One interesting detail to add: It is somewhat outrageous to imagine that cyclical loading/unloading of hydrogen into a hydride storage metal such as palladium - and that alone - can cause temperature increase in both directions.
Mainstream physics, and most hands-on experimentation, teaches that there is symmetry and that conservation of energy prevails in such a common system - and that exotherm on loading is balanced by endotherm on unloading. But here is a understated paper found by Jack Cole, from a couple of years ago where George Miley, Xiaoling Yang and their postgrads at Illinois-Urbana manage to easily find and document a massive and glaring asymmetry with loading/unloading of deuterium in palladium. and hello. somehow the mainstream of physics manages to ignore the profound implications. Go figure. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/nets2012/pdf/3051.pdf ----------------------------------- This is the first part of a formative hypothesis for anomalous thermal gain, which explains terminology and acronyms but does not dig deeply into Holmlid's past work, nor into Mills, but instead presents a hybridized alternative to thermal gain. The gain is ostensibly non-nuclear so long as the laser is not used. The dynamical Casimir effect, DCE - is a proved relativistic effect of nanoscale geometry. It was first demonstrated in 2011 as a mechanism for anomalous energy gain involving photons being "created" (from virtual photons). Heretofore that type of gain has been too small to use in a practical device. Curiously, the DCE was first seen in Gothenburg, the home of Leif Holmlid, but the Professor has not yet seen the connection of DCE to hydrogen densification - nor to excess energy which will be presented here. This proposed route does not involve a vacuum or the laser per se, but is a new route using what is called PEC and would be powered by DCE. PEC is short for photo-electric-catalysis and is one of the hottest topics in chemistry these days, thanks to nano-geometry. PEC has been most often used to split water using solar radiation, but that is the tip of an iceberg of applications. PEC - at least as it will be used in this hypothesis, can be employed without vacuum condition - as the major pathway for hydrogen densification, leading to UDH or to an intermediate form of f/H (fractional hydrogen) operating in the gas phase (as opposed to plasma phase). PEC is boosted by the surface plasmon polariton, or else is intrinsic to SPP - but operates without the substantial ionization necessary for Mills version - which means low temperature operation. TiH2 is the nominal hydride of titanium when fully loaded, but the average amount of hydrogen per atom of Ti can vary substantially, causing major structural changes and stress in the packing arrangement of the crystal structure as the ratio changes. TiH(1.95) is a typical ratio as supplied commercially. Note that with palladium, the loading of hydrogen almost never gets to a full 1:1 but with Ti it is relatively easy to get to 2:1, but the important thing is that phase-change accompanies the various ratios, and this has profound thermal repercussions without invoking nuclear reactions. TiHx approaches stoichiometry as TiH2 and it wants to adopt a distorted body-centered tetragonal structure but there are at least two other phase structures "competing for space" along the way, and in a narrow range. At ratios of H:Ti which are between 1.5:1 and 1.9:1 this crystal can become unstable with respect to isothermal decomposition (dehydrogenation). The crystal can rapidly decompose even at room temperature until an approximate composition of TiH(1.74) is reached. Normally dehydrogenation is endothermic but some of the phases of titanium hydride are unique, and this points to eventual asymmetry. If there is an intrinsic asymmetry in titanium hydride, in sequential cycles of loading-unloading, and one unloading is isothermal but the loading is exothermic, then the stage is set. Gibbs "free energy" for the first time becomes really free. There can be a further boost in the exotherm of loading - if and when UDU expands on loading. It is worthwhile to take a moment to reintroduce "recalescence" as a known example of an surprisingly intense thermal anomaly of certain hydrides. Recalescence is related to rapid phase-change in a few alloys with soaring temperature gain. It was known to happen with Pd systems going back to the age of the Zeppelin, since one Pd-Ag alloy was used in hydrogen purification which can heat up drastically- igniting hydrogen. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recalescence> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recalescence Note that with recalescence there is the prospect of getting equivalent chemical energy of approximately an eV per atom - via hydride ratios, but with no redox reaction or other chemical change. As to what it takes to introduce asymmetry into the equation, so that that DCE can become active, that will be the focus of the next part of this hypothesis. Jones
