-----Original Message----- From: Akira Shirakawa > That is a confirmation of what Focardi hinted in his latest radio interview [1]: that the catalyst "might be something" that improves adsorption of atomic hydrogen rather than that of molecular hydrogen.
In essence this is what a "spillover catalyst" does. Unalloyed nickel is not a good spillover catalyst, but it has a modest effect. Palladium is better. There is a massive body of literature on spillover, as it is the very heart of petroleum refining. The big advance of Arata/Zhang is that they discovered an alloy of about 13-15% palladium with the balance nickel (when embedded in a zirconia support) which gives a factor of more than 10 times more spillover effect. This is detectable as surface loading and excess heat, even unpowered. This has been confirmed and improved by Brian Ahern and others. Even so, it is very likely that the Rossi breakthrough is a spillover catalyst that gives far more than the 10x the effect of Arata/Zhang. Jones
