MIZUNO REPLICATION AND MATERIALS ONLY

Mastromatteo determined a procedure by pure chance when he loaded a Pd plated nickel foam.

By asking him a lot of questions at last ICCF, I put forward this procedure that he had not seen.

He loads in H2 first, then he's waiting for pressure drop up to stabilization then unload by temperature both with pumping, then repeats these cycles up to 5X. The pressure always goes on and on faster with each cycle.

However, no excess at this stage.

After last H2 cycle pumped, now it loads with D2, pressure drop is much lower than in H2, He made also several cycles with D2 too.

After that when pressure didn't drop anymore, XH as well as neutrons appear.

Btw, as member from team that won European funding 2020, he will persevere in this direction, for sure.

Cydonia

People concerned with H₂ contaminating the cell will probably not want to use it, however.

As far as I recall, H₂ loading speed increasing with consecutive loading-deloading cycles is an effect that was observed with Celani's treated constantan wires too.

Mastromatteo's method of repeated loading and unloading with H and D might lead to a gradual increase in the accumulation of ultra dense clusters to critical levels until spontaneous fusion occurs as observed by Holmlid. Releasing neutrons + excess heat. Time to test other ways of catalysing UDH/D?

Dr Richard

As first suggested in a publication from a few years ago, in Holmlid's case most of the energy appears to leave the reactor vessel in the form of energetic (but oddly enough, non-ionizing. Source: conclusions here), penetrating neutral particles, so if you're using that as an explanation, it's possible that it could be enough to enclose the reactor in a thick-walled calorimeter to observe larger amounts of excess heat.

In his case there's also no constraint regarding the purity of the gas (mixtures are also possible), but D2 apparently condenses more easily to the ultra-dense form.

Quote from can

in Holmlid's case most of the energy appears to leave the reactor vessel in the form of energetic (but oddly enough, non-ionizing.

Muons get at least 10MeV kinetic energy why should that be harmless ? Neutral particles are even more tricky to contain.

If you ever did see a real nuclear lab then you would know about 10m thick concrete along the beam lines... Of course the generated doses of a small laser plus are not worth this shielding. But I would not stay in the lab !

Wyttenbach

I believe the idea is that at a close distance, mainly penetrating neutral particles would be observed (the neutral kaons). That they're not ionizing is what he's suggested in his last few sentences in the paper I linked above, but no detail has been provided yet on this property (this will likely be the subject of a future paper):

Quote

[...] The verification of all types of kaons from H(0) as now completed was considered necessary for the final elucidation of their formation processes and for the successful understanding of the true properties of neutral kaons. They are often thought to be ionizing while they in fact are just penetrating through solid materials and living organisms. This gives a much lower radiation level in the experiments.

Ionizing muons and other charged particles would be formed from their decay mainly at a distance from the reactor; nuclear muon capture and muon-catalyzed fusion reactions would also give ionizing radiation and neutrons, as Holmlid already pointed out here and here.

Theoretical ramifications aside, if at a close distance weakly interacting, penetrating neutral particles are mainly formed, this would affect reactor construction for harnessing excess heat.

Quote from can

I believe the idea is that at a close distance, mainly penetrating neutral particles would be observed (the neutral kaons).

But this exactly is the problem as such particles can move farther and then do decay to muons! See/read details in Holmlids papers!

The Holmlid path is absolutely crucial for basic science as this shows how we can replace nonsensical big instruments with clever small ones. But do not expect that the size of safety we need will be any smaller. In fact it must be even more extensive until the spectrum produced and the parameters that form it are fully understood!

This process is not only fusion. It's much more elementary as protons get cracked and more or less leave behind only photon energy. This is a kind of check pot as it is no way possible to increase the energy density of any fuel!

From my post 30 August 2020:

@Jed Rothwell, quoting Zhang wrote:

"Deuterium-filled gas 1.5 ml 0.3 MPa"

This seems seems a big difference from the advice given in the Mizuno paper of 300 Pa (0.0003 MPa) operating pressure. It is outside the 6000 Pa maximum pressure recommended by Mizuno

Perhaps Zhang meant to write 0.3 KPa. If he reads this, perhaps he could confirm the pressure units in his recipe.

This was never answered, but I remain convinced that Zhang did not load 3 bar of D2 in his reactor. There are good technical reasons I would not do that: it would potentially destroy my capacitance gauge, which has an absolute limit of 2 bar and reads only up to 13000 Pa (0.13 bar). Use of a gauge with sufficiently high measurement range would make it impossible to measure the pressure change with enough resolution to estimate loading. Some types of pressure measurement like conduction (Pirani) gauges are gas-dependent and not useful for hydrogen. Mechanical manometers may have a wider range of allowable pressure but typically lack both resolution needed and data recording output.

Regarding some of the other issues discussed above, my current method of hydrogen generation results in a mix of H and D, and that could certainly affect the course of the experiment. I've asked Mizuno (through an intermediary) to comment on this and some other questions, with no reply as yet.

Detection of radiation below 100 keV seems unlikely due to the 2 mm wall thickness of the SS304 reactor body. Charged particles would also probably be captured by the conductive body, which is well grounded. So uncharged particles such as Neutrons or kaons are suitable candidates for detection. I have confidence in my He3 corona-tube detector system (designed by Bob Higgins), though it has a small solid angle and thus low sensitivity for detection. I also have several x-ray film capsules just below the reactor, and those may eventually show something interesting if neutral kaons or EVOs are emitted.

The pressure regulator on H. Zhang's deuterium bottle, from the photos provided in his report, had the pressure scale in MPa.

