Rossi's missing secret or E-CatX description or both?

Very interesting indeed Tom! Some kind of extra stimulation of Arc/RF/Laser/DC etc is the only thing left out so far in 'known' parameter space by the open experimenters. This suggest strongly where to start looking. Acceleration of charged particles is best done in vaccuum (think the old fat CRT TV tube). I wonder why 3-6 bars are needed...

These electrodes were not used in the Lugano reactor. I assume that at high temperatures the Aluminia tube starts to conduct. Due to the high voltages between the three phase coils currents start to flow through the Al2O3 tube into the fuel. That may lead there to the LENR reaction. At the same time it may explain the curious change of the specific conductance of the heating wire.
Other (lower temperature) designs may require the anode/cathode solution as described above. It is quite likely that current pulses through the fuel may contribute to the triggering of the LENR phenomenon.

Do we need to pay attention to this silliness?

As H-G says 100kV (for acceleration up to 100keV) is what you find in particle accelerators - with vacuum.

In air 100kV will initiate a big fat spark over about 3cm. Over longer distances it will not spark, but equally not accelerate electrons.

You need good insulators, with careful treatment of circuit contamination, to withstand 100keV. Not saying it is impossible...

But one more fact. If Rossi claims to use 100keV electrons that is indeed enough energy to initiate (hot) nuclear reactions - though maybe 100keV betas do not often do this! In a vacuum 100keV protons might?

I guess he has reached the end of the road claiming to have excess heat from low energies?

Quote from Thomas Clarke

In air 100kV will initiate a big fat spark over about 3cm. Over longer distances it will not spark, but equally not accelerate electrons.

To nitpick without reference to the claims of Rossi's patent — I'm going to guess that you can have a potential on the order of 100 kV or more over much smaller distances. Assume two microscopic, dielectrically insulated metal grains with a gap between them. Put enough charge on one grain and remove enough charge from the other, and have them be within range of one another, and the electrons will really want to hop over from one grain to the other. It would not be surprising if under non-equilibrium conditions astronomical potentials could be set up for brief moments at this level.

Previous discussion
Rossi effect and apparatus to produce heat with high efficiency

Seriously.
It does not take much imagination to make the mechanical parts of the patent description workable.

Pistol shot in water is a good analogy

But don't dismiss it that easily. Brillouin patented the Q-pulse which has the same purpose. See http://pdxlenr.blogspot.se/201…brillouin-patent.html?m=1

For discussion the patent is here: http://www.google.com/patents/US20110122984?hl=en

"An example of a functional reactor parameter set is quantum current pulse values of 4 A for 40 ns at a 100 KHz rep rate, with a loading current on the order of 100 mA at a water temperature of 65C with a 0.05 mm wire core with on the order of 5 cm immersed in the water."

I guess yes. At first, the 100 kV applies to energy of resulting gamma radiation, not the input electrons. At second, we know that fusion of deuterons at molten lithium requires only 5 kV to run. Therefore I consider quite feasible to initiate the cold fusion by room pressure discharge, of course the voltage at the electrodes can be higher. The trick is IMO in achieving crystalline layer at nickel surface even at the temperatures above melting point of lithium.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Physi…ntional_source_of/cl8nnf8

Check the five links provided here

https://www.reddit.com/r/Physi…_collimated_xrays/d176cru

Some of the above comments assert that electrons can only attain the claimed
energy in a vacuum. I believe that is only true if one wants to accelerate
the entire electron's wave-function envelop to the needed transational velocity.

Another way is to shape its wave-function so that it becomes highly
oscillatory, (or with high zitterbewegung) creating high components in
the momentum spectrum. See, for example, the thread -
Force-free extreme acceleration of subatomic particles

Also, refer to Feyman's lecture "Two kinds of momentum" -
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_21.html
- where he shows that momentum spikes can be quickly created when particles
collide in a strong magnetic vector potential, borrowing momentum stored
in that field.

