LENR NEEDS ACTIONABLE PARAMETERS.

This is just a short introduction to the parameter problems in LENR; more has to come when we will study the Report No 2 of Rossi’s Professors.

The most frightening statement from the long Cold Fusion-LENR- new name(s) to come- multi-saga is, probably this:

"not only are the anomalous fusion reactions found to take place in only a very few chips (obtained from the same piece of titanium) but even in those chips, tritium production is restricted to a small number of selected localized 'hot spots' (by Mahadeva Srinivasan in "Nuclear fusion in an atomic lattice: An update on the international status of cold fusion research," Current Science, vol 60, no 7, April 10, 1991, p 417.)

It is absolutely irrelevant that it is about Ti and tritium, the same is painfully true also for palladium; heat and helium on the cathodes of electrolytic cells- this is the very spirit of cold fusion, where uncertainty is the rule- both globally and locally.

Recently I was very much interested in the heroic efforts of our best men to show that wet PdD is not unmanageable scientifically and dead technologically. See please: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2014/09/the-death-of-wet-pdd-was-highly.html

The stakes for me are high, I have decided irreversibly that if a team will obtain 100% long term reproducibility with a PdD cell without deep degassing or covering the degassed cathode with a membrane permeable only for hydrogen and impermeable for all other gases, I will retire from the field, playing chess or activating in some anti-vegan movement (“The cruel veganists are killing plants, let’s eat ham and eggs!”)

I will be 77 years old soon, this will happen probably in my late 80’s so I am still not so scared just now.

(When I just wrote this, the Internet has sent me a message: “Hey you narrow-vision-old-boy, do you really think that only LENR is complex- give a look to this: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/09/25/key-catalytic-factors-in-carbon-dioxide-reduction/) True, but is it a consolation? No, but I think it is something to be learned from this.

Also, I have developed a good habit to discuss important LENR problems with people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than me. I am listening to what they say with care and openness- and if they say things in accordance with my own ideas, usually I consider and apply their teachings.

OK, I have discussed about PdD with Ed Storms. Many people think he is the most advanced in the study of LENR and his merits are obvious even to a computer.

The discussion has started with my question if the nanocracks- nuclearly active sites in Ed’s new theory are- an “actionable parameter” i.e a variable that can be changed thus that you obtain the desired effect (more or less in practice). Ed who has studied the problem thoroughly says: Yes! “Nanocracks can be created on purpose”

I, less educated in the subjects of fragility and fragilization of palladium and of other metals, plus because I have developed a kind of nanocrackophobia bound to the long term integrity of the metal – cathode or in other form, - I have serious doubts that nanocracks of the optimum sizes can be manufactured at will for long time. For short time too. Ed Storms knows t methods and thinks that Andrea Rossi has found a good method

for making plenty of productive nanocracks...

“So have done other people occasionally but they have unfortunately misunderstood their findings and were unable to discover the truth. The formation of cracks is a complex subject-says Ed Storms we ( the other people) still have to understand correctly) The problem, thinks Storms, can be solved for both Pd that forms large cracks too easily and nickel, that forms cracks with too much difficulty.

Ed Storms has also emphasized the decisive role of impurities- contaminants. Even small concentrations of impurities will have large effects on the ability to form cracks.

“Consequently, finding the relationship between the material properties and LENR has been difficult. As McKubre and others discovered, slightly impure Pd works better than very pure Pd.  When electrolysis is used, the surface is changed by the slow deposition of Li, Si, O, and Pt. That slow change to produce a brittle surface is the reason why electrolysis has to be applied for a long time before LENR starts. This effect has been completely overlooked. (citing Ed Storms)

About the role of the contaminants: “The reproducibility is low because the role of impurity is not correctly identified. None of the efforts focus on the critical variables.  Yes, the impurity content is variable both locally and as an average. This fact is ignored.  When people actually take the critical variables into account, reproducibility will improve.  Most people have not looked at the surface using SEM and have not considered that the effect is very local where the impurity content is very different from the average.” For me this raises the problems how the impurities or contaminants can be “made” into an

actionable parameter. Say I have the responsibility to manufacture 1000 functional F&P Cells per day- how will I manage the impurities- in-Pd problem? How will I select and treat the assortments and batches of this metal? How can I select the lots with the same composition but with some batches having a random distribution from those in which the contaminants are grouped in islands of different sizes? I fear I will lose my job and cursing the purity parameter will not make me happy.

We also have discussed about the gaseous impurities or contaminants; Ed Storms thinks they have a secondary role and I am obsessed with them. He is right; I indeed think they are the main cause of the Reproducibility problem.

However it seems we have hit a hornet’s nest- and we have to start professional discussions about the LENR parameters; they can perhaps help us to understand better the problem and much later even to solve it.

Making our bureaucrats happy: the definitions

Words are excellent to hide our thoughts; however with a bit of care they can also be used to express thoughts, ore or less precisely. English is quite difficult being poly-semantic- so many words have a broad range of senses. I am reminded about this daily by http://www.wordsmith.org/ and other inspiring sites I am subscribed to – from my web-searcher journalist period (1999-2010)

Now I want to speak about those measurable variables of the LENR processes that have to be changed in controlled and coordinated ways in order to get lot of excess energy and limited harmful side effects. I will emphasize the great difficulties due to extreme complexity and fuzziness.

