Focardi has disclosed some data on how the Ni rods were prepared which
seems doable:
"In order to compare samples having the same surface but different
bulks, the metal
rods used in the experiments described here (stainless steel for cell A
and nickel for cell
B) were coated with a thick ( 0.1 mm) nickel layer by the usual
nickel-plating bath [7]
containing the following components: Nickel Ammonium Sulphate, Citric
Acid, Ammonium
Hydroxide, Sodium Disulfite (purity RPE-ACS). After introduction in the
cells, the
rods were annealed under vacuum (p < 104 mbar) at temperatures up to
about 900 K
in order to clean their surfaces [8, 9]. Successive thermal cycles were
also performed in a
hydrogen atmosphere below 1 bar."
He also went through a cell / rod H loading process which also seems doable:
"The sample loading in a natural hydrogen atmosphere was performed in
successive
steps. In each step, we started with an initial gas pressure in the
range 400–800 mbar
and thereafter a little amount of hydrogen was introduced into the cell
through a suitable
valve (p 400–600 mbar). When the pressure decreased down to its
starting value, new
hydrogen was added (see fig. 3). After several loading cycles, the
sample was ready and
it was possible to trigger the exothermic process. Such an operation can
be performed
by lowering the input power, waiting for the sample temperature to
decrease down to
about 300 K, then suddenly restoring the previous power level. After
this operation an
increased equilibrium temperature, as shown in fig. 4, is obtained: the
cell is producing
an excess heat. Another way to trigger the process is to provoke a
pressure step-like
variation, as shown in fig. 5. After the triggering procedure, the
production of excess heat
is maintained for months.
It must be underlined that, once the heat producing process has been
started, the cells
are kept sealed for all the time, that is no H2 or anything else is
introduced or extracted
from the cell, except heat, of course, while the input power is
maintained constant. The
initial temperatures are newly obtained when the heat producing process
is stopped by
following a suitable procedure (see fig. 5 and relative caption)."
Note there was no H supplied to the cell for 289 days and still Focardi
and his team say the cell produced more heat that was being applied for
289 days. To me this seems very doable to replicate. Why has no one
replicated the device and reported on the results? This is not rocket
science nor mega buck expensive nor using exotic materials nor requiring
exotic processing.
