Foreword: I gave Ric Werme permission to do this essay. I don’t have any doubt that the original Cold Fusion research was seriously flawed. That said, this recent new development using a different process is getting some interest, so let’s approach it skeptically to see what merit it has, if any. – Anthony
Cold fusion isn’t usual fare for WUWT, at best it’s not a focus here, at worst it’s sorry science, and we talk about that enough already. However, it never has died, and this week there’s news about it going commercial. Well, it won’t be available for a couple years or so, but the excitement comes from a device that takes 400 watts of electrical power in and produces 12,000 watts of heat out.
Most people regard cold fusion as a black eye on science. It’s credited with the advent of science by press release and its extraordinary claims were hard to reproduce. Yet, unlike the polywater fiasco of the 1970s, cold fusion has never been explained away and several experiments have been successfully reproduced. Neutrons, tritium, and other products kept some researchers working long after others had given up. Even muons (from Svensmark’s Chilling Stars) have been suggested as a catalyst. Everyone agrees that theoretical help would provide a lot of guidance, but for something that flies in the face of accepted theory, little help has come from that.
Grandiose claims of changing the world have been lowered to “show me something that replaces my water heater.” Attempts at scaling up the experiments that could be reproduced all failed. Even had they worked, a lot of systems used palladium. There’s not enough of that to change the world.
As media attention waned, the field stayed alive and new avenues explored. Some people active in the early days of Pons & Fleishman’s press conference are still tracking research, and research has continued around the world. There are publications and journals, and conferences and research by the US Navy. And controversy about a decision to not publish the proceedings of a recent conference.
The term “Cold Fusion” has been deprecated, as focus remains on generating heat, and heat to run a steam turbine efficiently is definitely not cold. Nor is it the 30 million degrees that “Hot Fusion” needs. The preferred terms now are LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) and CANR (Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions). I’ll call it cold fusion.
I keep a Google alert for news, and check in from time to time, and last week came across notice of a press conference about a cold fusion system that is going commercial. The reports beforehand and the reports afterward said little useful, but some details are making it out. Whatever is going on is interesting enough to pay attention to, and since WUWT has developed a good record for breaking news, it’s worth a post.
The bottom line is that Italian scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi have a unit they claim takes in 400 watts of electricity and, with the assistance of nickel-hydrogen fusion, puts out 12 kilowatts of heat. Okay, that’s interesting and the power amplification doesn’t require some of the extremely careful calorimetry early experiments needed. The elements involved are affordable and if it works, things become interesting. (There are undisclosed “additives” to consider too.) The reactor is going commercial in the next few years, which may or may not mean it’s ready.
Several details have not been disclosed, but there will be a paper out on Monday. Dr. Rossi reports:
Yes, I confirm that Monday Jan 24 the Bologna University Report will be published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics. I repeat that everybody will be allowed to use it in every kind of publication, online, paper, written, spoken, without need of any permission. It will be not put on it the copyright.
Major caveat – the Journal Of Nuclear Physics is Rossi’s blog. Peer review is:
All the articles published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics are Peer Reviewed. The Peer Review of every paper is made by at least one University Physics Professor.
So it’s not like they’re getting published in Nature, Scientific American, or even a reputable journal. Still, it ought to be a welcome addition.
The mechanism involved is claimed to be fusion between nickel and hydrogen. This is a bit unusual, as the typical claims are for reactions involving deuterium (proton + one neutron) and tritium (proton + two neutrons) with the gas filtering into a palladium lattice. In this case, it’s reacting with the substrate.
Nickel has several isotopes that naturally occur, the belief is that all participate in the reactions. In http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Rossi-Focardi_paper.pdf discusses finding copper, which has one more proton than nickel, and various isotopes that do not occur in natural nickel. It also observes that gamma radiation is not observed while the reactor was running. Comments in other articles make suggestions about why that is. Apparently they see a short burst of gamma waves when the apparatus is shutdown.
