An unusual predicament is lurking in the background of the field of LENR, due to Rossi's (apparent) success.
Prior to Rossi, palladium-deuterium - Pd-D - was king. Now it is looking like Ni-H will be the heir to the throne. Generally this change in focus away from exotic materials seems like a good thing, to the extent Rossi's results can be trusted. However, several dozen of the top researchers in the LENR field were a bit miffed by this change in direction, since they had built careers around Pd-D; and many of them may have jumped ship. After all, getting rid of two expensive components in an experiment should be "win-win" - IF - Rossi's extraordinary results can be duplicated without them. The reason I am bringing this point up is that there could be a promising "middle ground" which is ignored in a rush to switch to Ni-H. It is possible that this middle ground has a valid end-use, even if the Rossi effect is proved. That end use would be dense deuterium in a matrix which does not require precious metals and in a situation where one might desire actual fusion. As a few of you might have guessed, the big opportunity for this would be 'targets' for ICF hot fusion. A target which contains a low cost alloy which is loaded with dense deuterium could be most important in the big picture, since it might then be possible to employ "tabletop" accelerators to provide "inertia," instead of giant lasers, etc. More on that later .... First issue - we do know that Rossi says that deuterium quenches the heat reaction in his reactor. In fact, he claimed to use deuterium for that very purpose: quenching. But like so many Rossi-isms, this one may be another exaggeration. Moreover - a null result with what 'should be' the more active isotope - may be true only for the precise materials Rossi is using; and in other combinations it may be possible to find results with deuterium which have special advantages (such as for ICF targets, etc) and where you do not want extra energy until it is needed. We do know that prior researchers have gotten mixed results with nickel and deuterium, but far less than with Pd-D. However, the major problem is that nickel alone does NOT load to high levels, and even nano-nickel does not load well. In Pd-D LENR, the one criterion which is deemed important is loading of close to 1:1. That would be one atom of deuterium for every atom of palladium. This ratio is hard to achieve without palladium, BUT a ratio of over 4:1 has been achieved in an alloy of nickel and palladium. This is the famous Arata-Zhang alloy. The effort now is to move to alloys of nickel but without exotic metals, and that is where Brian Ahern's work can possibly help those researchers who want to stay with deuterium, yet get away from palladium - and still achieve excellent loading. It is estimate that Pd would cost $5,000 ounce if used in LENR or in ICF fusion due to the demand/supply situation. A few days ago, Brian was running a new alloy of Zr65%-Ni25%-Cu5%-Fe5%. This was spin cast, calcined in air and ground in a ball mill, so that in the end there is a ceramic "support" composed of zirconia, ZrO2 - in which are imbedded nano-islands of the alloy, which is metallic nickel-copper-iron. This is identical to his recent presentation at MIT, except for the addition of iron to the alloy. When baked at mid-range of temperature, zirconium "wants" to oxidize preferentially and that is the physical property that makes "nano-islands" of alloy a natural feature of this technique. The support particles are ground to 50 microns or so, and the result is millions of nanoislands of alloy embedded in each ceramic particle. Here is where it might get interesting for the deuterium researchers. This material loaded to a ratio of 2.5:1 ! And that is based on the ceramic mass as well, so it could be way more than double wrt to only the metal atoms. This is spectacular, under either circumstance. There is no apparent reason why it should not load to the same high level with deuterium, but this will not be tried by Brian, and that is why I am mentioning it now. Ahern is very concerned about the energy crisis - and is open about his results, and wants to see the benefit of them spread to as many areas as possible. This is the first nanopowder alloy to load well containing no precious metal. All of Brian's previous nano-nickel alloys have not loaded well unless palladium was a component in the alloy. This is a fine point to the casual observer, but there will be a few here who will appreciate the implications. I do not think that ICF can be economically feasible if palladium is required, for instance. The curious thing about all of this is that the nano-nickel which did not load was still producing net heat gain, ala Rossi. And wouldn't you know it - this one, which loads well, has yet to produce net excess heat. Go figure. That is why LENR is so frustrating. The devil is in the details. Again - this is a FIRST, in the sense of the first common alloy to load well which contains NO palladium nor any other precious metal, and it loads at modest pressure without electrochemistry. That is why it could be important for use with deuterium, especially for ICF targets. They should benefit from a deuterium density which orders of magnitude higher than liquid, for instance. So have at it. And consider this as public domain information. Jones
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