Terry Blanton wrote:
Has there been any progress on the Matthey Pd?
As far as I know they stopped working on it after the IMRA project in
France collapsed. The collapse was mainly caused by a fight over who
would control the intellectual property rights to the palladium. I
have no idea what Johnson Matthey (hereinafter J-M) learned from the
collaboration or where the information ended up.
Are they still keeping it secret?
Probably. No idea, really.
Why would not Fleischmann want to reveal the secret assuming he knows it.
Fleischmann revealed all he knew to anyone who asked, on many
occasions. This is a perennial subject, and attached below is my
stock response. Briefly, what he called "Type A" is the palladium J-M
developed in the 1930s for their palladium filters. As he said to me:
"Look at the data from Miles. What does it tell you? When Uncle
Martin gives you palladium, it works. When you get the palladium from
somewhere else, it doesn't work! Why don't people pay attention to
that?!?" He was referring to Table 10 in this document, which I have
often referenced, and which -- as Martin says -- no one seems to pay
any attention to:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf
The material labeled "JM (F/P) Pd" is from Uncle Martin, and I think
the "JM Pd" is the same material. Please note: anything labeled JM
works better than other types, and the "JM (F/P) Pd" works
spectacularly well. Also note that when the people at BARC tried
using the filter palladium in situ (in a filter) it worked like
nobody's business. As I recall the thing partly melted.
There is no mystery to why this works well, or why Fleischmann
selected it. It works because it has structural integrity and it
survives high loading without cracking or distorting. As you will see
in countless references this is essential to producing the cold
fusion effect. Fleischmann selected it because when he began this
research he knew that it was essential that the palladium load to
high levels, so he called up J-M and asked: "What kind of palladium
would you recommend for very high loading?" And they told him. End of
story. He is sensible guy who, as he told me, is lazy at heart and
likes to do things the easy way. When someone knows, why not ask?
As I said, attached is a message I wrote about this in 2000, which I
have sent to anyone who enquires about this subject.
- Jed
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Type A palladium saga
For many years Martin Fleischmann has been recommending a particular
type of palladium made by Johnson Matthey for cold fusion
experiments. He has been saying this to anyone who will listen, but
very few people do. He handed out several of these ideal cathodes to
experienced researchers, and as far as he knows in every case the
samples produced excess heat. The material was designated "Type A"
palladium by Fleischmann and Pons. It was developed decades ago for
use in hydrogen diffusion tubes: filters that allow hydrogen to pass
while holding back other gasses. This alloy was designed to have
great structural integrity under high loading. It lasts for years,
withstanding cracking and deformation that would quickly destroy
other alloys and allow other gasses to seep through the filters. This
robustness happens to be the quality we need for cold fusion. The
main reason cold fusion is difficult to reproduce is because when
bulk palladium loads with deuterium, it cracks, bends, distorts and
it will not load above a certain level, usually ~60%, I think. Below
85 to 90% loading bulk palladium never produces excess heat. A sample
of palladium chosen at random from most suppliers will *never* reach
this level of loading. You could perform thousands of tests for cold
fusion with ordinary palladium, with perfect confidence that you will
never see measurable excess heat. That is essentially what the NHE
did: they performed the wrong experiment hundreds of times in
succession, using materials which everyone knows cannot work. This is
like trying to make a 27 story building out of doughnuts.
It seems likely to me that most of the reproducibility problems with
bulk palladium CF would have been solved years ago if people had only
listened to Martin Fleischmann's advice. Alas, in my experience,
people seldom listen to advice or follow directions. Fleischmann
sometimes compounds the problem by speaking in a cryptic, convoluted
style and by using complex mathematical equations that few other
people can understand. He sometimes takes a long time to respond to
inquiries; he answered one of my questions two years after I asked.
However, in this case he has made himself quite clear on many
occasions. For example, he wrote:
. . . We note that whereas "blank experiments" are always entirely
normal (e.g. See Figs 1 5) it is frequently impossible to find any
measurement cycle for the Pd D2O system which shows such normal
behaviour. Of course, in the absence of adequate "blank experiments"
such abnormalities have been attributed to malfunctions of the
calorimetry, e.g. see (10). [Ikegami et al.] However, the correct
functioning of "blank experiments" shows that the abnormalities must
be due to fluctuating sources of excess enthalpy. The statements made
in this paragraph are naturally subject to the restriction that a
"satisfactory electrode material" be used i.e. a material
intrinsically capable of producing excess enthalpy generation and
which maintains its structural integrity throughout the experiment.