Rossi leaves several hints in his comments, e.g. instability when the pressure of the hydrogen is increased, including explosions. (The commercial unit is designed to need enough electrical power so it can be shut down reliably.)
The best summary of the calorimetry involved is by Jed Rothwell who has been involved since the early days. He notes:
The test run on January 14 lasted for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes the outlet flow became dry steam. The outlet temperature reached 101°C. The enthalpy during the last 30 minutes can be computed very simply, based on the heat capacity of water (4.2 kJ/kgK) and heat of vaporization of water (2260 kJ/kg):
Mass of water 8.8 kg
Temperature change 87°C
Energy to bring water to 100°C: 87°C*4.2*8.8 kg = 3,216 kJ
Energy to vaporize 8.8 kg of water: 2260*8.8 = 19,888 kJ
Total: 23,107 kJ
Duration 30 minutes = 1800 seconds
Power 12,837 W, minus auxiliary power ~12 kW
There were two potential ways in which input power might have been measured incorrectly: heater power, and the hydrogen, which might have burned if air had been present in the cell.
The heater power was measured at 400 W. It could not have been much higher that this, because it is plugged into an ordinary wall socket, which cannot supply 12 kW. Even if a wall socket could supply 12 kW, the heater electric wire would burn.
During the test runs less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. 0.1 g of hydrogen is 0.1 mole, which makes 0.05 mole of water. The heat of formation of water is 286 kJ/mole, so if the hydrogen had been burned it would have produced less than 14.3 kJ.
What should we make of all this? In a skeptical group like this, some healthy skepticism is warranted. On the other hand, the energy release is impressive and very hard to explain chemically or as physical storage in a crystal lattice. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
Andrea Rossi’s previous too good to be true scam was the Petroldragon fiasco. Read more about it here:http://www2.theeestory.com/posts/171457
Sure that Nickel was NANOSIZED nickel.
Uh, I dunno about this, although I’ve been following it at htt://blog.newenergytimes.com I’m very skeptical. As soon as you start trying to measure the heat I think things get difficult…
I have however been following the work of Mosier-Boss and the team at SPAWAR, and their use of CR-39 solid state track detectors which definately show something odd going on during their Pd/D co-deposition experiments.
Their latest paper “Comparison of Pd/D co-deposition and DT neutron generated
triple tracks observed in CR-39 detectors” really worthwhile reading:
http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2010/2010BossP-ComparisonOfPDD-DT.pdf
electricity could be free and we would still need to use plenty of oil … for driving for one thing … the idea that “big oil” will kill any cheap new energy source is simply black helicopter nonsense on stilts …
Here nanosized nickel is the “fuel” and/or hydrogen. Which is it the cost per watt?
anna v says:
January 24, 2011 at 4:00 am
Thanks Anna for your comment.
If this is a nuclear process (and I am sceptical) your comment about nano-crystals could be important. Nano-crystals would maximise the surface area of the Ni, and hence the adsorption of hydrogen. Also, large electric fields at the surface 0f the particles, together perhaps with intersitials and the current passed through the reactor, could provide conditions at points of contact that could increase the probability of proton tunnellng??
Just guessing. The authors themselves admit that they don’t know how it works. But if a world class physics laboratory could reproduce the “energy amplification” – the world would change. The experiment is not difficult to conduct.
Roger Longstaff says:
January 24, 2011 at 7:39 am
“Size” equals wavelength, be it nano nickel or the earth.
Anyway this could become a cheaper “gadget” than “antique”nuclear paraphernalia. 🙂
That man who first started a fire by knocking two pieces of flint against each other near a patch of dry grass did not know that HxCy + O2=>CO2 + H2O + energy, but still he managed to make a fire. If his shaman had treated this disvoverer of fire like some mainstream scientists (who are usually paid by our taxes) are treating those peers who venture out on a limb and manage to get a “fire” started, then we would still be living in the stone age.
Am I right in thinking that some scientists are taking up the role of the pope and making galileos out of their peers?
Someone educate me here: Does the process result in the very same, useable nickel and hydrogen you started with?? If not then what is the big deal? You provided fuel, induced a reaction with some energy and got some energy out of it – why is that such a big deal?
