The results from Lugano are not useful in reverse engineering the LENR reaction at the initial rudimentary stage of analysis that MFMP is now. On the contrary, those Lugano results have led Rossi to a very advanced understanding of the LENR reaction. Rossi said that the Lugano results inspired him to create the design of the E Cat X. IMHO, that XCat insight goes beyond the NI62 question and more into the LENR reaction in the vapor stage.
The purpose of fuel preprocessing is to make the nickel particles porous through sintering and able to produce hydrogen nanocrystals. In Lugano, the nickel melted and lost the ability to produce the LENR active effect using it porosity. The melting of nickel during the Lugano test took away nickel's role in the LENR reaction. The melted nickel became passive and its ability to flow in the liquid state allowed the mixing of the nickel to completely transmute into the Ni62 isotope. After the nickel converted to Ni62 as a side reaction off the main LENR reaction, the Ni62 stopped participating in the LENR reaction as a dead end. It is a dead end because no Ni64 was found. The active LENR agents in Lugano were in place after nickel melted. In other words, nickel played a role in initiating the LENR reaction but after a time became inactive when it melted. The core of the Lugano reactor has all the metallized hydrogen required to keep the LENR reaction going. Rossi used this observation to setup the XCat to operate at a temperature greater than the melting point of nickel(over 1500C). The active agent in the LENR reaction at those high temperatures is metalized hydrogen. Once that form of hydrogen forms, it takes over the LENR reaction from the melted nickel particles. Think of the LENR reaction like a multistage rocket where each stage is discarded after its function has completed. Rossi has gone beyond Piantelli on the design of the XCat. It is bad analysis technique and therefore confusing to mix the XCat design with Piantilli design thinking. ​When Bob G says heavy, he means the most nuclear binding energy per nucleon. Ni62 has the most nuclear binding energy per nucleon of any element, In that sense, Ni62 is the heaviest element. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_binding_energy. It could be that this nuclear binding energy is the quantity that must come into a state of equilibrium by way of the LENR reaction among all the elements that the LENR reaction effects as covered by the nuclear condensate. If a Bose condensate is formed among all the nuclear components inside the reactor, then all those components may want to become energetically equal through a multi-particle entanglement process in terms of nuclear binding energy. As nuclear energy is removed from the condensate through the action of black thermal radiation from the metalized hydrogen, total binding energy in the condensate goes up. Small nuclei that are larger than hydrogen can combine into bigger ones and release energy. By releasing energy, they increase their nuclear binding energy. But in combining such nuclei, the amount of energy released is much smaller compared to hydrogen fusion. The reason is that while the overall process releases energy from letting the nuclear attraction do its work, bose condensation energy must rebalance nuclear forces between all the elements in the process of condensation. Nuclear energy is removed from the nickel nucleus until the nuclear binding energy is maximized. The nuclear energy is removed from all the elements under the influence of the bose condensate and moved to the metalized hydrogen EMF surface field which continually leaks energy away as hawking radiation in the thermal spectrum. The most enhancement of the LENR reaction might be to use pure Ni58 which has the most energy to give over to the LENR process before the Ni62 ash product is reached. It might also be that when nickel is a liquid, its flow allows more nickel to be converted to Ni62 than if it were a solid.
