Posts by Leon

Could the "too much heat" effect be an explosion?

That would have all sorts of implications, such as a micro nuclear bomb without radioactive components.

Metal Organic Frameworks (MOF) are new chemical structures that have a large surface area for their weight. MOFs are currently being studied for their ability to absorb and filter gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, acetylene, and hydrogen.

Wikipedia has a good entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-organic_framework

I see four possible applications to cold fusion:

1. Improved Hydrogen or Deuterium gas storage under lower pressure
CF gas reactors may require hydrogen or deuterium storage and transport. Fuel cell development programs are trying to make hydrogen storage practical for automobiles. MOFs have the highest H2 storage ability by weight. This MOF H2 storage technology will be directly applicable.

2. A Quantum Sieve for H to D or He3 to He4 separation
Use of a MOF filter as a quantum sieve to select out gas by mass. This separation should make deuterium from ordinary hydrogen cheaper than current technology. Also it would allow He3 to be separated out if it is a by-product of cold fusion. http://phys.org/news/2012-12-d…al-organic-framework.html

3. As a cold fusion 3D support structure
Pd@MOF and other MOFs are currently being tested as structures for catalytic reactions. Since cold fusion is known to be a surface effect a structure with a large 3D surface could greatly enhance the heat effect.

4. Create atomic hydrogen using the Hydrogen Spillover effect
In a process called Hydrogen Spillover H2 can be split with an activated MOF into its atomic state. If connected with a ceramic support structure this atomic hydrogen could then feed an active cold fusion site.

MOFs are new and just beginning to be used in commercial applications. These ideas the first uses that came to mind, if you have others I would be interested.

This looks like a LENR patent.

First review what is needed for a thermionic generator - a heat source and a vacuum (or cesium plasma) with a cold collector.
Their diagram shows a hydrogen source directed at a Pd or Ni lattice. Do we expect heat? If so then it could drive a thermionic
generator.

Thermionic generators were being designed for direct conversion of fission heat to electricity in the 1950's. But they were
never as efficient as steam turbines. Their was some use of fission powered thermionic reactors in space mainly by the USSR referred
to as TOPAZ see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPAZ_nuclear_reactor

This is old technology being recycled into the modern LENR era.

Thanks for the interesting find BTW.

I noticed that Tom Claytor's plasma cells produce quite a bit of helium-3, some almost 50%.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEUaJ6AHkF8&feature=youtu.be (at 14:46 minutes)

I was looking around to get an idea what helium-3 might sell for per gram and noticed
a variety of prices starting at $4000 and going to $15,000 per gram. At $15,000 per gram
the helium-3 could be worth more than the electricity generated.

Helium-4 might be cheaper to vent to atmosphere depending on what the capture costs are.

I started with Y. Fukai's "The ABC's of the Hydrogen-Metal System" which he wrote for ICCF-3 (lenr-canr.org).

It is short and is reasonably easy to read. After this early work these structures got name after him.

Ed Storms has said that there are two types of fusion going on, fracto-fusion which may account for
the small amount of neutrons and tritium, and then the mysterious cold fusion which produces heat and helium.

Y. Fukai proposed fracto-fusion in 1992 as a source of energetic particles.

An advantage the scientists have today that was not available even 10 year ago is software and computing resources. Ongoing research
to characterize the transition metal hydride environment is aided by the software program http://www.quantum-espresso.org/

Palladium when it loads deuterium above 95% forms Fukai structures. Fukai structures are stable even
if the palladium is de-loaded. Loading above 95% is a requirement for excess heat in the Pons-Fleischmann experiment.

Fukai structures create large gaps in the lattice, some 18% vacancies which are called
superabundant vacancies (SAV). These vacancies form pores some 20 - 30 nm in size.

Deuterium exists in three states in palladium, as a D2 molecule, as a sigma bonded dihydrogen
molecule with Pd (van der waals attraction), and as a D+ ion sharing the electrons
with the palladium atoms in the lattice. The deuteriums' state depends on the background
electron density at its location. Deuterium in the Fukai pore areas may exist in
all three states.

There is also a notion that deuteron flux is a supporting element of cold fusion.

