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.
Per Strandberg says:
January 23, 2011 at 4:24 pm
…
So here we have two contradiconary evidence.
The people making these experiments don’t get leathal doses of radiation. Indeed they don’t seem to register any elevated levels of radiation at all. And with excess energy there seems to be nuclear fusion produced atoms.
—
I like you approach, so true.
If you will read the actual patent application there is in place both boron and lead casing to prevent any escapement, so, it is not as if there is absolutely NO radiation products involved, just that it is rather benign compared to current high-energy nuclear production.
With proper skeptism of something that is actually good usually also comes hope.
Looks like I must point out a probable inconsistency in one of my prior posts, wherein I stated that elements lighter than iron must fuse, while those heavier than iron must be split in nuclear reactions. A quick glance at the periodic table shows nickel (element #28) to be just to the right of iron (element #26) and hence heavier than iron.
Provided these results by Focardi and Rossi are real and their process does indeed transmute nickel into copper (element #29, heavier than both iron and nickel), the theorists will have to adjust the pivot point rule when dealing with cold fusion reactions. The question then becomes: What is the heaviest atom that can be transmuted with cold fusion? I’ve seen lab experiment descriptions in which palladium was transmuted to another element, and Pd is element #46 (just below nickel in the periodic chart, by the way, so the two have similar orbital configurations), and hence much heavier than iron. http://webelements.com/
Perhaps there is no theoretical upper limit, with predominant candidates determined by price and availability (although it isn’t going to take a huge amount of the initial metal to produce the amount of energy mankind is currently consuming).
I can still see a “global warming” objection to all this, however– the “environmentalists” will be screaming about all that heat warming up the earth. Oh my, is there no solution? I’m betting nothing will placate these people except a vast reduction in population.
Berényi Péter says:
January 29, 2011 at 2:20 pm
“Dr. Storms writes (on page 28 of his review paper): “Addition of neutrons, as several authors have suggested (Fisher 2007; Kozima 2000; Widom and Larsen 2006), is not consistent with observation because long chains of beta decay must occur after multiple neutron addition before the observed elements are formed.””
Which is simply not true. There are numerous possible routes (as I have pointed out above), many of which should be quite fast (cf. the similar transmutation chains occurring in supernovae). Note also that beta decay of neutron-rich nuclides (resulting from multiple neutron captures) will normally be very fast – typically less than a second – at least until the final link(s) in the chain. There is also the possibility of stimulated decay. Without a much clearer understanding of the experimental conditions, and the precise nature and energetics of the neutron field, it is not possible to say whether or not such a model would be consistent with observation.
RockyRoad says:
January 30, 2011 at 8:15 am
“Looks like I must point out a probable inconsistency in one of my prior posts, wherein I stated that elements lighter than iron must fuse, while those heavier than iron must be split in nuclear reactions. A quick glance at the periodic table shows nickel (element #28) to be just to the right of iron (element #26) and hence heavier than iron.”
The binding energy per nucleon is highest around iron, but it’s that binding energy released from the hydrogen that provides the energy for fusion reactions; and that will give a net production of energy so long as the binding energy curve does not fall too steeply at the top end (which, up to the heaviest known elements, it doesn’t).
“The question then becomes: What is the heaviest atom that can be transmuted with cold fusion? …Perhaps there is no theoretical upper limit,”
Not until way beyond element 120 anyhow. For example, 238U + p -> 239Np + 5.3MeV.
Of course it would be difficult to determine what electricity rates would be once power plants started to utilize this new form of heat energy, but the Northeast pays around 14 cents per kWhr. The national average is 9.45 cents per kWhr (based on June 2007 prices):
http://www.kaec.org/images/stand/0607_RateMap.pdf
What amazing benefits to our economy we’d see if this invention reduced electricity prices by half or even more!