Conclusion: Key to understanding FPE is temperature
The Progress Reports have revealed some important behaviors having a relationship to attempts at replication and to the various proposed theories. Its time to put these behaviors in context and suggest some conclusions.
If you are tempted to speculate on your own, please do read the reports first and make yourself knowledgeable about what has been observed in other studies published over the last 26 years. We now have enough information, when considered in its totality, to arrive at some very firm conclusions.
Progress will be made only when this understanding is accepted and used as a guide to support additional understanding.
As anyone who is familiar with the many observations will understand; the conclusions noted below are totally consistent with past observed behavior. The only conflict is with the past conclusions. Many of these past conclusions are now shown to be wrong.
1. The LENR process is not initiated when a sample of Pd is initially loaded to high composition. Additional treatment is required to cause the LENR process to start. Once this additional treatment is successful, LENR will take place over a very wide range of deuterium concentration, even after all D is removed and the sample is again reacted with D.
2. Only certain batches of Pd can be activated. One of the requirements for successful activation is lack of significant excess volume formation when the Pd is reacted with D.
3. Excess power produced by an activated sample is very reproducible once it is initiated as long as the surface is not removed. This behavior is consistent with the surface being the location of the nuclear reaction based on the behavior of helium release.
4. Once the LENR process starts, the amount of current applied as electrolytic current has no effect on the amount of excess power produced. Only the temperature of the active surface has any effect on excess power production, with higher temperatures producing greater excess power. We can assume that once a sample is activated, simply exposing it to D2 gas and heating it would cause excess power production. In other words once the sample of Pd is activated, use of electrolysis is no longer necessary.
5. The activation energy for excess power production based on the temperature effect is similar to the value for the activation energy for diffusion of D in PdD. We can assume excess power production is controlled by how fast the D can diffuse from the surrounding lattice to the NAE where the nuclear reaction occurs.
6. So called life-after-death will result in eventual destruction of the sample if the temperature is not controlled, as some people have observed. In other words, the system suffers from positive feedback as Rossi has also experienced using the Ni-H2 system. This positive feed back is generally not observed because the amount of power produced relative to the rate at which it can be lost is small.
7. Once the role of electrolytic current is understood, the F-P method can be seen to have the same basic behavior as all methods found to initiate LENR, including the Ni-H2 system. In other words, no reasons exists based on observed behavior to consider the Pd-D2 system different from the Ni-H2 system. Only the reacting isotopes are different which naturally would produce different nuclear products.
All of behaviors and conclusions resulting from this study are consistent with the Nano-crack theory I proposed. Most other proposed theories are not consistent with all the observations and conclusions. These conflicts need to be resolved for any progress to be made.
See also:
Thanks for the suggestion, Ray. You need to take into account that the ability of Pd to eventually support LENR was formed in the piece of Pd when it was made. If a sample of Pd is found to be active, most members of the same batch of Pd will also be active. The ability needs to be stimulated by subsequent treatment, but the initial ability comes with the Pd. This fact is frequently overlooked.
I’m not sufficiently familiar with the results to make a detailed evaluation. Until more information is provided, assuming a relationship to LENR I think is unwise. Nevertheless, if simply exposing the treated surface to gas is the only requirement to cause a nuclear reaction, the connection to LENR becomes stronger.
Dr. Storms,
Prof. Holmlid (with the collaboration of Dr. Sveinn Olafsson of the University of Iceland) also observed spontaneous energetic emission, without laser ignition.
It might still not be LENR, but I thought this makes it even closer to many gas-loaded experiments in the LENR field.
Also see the seminar abstract and ref. 5 here:
http://www.magicsound.us/Seminar_-_Olafsson_SRI.pdf
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2015.06.116
Dr. Storms,
Are you aware of Prof. Leif Holmlid’s research on Rydberg Matter? He’s been performing dry experiments with a commercially available, nanostructured potassium-promoted iron oxide catalyst and D2 gas. Deep loading is not required. When deuterium flows through the catalyst a dense form having metallic properties (which he calls “ultra-dense”) is observed to be produced from the surface, and this process appears to be enhanced with temperature, as long as the catalyst isn’t destroyed by it, and D2 flux. Fusion reactions can then occur within the dense hydrogen layer produced either spontaneously at a slow rate or at break-even with low power nanosecond laser irradiation.
