Possible LENR observation reported in ACS journal

Quote from Tarun

Quote from Erwin: “On summing up over the pulses, the heat does not exceed the standard value for the water formation.”
Thanks for clearing it. Does this mean that there is no LENR here ?

One needs to be very careful in proclaiming LENR. I believe the anomalous heat evolution in the oxygen titration may eventually be a result of a LENR phenomenon, but perhaps not in direct way. Let me explain.
The heat that we have measured for the highest O2 pulses ranged from 1100 kJ/mol O2 to 1200 kJ/mol O2. This is more than twice as much as the heat of gaseous water formation from molecular reagents, i.e., 1/2O2 + H2 = H2O, which is ca. 500 kJ/mol O2. However, it still does not exceed the heat of (gaseous) water formation from atomic reagents. Let us take the reaction of molecular oxygen with atomic hydrogen, i.e., 1/2O2 + 2H = H2O. Now, the standard heat of this reaction is a massive 1354 kJ/mol O2 (or 678 kJ/mol H2). This is because in case of starting from the molecular O2 and H2, a large part of the energy released on the formation of the H2O molecule is actually being used up for braking the bonds in the O2 and H2 themselves, and so only the 500 kJ/mol O2 is left to be measured as the actual thermal effect of reaction. In contrast, when the H2O molecule is being formed from the atomic H and molecular O2, than much more of the H2O bonding energy is being released as a heat of reaction. How much more? It is precisely by the bonding energy in the H2 molecule, which is 436 kJ/mol H2. So the thermal effects we observe for the highest pulses in oxygen titration, say 1200 kJ/mol O2, could be explained as coming from the water formation from the molecular O2 with atomic H (1354 kJ/mol O2). But then, where does the atomic hydrogen species come from, or more precisely, where does the energy necessary to dissociate the H2 molecule come from? Remember, that we only provide molecular H2 to the system.
For the H-H bond in H2, the bonding energy of 436 kJ/mol makes it be one of the strongest chemical bonds in chemistry. And yet, on several occasions, this strongest bond is being broken effortlessly, as H2 dissociates easily on contact with metals like Pd, Ni or Pt. Not only does this process not require any energy to be absorbed in order to brake the H-H bond, in fact, a heat is actually being released on such reactions; indeed, in the case of Pd/H system the thermal effect of sorption is around 40 kJ/mol H2.
It seems, therefore, possible, that that a clandestine LENR process may occur in our system. It is hidden behind the H2 dissociation. What we measure calorimetrically may be the heat of water formation from atomic hydrogen species, but the very production of the H-species may be taking energy from compact hydrogen species of a kind postulated by various authors, like hydrino (R. Mills), hydrex (X. Dufour) or tresino (F. Mayer and J. Reitz). Needless to say, this is only a hypothesis currently, and much work is still necessary for it to be verified.

Erwin, thank you for the detailed explanation. Hopefully further experiments will throw more light on your hypothesis. You may find the spectral signature of Hydrino, if its involved.

@Lou Pagnucco: in principle it might be, since Church's experiments too have been about recombining hydrogen and oxygen over a supported Pd (and also Pt in his case) catalyst - although in Church's case it's from an automotive catalytic converter. However, Lalik's paper was worded in a way as to not imply that there really is anomalous heat production (ie: excess heat), but rather anomalous heat evolution (excess rate of heating).

Several gas-loaded LENR experiments employ micro/nanostructured catalysts, and my opinion is that they could be the key for understanding these phenomena. Erwin Lalik's comment earlier in this thread seems to point that compact hydrogen species could be at play, and was one of the main reasons why some time ago I started considering more seriously Rydberg matter Hydrogen (as per Leif Holmlid's research) as a possible explanation for the effects observed so far in the LENR field, and possibly also by Rossi.

The Justin Church video is quite long, but within it I see one likely misunderstanding. Church emphasizes the high temperature seen within the converter matrix. That is to be expected, since the catalytic matrix is ceramic and is specifically designed to come to high working temperature.... it is essentially an insulator. The degrees kelvin / celsius of temperature rise do not necessarily indicate a proportionate rise in ability to do outside work, which would be measured in joules / calories etc. The suggestion by Church that drilling into the converter matrix might allow removal of some of this useful heat will have two immediate effects: 1) it will cool the matrix and hence greatly reduce its ability to produce more heat in the vicinity of the copper tube. Further it will show that the quantity of heat is actually quite low, that is the ability to do work such as heating a working fluid in the copper tube will be predictably and disappointingly modest.

The fundamental issue here is equating "temperature" with "quantity of heat". Temperature rise in a given mass can measure "quantity of heat" or "work". The "surprisingly" high temperature here is dependent on the low density and low overall mass of the catalyst ceramic matrix, and on the low heat flow out of the matrix relative to the heat production of the reactions taking place. Joules as work and quantity of heat are defined classically as work required to cause a temperature rise per mass of water (specific heat and mass are integral to that definition).

@Longview: several people (me included) did suggest him to perform some sort of calorimetry to confirm the effect he thought he was seeing, but he always quite aggressively refused (together with some of his friends who also built similar devices), ranting that others were actually trying to make him pass as a sort of idiot and put his ideas down. You can find several videos on the subject on Youtube by him and others, titled "H-Cat" (not "Hot-Cat").

He might have not had much more than a catalytic burner, but in light of Erwin Lalik's results in the paper presented in this thread, chances are that there could have been more to it.

By the way, the video above is a repost of this (2013): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqIBdhtvZ9o

JC hasn't posted much on the subject in a year or so.
His channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/jdcproducts/videos