There are many things I find wrong with the theory expounded by this paper and the paper itself is poor. Here are some other complaints that you Vorts may or may not have already noted (not in any particular order). [I would be happy to hear how I might have gotten these wrong.]
- The first complaint is with the Alfven model they used. We all know that physics is the attachment of APPROXIMATE mathematical models to natural physical processes to help understand what is happening and what opportunities might exist to exploit natural behaviors. Physics models are ALWAYS incomplete. Also, there are NO SINGULARITIES in nature. The fact that the authors present an Alfven model that shows a singularity, without discussing the fact that there is no real singularity is evidence that the model is poor. In fact, a resonance may occur there, but its residue will be finite due to other couplings that are not modeled. The finite residue means finite Q of the resonance. With the poor model they have, they have no idea of the Q of the resonance. Also, nature inconveniently creates high Q along with an inability to closely couple to the resonance (I could explain, but it is a long explanation), which is why the Q is high in the first place. - The process described doesn't seem to imply any unique coupling between the deuterium and the Ni or the Li and the Ni so as to enable the spallation of a neutron. It appears that you could create a container of hot deuterium and you would get this spallation. What are the unique conditions that allow this to happen only in very rare occasions? This looks like something that might begin to happen before hot fusion in deuterium. If it happens, it is not LENR. - The authors take a sudden miraculous leap in the paper. They describe the ponderomotive forces and then suddenly introduce the spallation neutrons as "thermal neutrons". Thermal neutrons have a narrow range of kinetic energy around 0.025 eV. How can a spallation process, by whatever means, break MeV level nuclear bonds and result in neutrons broken free that have 10 million times less energy? I didn't read anywhere in the paper a justification for this magic form of spallation. Even the description of the ponderomotive forces used in the spallation suggests nothing but brute force. If I understand it (and I am not a theoretical nuclear phycist), there should be MeV neutrons from the spallation. These MeV neutrons would pass readily through the apparatus and would be detected by conventional moderated neutron detectors that have been used in evaluation of LENR radiations - AND - these neutrons are NOT seen in amounts commensurate with the excess heat. - The authors talk about application of 10's of "watts" to "kw" of electromagnetic energy to the ponderomotive excitation. What "watts" are they referring to? To really make a difference, it would have to be a high power single spectral line transmitter at the Alfven resonance, suggested to be in the THz range. Such transmitters do NOT exist today. Further, they mention the use of square wave drive (at 50Hz) for a hotCat heater as having produced fields whose harmonics could make a difference. I can tell you, even a million watt 50Hz drive for the heater will produce no measurable energy at THz in its harmonics. This is pure fantasy. So where were they suggesting that drive for the Alfven wave would come? It could come from the portion of the heated blackbody spectrum of the heated reactor materials - the portion of the spectrum that happens to overlap the Alfven resonance frequency. However, the energy in the Alfven resonance ovelap will be small - AND - the higher the Q of the Alfven resonance, the narrower the portion of the blackbody band that will apply to excitation. They talked about kilowatts of drive, but this blackbody radiation is only going to supply microwatts by comparison. Also, if the discussion is about the blackbody spectrum drive of the Aflven resonance by simple heating as was done in the hotCat, then you need to be talking about temperature rather than watts. - As has been mentioned, if the result were abundant thermal neutrons, then these would get into everything. The whole of the reactor apparatus would be activated, giving off many different gammas. Many of the isomers may decay via beta emission and the high velocity beta particle would create substantial Bremsstrahlung radiation when these are thermalized in the reactor materials - which also is not detected. - It is interesting how well their simulations of the hotCat agree with the Lugano results that we have long analyzed to be flawed - this is pretty cheesy. The actual Lugano reactor temperatures were 200˚C less than reported and COP's probably half of what was reported. Just as bad is that the theory seems to be designed to support the flawed implication that the isotopic differences between [what the Lugano experimenters measured as "fuel" powder that Rossi put in] and the [isotopic composition of the ash particles that were shaken out] are significant. We have pointed out that there was no reported inspection of the reactor to indicate that it was empty of materials prior to Rossi adding his "fuel" powder (I emailed Bo Hoistad and he replied that he would not answer). It could have been that Rossi had fueled this reactor before and substantial ashes of the prior test were still present in the reactor when he refreshed the charge by adding a small amount of powder. OR, the reactor could have been pre-loaded with 62Ni in some form. The powder he did add contained particles that were from prior thermo-chemical processing in LiAlH4, either in a crucible or in a reactor. Because we don't really know all of what went into the reactor before the reaction, it is ludicrous to give credibility to any differential isotopic analysis between the powder Rossi added as fuel and the ash sample. In fact, from follow-on Parkhomov and Parkhomov-like reactions, no Ni isotopic shift is seen. The shift in 6Li/7Li in these other experiments is exactly contradictory. So, there is no usable isotopic shift support for this theory in the greater community data sets. - Mention was made of Li plasma that might occur if Li was in vapor form at a temperature of over 1340˚C. First, we know from follow-up analysis that the Lugano hotCat temperatures probably never exceeded 1100˚C on the outside. Plasma temperatures are MUCH hotter than the vapor temperature of Li anyway. The Li was found to be in a porous assemblage of sintered Ni, and any plasma would have been highly coupled to the Ni, likely melting the Ni if a plasma was achieved on any significant scale. Personally, I would rate this theory as very low on my scale of possible explanations of LENR. Bob Higgins On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 10:54 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > I wrote: > > Only after this first step is the energy debt paid back in a second step >> involving the exothermic neutron capture reaction (which would be >> accompanied by deexcitation gammas). >> > > Note that there's two sources of gammas. There's the gamma that is > released during the reaction (Robin's point) and the gammas that follow > afterwards (the deexcitation gammas). > > n + 59Ni => gamma + 60Ni + 11388 keV > n + 61Ni => gamma + 62Ni + 10596 keV > n + 58Ni => gamma + 59Ni + 8999 keV > n + 60Ni => gamma + 61Ni + 7820 keV > n + 62Ni => gamma + 63Ni + 6838 keV > n + 64Ni => gamma + 65Ni + 6098 keV > > Those gammas will carry nearly the full energy and there will be very > little recoil in the nickel nucleus. So that's a strong flux of ~ 10 MeV > gammas. > > Eric > >
