. The main reason cold fusion is difficult to reproduce is because when bulk palladium loads with deuterium, it cracks, bends, distorts and it will not load above a certain level, usually ~60%, I think. Below 85 to 90% loading bulk palladium never produces excess heat. A sample of palladium chosen at random from most suppliers will *never* reach this level of loading. You could perform thousands of tests for cold fusion with ordinary palladium, with perfect confidence that you will never see measurable excess heat. That is essentially what the NHE did: they performed the wrong experiment hundreds of times in succession, using materials which everyone knows cannot work. This is like trying to make a 27 story building out of doughnuts. It seems likely to me that most of the reproducibility problems with bulk palladium CF would have been solved years ago if people had only listened to Martin Fleischmann's advice. Alas, in my experience, people seldom listen to advice or follow directions. Fleischmann sometimes compounds the problem by speaking in a cryptic, convoluted style and by using complex mathematical equations that few other people can understand. He sometimes takes a long time to respond to inquiries; he answered one of my questions two years after I asked. However, in this case he has made himself quite clear on many occasions. For example, he wrote: . . . We note that whereas blank experiments are always entirely normal (e.g. See Figs 1 5) it is frequently impossible to find any measurement cycle for the Pd D2O system which shows such normal behaviour. Of course, in the absence of
Re: [Vo]:Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium
On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Terry Blanton wrote: Has there been any progress on the Matthey Pd? As far as I know they stopped working on it after the IMRA project in France collapsed. Considering Abd's goals, this gives us a lot to think about. Ammonia vs Argon for crystallization could very well be the key. It's kind of like a spacer used in the construction of the structure. It likely results in different containment figures for the interstitial deuterium. Reading the testimony before Congress in 1989 combined with this information could be quite telling. I think this is a geometry problem. Thanks, Jed. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium
Pd is FCC at 389 pm. Pd atom radius is 137 pm (interesting number :-). This leaves 115 pm which allows the 102 pm NH3 molecule ideal for structuring but is challenging for the 188 pm Ar. I'm gonna sleep on this. BTW, what is the Van der Waals radius of deuterium? (too lazy to look it up now.) Terry On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 6:43 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Terry Blanton wrote: Has there been any progress on the Matthey Pd? As far as I know they stopped working on it after the IMRA project in France collapsed. Considering Abd's goals, this gives us a lot to think about. Ammonia vs Argon for crystallization could very well be the key. It's kind of like a spacer used in the construction of the structure. It likely results in different containment figures for the interstitial deuterium. Reading the testimony before Congress in 1989 combined with this information could be quite telling. I think this is a geometry problem. Thanks, Jed. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium
I would bet, if you could grow single crystal Pd ( in a NH3 atmosphere), it would load quickly. And if you modulate it with a 26 Mhz signal (lambda = unit cell length), you could have controlled CF. Or not. Terry On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: Pd is FCC at 389 pm. Pd atom radius is 137 pm (interesting number :-). This leaves 115 pm which allows the 102 pm NH3 molecule ideal for structuring but is challenging for the 188 pm Ar. I'm gonna sleep on this. BTW, what is the Van der Waals radius of deuterium? (too lazy to look it up now.) Terry On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 6:43 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Terry Blanton wrote: Has there been any progress on the Matthey Pd? As far as I know they stopped working on it after the IMRA project in France collapsed. Considering Abd's goals, this gives us a lot to think about. Ammonia vs Argon for crystallization could very well be the key. It's kind of like a spacer used in the construction of the structure. It likely results in different containment figures for the interstitial deuterium. Reading the testimony before Congress in 1989 combined with this information could be quite telling. I think this is a geometry problem. Thanks, Jed. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Johnson-Matthey Type A palladium
Let me add a post-script. Since 2000, the ENEA researchers have put a lot of effort into understanding and fabricating palladium. They have done a good job. I have not made a rigorous comparison, but I think their material now rivals the best J-M material from the IMRA program. It puts out about as much energy per gram, and it works even more reliably and consistently. In most tests I have heard about it is used with superwave stimulation, which is probably contributing to the enhanced performance. It is hard to know how much. The ENEA samples are much smaller than the IMRA cathodes, so you have to adjust to make the comparison. You might say the ENEA has recapitulated whatever it was the J-M did to make the palladium work well. Unlike J-M however, they are a national laboratory, so their work is public. They discuss it in detail at conferences, and publish papers. Brian Scanlan gripes that their material still constitutes a secret sauce available only to a handful of other labs such as SRI, rather than something available to anyone. That's true but I still think it is an improvement over the corporate secrecy of the IMRA program. I have no objection to corporate secrecy. A corporation must develop a thing like this in secret. However, this is counterproductive in the early stages of fundamental research, which is why we need national laboratories and universities. Both have a vital role to play, but I think at this stage in cold fusion, the open source national laboratory probably has more to contribute. - Jed
