Patent: Mizuno/Yoshida of Clean Planet patent a LENR reactor technology

Who here thinks that the "nanoprotrusions" and that the other evidences of nanoparticles being successful in LENR as we are seeing it today, might simply be evidence that the surface to volume ratio is greatly increased?

And who might suspect that special electronic orbital features uniquely found at surfaces are key to the LENR proscess?

Best wishes,
Longview

I guess I can answer my own question in one regard. If we are speaking of electrostatic fields in an electrolysis setup, the nanoprotrusion will create very high volts/cm potential gradients at and near the tip of the protrusion. Perhaps this contributes beyond the surface-to-volume mechanism alone. Such a discussion is reminscent of Mizuno's emphasis on Nernst pressure in his 1997 book in English translation (by Jed Rothwell) "Nuclear Tranmutation: the Reality of Cold Fusion" (Infinite Energy Press). Fleischmann and Pons also paid great attention to Nernst pressure. These pressures are truly immense, it is almost unbelievable that any electrode surface structure could survive such. For example, on p. 103 Mizuno give the pressure as 10^17 atm, that is about a million times the pressure at the center of the sun. Not a surprise to those who know the numbers: the total output of energy from the sun divided by its volume shows us that it is generating energy on the order of a watt or so per cubic meter. Any CF / LENR experiment producing such tiny amounts of energy would show a COP, at best, so near 1 that its excess heat would be confirmably zero. Widom Larson and such theories that bypass Coulombic repulsion may well take away the interest in Nernst pressure. But as long as "protrusions" show interesting behavior with respect to LENR, we can at least keep the idea of actually overcoming Coulomb rather than simply bypassing it. The pioneers (Swartz, McKubre, Hagelstein, Storms etc.) have indicated that there may be a unified explanation for CF / LENR. I suspect that Nernst pressure, it is truly a factor, suggests at least two fundamentally distinct mechanistic paths.

Yes, certainly in an electrolytic or other relatively fixed vector system, simply small is not necessarily beautiful. But, in the current generation of Ni / H systems the structures I have seen do not invite thinking of obvious fixed vectors (exception maybe magnetic fields)-- or at least not as we see in electrolysis. Heating transition metal powder, protium and catalyst in a tube would seem to me to take away vectorial information from the analyst even though it is surely there in a chaotic context.

Speaking of magnetic fields, whether accompanying AC or DC heating, it would be interesting to counter-wind the heating coils in Ni-H experiments, to determine if cancelled magnetic fields would change the reaction significantly. I imagine this has been done, but I am not aware of it... yet.

Thanks AlainCo.

Change of output with change of H field orientation is a clear sign of mechanistic significance for magnetism.

In the second instance you cite, it invites comparison with theta pinch and so on. But in this case it is in condensed matter or in relatively low temperature systems. Huge magnetic pulses are generated by EM railgun mechanisms and other technologies. By facing them off one can get v^2 enhancements, or so i imagine. Personally, I would hope that the LENR research field can get to much more complete understanding of LENR mechanisms without introducing much collisional or even very high temperature physics. Operationally it is desirable to have a hot reaction, but for thorough mechanistic understanding--- if possible--- it would be beneficial to have simple and pure systems driven to LENR over unity COPs by simple and pure forces acting on relatively simple mechanisms operating at temperatures allowing long survival of the working components.

I suspect that one restraint on LENR / CF mechanisms is that if it is too easy, then cosmology can be invoked to say that natural CF and LENR mechanisms would prevail enough to significantly alter the way our Universe has run and runs down, so to speak. There are very strong magnetic gradients in the observable Universe (magnetars, neutron stars as I understand them). There are likely strong voltage gradients as well. Even the segregation of elements by gravitational and decay gradients may be sufficient to trigger natural CF / LENR within planets or stars, at least sporadically. It all cannot be too easy, or else our Sun would produce a much higher specific energy flux per cubic meter.

