On Dec 16, 2008, at 7:26 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
This is ideal, if it really works. See:
David, F. and J. Giles. Self-Polarisation of Fusion Diodes: From
Excess Energy to Energy. in ICCF-14 International Conference on
Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. 2008. Washington, DC.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DavidFselfpolari.pdf
If the energy output is actually electrical, why the calorimetry? It
should be easy to measure the power directly as i*V. They apparently
don't directly measure the current but rather assume it exists due to
the fact the voltage is maintained across a resistor having the same
resistance as the cell internal resistance of "some hundred of kilo
ohms". A similar mistake might be made regarding potentials measured
across thermocouple junctions, depending on how the measurements
occurred.
There appears to be an equating of electric potential with energy in
this article, which is unfortunate, especially if unintended.
The periodic rise and fall of potentials, assuming the experiment ran
for a week in each mode, may possibly correlate with daily
temperature excursions.
This article seems to me very much entangled with a concept Jones
Beene posted here. (See:Jones Beene, vortex-l post of Thu, 06 Sep
2007 20:26:42:
http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg22324.html
and subsequent posts on the topic.)
Jones Beene theorized that electron affinity might be used to
spontaneously transport electrons between electrodes of the right
kind in a gas modality. "take two electrodes and a working medium,
and hydrogen is the only working medium that fits into this concept
very well (73 kj/mol)... - such that one electrode has a much lower
electron affinity than does the H2 (zinc works well ~0) and the other
has a much higher (gold plated copper works here ~223). You need a
source of energy to convert - like focused sunlight onto the back
side of the zinc. The other electrode is finned and air-cooled. The
zinc emitter can be a Zn plated bimetal, so that there is already a
small thermoelectric effect."
This concept was explored by Jones Beene and this author on the
vortex-l news list through discussion of variations of the concept,
methods to practically develop the concept, possible relationship of
the concept to dry pile operation, and the possible tapping of zero
point energy.
I extended and further explored this concept, in this article
"Electron Affinity and The Dry Pile":
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/DryPile.pdf
It seems to me the experiment might just be just another version of a
Dry Pile. The efficacy of D2 over H2 seems strange, because deuterium
orbitals are slightly smaller than and have slightly higher binding
energy than hydrogen orbitals. Maybe this is of actual use in
transporting electrons. A more likely explanation is that the D2
experiment had more water vapor present, which as the above Dry Pile
article shows should greatly improve the charge transport.
Pd and silicon might be effective for a dry pile, depending on how
the silicon is doped, and how transition is made of work function and
electron affinity between the exposed surfaces.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
