The new edition of Ed Storms’s CF/LENR Guide.

 A few days ago this valuable document was published:
Edmund Storms: 

A STUDENT’S GUIDE TO COLD FUSION.
Edition 2012
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEastudentsg.pdf
A must-read for our community.

Thank you, Ed- you have created an excellent review of the field, very dense in information, comprising almost all the essential facts and ideas of interest. Also a great performance in taxonomy, you have succeeded to classify and correlate an increasingly huge diversity and richness of data, some of them fluid or with lower reliability. You possess both the holistic, details in the whole, and holographic, whole in the detail, vision of the field.

With full respect to this accomplishment I try to add something to the understanding of cold fusion/LENR whatever this discipline/field/science/technology is today.

But first perhaps a possible change- in the title. This opus  is much more a guide for Researchers than for Students- usually we have to deliver to students (at least University students stricto sensu, not learning people – largo sensu) - knowledge with predominantly firmly established facts with only a small proportion of open, undecided, not completely understood  problems.
If we refer to the interpretation and understanding of experimental data, in case of LENR, what we don’t know or don’t can comprehend is almost matching what we already know and can explain- and use for prediction. It will be a real Student’s Guide when certainties will be preponderant and applied commercially. That day is not so far, I hope.

Re the central issue – NAE.

It seems (as I have shown in my ancient paper:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GluckPunderstand.pdf
later published in Fusion Technology) that LENR is indeed a
catalysis like phenomenon taking place in small active sites... Somewhat philosophically defined, catalysis occurs when matter at a level is able to stimulate some processes at an other level of organization. Chemical catalysis is stimulation of processes at the level of electron layers (chemical) by special structures at the atomic level. It is an influence from inside out. LENR goes in the opposite direction; matter smartly organized on the chemical level determines some unexpected phenomena on the nuclear level. A complex phenomenon involving more levels and stages of collaboration.
The catalytic nature of cold fusion- it takes place in active sites, specifically nuclearly active sites, is not my idea, it a natural idea.
Important things take place in restricted, special zones or areas, and this includes miracles.

I remember discussing about it with many scientists already at ICCF-2 Como in 1991, inter alia with a great electrochemist professor Heinz Gerischer (R.I.P!) while walking together along that beautiful lake. Corrosion, the Prof’s specialty is also very local.

If “nuclearly active” environment” is better than site, zone is for now a non-relevant question, I think it is OK to accept this, NAE is nice.
It is true that for the Pd-D systems there is a real NAE mystics- neither dimension nor chemical composition can explain local nuclear activity. Nobody except me believes that existing NAE in real Pd based systems are actually poisoned, deactivated by a simple mechanism - due to adsorption of gases different from deuterium- from air. OK, Pd –D system are more scientific than technological- in the best case we can use some 2.10 exp 8 g of Pd and the total power in world is around 15 exp 12 W. How many W can generate a g of Pd?

However it is a rather different situation for the Ni-H branch due to two publications of Francesco Piantelli – his second patent WO 2010/058288 and his Poster “Proton Reactor” presented at Pontignano in 2010.Unfortunately, these are not cited in Ed’s Guide. Piantelli shows that for Ni-H (and other transition metal-H systems too) NAE are crystalline nanostructures of pure Ni. See please also “Special- contribution of Piantelli to the LENR-specific nanotechnology.” in http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-does-apply-prof-piantelli-rules-of.html
Piantelli has advanced from the NAE mystics to NAE science and Rossi and even more DGT, have gone steps further toward NAE technology.

At 5.II.7 Ed speaks about “Theory of Rossi and Piantelli”. I ask him to reverse the order. Piantelli has worked more than 20 years
in order to understand a line of LENR research and was the leading scientist in all the published and patented research works
for Ni-H. Unfortunately, the anti-meritocratic Italian practice to put the authors in alphabetical order favors – for example -Focardi who was kind of second violin in these works. The great majority of heat releasing experiments was performed at Siena Univ. in Piantelli’s lab. Piantelli’s popularity has suffered because he never has never been an enthusiast of Preparata’s theory and also not an optimist regarding the chances of Pd-D LENR to have an industrial future. One of his arguments is the closed electronic structure of palladium.