But, if LENR persistently requires very specific conditions, structures and quite defined reagents then, I would think, there is hope that natural occurrence is either not commonplace or at least has run itself out by this stage of local cosmological development.

I believe such cosmological LENR thinking is important because it can guide us toward possible LENR evidence, toward or away from specific mechanistic explanations.

But perhaps the "heavy hand" of cosmological evolution only follows the gross statistical paths our cosmologists have already deduced.

Or is there perhaps evidence in the ashes of longterm LENR? That is in the incidence or percentages of natural Beryllium, Helium and nickel isotopes, and other observably unusual isotopic compositions in nature.... and so on. Long ago Gamow had a lot to do with unifying cosmology and nuclear theory. Those pioneers were brilliant, no doubt, but we in the LENR community know or at least suspect that there may be a lot more possible than dreamed of in the philosophies of 20th century "collisional physics" as I like to call it. Remember that Teller and his brilliant H-bomb developers failed to see that Lithium 6 would also participate in the reaction... it cost a number of fishermen their health if not lives that Teller's team failed to see that lithium deuteride was not simply a lightweight way of avoiding cryogenic storage of the fusion fuels. The first H bomb was several times more powerful than predicted because of the unexpected participation of lithium. What else have the "big boys" missed with their chalkboard theorizing?

My apologies to all here who are distracted from such questions / speculation. In the "rush to replicate" I hope that, at least in some threads, we can keep the speculation open enough to allow development of useful generalities.

Regarding AlainCo's earlier post above:

Quoting AlainCo: "I remember of few point.
first is that surface to volume is not the main parameter, as nano particle don't work well, while nanostrutured surface or microparticles works."

"The good point is how the "protrusions" and nanostructures are kept.
They are probably never kept but regenerated. It seems to be what happened during electrolysis, with observer craters, that may both destroy NAE but also create new NAE."

"The SKINR experiments with nanotubes may give a hint."

AlainCo's point certainly applies to electrolytic LENR work, at least it has been shown several times. But if I have it right, most of the Rossi, Lugano, Parkhomov Ni-H gas and powder schemes show finer dispersion of Ni powder is better. It would also be interesting to compare that with the"Georgy" Egely patent using carbon powder, also quite finely divided, if I recall correctly.

My reason for looking at this is simple: The electrolytic systems have a relatively fixed electrostatic vector orthogonal to the electrode surface, at least in many implementations of F-P type cells. So an orthogonal to surface nanoprotrusion there will see a high electrostatic potential gradient at or near the tips of the protrusion (over and above or augmenting an Nernst pressure that is predicted to be be present--by F-P, Mizuno et al). In a powder and gas cell (Piantelli, Rossi, Parkhomov et al) one does not (necessarily) have any fixed or relatively slow moving electrostatic gradient, activation is largely thermal, the powder may well be flying around and mechanical collisions may be operative... further or consequently there may be some sort of continued renewal of surfaces to provide fresh chemical reactivity, that is exposure of unoccupied / unpaired orbitals or generation of unpaired electrons or momentarily "naked" protons and so on. Perhaps in some gas amd powder systems sufficient mass is required to assure enough momentum to provide collisional damage and hence renewed surface chemisty. In electrolytic cells there can be continuous electorchemical renewal of surfaces, particularly if voltage reversals are allowed...

Take home for me-- inviting corrections of course: nanoprotrusions may enhance electrolytic F-P style cells. Nanopowders may enhance the reaction rates and hence COPs of hot gas and powder cells.

One can always be concerned that a true "nano powder" is so fine that the metal is in gas phase, or that a nanoprotrusion is truly atomic in dimensions.So let's agree that nano structures are confined to nanometer dimensions and maybe somewhat smaller. If we want molecular or atomic suspension in the discussion perhaps pico- may need to enter the suspension vocabulary or lexicon. All atomic radii I'm seeing in online sources are less than a nanometer, generally ranging from about 30 to 300 picometers [31 pm for He, 298 for Cs, http://www.periodictable.com/P…/A/AtomicRadius.v.wt.html]