Tim McHenry says:
January 24, 2011 at 8:43 am
You are right: Nickel and/or hydrogen being the “fuel”. However this effect calls the attention to how important “size” of nickel particles is….. c/λ…..
Enneagram says:
January 24, 2011 at 7:37 am
Here nanosized nickel is the “fuel” and/or hydrogen. Which is it the cost per watt?
Just for the fun of it. Nickel price is somewhere around 25 USD/kg. Claimed mass-energy conversion rate is about 0.01%. E=m×c^2. Let thermal efficiency be 4% (rather low). Under these circumstances one can produce 100,000 kWh electricity using 1 kg Nickel. Therefore raw fuel price comes out as 0.025 cent/kWh (price of Hydrogen used is negligible). If preprocessing (making nanoparticles, etc.) pushes up fuel price to 100 USD/kg, it is still 0.1 cent/kWh, almost too cheap to meter. Counting development, investment, operational, transmission, distribution, management, etc. costs & taxes as well it can hardly exceed 4 cent/kWh, which is way below current prices. At least recycling windmills would become a profitable business opportunity.
The funny part is you would have Copper and/or Nickel with a bit higher mass numbers as waste product. If no long lived radioacive isotopes are produced (as the claim goes), you can re-sell it, for Copper you would currently get about 10 USD/kg, for Nickel whatever the price for non-fuel applications would be (world economy uses some 1.3 million tonnes annually).
Look into a company called Blacklight Power as well, and its founder Randall Mills. They’ve gotten Rowen University to go along with some of their claims from at least a functional black-box perspective.
Theoretically, the physicists are still very much bite both thumbs and make loud rude noises about it all. It violates some very basic tenets of quantum theory, I gather.
I mention it in this context, because at least one theory is that what the original Cold Fusion people were seeing was something like Mills has been trying to claim is going on.
You can’t start a fire with two pieces of flint. Try flint and steel instead.
Those awaiting the second coming of Nikola Tesla will likely find themselves disappointed.
Ken Lydell says:
January 24, 2011 at 9:42 am
You can’t start a fire with two pieces of flint…
As Dr.Fred Flintstones would say: You should have to choose the right kind of flint-heads. 🙂
Here, from the ZeroHedge site, are some of the positive third party reactions to the finding.
Ric Werme says:
January 23, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Good work and I extend my heartfelt thanks.
What I’d most like to see are interviews with the manager of the building his device supposedly heated. If he’s really been doing that, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for a month or two.
This is an interesting reference, has done the work of all nuclear states for proton or neutron capture.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/library/2010/2010Dufour-NuclearSignatures.pdf
It is pretty clear that hydrinos aren’t involved in the reaction as Randell Mills has cornered the market for them. But what about doofusinos? Read more about them at http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/doofusino.html
Dave Springer says:
January 23, 2011 at 10:48 am
I’ve read where their unit runs at about 500 C–is that hot enough to produce the superheated dry steam you’re looking for?
It appears they are ready for limited commercial delivery of their units next quarter, not in a couple of years. They are planning on ramping up to full production by the end of this year and are setting up distributors in other countries, including the US.
At the heart of the claims of Rossi et al. seem to be (a) a forgetting of the fact that positron annihilation leads to 2 photons (511 keV) in opposite directions, not 1, and (b) a fantastical new variety of positron annihilation in which most of the energy of the (newly single) resultant photon can somehow be transfered to the parent copper nucleus as thermal energy. Why are they propposing such a far-fethed mechanism? If they dont understand nuclear physics, why pretend to, why not just focus on the engineering question, does the system generate heat energy reliably in a way that cant be explained by a chemical energy source? As has been said above, if it works, it works.
In their patent application,
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2009125444&IA=IT2008000532&DISPLAY=DESC
in the description of the “discovery, they stated:
As the copper atom decays, an energy emitting positive beta decay occurs, according to the following equations:
P = N+ e+ + v, where
P = proton N = neutron
E+ = positron v = neutrino
The positron forms the electron antiparticle, and hence, as positrons impact against the nickel electrons, the electron-positron pairs are annihilated, thereby generating a huge amount of energy.
