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. . . a cool review (was COLD FUSION)

Brian's message forced me to go back to the camcorder
and to read temperatures. For some reason the temperatures
I typed were wrong. Here are the data again:

Current through the two cells in series: 3.5 A
Control cell (#1) 3.03 volts and 89.1 degrees C
Sample cell (#2) 2.80 volts and 89.8 degrees C

In other words, the difference of temperatures was 0.7 C.

It would be foolish to use these data as an indication
that something nuclear is going on. My emphasis was
on the fact that a teacher, John Dash, was brave enough
to give students a project based on a controversial
subject. No attempts were made, as far as I know, to
argue that excess heat can not possibly be attributed to
chemical reactions, etc. The assumed "steady state"
situation can also be questioned. No calorimeter was
used in the experiment to measure the amount of
thermal energy.

The nature of the apparent excess of thermal energy
should be discussed but not necessarily at the level at
which students learn about differences between volts,
watts and amperes. The next questions should be:

a) how can the observed temperature difference
of 0.7 degrees C be explained?

b) what else can we do with available tools?

c) what additional tools would help us?

d) etc. etc.

Personally I am very critical of calorimetric data when
heating rates are very small; nuclear signatures reported
at the conference are much more convincing. They
show that something very unusual is taking place in
some cold fusion experiments. But that is a different
subject.
Ludwik Kowalski

On Saturday, Aug 30, 2003, at 18:50 US/Pacific, Brian Whatcott wrote:

At 06:44 PM 8/30/2003 -0700, Ludwik, you wrote:
The 10th International Cold Fusion conference
ended yesterday. A student project demonstrated
at that conference is described in item 103 at:

http://blake.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/

Here is the "cold fusion" aspect of that student project (as extracted
from
Ludwik's site.)

"Two electrolytic cells were connected in series with a power supply
delivering a constant
current of 3.5 amperes. Cell #1, labeled 'control',had two platinum
electrodes and used
an ordinary water electrolyte. Cell #2, labeled 'sample', had a
palladium
cathode and a
platinum anode. It used a heavy water electrolyte. The DOP on the
control
cell was 3.03
volts while the DOP on the sample cell was 2.80 volts. In other words
the
electric energy
was delivered to cell #1 at the rate of 10.6 W while to cell #2 it
was
delivered at the
rate of 9.8 W. The two cells were geometrically identical; they also
had
identical
catalysts recombining gases (hydrogen and oxygen).

On that basis one would expect cell #2 to be warmer than cell #1 (10.6
W
versus
9.8 W) . But the equilibrium temperatures measured did not confirm this
expectation.
The temperature of cell #1 turned out to be 82.3 C while the
temperature of
cell #2
was 89.2 C. The difference of temperature, nearly one degree, could be
interpreted
as an indication that some kind of additional energy was converted into
heat in
cell #2."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When you apply a battery charger to a car battery, I understand that
at first the battery stays cool, but later grows warm with the
evolution of
hydrogen
bubbles. This may be said to illustrate the different ways that
electrical energy
may be transformed or stored.

I also recall an unusual property of palladium, that it has the
distinction of
storing up to 700 volumes of hydrogen internally.

I notice in this narrative, that 9.8 W applied to cell #1 was
associated
with an
operating temperature of 82.3 degC
But 10.6W (or 8.2% more power) applied to a second cell was associated
with a
higher temperature of 89.2 degC (or 8.4% higher temperature) where
the temperature expected for 10.6 W might be 1.082 X 82.3 = 89.05 degC

This seems to be a modest difference of 0.15 degC from the expected
value.....
could it be that warmed hydrogen was lost from one cell, but retained
by
another? or did I miss something?


Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!