axil: So you shouldn't object the comment, which is dealing explicitly with graphite only.
Anyway, Mr. Egely is a kind humble guy, who I know in person from his Prague lecture - but he's non-reliable in every quantitative research due to his rather naive, esoteric nature (Wyttenbach's - like).
In particular, the transmutation of the red sludge into copper inside the RF plasma with copper electrodes (which would be subject of sputtering) is a priori doubtful.
Alan Smith,
It's not exactly a thermite reaction, but there have been reports in the scientific literature on the x-ray emission from the combustion of metallic particles in the submicrometer size. Are you willing to look into this? Several of these papers fall in the "SHS" (Self-propagating high temperature synthesis") category. Here's an example. I believe one of the authors is also known in the LENR field:
http://www.ijesi.org/papers/Vol(3)10/B03106012.pdf
"Heterogeneous Combustion Wave as an X-Ray Source"
QuoteABSTRACT : By the example of a nanodispersed Ti-B system, it was found for the first time that a
heterogeneous combustion wave is an X-ray source with a quantum energy of up to 30 keV. The radiation is
generated in individual reaction centers of size 2–5 mm. Among probable causes for the effect can be extreme
electron acceleration inside nonequilibrium electric layers formed in the heterogeneous system during high-rate
chemical transformation.
KEYWORDS : heterogeneous combustion , self-propagating high-temperature synthesis, X-ray
Apropos: what was the avg particle size of your iron thermite powder?
What do you (or anybody else) think about the 2 experiments I suggest above?
Ti is a very good mediator. It is the most versatile because it has many stabile isotopes, which can mediate.
What do you (or anybody else) think about the 2 experiments I suggest above?
My working assumption: Ti by itself will not do anything (despite the link to a paper suggesting to the contrary that was mentioned in a previous comment). Either an element with an isotope that can decay by beta decay or EC, or a heavy nuclide that can fission, must also be present. And in that case the Ti is inert.
Ran my 'Model T' reactor today with one gram of 'fast' thermite - which is standard thermite mix but uses powdered alloy containing 10%Mg/90%Al. As expected this is not a good way to fake LENR - though it works as a way to fake a meltdown. No RF and no radiation detected btw. The picture below is a single frame from a video of the whole experiment which will posted by Lookingforheat.com soon.
I beleive that this method of LENR is based on Coulomb Explosion. Thermite does not contain exploding atomic clusters. But noble gases and water do. “Barrier suppression ionization” produced by x-ray dissociation of clusters produce the charge separation that generate LENR.
The kinetic energy of the product ions formed by this cluster explosion is of the order of several or tens eV in a diatomic, hundreds of eV in small van der Waals (VDW) clusters, and 100 KeV to 1 MeV in large (n > 1000) VDW clusters.
explosion of large Xenon clusters are the most powerful using XUV and X-rays.
Read more at
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1006.1725v1.pdf
Ionization and Coulomb explosion of Xenon clusters by intense, few-cycle laser pulses.
The Papp engine used a large positive electrostatic field produced by spark irradiation of thorium accelerating alpha decay to aggregate the small dissociated noble gas clusters into a few large ones via the TAO effect.
Alan Smith,
Here's a very similar paper on the Ti-B combustion (reaction) in an inert atmosphere. Zr-B is also mentioned. Amazingly this one almost looks like it's a demonstration of all main discussion points of this thread. In some ways this reminds me of Randall Mills's BLP process, but there's not hydrogen nor oxygen involved here.
One more thought about this: Sadly enough the didn't deploy Alpha dectors. May be they measured Bremsstrahlung vom Boron fusion. Ti can mediate a "proton" to B and transmute to a lower Isotope. But they missed any fuel analyses. Further, as we know from many other papers, even traces of H2O and Ar help to increase these reactions.
Hi gamover.
These are all good thoughts, though I am not sure what these experiments would show us? I routinely make Hydrogenated Nickel since we sell it in the shop. Now and then 
and the attached photo shows what happens when you out this into a standard Microwave. Never tried it in a reactor where the heat generation characteristics would be very different.
While I could readily do the 'changing gases' experiment, it would be very time consuming. The reason is that the Hydrogenation phase of Ni involves several 'heat and vacuum' stages. I normally do it over about a 12 hour period - though that coulb be condensed to say 4-5 hours. Before admitting Oxygen to a hot Hydrogenated Nickel containing reactor you would have to flush it through with Argon, which introduces several unknowns (ie how much Hydrogen would it displace?
Mixing hot Hydrogen and Oxygen in a sealed system is a good recipe for a large insurance claim. Or let it cool down completely each time you cycle it. Oxy-Hydrogen mix is the devil incarnate. Plain Hydrogen is no worse than petrol vapor or Propane gas. Bad but not terribly bad in small volumes. Mixed with Oxygen a cupful can blow your head off! Weight for weight it is probably worse (more energetic) than TNT.
Thank you for your ideas though, I shall ponder them.
Alan Smith,
Let me explain in detail. In the past few days I've read a bit about Randell Mills (who is held in high esteem by MFMP and Piantelli) and found that according to his theories nascent, chemically formed water is a hydrino catalyst. Now hydrinos may or may not actually exist but nevertheless claims are that the energy released by their formation process supposedly greatly exceeds that of water formation. Moreover, it can also produce UV, soft X-rays, excess electrons and so on.
You don't think Mills is credible? No problem. There have been similar mainstream studies where the recombination of oxygen with hydrogen adsorbed on metal catalysts can sometimes yield a greater heat than that of water formation. I linked one of those earlier in this thread, but I later found that a similar paper was posted in 2015 on LENR-Forum. The second post there is also interesting and refers to the paper I previously linked in this discussion if you missed it:
Possible LENR observation reported in ACS journal
The author of this 2015 paper is also a member of LENR-Forum and has written a couple interesting messages in that thread.
After quickly skimming through these papers (you can use www.sci-hub.ac if you don't have academic access to them) it doesn't sound like it is required to soak nickel particles in hydrogen for a very long period of time for the proposed experiments, but I can completely understand if you would rather not mess with potentially explosive mixtures of O2-H2 in your laboratory.
Bottom line is this a different line of experiments that is not strictly focused on the absorption of H in metals and which could still show interesting LENR-like results. But it would need to be performed safely.
Now hydrinos may or may not actually exist but nevertheless claims are that the energy released by their formation process supposedly greatly exceeds that of water formation. Moreover, it can also produce UV, soft X-rays, excess electrons and so on.
My hunch with Mills is that what he's seeing (if anything) is due to something happening with the potassium and other elements he sometimes uses, rather than hydrogen.
Possible LENR observation reported in ACS journal
This link is dead, and I am an ACS member.
Longview: IMO it's this story There is number of such incidents described in the literature. In 1959 R.J.Kokes and P.H. Anderson were studying chemisorption of hydrogen on Raney nickel and observed “strange feature of exothermic reaction” (Journal of American Chemical Society, 81,5032). What they observed predated the Piantelli work by 30 years, and the Rossi catalyst by over 50 years...
Thanks for that reference. I suppose there are others. It also reminds of "Ogfusionist" here with his nickelous oxide on Fibrefrax "meltdown" in hydrogen when heated to over 830 deg C, If I recall it correctly. A comprehensive collection of such anomalies would be beneficial to theoreticians and experimentalists alike. Perhaps that has already been done. I suspect that the more bizarre events are less likely to get serious attention.... but at least they should be noted and summarized as best can be from contemporary accounts.
Is OGfusionist still around? He said he developed a tabletop device over 40+ years ago if I remember this correctly. I hope he is ok.
