Michel
* The spread is not large for a given set of conditions. In particular there is one very important (IMHO) point which seems consistently overlooked, not just by you, which is that the binding energy is not the same on the surface (heat of adsorption) as it is in the bulk (heat of absorption). It's much higher on the surface. Interestingly, decreasing the Pd particle size increases the surface binding energy (I can dig up a ref if anyone is interested) which is what the Kitamura work re-discovers IMHO. By all means - we are very interested, since this is really one of the two important points left to be decided. And providing this reference in an unequivocal way (i.e. specifically wrt hydrogen and palladium) would salvage your other comments out of the category of "fishy". Therefore, we eagerly await your (hopefully authoritative) reference, since the "much higher" surface binding attribute as you claim, is a bit counter-intuitive; and without it we have a compelling set of circumstances for expanding the importance of the putative anomaly - which as Terry opined, might possibly be related to nascent hydrogen. The next issue, of course, is whether or not the 2 eV per atom loading heat of Kitamura is accurate and reproducible by others. That is where I suspect the problem will be found. Side note: as many of us are aware, hydrogen comes off of bulk palladium easily enough that it can be, and once was, once used as a cigarette lighter (which presumably did not require much input to ignite - other than a spark) but was surely an expensive indulgence. As I recall - and a brief googling confirms, the so-called "Doebereiner cigarette lighter" from the 1800's was used by early CF skeptics to explain away the excess heat of the P&F effect, since it apparently got quite hot following a hydrogen recharge. Problem is - they apparently never checked the complete thermodynamic balance of the Doebereiner effect . at least there is no record of that which I can find. Is it presumptive to suggest, given Kitamura, that the very same effect used by skeptics to try to disprove CF could instead point to another, and perhaps more usable anomaly? Nah, probably not. But it would be one great way to convert palladium into irony ;-) Jones
