Re: cold nuclear fusion in palladium

verdigris wrote:

Pons and Fleischman used a palladium cathode in their cold fusion
experiment of 1989 (cathode immersed in heavy water,D20)and they said
that excess energy was released from the system.

There is no doubt that substantial excess energy was dramatically
released. Said release is easily *chemically* explained ein all its
parts - configuration as well as results.

Since 1989 lots of experiments have been done and some researchers
have agreed with the findings of Pons and Fleischman.

There has been no defensible "agreement" about a nuclear origin for
the observed energy release. teh chemcil orgin is uninteresting as a
power soruce.

I have seen many explanations of why cold fusion can't take place
according to known physics but here is one suggestion I have as to why
it can!
Palladium metal is very resistant to fracturing.

Palladium hydride is brittle and fragile, as with titanium and
titanium hydride.

This means that
impurity atoms or ions face a high energy barrier to get into the
crystal lattice and distort the face-centred cubic arrangement,and
that it is difficult for defects to grow larger to cause fracturing.

Your argument already is not strong on many counts. Are ruby
(Cr-doped Al2O3) and sapphire (Fe/Ti-doped Al2O3) prone to
instability? Is emery less of an abrasive than clean corundum?

But when an electric current flows through palladium metal (which has
hydrogen gas on its surface and inside it - palladium absorbs 900
times its own volume of hydrogen) hydrogen molecules and hydrogen ions
(which are present in the heavy water) are given the energy to distort
the metal structure and remain in situ.As time passes the number of
distortions and hence the potential energy of the palladium cathode
increases.At some critical point, the face-centred cubic arrangement
of palladium atoms is quickly restored
and the hydrogen molecules and ions are expelled from the palladium
cathode, as potential energy is released like a mini-earthquake.

That's silly.

In a
cylindrical-shaped cathode the released energy could be focused at its
end or in the centre of the rod.In particular,
at some locations in the rod where deuterium molecules are located,
the focused energy could be sufficient to cause helium 4 to form.The
formation of helium inside the cathode would explain why nuclear
products have rarely been detected in the heavy water in experiments
of this type.

Look up the Pd-Li phase diagram. Pd-Li is a common braze filler -
alloy melting point is remarkably depressed from Pd metal at small Li
wt-% loadings. Drop metallic lithium into water. You get a bubble
every now and then - it's not all that reactive. Here we go: The
thin Pd cylinder is the cathode in D2O/LiOD electrolyte (*nothing*
else gives a "fusion" exotherm) surrounded by a closely-spaced
(minimize electolyte resistance) Pt spiral anode. Ram in big DC
current! Days pass... then KABLOOIE!

A lithium or very lithium-rich Li-Pd rind progressively forms and
works its way into the Pd cathode. The metastable system finally
flips and there is a large alloying exotherm. Pd-Li alloy melts to
give a BLEVE plus chemical reaction. There is your "fusion"
explosion. (Explosions from jostling the separate Pt catalyst bed
recombining D2 and O2 to recycle D2O don't count. Exposing very
reactive fresh surface can be nasty.)

The obvious control is H2O/LiOH. The same KABLOOIE! is expected.
Nobody seems to have run it. Never send an engineer (things) to do a
chemist's job (stuff).

Intermetallic alloying can be intensely exothermic. Take a lump of
clean sodium the size of a butter pat, stick it at the end of a rod,
then plunge it into a small beaker of mercury. You will get a
thoroughly impressive explosion of boiling mercury from heat of
amalgam formation. Uncle Al suggests looking up sodium amalgam preps
rather than trying it yourself. The contained warnings are eloquent.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2

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