Peter Hagelstein's Lecture at MIT IAP Tuesday, Jan 28 at 1 hour 53 minutes had a slide
that mentions a cage effect. He did not talk about it however. I presume the cage
effect would apply to the interstitial D+ in a vacancy?

I am putting this out looking for more information about a cage effect possibly in Fukai structures.

There is compelling evidence that Nickel-Hydrogen experiments produce excess heat. If you don't believe
that then go to lenr-canr.org and search for nickel.

There a a plausible case for Nickel-Hydrogen reactors to work. If Rossi's E-CAT doesn't work then this design
may not be far from what could work.

I am quite sure Rossi would not know why his reactor works if it does. Turning nickel into copper doesn't seem probable.

My point is that a device such as an E-CAT is a real scientific possibility. Other claims such as magnet motors or gravity engines or
noble gas engines are nonsense. I also ignore what Randy Mills claims with his hydrinos.

The assumptions he made regarding how a LENR system would scale and its throttle-abilty seem reasonable (slide 52). Most
LENR system designs will probably look and function like a fission nuclear reactor without the radiation.

Slide 16 was interesting in that he proposes injecting LENR nano-particles into the combustion chamber and blowing them
out the exhaust. I would guess that this would not be allowed as transition metals are can be toxic in an airborne state.

I was disappointed South Africa cancelled its PBMR development in 2010. What remains are the 2 Pressurized Water reactors at Koeberg, the only
nuclear power plants on the African continent.

The problem with current nuclear power in the cost of new construction. Cost can be mitigated by building the reactor with local resources. I fear that
South Africa gave up on their home built reactors when they shut down the PBMR program.

For a country like South Africa to get more reactors they have to guarantee long term power contracts to the builder.
Turkey is doing this with ROSATOM http://www.akkunpp.com/.

The smaller and more modular reactors such as the PBMR have a price advantage. But if Rossi, Defkalion, or Brillouin succeed then
the game changes.

Really cool.

Similar to Purrratio's method of directing a plasma jet at a lattice hydride. Maybe call this "warm fusion" as the deuterons in hot plasma start the fusion event and its gamma signature is smothered into the lithium lattice.

Purratio uses deuterated palladium which produces He-3 and neutrons.

Dr. Leal's red fusion lack of gammas is a good example of a large quanta being fractionated into the lattice (thats what Dr. Hagelstein calls it when
gamma emissions are smothered).

No mention of any effort to commercialize this devices or even if it is running over unity.

Maybe he would first use this technology to produce helium-3.

Purratio uses a H+, D+, or Li+ plasma jet impinging on a Palladium cathode. Their reactor creates helium-3 and neutrons.

It runs intermittently so as to allow the cathode to cool. Plasma pulses range from microseconds to seconds.

Neutrons are detected almost immediately at 300x background. They use 3 layers of shielding from the neutrons, first lead, second water, and finally boric acid.

Not sure why they would call this cold fusion? But if it works that is OK.

I didn't see any mention of the COP.

http://www.purratio.ag

The best option would be sustainable, cheap, safe, environmentally friendly, and abundant enough to power the world.

The carbon free options:
Wind, Geothermal, Hydro - not abundant enough to power the world, but a good local option
Solar - expensive, but in space could power the world.
Nuclear Fission - would need breeder or thorium technologies, but possible to power the world for many centuries.
Hot Fusion - not expected to be available in the near term but could power the world.
Cold Fusion - same as hot fusion but without the radiation problem

Right now Nuclear Fission is the best option. But if Rossi, Defkalion, Brillouin, or STMicroelectronics delivers a cold fusion power plant I would change my opinion.

Ditto for the Focus Fusion effort by Eric Lerner.

STMicroelectronics (STM) recently filed a patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US20130243143

This is a research reactor. STM intends to test a variety of transition metals including nickel(Ni), palladium(Pd), platinum(Pt), tungsten(W), titanium(Ti), iron(Fe), cobalt(Co) and alloys between two or more of such transition metals. Also they intend to test a variety of triggering mechanisms such as thermal shock, RF pulses, electric current pulses, electron beams, and magnetic fields.

The reactor is designed to run between 100 and 500 degrees Celsius. A magnetic field between 1 and 70000 gauss and electric fields between 1 V/m and 300,000 V/m
can be applied.

