On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
Of course, helium is not hydrogen, but still, it does indicate there is > trapped gas. > For palladium and deuterium, where we know 4He is produced, 4He is immobile in bulk palladium, while deuterium will escape over time. The 4He gets stuck in a way that H or D does not, as I remember. An implication is that to measure the full amount of 4He that has been produced in a PdD system, it is advisable to melt down a cathode to get at the 4He trapped in the bulk. One reason people have suspected that PdD cold fusion is due to a surface or near surface reaction is that 4He is found near the surface and with decreasing probability further into the used cathode, where a clean sample does not show such a pattern (I think). But I believe the deuterium itself will gradually escape from palladium over time, like air leaking from a balloon. The dynamic with hydrogen and nickel is probably different with regard to this detail at least, as nickel, unalloyed, does not appear to readily absorb hydrogen in the way that unalloyed palladium does. I assume that loading is something that is only indirectly related to PdD cold fusion, and the actual mechanism simply depends upon a ready supply of deuterium, something that is accomplished in NiH system by having an additional source of hydrogen that releases it over time, e.g., when it is heated. But this is just speculation on my part. Eric