Great bad question: are the weaknesses of Pd-D i.e. low intensity, difficult reproducibility, short duration- curable or not?

Piantelli’s active sites or NAE are nanostructures and is well known today that one and the same material in bulk and in form of nanostructures have essentially different properties.
These nanoclusters act as NAE, must be built by different processes, some based on hydrogen fragilization of nickel, Ni alloys or other transition metals.
Piantelli also considers as vital to free the active site of any traces of alien gases ( not hydrogen) and uses deep degassing a very, very drastic and time consuming process (see the patent!) similar to a technological exorcisation.
Obviously NAE in Pd –D systems, e.g. electrolysis are fully exposed to all the components of air. If this is a fatal error only the future will say but it is difficult to create an anaerobic environment for such cases.
.
A fundamental question- Pd-D vs. Ni-H similarities and differences.

Ed Storms seem to believe in the economics and rationality of Nature- one set of laws/principles is valid for all forms of LENR, ergo the Pd-D and Ni-H are similar and what we learn in  the frame of  one can be applied in/transposed to the other. See please:
SUMMARY
6. Heat is mostly generated by D+D+e fusion to give He4+e when deuterium is used and H+H+e fusion to give stable deuterium when normal hydrogen is used
This is an over-simplification, IMHO.

SUMMARY
Two assumptions are made:  All LENR occurs in the same environment and by the same mechanism, and the environment and mechanism must not conflict with known chemical behavior or each other.

6.II Testable Predictions
9. No difference exists between the conditions required to cause fusion involving pure D or pure H. However, many more NAE sites are required to obtain a detectable amount of energy when H is used compared to D.
I think that these statements have to be demonstrated, the contrary statements also can be true- in some extent. What is obvious, Ni-H works better than Pd-D. Piantelli has succeeded already to eliminate 2 of the 3 flaws of LENR obtaining reproducible processes working for month in a self-sustaining regime. Intensity was also increased up to tens of watts however more is necessary for industrial application of LENR as an energy source.

I think we cannot dictate Mother or Stepmother Nature how to behave. Nature is known to have no problems only solutions and nothing can limit the number of these. It is one manifestation of Nature’s Extremistanic attitude and unique ambition to be interesting. Science means understanding Nature’s interestingness, Technology is converting interestingness in usefulness.

Involving and explaining Rossi and Defkalion.
More than one year has elapsed from the first Bologna University
Rossi experiment claiming heat generation at more kWatts level and that was followed by a dozen or so of chaotically conceived and badly executed experiments. Inventor Andrea Rossi has stubbornly refused to make simple and absolutely convincing experiments. An inextricable informational hodgepodge has resulted.
Ed Storms, who first has imagined a stampede to Rossi like LENR technologies, now has chosen to wait for more reliable data. He has completely ignored Defkalion Green Technology that has much better engineering than Rossi.

As regarding Rossi, I think that if do not confuse the points of view, we can use this analogy:
- If you try to demonstrate that 0 = 2, that’s a scam.
- If you try to demonstrate that 2 = 4, that’s advertisement.

Rossi has used some methods from bad ads to convince the public that he has better results than he actually has, also due to stability and duration problems his results were disturbingly regressive, both energy intensity per E-cat, and COP decreasing from one experiment to the next. COP= 6 is inadmissibly low,
I am convinced that using probably Edisonian methods, Rossi
has really discovered a new method in LENR, just he cannot manage the system well.
I think it is not reasonable to reject Rossi completely, Krivit style.
NAEology has to explain what is the essence of Rossi’s discovery, what had he added to Piantelli’s successful methods and what kind of functional additive(s) he calls his catalyst.
We will see this hopefully in the 2013 edition of Ed Storms’ Guide.
Peter