On Oct 23, 2008, at 2:00 PM, Jones Beene wrote:
Ed,
Suppose the Ni in contact with NaH provides a place for the electron
released from NaH to go that then gives the energy change the right
value. After all, NaH does not have a conduction band and the
electron could not find a way out of the local system without a
conductor with a conduction band being present. If this is the
explanation, any finely divided conductor would work, for example
finely divided Pd. This idea would suggest that nanosized Pd in a
cold fusion environment is only required to take the released electron
away from the actual catalyst, which has not been identified in this
case. What do you think about this idea?
Well - there is plenty of evidence that finely divided Pd does
produce excess heat if there is 'something else', correct? And it
certainly looks like trial and error is the best way to find that
'something else',
Well, maybe the best way at this stage, but life would be much easier
if we had a guiding theory. My point is that in the past, theory has
concentrated on palladium, both big and small sized. I'm suggesting
that the mechanism involves an unknown catalyst and any finely divided
conductor. Perhaps a better theory might be suggested if people
started to look away from palladium.
Ed
At a minimum, with Arrata it was zirconia and almost no added energy
and with others it was some form of carbon etc. even coconut
shells ;-) It could be that the main difference between using
deuterium with palladium instead of Mills protium with nickel is
that in the end one gets helium, and possibly more energy per
molecule but possibly less in total due to a reverse economy of
scale. At least no one has been able to scale-up any CF reactor like
Mills has done. It could be that your glow discharge is simply a
brute force way of doing what local field gradients on nanoparticles
can do somewhat more elegantly... or else the discharge itself is
producing the nanoparticle in situ.
It seems that all of these various phenomena have a nexus or a
connection with the increased surface-area afforded by the small
particulate size, and the high field-gradient which can results from
simply the geometry, especially if an exciton puts a nominally free
electron in some kind of group orbital - say with the quantum dot.
One of the biggest things about the Rowan confirmation is the scale-
up to commercial size. Can that be done with palladium as easily ?
Jones
