The area of the palladium surface determines how fast the hydrogen escapes and hence the energy released to heat the total mass. This increasing energy would then heat the palladium mass determined by the volume of material until the temperature reaches a steady state value where the heat being radiated, conducted and convected into the surroundings balance. A finer grained material would release more heat per unit of time and get hotter.
The hydrogen is burned as soon as it exits the metal, helped by a catalytic action of the metal. That is the way I understand the process. One could determine the rate at which hydrogen escapes the surface of the material by measuring this heating power like Fleischmann calculates. I suspect that his calculation is in error if he in fact derived that 5 milliwatts was the amount generated by the 1 cm cube. This would not be enough to heat that cube significantly, certainly not enough to burn wood. Perhaps the wood comes in contact with some of the escaping hydrogen as it is combining with oxygen in the air. That would be about the only way to reach the temperature that would char wood at 5 mW. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> To: vortex-l <[email protected]> Sent: Tue, Dec 24, 2013 11:01 am Subject: Re: [Vo]:Beaudette book : "Excess Heat" H Veeder <[email protected]> wrote: I didn't know that. Was the slab of Pd much larger than the Pd electrode used by P&F? It must have been. In the experiments in question, Fleischmann's electrode could produce at most 6 nW of local heating from this de-gassing effect. See: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf The 19th century palladium electrodes used as cigarette lighters were probably a few ounces (60 g), and they were fully exposed to air. That is much larger than Fleischmann's cathode, which was in D2O vapor with a little air. For the earlier experiment with a 1 cm cube, Fleischmann calculates: "the rate of diffusion of oxygen through the boundary layer could lead at most to a rate of generation of excess enthalpy of ~5 mW." - Jed