Shooting a bullet under water is a flawed analogy to accelerating an electron through a gas with an electrical potential.
a) Bullets have all their kinetic energy at the start and no potential energy. The only forces are reducing their inertia.
b) Bullets aren't spherical, so they can tumble increasing resistance.
c) Electrons have very little inertia to lose.
d) Electrons have nearly elastic interactions with other electrons and only minor energy losses when their path is curved by protons and deuterons.

padam73 Rossi himself said, that after studying it he was able to improve the performance of the E-Cat by 30 per cent
http://www.diva-portal.org/sma…iva2:52651/FULLTEXT01.pdf
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…mi-Obs-EnhancedNucFus.pdf
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…ear-Fusion-ER2006-42W.pdf

The injecting of deuterons into molten lithium leads into formation of heat and huge amount of alpha particles - at five thousands of volts only. But only at the temperature of lithium melting, not above. So that not only we have nuclear reaction started with few kilovolts of energy, but this reaction can be even controlled with minute temperature changes - which is really something! This products of reaction don't differ from normal fusion reaction, so no nuclear transmutation actually happens there.

So, which physics is behind such an anomaly? Einstein was first, who proposed, that during mutual collisions of many deuterons an analogy of Astroblaster effect may happen. The line of atom nuclei may serve as a miniature solid state accelerator, so to say. But for reaching of energies required for fusion many dozens of atom nuclei must collide along single line at the same moment. The surface of lithium provides such an orientation of atoms - the atoms tightly above melting point are still arranged with surface tension beneath the surface like sorta liquid crystal. Once they're heated more, their chaotic motion disturbs this arrangement and the Astroblaster effect cannot happen there anymore. Therefore the cold fusion is an result of extreme low dimensionality of deuteron collisions by arranging them along a single line. The decreasing of dimensionality helps to lower the activation energy everywhere, for example during conduction of electrons within superconductor - it's very general mechanism. The decreasing of dimensionality would undoubtedly help the hot fusion collisions too. But the same Astroblaster effect, which attenuates the energy of lattice collisions also works in opposite way and it dilutes the resulting energy simply by distributing it between multiple atoms at the same moment. We even already have chemical analogy for this effect.

padam73 http://www.diva-portal.org/sma…iva2:52651/FULLTEXT01.pdf http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…mi-Obs-EnhancedNucFus.pdf http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…ear-Fusion-ER2006-42W.pdf

Given the 17 MeV excess energy from the Li7+H1->Be8->2He4 reaction, data supports the possibility that Lithium-Hydrogen is one of the main contributors to the excess energy from the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) involved in the ECAT Rossi himself said, that after studying
it he was able to improve the performance of the E-Cat by 30 per cent The injecting of deuterons into molten lithium leads into formation of heat and huge amount of alpha particles - at five thousands of volts only. But only at the temperature of lithium melting, not above. So
that not only we have nuclear reaction started with few kilovolts of energy, but this reaction can be even controlled with minute temperature changes - which is really something! This products of reaction don't differ from normal fusion reaction, so no nuclear transmutation
actually happens there.

So, which physics is behind such an anomaly? Einstein was first, who proposed, that during mutual collisions of many deuterons an analogy of Astroblaster effect may happen. The line of atom nuclei may serve as a miniature solid state accelerator, so to say. But for reaching of
energies required for fusion many dozens of atom nuclei must collide along single line at the same moment. The surface of lithium provides such an orientation of atoms - the atoms tightly above melting point are still arranged with surface tension beneath the surface like sorta
liquid crystal. Once they're heated more, their chaotic motion disturbs this arrangement and the Astroblaster effect cannot happen there anymore. Therefore the cold fusion is an result of extreme low dimensionality of deuteron collisions by arranging them along a single line. The
decreasing of dimensionality helps to lower the activation energy everywhere, for example during conduction of electrons within superconductor - it's very general mechanism. The decreasing of dimensionality would undoubtedly help the hot fusion collisions too. But the same
Astroblaster effect, which attenuates the energy of lattice collisions also works in opposite way and it dilutes the resulting energy simply by distributing it between multiple atoms at the same moment. We even already have chemical analogy for this effect.

An active anode/cathode construction is not necessary at all to enable electrons to gain energy amount of 100 KeV.
High voltage can be generated at nano scale using ferro-electric, magneto-electric or piezo-electric (nano)materials.
Read Pekka Soininen's patent applications and you'll find this has already been claimed.

Besides, remember that Defkalion also used external driven HV with modified spark plug entries. This makes the whole construction much more inefficient and expensive. This method is therefore prior art and makes the provisional content likely worthless regarding this method.