[in response to this, my first posting yesterday:]
So the “huge amount of energy” that they claim is produced, comes from annihilation of a positron. THIS IS NONSENSE. What happens when a positron meets an electron and annihilates, is the disappearence of both particles and the emission of two photons of exactly 511 keV energy, travelling in exactly the opposite directions – this is the basis of positron emission tomography (PET).
These quite energetic and penetrating 512 keV photons would NOT heat the reaction liquid, most of the photons would leave the mixture and be a source of significant, and easily measurable (with any Geiger counter) gamma radiation around the chamber. If the energies they are claiming came indeed from positron annihilation, then the system would be seriously radioactive and need lead shielding. It would not generate any significant heat.
Well it seems that they responded to this criticism. Now, instead of the positron emission of copper causing “huge energy” by some mysterious and unknown mechanism, now they have proposed, in the Nuclear Journal ress release, this new fantastical version of positron ennihilation, with a (completely unexplained) reduction in the number of photons from positron annihilation from two to one, and then a transfer of the photon energy (the single photon having swallowed its companion would now presumably have 1022 keV) mostly back to the parent copper nucleus in the form of thermal phonon energy. Here is their revised positron annihilation mechanism in today’s press release:
The mechanism proposed by Focardi – Rossi, verified by mass spectroscopy data, which predicts transmutation of a nickel nucleus to an unstable copper nucleus (isotope), remains in principle valid. The difference is that inside the unstable copper nucleus, produced from the fusion of a hydrogen mini-atom with a nickel nucleus, is trapped the mini-atom electron (β-), which in my opinion undergoes in-situ annihilation, with the predicted (Focardi-Rossi) decay β+ of the new copper nucleus.
The β+ and β- annihilation (interaction of matter and anti-matter) would lead to the emission of a high energy photon, γ, (Einstein)
[.. this is wrong, positron annihilation leads to a pair of photons .. ]
from the nucleus of the now stable copper isotope and a neutrin to conserve the lepton number. However, based on the principle of conservation of momentum, as a result of the backlash of this nucleus, the photon energy γ is divided into kinetic energy of this nucleus of large mass (heat) and a photon of low frequency.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the system does not exhibit the Mössbauer* phenomenon for two reasons:
1. The copper nucleus is not part of the nickel crystal structure and behaves as an isolated atom in quasi gaseous state
2. Copper, as a chemical element, does not exhibit the Mössbauer phenomenon.
In conclusion, it should be underlined that the copper nucleus thermal perturbation, as a result of its mechanical backlash(heat), is transferred to its encompassing nickel lattice and propagated, by in phase phonons (G. Preparata), through the entire nano-crystal. This could explain why in cold fusion the released energy is mainly in the form of heat and the produced (low) γ radiation can be easily shielded.
Oddly, in the initial article here the author “observes that gamma radiation is not observed while the reactor was running”. That is not compatible with a central role of positron annihilation. However now, with their new Positron annihilation version 2.0, they admit that weak gammas are emitted but they only need a little shielding!
Seriously though they really need to drop positron emission as the explained source of the nuclear energy, their proposed bizzare mutation of positron annihilation is not credible.
Great stuff! it’s good to think out of the box…
It looks like ‘phlogiston’ is great low energy nuclear fusion expert! But I think that critisism what phlogiston gave was not very relevant, because it just means that energy is not from antimatter annihilation. LENR does happen as it has been shown in many studies before during the last 20 years. Although contemporary science cannot explain it.
Did it really happen in Bologna or is there just cleverly hidden fuel cell? I think that we will see that soon. It is possible that Rossi is just another con artist, but I still think that LENR research should deserve more attention. Instead we spend our money on hot fusion reactors such as ITER, although it is just wasting of money and brain power of scientists, without no possible pay back, because Solar Fusion Power is always more cheap and more abundant.