Ultra-dense hydrogen and Rydberg matter—a more informal general discussion thread

Rob Woudenberg

If UDH is essentially the same as the Hydrino with a different name, its formation under atomic hydrogen welding on surfaces might be possible despite the apparently unfavorable conditions along Holmlid's experimental suggestions (his experiments with industrial catalysts probably don't generally produce a very high density and formation rate of H atoms), since the Hydrino is suggested to be formed under similar environments.

Then, the problem would be discerning the actual energy produced by the condensation to the ultra-dense form from just 2H->H2 recombination. Clearly, under ordinary conditions UDH condensation has to be a minor component of the total output, or the energy liberated would greatly exceed anything chemical. Even in Mills' experiments/demonstrations, despite theoretical suggestions, the overall output is certainly not 100x times chemical energy or thereabouts.

Rob Woudenberg

I tried writing a long answer to that, but in the end, this point isn't clear from Holmlid's papers alone, which might be all that can be confidently said.

Hopefully the upcoming paper on the catalysts and the process of ultra-dense hydrogen formation from them will bring clarity in this regard.

From https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2021.01.212 as of February 2021:

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The science and technology of the production of this new nuclear fuel is described in a submitted review [9].

[...]

[9] L. Holmlid, A. Kotarba and P. Stelmachowski, “Production of ultra-dense hydrogen H(0): a novel nuclear fuel”. Submitted to International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.

EDIT: the attached diagrams are my own.

Rob Woudenberg

The exact composition and state determines the temperature above which Rydberg states (but also ground atoms and ions) of K are emitted from the catalysts in large amounts, but in general this occurs with fresh catalysts above 550–600 °C. As these should assist the formation of RM of hydrogen and other species in desorption, high temperatures should therefore be better at least in this respect.

In reference to "catalyst B", below is an excerpt from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0926-860X(00)00858-9 (paywalled)

I have no clear ideas about why low temperatures have been used instead in later studies. In the H RM studies at low pressures, high temperatures were justified by the need for improving diffusion of K and other molecules through the catalysts, e.g. in 10.1016/j.physleta.2004.05.027 . Why wouldn't this still be valid later on?

If UDH does not have to necessarily be formed at the catalysts as suggested in the patent application (assuming there is a temperature limitation in this aspect, which I'm not sure about), it should make sense to use catalyst temperatures that are more likely to produce RM and then let it transition to UDH on a colder surface.

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2018093312A1/

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It should be noted that the hydrogen transfer catalyst does not necessarily have to transition the hydrogen in the gaseous state to the ultra-dense state directly upon contact with the hydrogen transfer catalyst. Instead, the hydrogen in the gaseous state may first be caused to transition to a dense state H(1), to later spontaneously transition to the ultra-dense state H(0).

In 2011 it seemed advantageous to use higher temperatures for UDD production (no laser target plate was used in those studies yet) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3514985 (paywalled). The construction here allowed up to 200 °C.

So, this temperature aspect regarding the catalysts for UDH production or condensation to UDH in general (in reference to the possible case of the atomic hydrogen torch) is still a mystery to me. It's just not clear. Again, hopefully the upcoming paper mentioned earlier will clarify this.

Rob Woudenberg

I don't know. Sometimes it has been reported that a period of days of admission (or only exposure; it's not entirely clear) of hydrogen gas in the mbar range through the catalysts is needed to obtain a strong meson signal and therefore presumably a sufficiently high accumulation of produced UDH (which in turn appears to indicate that production is very slow). Why employ days when shorter times could be possible at higher temperature? https://www.researchgate.net/p…ts_detect_0_K_L_and_0_K_S

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[...] The most striking observation is that the kaon signal increases with time (of the order of days) using D2 gas at high pressure (many mbar) in the generator, with one example in Fig. 9. Further, this signal is slowly decreased by laser impact on the generator, in the time range of minutes to hours with an example in Fig. 11. Thus, the structure of D(0) which gives most neutral kaons is formed by self-organization in the D(0) material (probably mainly in the porous catalysts) but it is destroyed by the (probably indirect) effects of the impacting laser, possibly by the gamma emission from the laser-induced nuclear processes. [...]