Most of our own investigations have been carried out with a material
which we have described as Johnson Matthey Material Type A. This
material is prepared by melting under a blanket gas of cracked
ammonia (or else its synthetic equivalent) the concentrations of five
key classes of impurities being controlled. Electrodes are then
produced by a succession of steps of square rolling, round rolling
and, finally, drawing with appropriate annealing steps in the
production cycle. [M. Fleischmann, Proc. ICCF 7, p. 121]
Fleischmann recently gave the some additional information. The
ammonia atmosphere leaves hydrogen in the palladium which controls
recrystallization. Unfortunately, this material is very difficult to
acquire and there is practically none left in the world, because
Johnson Matthey stopped making it several years ago. Palladium for
diffusion tubes is now made using a different process in which the
palladium is melted under argon. Material made with the newer
technique might also work satisfactorily in cold fusion experiments,
but Fleischmann never had an opportunity to test it so he does not
know. There should be plenty of the new material available, so
perhaps someone should buy a sample and try it. Johnson Matthey has
offered to make more of the older style Type A for use in cold fusion
experiments. They will charge ~$20,000 per ingot, which is a
reasonable price. Fortunately, the precise methodology for making the
older material is well documented and an expert who helped fabricate
previous batches has offered to supervise production. So, if anyone
out there has deep pockets and once a batch of the ideal material to
perform bulk palladium cold fusion experiments, we can arrange it. I
do not know any cold fusion research scientists or institutions who
can afford $20,000 worth of material, but perhaps several people
could get together and pool their resources.
The above description of Type A is not comprehensive. We know little
about the material. We cannot begin to explain why it resists
distortion and allows high loading. The experts in Johnson Matthey
probably know, but they are not talking. When Ed Storms read this
description, he immediately thought of a number of important
questions about fabrication techniques: "What is the crucible made of
in which it is melted? Pick up of crucible material can not be
avoided. How is oxygen removed? Is calcium boride used, which is
the usual method? What is the boron content?" Unfortunately, such
details are trade secrets which Johnson Matthey will not reveal.
Fleischmann does not know the answers. Anyone who has a sample can
quickly find out what elements are present in the alloy, in what
proportions. But questions such as "How is the oxygen removed?" may
not be as easy to ascertain. The trade secrets are not what is in
the metal, but how it got there and why it stays.
I asked Fleischmann how confident he is that this material is
effective, and how much batch to batch variability he observed. He
said that since 1980 he has used samples from eight or nine batches.
Only one batch failed to work, and was returned for credit.
In general, any material from Johnson Matthey works better than
palladium from other sources. The most dramatic proof of this can be
seen in M. Miles, "Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Systems." See
especially Table 10, p. 42, summarizing the effectiveness of
palladium from various different sources. The success ratio with
Johnson Matthey material was 17 out of 28 (17/28) compared to 2/5,
0/19, and 2/35 with other sources. Only the alloys fabricated in
house by the NRL worked better, with a 7/8 success ratio. Miles
tested two samples of Type A palladium supplied to him by Fleischmann
and Pons. Both produced excess heat at much higher power density than
samples from other suppliers (3 14 W/cm3 compared to 0.3 2.1 W/cm3).
Fleischmann reported success with pure palladium, as well as silver
and cerium alloys. So did Miles, and he also had good results with
boron alloys. The NRL in Washington reported no heat with samples
from the same batches Miles tested, but their calorimeter was an
order of magnitude less sensitive than his (with 200 mW precision
compared to 20 mW), so even if their samples had produced the same
level of heat Miles observed, they could not have detected it.
In their Final Report, the NHE claimed that they used "the type of
palladium recommended by Fleischmann and Pons" in a series of
experiments in the final stage of the project, after all else had
failed. This is incorrect. They did not have any of the Type A
palladium. Perhaps they used some other Johnson Matthey material
instead. They have refused to reveal the batch number or say when or
where they acquired the material, but as far as Fleischmann knows,
there was no Type A material available at that time. When the NHE
program began, Fleischmann supplied them with three Type A cathodes.
Two of them produced excess heat, and one failed because of a prosaic
problem with the equipment. The NHE disagrees with Fleischmann's
conclusion. Based on their nonstandard method of evaluating
calorimetric data, they say all three samples failed to produce heat.
They refuse to release detailed data which would allow others to
analyze the results using standard methods. Fleischmann, McKubre and
Miles have criticized their methodology, in which a single
calibration pulse made a few days after the experiment begins, when
low level excess heat is probably already present. (See the
Fleischmann quote above, and M. Miles, "Report on Calorimetric
Studies at the NHE Laboratory in Sapporo, Japan.")
The question is: At this late date does anyone care about bulk
palladium electrochemical cold fusion? Does anyone still want to try
it? Even with the proper materials, this is still a very difficult
experiment. Fleischmann and McKubre agree that if techniques can be
used, they should be. McKubre said, "the world is fascinated by
electrochemistry, except electrochemists. If they can find another
way of doing the job they will always choose the other way."
Fleischmann believes that the qualities of the palladium material are
not be as important with electrodiffusion, which pushes deuterons
through the bulk of material rather in through the surface. "Solid
state works better than interface chemistry." (Other people may not
find the Italian electrodiffusion results as convincing as he does.)
McKubre has successfully replicated the Case experiments using gas
loading into commercial catalysts made of palladium on carbon.
Researchers may feel that this kind of technique is more promising
than bulk palladium, and there is no point to revisiting obsolete, 10
year old experiments. We may no longer need Type A palladium. We can
hardly afford it, anyway.
I once asked Fleischmann how he learned about Type A palladium. He
said: "It is very simple. When we began this work I went to Johnson
Matthey, I told them what I needed, and they recommended this
material." As I said, he has a baroque imagination and he often goes
about doing things in indirect, complex ways, but in this case he
used the direct approach.
Jed