Here the low side gauge is indicating a non-zero pressure value. I think it would be easy, depending on the plumbing, to isolate off sensitive vacuum gauges when atmospheric-level pressures are used in the system.

Of course it would be best to be able to contact him to ask for confirmation. Where did the report originally come from?

Quote from Alan Smith

I must admit the very low pressure D2 environment that Mizuno likes is a puzzle, since intuitively you would expect that more pressure would improve the loading ratio if the PD. But perhaps variation on pressure is more important than absolute pressure? Encouraging deuterium to move through the Pd lattice is generally held to be a key feature of successful experiments

My idea: according to the ideal gas law PV=nRT, pressure(P) gets higher when you diminish the volume(V) of your container or enlarge the quantity of gas(n) or raise the temperature(T). That means I can obtain the same pressure by either diminishing the volume or by raising the temperature, but what does that mean for the speed of the molecules? If I diminish the volume the molecules get closer to each other and move more slowly and the pressure results from more molecules in a smaller space. If I raise the temperature the molecules are moving faster and raise the pressure at the same density. The question is what determines the loading of the lattice: the density or the speed of the molecules? You can't look at this from a macroscopic level and it might be that an individual molecule needs enough energy to enter the lattice.

Zhang's replication was first reported here by Jed on 21 August 2019, and he included a link to the paper at lenr-canr.org

Jed then commented:

Mizuno expressed some reservations about these results because the heat peters out after 2 or 3 hours. He thinks this might be caused by "impure gas in the reactants or slight differences in nickel." I do not think this is a problem because:

1. Zhang ran several times with a mesh that produced no heat (p. 18).
2. I think the total heat release is too large to be explained as impure gas.
3. The reaction is getting stronger between the second and third runs, from 4 W 20 kJ up to 9.7 W 47 kJ. If this were caused by gas coming out of the nickel mesh, I suppose it would fade away. He does not open the cell or change the mesh between runs.
4. Zhang replaced the deuterium gas with argon. That killed the reaction. I hope he did not clobber it permanently! Yesterday he told me he went back to deuterium, but it is still dead.

Quote from magicsound

This was never answered, but I remain convinced that Zhang did not load 3 bar of D2 in his reactor.

Ask him.

After giving some thought to the issue I think it's possible that Zhang first admitted D₂ at elevated pressure (0.3 MPa = 300000 Pa) into a small 1.5 cm3 volume initially closed to the rest of the plumbing, and then bled this off into the much larger reactor vessel volume, which should be in the order of 5000 cm³ or so (given 600 mm length, 105 mm diameter). This would result in a final pressure of about 100 Pa.

On page 25 he mentions having loaded 0.0002 mol D2, which is consistent with a 1.5 cm3 gas-filled volume at 0.3 MPa as suggested there, but not with the entire reactor vessel's volume at the same pressure.

Quote from can

On page 25 he mentions having loaded 0.0002 mol D2, which is consistent with a 1.5 cm3 gas-filled volume at 0.3 MPa as suggested there, but not with the entire reactor vessel's volume at the same pressure.

I think your analysis is correct.

Quote from magicsound

Detection of radiation below 100 keV seems unlikely due to the 2 mm wall thickness of the SS304 reactor body. Charged particles would also probably be captured by the conductive body, which is well grounded.

By the way: would it be feasible to continuously measure the reactor grounding signal, perhaps through a load resistor of known value?

It would be interesting if any odd disturbance there could be correlated with unexpected events like pressure or temperature changes, radiation bursts, etc.

Quote from can

By the way: would it be feasible to continuously measure the reactor grounding signal, perhaps through a load resistor of known value?

Possible but not easy. The cell would require a ceramic vacuum break (isolator) like this one.

Lesker is one of the pricier parts suppliers ($279). MPF has one listed for $242 but I haven't dealt with them. The thermocouple sheaths are ungrounded, so no problem there.

With good isolation it would be possible to measure the expected tiny current at high impedance, not possible with a typical current shunt meter.

magicsound

An alternative but somewhat speculative method could be having a metal plate facing the reactor (but not in electrical contact with it or other parts of the setup) and attempting to measure a signal from it in a similar manner. Such signal however might need significant amplification, and putting large plates or foils near the reactor vessel could possibly affect temperature measurements.

Alan Smith

Holmlid measures directly (without amplification required) large signals with internal detector foils inside his vacuum chamber, but that's with the laser-induced reaction which is several orders of magnitude larger than the spontaneous (LENR-like) one. For the spontaneous reaction he uses metal foils or other materials in front of an enclosed photomultiplier tube used as an external detector. Such materials produce fast electrons from the supposed muons (although not mainly by capture reactions), which penetrate the photomultiplier tube window and get greatly amplified. The speculative part of what I proposed above is using other amplifier types (e.g. audio amplifiers) and detector geometry.

In Holmlid's case the signal goes through a multi-channel analyzer, but just measuring the amplitude (i.e. if anything can be measured at all) should be sufficient here. This is Holmlid's and Olafsson's latest paper on the subject: Detection of muons and neutral kaons from ultra-dense hydrogen H(0) by lepton pair-production

A possible way to check if any alternative method on this regard could work might be—like they do for calibrations—observing if it's sensitive enough to measure beta electrons from a check source like Cs-137.

Although it was more or less fancily described, the previously proposed detector would be almost equivalent to a basic antenna amplifier circuit with no particular tuning for any specific frequency range. From Holmlid's experiments it is apparent that the signal is due to particles with mass traveling from the source and generating a beta-like signal inside the "antennas" (i.e. the foil/plate detectors), not from directly emitted RF. This could have implications for LENR experiments where RF emissions are apparently found, as in Alan Smith's example.