In the early days of cold fusion (early 1990s) there were dozens of
papers on so-called "low energy emissions" which happened merely from
loading or exposure of hydrogen to both nickel and palladium - and often
with no other input power being used.
This was NOT electrolysis. Many of the papers originated in India or
Italy and few from the USA. The testing was done using x-ray film, often
the kind used by dentists and the result is a foggy film known as an
"autoradiograph". In fact, the radioactive properties of Uranium were
first discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel using fogging of film, in a
very similar way.
Various filters can be used to estimate the energy of the emission -
which is called "low energy" in many of the papers, but it was in the
soft x-ray range of 500 eV to 10 keV. These photons are far from low
energy compared to visible light and are only "low" compared to gammas.
The upper end of this range is where tritium decay occurs, and based on
that and the estimated half-life of exposed metal - some of the old
papers conclude that tritium was being produced from light water and
nickel, which is most unlikely given the lack of a suitable mechanism
for tritium.
Names of experimenters are Focardi, Piantelli, Srinivasan,
Sankaranarayanan, Notoya, Rout and others.
BTW - these emissions were seen using either hydrogen or deuterium or
both and there was no advantage for deuterium, so this was NOT cold
fusion per se. For instance, "Copious low energy emissions from
Palladium loaded with hydrogen or deuterium," Indian Journal of
Technology, 29, 5071, (1991) Rout et al. At least one paper got picked
up by Fusion Technology.
It is too bad that this niche was not pursued further to determine the
mechanism of the soft x-rays and to attempt scale-up. In retrospect, the
implications of this kind of energetic radiation happening from mere
exposure of metal to hydrogen, and with zero added power should have
gotten more people excited than it did. For those of us who are
revisiting this niche in light of what Holmlid has (more recently)
reported - it is very exciting... since Holmlid has a viable theory and
identification of the species responsible.
In short, this niche of relatively energetic photons occurring
spontaneously, with no power applied other than pumping the H2 gas, may
represent a more commercializable result than actual fusion since the
radiation is easily shielded, and especially since it was said to be
100% reproducible at the time. If Holmlid is correct, the ash could be
the most valuable part of the process.
- [Vo]:A forgotten chapter in LENR Jones Beene
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