At 09:21 PM 8/20/2012, Kelley Trezise wrote:
I have suggested that palladium is a red herring. If the phenomena
is a surface effect then the outer surface of the palladium or
material X will have the greatest number of defects or
surface-effect areas and it has been found that roughening the
surface will increase the effect. So too, I speculate will loading a
bulk sample of palladium to the point that you induce fatigue cracks
which will appear first on the surface and propogate inward as the
internal pressure within the sample builds up due to the loading
with hydrogen. You could get the same effect by first stressing a
sample of palladium with proteum to the point that it would have
shown the heat effect had it been loaded with deuterium then
unloading the proteum and reloading it with deuterium. If the
phenomena is a surface effect it should show up almost immediately
just as in the case with the codeposited palladium and deuterium.
The heat phemonema has show up in so many different material
combinations and conditions that there is some other governing
parameter other than palladium material. Granted palladium being
open to hydrogen would allow it to migrate into the intersticies a
little faster but just breaking up the material into a powder could
produce the necessary surface defects and porosity needed to allow
the heat effect to show up.
Not bad.
Not quite as easy as stated. Hydrogen poisons the reaction with
deuterium, so you'd have to get rid of the hydrogen, it won't
spontaneously unload, at least not quickly. You'd need to heat it, probably.
When the palladium is heated, or even sitting at room temperature,
the cracks can heal, if I'm correct.
Predicting when the heat effect will show is also difficult.
Basically, we don't know. Methods are known of preparing palladium
that will *usually* produce XP, after a variable delay.
Basically, the effect may be very sensitive to the population of
cracks of a precise size.
Storms thinks that the effect will appear if the cracks are the right
size, regardless of the material. I'm rather skeptical of that, but
it easily could be *partially* true.
Nanopowder and gas-loading are common approaches. Probably even
greater success has been seen with matrices including palladium in a
structure with other materials.
I've suggested working on controlling crack size, there are a number
of possible approaches. Controlled deformation of material made
brittle is one approach that could produce many controlled cracks
distributed around a specific width.
