From: Roarty, Francis X * * There was some conjecture that even sputtering can accomplish a crude form of enrichment.
I can't see nickel sputtering making a significant difference in enrichment at all. Is there any real evidence? Even a faction of a percent gain is doubtful from sputtering, and anything less than a ten-fold (order of magnitude) increase is not going to help very much IMO. The interesting thing about ultra-centrifugation of electroless nickel however is the synergy of in situ deposition. Imagine using the cylindrical reactor itself as the holder for perhaps 500 grams of electroless nickel (along with a heavier metal that can be leached-out to give Casimir cavities). This would be in a situation where you want to plate out 10 grams onto the wall of that reactor which is also enriched 10 fold in 64Ni. IOW nearly a full gram of 64Ni is plated out. Your centrifuge is custom designed to take the entire reactor cylinder as a cartridge, and spins it for long enough to make the enrichment - following which added heat does the plate-out. 490 grams of the original electroless nickel is then removed and exchanged with the supplier for 500 grams of new plus cash for handling. IOW the 'spent' feedstock has not lost its value for every other customer (for typical plating purposes) - and we know that millions of kg of electroless nickel are used in this market. However ... red flag alert. Yes - it is clear that this plan is an expedient and is NOT sustainable - and only works if there is lots of demand for the depleted electroless nickel, compared to the amount that is needed for this kind of reactor. But that is not a huge concern now, at least not for a few years down the road. If the E-Cat were successful, by then Rossi would own all the nickel mines anyway :-) At least he would have if he done this correctly from the start and were using DGT's money now. Please excuse the (intended) oversimplification of a complex issue... Obviously this is all completely speculative. Jones
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