So the $64M question is... "What are the conditions that make it favor the QM-tunneling mechanism as opposed to the traditional chemical processes????"
-Mark _____ From: Mark Iverson [mailto:zeropo...@charter.net] Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 3:30 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: [Vo]: New driving force for chemical reactions... http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-chemical-reactions.html This might explain what's going on in LENR systems... with emphasis on these 3 statements: "... the observed product of the reaction, acetaldehyde, is the least likely outcome among conceivable possibilities." "...Tunneling can cause a reaction, that does not have the lowest activation barriers, to occur exclusively." ... Allen said that tunneling control "can be a general phenomenon, especially if hydrogen transfer is involved, and such processes need not be restricted to cryogenic temperatures." Further sound-bites... "What we found was that the change was being controlled by a process called quantum mechanical tunneling," said Allen, "and we found that tunneling can supersede the traditional chemical reactivity processes of kinetic and thermodynamic control. We weren't expecting this at all." What had happened? Clearly, a chemical reaction had taken place, but only inert argon atoms surrounded the compound, and essentially no thermal energy was available to create new molecular arrangements. Moreover, said Allen, "the observed product of the reaction, acetaldehyde, is the least likely outcome among conceivable possibilities." "We knew that the rate of a reaction can be significantly affected by quantum mechanical tunneling," said Allen. "It becomes especially important at low temperatures and for reactions involving light atoms. What we discovered here is that tunneling can dominate a reaction mechanism sufficiently to redirect the outcome away from traditional kinetic control. Tunneling can cause a reaction that does not have the lowest activation barriers to occur exclusively." -Mark
