AFAIK - the HotCat is not designed to "retrieve" hydrogen, and yes the reactor will stop working as soon as the initial hydrogen is depleted. It was not intended to be a long-term solution so much as to demonstrate that high temperature operation is feasible.
From: Axil Axil One development in the design of the Rossi reactor speaks against the hydrogen migration idea. Rossi is using a solid to emit and retrieve hydrogen so his reactor does not require hydrogen tank to function. If hydrogen were lost through the walls of the reaction chamber in large amounts, the reactor would stop working because the volume of hydrogen is fixed and conserved by the solid. Jones Beene wrote: Hi Robin, >> 8x less effective volume than hydrogen and the perfect size to slowly diffuse through the steel > That's only the first level, and even then only if Mills' radius is correct. (My version would see the first level volume 64 times smaller.) Well, either way - it looks like no thickness of non-magnetic steel should be able to contain f/H ... and thus Rossi could have devised an effective way to dispense it as quickly as it forms... even if this result was unintended. Which begs the question of why not run a simple experiment with an extremely well-sealed reactor? ... containing hydrogen and a easily ionized catalyst like Cs, which is one that Mills has recommended in the past for first stage redundancy. The goal is to monitor the internal pressure to see how quickly hydrogen escapes following formation of f/H by catalytic action, after which it would be dispersed through the walls of the reactor. A pressure drop would be meaningful (assuming leaks are eliminated), no?