While at a first glance this seems to be different than most Pd-D experiments or even LENR experiments in general, upon closer inspection and analysis of the published papers, there appear to be remarkable similarities with your findings and points highlighted in your Progress Report conclusions in this blogpost, and past observations in the LENR field as well.
Prof. Holmlid doesn’t think he’s doing LENR.
Yes, I’m aware of what Prof. Holmlid claims. I agree with him, this is not LENR. Instead, another strange type of nuclear interaction seems to be occurring. In his case, the events are initiated using a laser and result in energetic emissions, including muons. This is in contrast to how LENR is stimulated and the resulting nuclear process. Apparently, many new kinds of nuclear reactions are now being observed thanks to a willingness of a few people to explore and to accept new ideas.
Thanks for your insight. Yes, I believe the reaction with D helps fracture the surface of PdD. Such fractures are observed when they are large (>1 micron). I propose the small cracks, which are too small to detect, are the location of the nuclear reactions. However, these fractures occur mainly at the surface where the presence of other impurities weakens the bonds and makes the material slightly brittle. The rest of the material remains very ductile and would not produce significant cracking when subjected to impact .
The actual properties of the materials being used creates limitations to what can be proposed. That is why a good understanding of the actual material in which LENR is found to occur is essential to experimental design and interpretation.
It would be interesting to see the effects of substituting a more brittle cathode (ie, more likely to fracture) while all other variables remain constant – like tungsten (ala Mizuno) or even magnesium.
Also, if you could somehow manufacture a cathode with zones of varying prefabricated cracks, that would really put the hydroton theory to the test. If nothing is happening in the octahedral sites, which should be around 116pm in Pd, then if you could move up from there in orders of magnitude – say 1 cm of the cathode etched with 1nm troughs, then another 1cm with 10nm, then 1cm with 100 nm, that would give you the basic ranges. Then thermal imaging during heat production could show the most active areas. I have no idea who could manufacture this magical cathode though.
Yes, making the cathodic more brittle is the way to go. Doing this in a controlled way is not easy. In addition, the structure must react with and contain the deuterium fuel for the cracks to have any effect. For example, although tungsten can be made brittle, it does not react with hydrogen. Even a nominally brittle material is not uniform in its properties, with some regions bring brittle while other regions are less so. In addition, the active gaps are ones having a very small dimenision. Most gap become too big.
Manufacturing the gaps by nanomachining would make a lot of sense but this approach takes more money to explore Lack of ideas is not the problem. In fact, many possible methods to achieve the required conditions are available but can not be explored because the financial support is not available.
that hundreds (or thsonauds of patents) will be written around LENR devices. Yes, hopefully nobody nails a really board one.And actually, I don’t think anyone is really understands for certain how these devices work. In fact Rossi was having trouble getting a patent because the patent office said the device didn’t abide my known physics. Rossi says he knows how it works, but it seems to me that it’s still speculation about what is truly going on at the atomic level. What is needed are experiments to validate theories of what is going on, and these experiments have to be replicated many times by other researchers.But if it works, it works, that is what is most important. Eventually there will be a good, well-validated atomic model to explain it all. And once that model is in place, that will drive further refinements of LENR technology. A valid theory leads to new insights and new ideas for technologies.
Dr. Storms,
I have your book and I’ve read various portions of it. If heat is the key to the reaction, could the heat be causing an increased incidence of fracturing on the surface? Though I am now aware of the counter arguments, I can’t help but wish that I could test the possibility of fracturing being an indirect cause of LENR.
I’d like to see someone load Pd with D, fracture it, measure the resulting EM radiation across as wide a range of frequencies as possible, then load a second identical Pd sample with D and expose it to the same range of radiation as emitted during fracturing.
I do see a 1989 paper by Yoshihara regarding microwave irradiation, but that’s in silica gel.
I do not see why Sobotka and Winter thought that firing steel ball bearings at deuterium would have anything to do with the issue – it comes across as an intentional red herring to me.
Anyhow, I’m just throwing that idea out there. I need to dig more through http://lenr-canr.org/ to understand the breadth of current research on this part of LENR.