At 04:37 PM 4/5/2012, pagnu...@htdconnect.com wrote:
My suggestion is that transmutations be the litmus test for LENR - not the
calorimetry results which never seem definitive enough for everyone. If
the reported successful experiments were well conducted, then they will be
reproducible.
There are some highly questionable assumptions here.
First, it appears that the predominant reaction (by far) in the
Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect does not involve transmutations *other
than to helium.*
Helium has been found to be correlated with heat. Helium had been
reported, early on, by Pons and Fleischmann and by others, but the
results were not widely accepted and were not convincing.
Miles, however, ran a series of cells, finding excess heat in most,
and collected gas samples from all the cells, submitting it for blind
analysis. His results were clear: no excess heat, no helium. If there
was excess heat, there was helium, in amounts well within an order of
magnitude of what would be expected from fusion of deuterium to
helium (by any mechanism; if the fuel is deuterium and the ash is
helium, this value, 23.8 MeV/He-4, will result. The major difficulty
is collecting all the helium for measurement; Storms figures that
roughly half is trapped in the cathode.)
Secondly, individual cold fusion experiments, in PdD, continue to be
highly erratic. Success rates, i.e., finding some excess heat, have
increased over the years until nearly every cell shows such a result,
but the quantity of heat varies greatly.
It is not a problem of how "well" the experiments are "conducted."
Rather, the very method involves physical conditions which are quite
difficult to control. It appears that the FPHE involves defects in
the palladium, and the palladium itself changes during the process. A
cathode which is showing no effect, later, under what would appear to
be the *exact same conditions*, then shows the effect, and not
marginally; rather, clearly, far above noise.
What is constant, though, whenever it has been tested, is the
correlation of helium with the heat. There is no contrary
experimental evidence; the early negative replications, the ones that
tested for helium -- and some did -- actually confirm this. They
found no helium and they found no heat. From what we know now, we can
say for certain that they simply failed to set up the necessary
conditions, and from other later work, it's quite clear what this
likely involved. They ran at a loading of roughly 70%, whereas the
FPHE required loading of something on the order of 90% or better.
(Effects are not seen, at all, below 80%).
To get that high loading requires special palladium. Before the work
of Pons and Fleischmann, it appears that 70% was considered about the
best you could get!
And high loading, by itself, isn't necessarily adequate.
In any case, the calorimetry, in the hands of experts, is quite
adequate. It alone won't convince those who are not confident about
calorimetry, which is why helium is so important. The helium and
calorimetry confirm each other. The only thing that connects them
would be transmutation, i.e., the fusion of deuterium to helium.
There have been attempts to impeach the helium results, but every one
of those attempts that I've seen simply ignores the experimental
conditions. It's as if someone says, "Helium has been found in cold
fusion cells" and the person, without looking at the data at all,
says, "Must be leakage from ambient helium." End of topic.
That could make some sense when the helium levels are below ambient.
It makes no sense when they rise above ambient, as they do on
occasion, and it does not explain -- at all -- how the helium could
be correlated with the heat, and not just at some random value, at
roughly the fusion value. Once this was known and confirmed, by
rights, the shoe should have been on the other foot. That happened
long ago, and here we are, still flapping about.
With a preposterous theory gaining attention because, it's claimed,
"It's not fusion!" Where are the experimental results to back it up?
The confirmed predictions?
