Edmund Storms <[email protected]> wrote: While all of the proposed mechanism are applied to Pd, this does not mean > Pd is the only material that supports the NAE. People have used Ti, Ni, > various alloys, and various oxides with success.
The ENEA and others still research mainly Pd, or exclusively Pd. I wish more people could get Ni to work, but I do not know many who have. > Once the NAE can be made on purpose and in large amount, use of Pd will > not be necessary. So, why keep using Pd as the example? I use it as an example because there is a lot of literature on it. No other reason. As I said in the book and elsewhere, Ni is more promising from a commercial point of view, mainly because it is abundant and cheap. I described my back-of-the-envelope estimate based on Pd in catalytic converters because converters are where half the world's Pd ends up; because it is an interesting comparison; and because I used this to estimate how much energy we might produce with the world supply of Pd. My conclusion was roughly in line with Martin Fleischmann's. I do not know the basis for his estimate. As I recall, we both figured you could produce roughly a third of the world energy supply with Pd. I do not think anyone advocates the use of Pd as a practical source of energy. Martin was the first to suggest Ni would be better. > Palladium only has historical interest because F-P chose this material. > It actually is the worst choice, as many people have found. Well, in bulk the power density of Pd is lot higher than Ni. For now it is. I don't know about in powder form. If Rossi is correct than of course powder Ni is better than anything. With Ni you would not have to worry about conserving metal. You could use as much as you like per watt of generator capacity. So, the catalytic converter model is less useful. You would want to minimize the amount of metal used in some applications, where the heat engine has to be as small and compact as possible. Such as a wrist watch battery, or a spacecraft power supply. - Jed
