jon@cernvax.UUCP (jon) (03/31/89)
This is a summary of a talk given by Professor Fleischmann at CERN, Geneva
on Friday 31st March. I should point out that I am a computer programmer and
not a physicist or a chemist, so therefore not all my understanding of the
facts may be 100% correct, but I kept notes so hopfully the following will
make some sense. Also this was strictly a scientific seminar, no questions
were allowed on the non-scientific aspects of the talk. In fact the camera
crews of various TV stations were asked to leave before the talk began.
But they were given a chance to interview Professor Fleischmann after the
seminar.
It has taken Prof. Fleischmann and his collegue 5 years to get this far
and they had hoped to keep the experiment secret for about another 18 months
so they could be 100% certain of the results. But the results where "leaked"
(This was news to me, any confirmation?), and then they had the "awful news
conference", as he called it. They also funded the experiment privately
because they didn't think anyone would give them money for such a mad idea.
The equation in the at the palladium cathode is as follows
D2O + e- <=> Dabs + OD-
Dabs <=> Dlattice
Dabs + D2O + e- <=> D2 + OD-
Dabs = Absorbed Deuterium
Dlattice = Deuterium in the Palladium lattice
The deuterium in the lattice is very mobile.
He then said something that I quite didn't understand and gave the figure
of 0.8eV. I think this is the potential of the deuterium in the lattice.
This 0.8eV is equivalent to a pressure of 10^27 atm for gaseous deuterium.
The QM of the s-electron density of the Deuterium is VERY strange and is
not understood.
In the lattice the following nuclear reactions occur
2D + 2D -> 3T + 1H + 4.03MeV
2D + 2D -> 3He + n + 3.77Mev
Their first experiment was with a palladium cube, this finished when the
cube ignited, in the nuclear sense. The conclusion of this is that this
reaction does not fail safe. When it starts to run hot it runs very hot.
The cube almost burnt down their fume cupboard. But at least the effects
are not quite as serious as a meltdown of a fission reactor.
They then tried sheets before finally trying rods. These rods a 10cm long
and have diameters of 1mm ,2mm and 4mm. The best results are with the 4mm rod
therefore the reaction is dependent on volume as opposed to surface area, it
also seems to be dependant on temperature.
After 100 hours the measured output was 5MJ / cm3. They managed to detected
neutrons, gamma-rays and 5 fold increase in the tritrium in the heavy water.
They didn't manage to get a energy spectrum for the neutrons.
They calulated there are 10^4 neutron producing events/sec but to account
for the energy released there must be 10^13 events/sec, this means that
the prefered reaction path does not produce neutrons. They do not know
what this path is but lithium was being mentioned.
The efficiency of their cell is "miserable" and their best result was 111%
of breakeven (i.e. 100% => power in == power out), but they predicte that
with a properly designed cell their efficiency could be over 1200%, i.e.
10 times out what you put in.
It takes 3 months to charge a cell before it starts to produce anything.
That's the end of my notes, now for some editorial comments.
I personally could see nothing wrong with his explanation of the phenomena,
there is no known chemical reaction which can produce the amounts of energy
involved. It has to be nuclear fusion. Whether or not this is going to have
any practical use is still to be seen, as Prof. Fleischmann said a lot of
work now has to go into understand why and how this is happening. There
were some very worried theoretical physicists leaving the hall after the
talk, and there were mumbles about rewriting the theory of quantum mechanics.
The are going to be a hell of a lot of papers on cold fusion in the next
years!!
*---------------------------------------------------------------*
| |
| Jon Caves {world}!mcvax!cernavx!jon |
| Division DD, jon@cernvax.cern.ch |
| CERN CH-1211, |
| Geneva 23, "Quote? I haven't got time to think |
| Switzerland. of a quote!" |
| |
*---------------------------------------------------------------*pjs@ARISTOTLE-GW.JPL.NASA.GOV (Peter Scott) (04/05/89)
mcvax!cernvax!jon@uunet.uu.net (jon) writes: >Their first experiment was with a palladium cube, this finished when the >cube ignited, in the nuclear sense. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ What does this mean in this context, please? I have heard the term applied only to the break-even point in fission reactors. Peter Scott (pjs@grouch.jpl.nasa.gov)