At 06:00 AM 3/26/2010, Peter Gluck wrote:
He concludes: the CF system can contribute but cannot conquer the market of energy.
This is indeed my seat-of-the-pants conclusion as to the palladium approach, unless the reaction rate can be greatly increased. At current prices I did a detailed calculation (a few scribbles on a napkin) that an Arata-effect cold fusion hot water heater might be done for, oh, neglecting development costs, $100,000. Someone might buy it for the novelty. The catalyst would probably need reprocessing from time to time, and that might cost as much as the value of the energy. As has been pointed out, we have a crackerjack operating hot fusion reactor sitting at a nice safe distance, the sun, and we can capture and harness the energy being emitted from it.
But ... this analysis assumes palladium catalysis. It's not the only possibility. Vyosotskii's work is intriguing. What if proteins can pull this off? What if we could grow reactors instead of "manufacturing" them? They might be extremely cheap.
This brings me to the main point: we need to understand the science. The experimental facts must be nailed down, we need solid, reproducible results, and aiming for "practical power levels" has probably kept this field back, overall. Electrolysis with palladium is interesting to me because it's the most widely replicated, and because it's easily accessible with codeposition. It takes only a tiny amount of palladium chloride; the expensive part of the experiment is the heavy water.
I'm not looking for cheap energy, I'm looking for science and cheap replication of experiments, so that they become, even in a highly skeptical environment, widely replicated. I'm trying to help build a foundation, and to thus stimulate more work on theory and the testing of theory.
Because of the possible fabulous wealth and glory, perhaps, too much work was done too soon on scaling up, trying to find the magic formula for a "reactor" for energy production. There is certainly a place for that. But to get to practical power production, as was emphasized in the ACS press conference, we need to understand the science. Probably we need to understand it first, unless someone gets very, very lucky and happens across some technique. It's more likely that someone comes up with an accurate theory and predicts high energy yield with, say, nickel under such and such conditions. In other words, that science leads, the part of the scientific process that develops theory. And that's based on knowledge of the experimental work, and the existence of a body of work that explores the "parameter space," as they were saying.
That's relatively boring, plodding work, compared to Solving the Energy Problems of Mankind.
Of course, it could end up doing just that. But, really, do we have, for example, solid measures of how deuterium concentration affects excess heat? Not just endpoints. What I've seen, sometimes, is H2 vs D2, presumably pure or H2 at normal isotopic ratio. What happens in between?
From my point of view, I'd like to try a silver wire, plated with gold, as a cathode, for codeposition. Much cheaper. I'd expect it to be the same results as gold. Would it be? It's one of the things I expect to try. (Note: I'm looking for neutrons, not excess heat, at this point. Gold wouldn't be better than palladium, particularly, as to expense, but there is a lot more gold in the world.)
So: how does the reaction rate vary with the thickness of the gold, all other variables being equal? I could do my own electroplating of gold, to create silver wires with various thicknesses.
Various theories might suggest various simple variations. What happens if I dope the electrolyte for codeposition with some beryllium chloride? Or preplate a beryllium layer? Any effect? Countless experiments become possible once there are standard cells, and as long as they produce results well above background (two orders of magnitude is probably enough, even lower could be useful), I don't need to scale up and if the results are robust enough, I can scale down, making it cheaper.
He visits my grave and has a long imaginary discussion with me. I ask him to do better mathematics and use the best data. Can you help him? Thanks!
I'll try. How old is he now? These kits, unless I fall victim to my constant vulnerability to distraction, should be available this year. I should have results within a few months. So ...
Rich Murray suggested I should sell them for $200, not the $100 I expect (single heavy water cell, everything ready for current to be supplied, includes SSNTDs but not development of them). $100 includes a reasonable profit, and, with some work and volume, I can lower the costs, I expect. I expect to be working with a nonprofit (and the whole "business" might be sold to a nonprofit) to help subsidize kits. Assuming they work. If they don't work, back to the drawing board and, I expect, a lot of back-and-forth with those who have done SPAWAR/Galileo cells before. The risk is entirely mine, plus the kind soul who loaned me $2000 interest-free, after donating $1000. And that loan is effectively secured by inventory of precious materials.)
I am committed to announcing my results as they are available. But I won't assume that "failure" is anything but failure, until and unless the success of others can be clearly explained away. Pretty unlikely.
(Like, they don't work, but then, with some tweak, they *appear* to work, but the mechanism is shown. And then this mechanism is shown to apply to other positive results. And then we realize that we all fell down a complicated polywater well. Given what I know of the state of research, very, very unlikely, but there is one strident advocate for this view, Kirk Shanahan. If I can get a cell to work, maybe he'll buy one to prove how stupid it all is. Put up or shut up, Kirk! -- he reads this list from time to time.)
