Sorry for the characterization of Claytor's work as electrochemical - it was gas phase plasma with Pd. While it is a gas phase plasma reaction, the reaction appears to be occurring at the metal surface.
I have heard that he is able to tune the reaction toward tritium production or heat. I am not supplying an explanation of how I think this works. I believe he is working with highly pure deuterium gas. If the process was neutron capture, where are you proposing that the neutrons are coming from? If not coming from some kind of free neutron, and is instead coming from another nucleus, this is a nuclear process. I have a hard time believing this can occur without overcoming the Coulomb barrier such that either the proton or the neutron in a deuterium is in contact with the neutron of the donor nucleus. Once they are in contact, and the strong force is in play with both nuclei, the neutron would statistically be transferred in some cases, but doing this would still require overcoming the Coloumb barrier at low temperature. On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Bob Higgins <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Where would the 3He be coming from? 3He is only 7e-12 in the atmosphere. >> > > It might be a daughter of another reaction. Because the tritium is in > small (but detectable) amounts, not commensurate with heat (I've even heard > that it is not correlated with heat, but am less sure about this), there's > more room for explanations that do not quite fit within the constraints of > the primary heat-generating process. > > Another possibility is that tritium arises from neutron capture with > deuterium. Again, because there's so little tritium in general, you > wouldn't need too many neutrons. > > I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation in which a charged particle > like a proton would lead to tritium, since there's an overabundance of > neutrons, unless it's through spallation or ejection of some kind. What do > you propose in this connection that would normally be prevented by the > Coulomb barrier but in this case is not? > > Eric > >
