From: Axil Axil
No the input heat is insufficient to cause ionization. FYI A thermionic converter consists of a hot electrode which thermionically emits electrons over a potential energy barrier to a cooler electrode, producing a useful electric power output. Caesium vapor is used to optimize the electrode work functions and provide an ion supply (by surface contact ionization or electron impact ionization in a plasma) to neutralize the electron space charge. So what? Thermionic emission is fact - of course, but you overlooked the "hot" part - and the minimum temperature for thermionic emission, even with cesium is in the range 1400 C. You may remember that Celani finds LENR gain as low as 200 C or lower. Yes there are "cold cathode emitters" for ballistic electrons - but these depend on relatively high supply voltage and will not emit from ground. Please demonstrate your superior knowledge of ionization by showing a reference to thermionic emission at the relatively low temperature of LENR or cold cathode emission from ground. There is no evidence of degenerate electrons in LENR. Rossi reports that his reactor produces so much current(electrons) that he may now forget about the production of heat. Excess electrons will be degenerate because of the Pauli exclusion principle. This is absurd. You may be the only person on this forum who will quote Rossi as an authority on anything scientific - and no - Pauli has little relevance to degenerate electrons. Where is you scientific reference for degenerate electrons in LENR? And once again - please demonstrate your self-proclaimed superior knowledge of ionization by showing a reference to thermionic emission at the temperature where Celani has demonstrated LENR. I think you have probably fallen into the trap of confusing eV with volts, and not taken into account that a low work function of say 1 eV, found in cesium is the equivalent of 10000 degrees more or less. The only reason that you get thermionic emission at all with cesium is due to the Boltzmann tail of the thermal distribution but the cathode still needs to be quite hot. You do understand energy distributions, I hope? Jones