No indication of catalyst temperatures in this paper, as well as other most other recent ones. In another from a few years ago (and perhaps another 1 or 2) there was a hint that higher temperatures would work better, however: https://www.researchgate.net/p…nse_Hydrogen_H0_Generator

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[...]The steady spontaneous production of neutrons and other particles observed by the detector is due to processes in the generator. The rate depends on the gas filling in the catalysts in the generator, and it depends also on the temperature of the generator which is heated slightly during operation to remove other adsorbed gases than hydrogen from the catalysts.

A possible reason could perhaps be limiting or avoid reduction of the catalysts (which are active in oxidized form), but at low temperatures it is extremely slow even at a few mbar pressure in pure hydrogen—assuming the catalytically-active phases have been properly formed, e.g. see this open-access paper in this regard (from different authors): https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi…cle=1221&context=cbe_pubs.

Yet, in the patent documentation submitted to the examiners it's been suggested again that a few hundred °C are useful: https://register.epo.org/appli…17870991&lng=en&npl=false

525K (250 °C) is the superfluid transition temperature for ultra-dense deuterium on iridium, presumably used as the target in the patent application construction: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4947276

Rob Woudenberg

An[other] unclear point is the rate of ultra-dense hydrogen production that can be attained in the experiments with the methods and apparatuses described so far. If it was high enough that the H->UDH condensation energy could be easily observed as excess heat, or perhaps even better as hydrogen "disappearing" almost as fast as it is admitted (due to UDH condensation), large-scale energy production through annihilation reactions as proposed by Holmlid would be feasible, even if it might take a while to develop it into a reliable commercial product.

However, so far both from Holmlid's papers and other people's private tests with similar methods I haven't personally seen convincing indications that large UDH production rates are easily possible. I think that more than better catalysts it might take different approaches.

Simple indicators of UDH formation have not been reported yet, as far as I'm aware of. Perhaps measuring UV and soft X-rays from the catalysts and their intensity in a vacuum, as previously suggested, may be able to give a reliable indicator of its production (and the rate of production). Never done by Holmlid or his colleagues so far, though.

Rob Woudenberg

High-excitation RM de-excites with the emission of infrared photons. This has been suggested to explain for example the unidentified infrared emission bands in Space, where large amounts of H RM are proposed to exist as dark matter. Most laboratory experiments in this regard have been done with K RM, however.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2000A%26A...358..276H

https://arxiv.org/abs/0710.3293

Other suggestions here: https://link.springer.com/arti…07/s10509-019-3632-y#Sec8

Rob Woudenberg

When it's formed, UDH is highly excited and easily reverts to ordinary Rydberg matter. This excitation energy, as pointed out earlier from the latest review paper, often isn't easily dissipated to the surrounding environment, but is retained in the form of internal cluster motion.

De-excitation would be towards a stable, lower-energy, denser state of UDH, not towards its destruction.This should happen (when it can) in progressively larger discrete energy steps corresponding to the various "spin levels" of UDH described by Holmlid. This particular aspect however does not appear to have been studied by him, whereas Randell Mills did for his Hydrino.

JulianBianchi

I think it's being suggested that such high-excitation UDH is close to the energy level of the RM it is formed from, for example in the graph provided in the latest review paper:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1402-4896/ab1276

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Relation between H(0) spin states, ordinary H₂ molecules and H(l) Rydberg matter. The transformation between H(0) and H(1) is indicated with a blue arrow. The states reached in H(0) (in red) are highly excited by rotation of the H₂ pairs in the H(0) clusters.

It has sometimes also been suggested that the superfluid UDH clusters absorb readily energy from the environment, in particular light, which would contribute energy to make to the interconversion effect observed possible. Here is an example from a relatively dated paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijms.2011.11.004 (paywalled)

Although, if this is case then the conversion to stable UDH clusters might be much faster above the superfluid transition temperature described in other publications.

JulianBianchi

I'm aware of that. I made one more to-scale a while back.

What I meant was that states indicated in red in Holmlid's graph posted earlier and the slope of the blue arrow there seem to indicate that the initially excited UDH states at about the same energy level (i.e. position on the vertical axis) of H RM, which is what has been suggested in the text and in earlier papers.

My understanding is that only after such energy has been dissipated, the energy level would be that corresponding to the bottom of the deep "wells" of the various UDH spin states.

EDIT: This the same same graph as posted earlier from a 2014 paper and a relevant excerpt: http://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-014-9681-x