Before a production LENR reactor leaves the factory it should be well characterized in terms of the radiation, transmutation, and reaction products expected. We don't have to know the theory but we have to know what to expect from its operation.

STMicroelectronics has been active in LENR since 1994. Originally they were hoping to create a solid state LENR battery, but recently they have focused in on Ni-H gas devices. This reactor is a welcome commitment of money and resources.

Steam engines have similar engineering problems.

Steam engines pre-heat the feed-water so as not to dump cold water into the boiler. And they do not like to get the boiler water level too low as that could cause an explosion.

Dr Mitchell Swartz (MIT) talks about the Optimal Operating Point which is a curve (manifold) that falls off quickly in both directions under excess power conditions. If too much heat is added or removed too quickly the excess heat disappears.

Not a trivial design problem but quite feasible to do with a micro-controller.

"problem of gas e-cat is that it cannot be looped as an energy source."

Not sure what you mean, by "looped" - do you mean using the heat output from an E-CAT to run another possibly larger E-CAT?

If so then assuming a COP of 3X, an E-CAT with 10 kWh output heat could be directed into the input of a 30kWh E-CAT (or three 10kWh E-CATs)
repeatedly until the required heat was produced?

If this is possible then I would suggest Rossi redesign his 1 MW plant to not use 167 kW input power...

The E-CAT needs heat to get to operating temperature and I noticed that the E-CAT HT drive could be
natural gas see http://ecat.com/ecat-products/ecat-ht-hot-cat-prototype.

Natural gas operation would give it a very low hourly cost to operate as natural gas is 1/3 the
cost of electricity. In the United States natural gas is cheap and plentiful, and if
we use it wisely it could make it last many times longer than we expect. It can also be sourced
via biogas which would be sustainable long-term.

For those not connected to a natural gas supply propane could be used. Since the heat amplification
is 6X the high cost of propane would be mitigated somewhat.

Synthetic fuels could be produced with cold fusion, not today but if adequately funded maybe in a year or two. You could
do the same thing with fission reactors, just convince investors that it would be profitable.

But the basic problem is that if you go and talk to the R&D budget manager of virtually any multi-billion dollar industrial corporation
they will tell you that cold fusion is unproven and has never been shown to work. Their are several ways to fix this but arguing
is not one of them. Making a cold fusion device available for testing doesn't help. However, if someone is making a profit on
cold fusion devices then people will take notice. Nobody will care whether its theoretically possible or not.

Maybe Rossi, Defkalion, Brillouin, and others can put out a product soon. The R&D budget avalanche will then follow.

I am encouraged that StMicroelectronics filed a cold fusion patent.

While reading through Melvin Miles discussing 24 MeV and helium-4 I found this:

MM: Schwinger was also interested in QED. The reason I started looking for helium is that Schwinger
came out very early. He had this theory, and he thought it was a reaction of a deuteron plus a proton
going to helium-3. So we went looking for helium-3. We didn't find it, but we found helium-4. I was
trying to prove that Schwinger was right.

15th paragraph from the bottom in http://newenergytimes.com/v2/n…0-jgk39gh12f.shtml#24skmm

So helium-3 has been looked for and not found according to Melvin Miles.

If their was a book of verified science we could lookup our topic and never
have to question what is true again. If that happens all progress will cease
and we will begin the next dark age.

Investors however need to know that scientists of some standing have attacked
the observations, experiments, and theories of cold fusion. We are like the ancients
that used fire but did not know how it worked. It is interesting to review phlogiston theory
to see what was thought about fire. Cold fusion is the new fire.

One of the most interesting parts of the 2014 MIT IAP Cold Fusion lectures was when Peter Hagelstein in his Friday (46 minutes) lecture mentioned
helium-3 as a possible reaction product. Helium-3 has not been tested for in excess heat reactions experimentally. It would be hard to
test since helium-3 is almost the same weight as an HD molecule. Although D2 and He-4 have the similar problem and they have been separated.

HD to He-3 is a 5.5 MeV event which is a quarter of the 24 MeV D2 to He-4 fusion event. Not sure how much difference that makes.

I know that Dr. Hagelstein is not a proponent of the Widom-Larsen theory and has several papers on lenr-canr.org with this viewpoint.
He-3 would not be expected under the W-L theory. Detecting it should allow theorists to move forward.