Alan, This is interesting, and we should encourage Chuck to replicate his finding in the modern context - using Celani's experiment as a guide, and with datalogging. It is too simple not to pursue, but anyone trying it should be aware that graphite electrodes will produce excess heat on their own (chemically) by first reducing and then oxidizing the carbon if enough voltage is present. See:
http://bingofuel.online.fr/bingofuel/html/bfr10.htm But since Chuck says that the heating effect ONLY happened with the coin, and not with other electrodes and at low voltage - then that "lack of" is exactly the factor which makes this anecdote interesting. Using the nickel coin as anode for electrolysis would tend to oxidize the copper to copper oxide. This is essentially what Celani does, with heat treatment of Constantan. Coincidence? However, in electrolysis - copper oxidation would tend to electrically insulate the anode skin so that it would not pass as much current. The fact that the anode got very hot would at first seem to be a function of oxidation, except that again, this would not explain why his copper anode did not do the same. IOW- the mundane discovery of possible electrode redox "contributions" may not explain-away a potential thermal anomaly, assuming that one exists. Taken at face value, then - there could be a valid and very basic LENR anomaly here, but like so many anecdotes of this kind - which were not carefully documented at the time, it impossible for us to be sure in retrospect. If you are listening, Chuck - let me encourage you to try to recreate your experiment while documenting the power-in and temperature rise in the liquid, as you did before but using datalogging and better technique. Serendipity lives! You could have stumbled onto something. The borax could be a key in the context of the coin operating as a spillover catalyst, but with hydrogen as opposed to deuterium. The reason that I mention "without deuterium" is that boron-10 has always been assumed to be the active nuclear species in boron, due to its extraordinary neutron cross-section. There would be no neutron here, unless it is "virtual". Boron-11 has a tiny neutron cross-section; instead, it is neutron heavy, which could indicate some degree of Coulomb shielding for an approaching proton. However, that reaction would not account for the anode heat - as it would be deposited in the liquid if the boron was the locus. So the further advice for a better technique is to position one thermocouple on the anode, and another in the electrolyte, in order to determine exactly where the excess heat is occurring, if you can reproduce the effect. ... but cough, cough: "If I had a nickel for every time"... Jones -----Original Message----- From: Alan J Fletcher >"If I had a nickel for every time" ... >So ... with that caveat in mind, here's a cheap tip about what to do with >another cheap tip - all those Buffalo coins you've been saving for the meter >... IOW - there is a ready source of Romanowski alloy for Celani type >reactions in your pocket, or center console, as we speak. > >The U.S. nickel has been a cupronickel since 1913 and the composition is >rather similar to Constantan: 75% copper 25% nickel with trace amounts of >manganese. Romanowski would approve. Last year I had a private email from Charles (Chuck) Sites --- who has given me permission to post : I was reading Vortex-L and followed your link. I'm an old cold fusion guy but pretty much a lurker. I found your article on Rossi's E-Cat to be very interesting. Here is a story about CF, from 1984 with Pons and Flieshman announced their discovery, I was a young excited physics student, and immediately want to test the concept of CF. I didn't have palladium, nor deuterium. So I was looking for an alternative. I was thinking, Boron has a very large cross section (Q factor) and B11 could easily cold fuse given the right circumstances. So looking at what I had, what would be a good source of Ni? Not knowing it's metal makeup I choose an American nickel 5-cent piece. (75 percent copper, 25 percent Ni) This was the Anode. A source of Boron, would be Borax (Na2B4.10H2O). The cathode, I used graphite. This was hooked up to a 65 Watt 5 Volt supply from an IBM PC. To my surprise, the Nickel got extraordinarily hot. Too hot to touch, and I melted several plastic p tree dish before changing to jars. I was always able to bring pint of water to 80C after running for about 8 hours. Other metals used for the Anode, showed no indications of even being warm. (Steel, Aluminum, Copper, Zinc). So a US 5 cent piece gave great results. I even had a Geiger counter go off once, but it may have been a cosmic ray. Given that, I could never really understand how this Nickel got hot without radiation. I could never get a theory as to how it worked either, in spite of the fact that the experiment is very repeatable.
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