Bob Higgins <rj.bob.higg...@gmail.com> wrote: I don't know why you think it is impossible. >
I think so because every textbook and every expert says it is impossible, and because I am familiar with the upper limits of chemical fuel energy density. I have read a lot about both conventional and exotic chemical fuel. > Energy storage in ions may be impractical for any significant energy > storage, but the ionization energy is exactly as he describes. Even though > it was described as energy/mole, it is no different than saying 13.6 > eV/atom. > I say it is impossible because there is no chemical fuel that even gets close to 13.6 eV, and certainly nothing with hydrogen. By weight, H2 + O2 is the best chemical fuel there is, or ever will be, and it produces only ~2 eV per atom. Fuels made from carbon do better per atom but are not as good per gram. Hydrocarbons make the best liquid fuel for practical purposes, when you take into account volume, weight, room temperature versus cryogenic storage and so on. Cryogenic liquid hydrogen is difficult to contain and difficult to deal with, even for NASA. An ionized atom immediately discharges and loses the energy, as does an atom heated to a high temperature. It does not store the energy. No macroscopic calorimetry could measure this effect. It would see the energy go in and come out instantaneously. There would be a balance, with no net gain. > No one ever said a mole would or could be ionized in such a small > apparatus. However, it is just another item in the energy balance. > If it cannot be ionized in this apparatus then it is NOT just another item in the energy balance! It cannot be part of the balance, in that case. Furthermore, as I said, even if you can ionize the hydrogen, the energy balance would be zero as measured Piantell's calorimeter. Energy in = energy out. It is simply not possible to measure the effects Piantelli describes, with the instrument he shows in his papers, or the instruments other cold fusion researchers use. If he thinks such things as ionization might register with his calorimeter, and that such effects have to be ruled out before we can be sure this is not a chemical effect, then he does not know what he is doing. Perhaps there are instruments that can measure nanosecond storage of energy in a single molecule, and they could detect 13.6 eV per atom ionization. I would not know about that. That is nothing like the ordinary mascroscopic calorimeters that Piantelli uses. Trying to detect such effects with his instruments would be like trying to see the atoms on the surface of a metal with a magnifying glass instead of an STM. - Jed
