On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 12:36 AM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> wrote:
I read that carbon rods could be obtained at craft stores so I might take a > trip to find one if my stainless is a problem. Did someone mention that > iron might be a catalyst in Rossi's device? I guess I might get some for > this experiment by default. Wikipedia says that US nickels are 75 percent copper. If you don't want copper increasing resistivity (and Joule heating) you might need to look for something other than US nickels. Pure nickel in natural abundances will not be expected to do anything under hydrogen-1 capture, by the way, although short-lived isotopes of it will. Nearby isotopes, such as copper and cobalt, can participate. So if proton or deuteron capture are what are happening, this suggests that Andrea Rossi really does need a catalyst, or he needs nickel with impurities, and it gives support to the idea that constantan would be better than pure nickel. I had a mischievous thought of heating the hydrogen loaded nickel in some > manner to see if that started a reaction. > I personally like this idea, although it does sound dangerous. It's hard to imagine what people are thinking when they take vessels of hydrogen and some material and then pressurize them to many atmospheres and heat them to high temperatures. That sounds like a death wish. From what I've seen with transitions in carbon under deuteron capture, oxygen will evolve, so if there are any carbon-based impurities, you will have a nice combination of: oxygen, deuterium, heat, high pressure. Given the possibility of the electrolyte participating in the reaction as well as all of the challenges of electrolysis, I wonder whether gas phase systems might do a better job at controlling some of the important variables. The gas phase systems eliminate questions about the electrolyte and, in some setups, the question of input power. As Jed has mentioned, in some gas phase systems you can simply expose the active material to ambient, unheated hydrogen and you'll see an effect -- these are the zeolite experiments, I think. I kind of like Nick Reiter's approach, here. He's getting around the difficulty of working with pressurized hydrogen by using a KH slurry that releases hydrogen. One unknown here is what happens to the potassium, since it will transition to argon under proton capture. I believe he is heating his setup. Nothing I say here should discourage you from using electrolysis or otherwise affect how you do your experiment! I'm part of the peanut gallery. Eric