Definitions used from Web dictionaries:

PARAMETER:  a measurable factor forming one of a set that defines conditions of operation.

ACTIONABLE: able to be done or acted on; having practical value; also goes: adjustable, controllable.

The other sense of “actionable: giving sufficient reason to take legal action” is not relevant for our case.

The first condition of a parameter is to be measurable with a good precision and I remember values of trivial parameters as temperature, pressure, flow, pH, mixing speed etc. in combination with so many non-culinary recipes. Including tens of sorts of functional additives.

My constructive discussion with Ed Storms has revealed me the sad fact that some parameters –as contaminants can be measured only with great difficulty –especially in LENR- purity control with its local effects and temperature differences too small sometimes due to weak heat excess effects.

We can move parameters upward and downward in many combinations and we can find the optimal values both for continuous and discontinuous processes- in some rational and practical limits. Myriads of possibilities in the technologies.

For the wet electrolytic PdD systems even the ‘simplest’ parameter, temperature is limited by the presence of the liquid to max. 100 C. Recent advances show that promising CF activity starts above 200 C. Fleischmann and Pons have built cells with boiling and refluxed heavy water in the glorious IMRA France days. The results were good but have not matched the experimental effort and complications. High pressure, high temperature closed electrolytic cells are rather dangerous but see what I wrote about the Cincinnati Cell in the final part of this paper. .

Therefore temperature is an actionable parameter only for the dry gas-phase LENR systems as those of Piantelli, Case, Rossi,

DGT.

Parameter Paralysis.

This essay is not intended as/for a complete study of LENR parameters; however I want to call your attention to a situation

I have met in practice: sometimes a system is conceived and built in such an auto-limiting way, that almost all the parameters have a restricted variability and are not well actionable.

I remember without details (because I could not test it) a cavitation device somewhat similar with James Griggs’ Hydrosonic Pump on which nothing could be adjusted.

An interesting and tragic case is that of the Cincinnati Cell  

see please it in some detail:

http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/IE13-14CincinattiGroup.pdf

The authors, Stan Gleeson and Don Holloman, were my friends because they were good men, idealists and have tried to do good things. They were Charismatic Christians and have worked from divine inspiration. They wanted to clean the Planet of radioactive wastes and have built their fine zirconium Cell. They have worked first with Thorium but later with Americium and both have died young by leukemia, more than probable due to being exposed to radiations.

We met, became friends and they have donated me one of their Cells and I was very grateful and proud, however a bit confused about their choice. As you can see here

http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/astiworkshop.pdf

we had some warm- human, cultural and scientific discussions. (It was the worse period of my life I already knew about the cancer of my son)

At my Institute ITIM, my younger friend Manu Surducan and I have tested the cell and the first impression was: “it works as it will and you cannot change much” You connect the cell to current it starts to heat up, the resistance increases rapidly and in short time it behaves as having distilled, pure high resistance water in it. You can change only the speed of increasing the voltage but not much. An unique scenario.”

If you open the Cell after the test the liquid phase is not more radioactive, however significant quantities of a white grey precipitate are formed and the radioactivity is there. 

The two electrodes (see the first Infinite Energy link) are damaged, eroded in more and more places.

The worst thing- if you measure the radioactivity of the entire

Cell before and after the high pressure electrolysis- it remains unchanged: no measurable transmutation takes place. The radioactivity is just relocated inside the cell.

But what happens actually, why has the test such a rigid evolution? Why is the zirconium “consumed”?

Then I suddenly remembered an English newspaper article

about a Russian guy who added a good quantity of cyanide to water, put the mixture in a similar electrolysis cell with electrodes of iron made a lot of sparking, filters the water then could drink it without any health problem. The trick is spark erosion due to the current drops of molten metal (zirconium for the Cinci Cell ns iron for water cleaning) fall in the water and embed, englobe, include strongly any substance except H2O- water is demineralized.

I had great practice with bad news so I solved the problem to communicate these results too and have collaborated many years

with the chemist of the Cincinnati Group, Rob Liversage and we have tried many variants of the process e.g. alkaline solutions.

It seems there is something malefic in, around about or with Cold Fusion. Something that causes unique problems. A far analogy- we chemists have a saying:

"God created 91 elements, man a little more than a dozen and the devil one - chlorine"

I had the chance to work many years with chlorine and its compounds, my favorite stuff, polyvinyl chloride contains 56.5 % in weight chlorine. I agree with the saying of above taking in account that Cl is overall.

Sometimes I don’t understand well my own ideas, what can I do with this analogy? Let’s try, Fleischmann and Pons have discovered cold fusion and this was a miracle because they have found it in the most improbable circumstances- and the worst. 

But, indeed, Who has created it?

No answer is necessary, Man will re-create it and it will be GOOD!

Peter