From: Jed Rothwell
* I do not think it is likely that cold fusion will work, yet not work well enough to provide all of the power you need for an application such as this. The power density already demonstrated in a few cases should be good enough.. Yes, the power density is there already, but at a scale of grams and/or watts for the device. It is the linearity of *scale-up* which I worry about: net power as opposed to power density. No one has yet shown linear scale-up of P&F type cells to kilowatt level - and this ability to scale-up is far from certain, for a known reason. If QM is involved, as may well be the case (quasi BEC for instance, or tunneling) then a REVERSE economy of scale may emerge. This could limit any single device to tens of watts or less. Of course, it may be possible that an array of dozens or hundreds of mass-produced cells will be eventual the answer to that problem . or not. This is why it may take much longer to get into production with some of the more popular techniques, like electrolytic Pd-D2 - then anyone imagines. The big exception is the LENR technique mentioned - glow discharge. which also gets us away from costly palladium and deuterium. That is win-win - even so, this device has been thoroughly neglected AFAIK. The best thing - by far - about a mass-produced "Bloom box" and at a moderate price, is that it might function as a direct converter of LENR hydrogen output, back to electricity - as was mentioned wrt the Mizuno type of glow discharge. If you had a look at the Naudin page on Mizuno - you see 8000% current efficiency is demonstrated in terms of hydrogen output. There is LOTS of nuclear transmutation, as well - so this is so-called warm fusion, not cold. But it can employ electrodes that are far less costly. It might work better with D2 than H2 (that is not known) and recycling the water from a Bloom box in closed cycle makes that possible with little loss of precious heavy water. Of course, current efficiency is not the same as power efficiency, which is still not OU, or at least not reliably. It is tantalizing however, that a glow discharge device with tungsten/hydrogen, as opposed to palladium/deuterium - is already at a power level where hydrogen output to a Bloom box could be fed back, thus requiring a COP much lower than if steam or thermoelectric conversion were required. If the Bloom box is 50% eff. then the COP for closing the loop could be as low as 2+. Thermo-electric conversion would need a COP of 10 or more (close to 20 really). Heck - if any vortician out there has this kind of glow discharge device that can get close to COP=1, then a good candidate for getting funding might be Bloom itself, since they have apparently all of the VC funds anyone could ever want. It would be instructive so see how much better glow discharge works with deuterium than hydrogen. Would it push the OU to greater than 2 ?
