Several replications of the Pd-Ni experiment are underway, but they have not been going well. Zhang reported small excess heat. It went away, came back, and now it has gone again. Others say it is not working. I asked Mizuno to comment on what the problems may be. Here is a summary (not an exact translation) of his comments and mine.
His comments: His biggest concerns is that when he prepares the mesh and rubs Pd on to it, he then immediately puts it into the reactor, evacuates it, and begins the cycles of degassing, then heating and degassing, and D2 gas treatments. Little or no time elapses from the final stages of rubbing to putting it into the reactor. Whereas, when he prepares a mesh and then mails it, a lot of time elapses, which may allow contamination from air, or from the plastic packaging. In other words, the state of the mesh and Pd may change. He thinks it might be a good idea to send someone an entire reactor that has produced excess heat, with the mesh installed. He would like to remind people that some Pd is hard and does not rub unto the Ni mesh. You may need to anneal it to soften it. You have to confirm that it has coated on the Ni. There is a replication now underway in Japan which seems to be going well. We hope we can soon upload a description and some data from it. My comments: As far as I know, no one has the equipment to do an exact replication. Most of the cells are smaller. The methods of calorimetry are different, although I think they should all work, because they probably do not cool the reactor excessively. They allow a large temperature difference between the inside and the outside. I am not sure they are all sensitive enough, or that they will work if heat is not uniform, and is produced in hot spots in the mesh. Some are not envelope calorimeters. They measure the reactor temperature directly. I think the envelope method is better. The thing the people replicating most need are high resolution SEM and mass spectrometers. The SEM is used to determine how much Pd has coated on the Ni. The mass spectrometer is used to determine if the gas in the cell is free of contaminants after several repetitions of the pretreatment described in the paper on p. 17. Regarding his suggestion about sending an entire reactor, I have some safety concerns about doing this. I fear there is a slight possibility it will self-heat, which would be catastrophic if it were an air shipment. Perhaps it would be okay to drive it in a car to someone else in Hokkaido.
