Yes – I agree with you both that it would take considerable extra effort to plate lithium and that it would not be “co-deposition” if it had to be done in a separate step.
I have seen an automatic plating jig where a workpiece was repeatedly moved around in a circular rotation to different tanks containing different electrolytes- and washed in between so that many thin layer could be built up over time. That would require much more engineering than co-deposition. Many of these things would probably have been tried 20 years ago if the funds had been available. Shame on that sad cadre of luddites that effectively quashed this technology back then - through starvation of funding. From: Bob Higgins Ed Storms once told me that in Pd-D systems using an LiOD salt for the electrolyte, the Li did not deposit at all on the Pd - implying that it remained completely in the electrolyte. I am not sure in co-dep if any Li would end up being trapped in the plated layers. As I mentioned before, Piantelli uses the Li as a nearby nuclear reactant for the high energy protons produced in the Ni-H reaction to amplify the excess heat. Perhaps there are some high energy protons [or other particles] produced in Pd-D reaction at the surface that can react with the Li in the electrolyte in contact with the Pd cathode, amplifying the overall excess heat. I agree that the presence of Li in systems producing excess heat is a noticeable coincidence. How it is implicated at a Pd cathode is a mystery. Bob Higgins On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 3:56 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: In reply to Jones Beene's message of Sun, 12 Apr 2015 18:20:39 -0700: Hi, [snip] >The maddening realization for all of us could be that lithium would have >plated out on the cathode as well – but this was never mentioned or considered. Perhaps to some extent, however there is a 3 eV difference in the first ionization energy of Pd and Li, with Pd much "hungrier" for electrons than Li, so when it comes to plating, Pd would be strongly favoured. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
