Andrew <[email protected]> wrote: ** > The COP for any exothermic chemical reaction is infinite, so there's > nothing particularly special about high COP values. >
Correct. > What interests me more is how the justification proceeds for statements > like "the output energy density exceeds that of any chemical process". What > kind of threshold of energy density does this represent, such that one can > label a process "non-chemical"? > See my book, chapter 1. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf As shown in the Ragone Chart, gasoline has the most energy per gram of any common chemical. It has 42 MJ/kg, however that does not include the oxygen. There are a few rocket fuels with more energy per gram than gasoline, even including the oxidizer. Most chemical fuel can produce at most 4 eV per atom. A few exotic types can produce 8 eV, and some theorists speculate that it might be possible to achieve 10 or 20 eV but I do not think that has been demonstrated. Nuclear reactions produce millions of electron-volts per atom. Cold fusion probably does too. No one knows the upper limits. I think it has been demonstrated to produce ~1,000 eV per atom of host metal. It is impossible to say how many atoms of deuterium were used to produce those reactions. There is usually more hydrogen or deuterium in a cell than nickel or palladium. Anyway, some cells have produced far more energy than you could get if the entire cell were made of gasoline. A few cells have produced far more energy than you would get if you burned all the furniture and books in the lab; i.e. 50 to 150 MJ from a cathode weighing a few grams in 50 ml of heavy water. Here is a safe standard: anything that produces 10 or more times energy per gram than gasoline is far beyond the limits of chemistry. - Jed
