Much has been said about Type A palladium and its special reactivity
with hydrogen, some of which is due to the alloy being one fourth
silver. Since pure palladium doesn't work as well, it might be said that
most of the reactivity seen in cold fusion has been due to the special
properties of the alloy, which is a 3:1 ratio (75% Pd 25% Ag).
In many ways, nickel can be considered to be a surrogate of palladium.
Nickel resides directly under Pd in the Periodic table, and has an
identical valence electron structure. This leads one to wonder about an
alloy of nickel and silver, based on transposing the results of cold
fusion to protium, instead of deuterium.
Unfortunately, in the historical context - and going back 300 years in
metallurgy, the term "nickel silver" refers to a well known alloy of
copper, nickel and zinc which contains zero silver. Essentially, nickel
silver is a brass alloy that looks like much like the more expensive
silver and is much stronger and more durable - making it a great
substitute for most common uses.
This old alloy was created to serve exactly the same purpose as silver
for attractive shinny flatware but not as prohibitively expensive -
about 20 times less expensive per unit of weight than silver. This
semantic confusion did not lead to neglect of finding a real alloy of
nickel and silver since these two metals are indeed mutually insoluble.
They do not mix. That kind of insolubility is somewhat unusual in itself
for metals so similar - but basically the two metals do NOT alloy by
melting together as is commonly done.
However, this proposed LENR alloy which I will call "Type A Nickel" in
the 3:1 ratio has been studied in another context - and found to have
exceptional properties for water splitting. To accomplish this they had
to go to extraordinary lengths to achieve an alloy. There are very few
papers on this because of the lack of a commercial alloy which can be
purchased.
BUT ... there is a strong suspicion that "Type A Nickel" could be
special for replacing pure nickel in LENR. This assumes that silver is
reactive in its own right for a nuclear reaction, such as in the
protonation reaction Robin mentioned in another thread.
BTW - In the paper "Nickel–silver alloy electrocatalysts for hydrogen
evolution and oxidation in an alkaline electrolyte" Tang and others
showed that the NiAg alloy is an excellent catalyst for the hydrogen
evolution reaction. Based on the free energy of adsorbed hydrogen,
theory predicts that alloys of nickel and silver are very active for
these type of hydride reactions and they are. The alloy is just hard to
make or else you would have heard about it before now.
Basically - the Type A Nickel could work better for NiH reactions than
nickel, since it is twice as reactive for water splitting (as defined in
their test) which needs to be proven out. This testing has been
neglected in the past - due to the lack of electrodes... for which there
is a work-around. That is what I propose to add: an easy work around at
least for some experiments.
My suggestion to anyone contemplating a gas phase reaction is to try
mixing nickel-black and silver-black in a high speed ball mill, in a
ratio of 3:1 --- where mechanical alloying is expected. Then, use this
composite powder instead of nickel. Mechanical alloying is special in
its own way and could add something akin to surface treatment.
Electrolysis reactions would be more difficult to accomplish with powder
- and since this proposed work-around for silver/nickel insolubility
involves metal powders and mechanical alloying a different geometry
would be needed for the cell. However, powder has been used for
electrolysis electrodes before (as a colloid) - and it could be worth
the effort.
- [Vo]:"Type A nickel" ? Jones Beene
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