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[Phys-L] Re: A BOOK FOR A SCHOOL LIBRARY (about cold fusion)



1) I am happy that Pat Viele <ptv1@CORNELL.EDU> offered help in
composing a list of books we suggest to be available to students. If
you have a good good book to suggest, but prefer not to write about it
publicly, please send the information to that librarian, do not write
to me. I hope the updated list will be shared with us periodically.


2) In reading Muzuno's book (it prompted me to start this thread) I
found another section that some of you might find worth reading. It
builds on what I quoted last time. Note that Mizuno decided not to
publish the described episode; he treats it an an anecdotal evidence
because he was alone to observe the abnormality during the long weekend
in May 1991. I am reading all his translated papers because there is a
chance that I will work with him in December (at Hakkaido University).
I do not think that he is fabricating fiction. Most on you probably
think that I am wasting time and money on a cold fusion project. That
is why I am not going to say anything about it right now. But I plan to
write about our work after returning from Japan.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

An Anomalous Heat Burst

. . . It was March 24, 1991. Exactly two years had passed since I began
these experiments. I had changed the experimental conditions,
increasing current density by a factor of 4 to 0.2 amperes per square
centimeter. Mainly I had in mind the goal of accelerating the reaction.
. . . Two weeks later, on April 6, the temperature slowly rose to
between 105 and 110 C, and as it did before it oscillated some 10 C
daily. At this time anomalous heat had already started. But the
increase was so small that I had continued measuring without noticing
it. Then on the morning of April 22, I stopped electrolysis and waited
for the deuterium in the palladium to deload. Usually, when you stop
electrolysis, the deuterium in the palladium deloads quickly and
combines with the oxygen in the cell head space, producing heat. I knew
this reaction would finish in about ten hours. The palladium I employed
weighed 100 grams, which is close to 1 mole (106 grams). If this was
fully loaded with 1 mole of deuterium, as the deuterium degassed it
would produce a half-mole of heavy water, and the total heat release
would be 151 kilojoules at most. Divide this by duration and you get
4.2 watts average power. This value is about one tenth of the energy
needed for electrolysis, so it should only cause the cell temperature
to rise by about 2 C.

But, even after deuterium deloading subsided, the temperature did not
fall below 75 C, remaining instead at 90 C. I realized that this was
happening on the morning of April 25, when I looked at the data log. To
my surprise the temperature was 100 C. Moreover, it was slowly rising.
This happened just after 9:00 a.m., when Akimoto stood beside me
examining the neutron readings. "Akimoto," I said, "look at this: the
temperature is rising. This is sort of strange. It's 30 C above the
calibration point. Do you think the display is calibrated correctly?"
Akimoto responded, "The temperature's going up? Let's see . . . You're
right, it sure is," he said, looking at the data trace. "Let me have a
look at the neutrons." He flipped through the multichannel data
analyzer memory blocks. "Nope, there is no particular change. We still
have the same old 2.45 MeV peak. It hasn't gone up significantly.
Everything looks about the same," he said as he checked the spectra.

I wondered uneasily if the temperature really was as high as indicated.
I removed some of the neutron moderator plastic blocks in front of the
cell and I checked directly with meters. The heater power supply
current and voltage were steady at 20 V, 3.0 A, just as they had been
before electrolysis began, and just as they had remained without the
slightest change for a month. Of course this was to be expected, since
this was a regulated power supply. The heating coil was covered with
stainless steel. Resistance was 6.67 ohms; the oil had been consuming
60 watts for a month. So the temperature should have read 75 degrees.
Furthermore, three days had passed since I stopped electrolysis, so by
now nearly all of the deuterium should have come out of the metal. The
thing is, at this stage I could only measure certain values directly:
temperature and pressure, and the voltage and current of the coil
heater and electrolysis. I could only infer the deuterium loading level
in the palladium, but I had a pretty good idea where it stood based on
pressure and temperature.

I put my hand over the surface of the cell, and said: "That's pretty
hot. That can't be 70 degrees. It has to be over 100 C. You can't touch
it with your bare hand." "What's happening?" asked Akimoto. "I don't
know. But the deuterium has not come out of the metal; this heat isn't
from recombination. And heater power is still at 60 watts." "Maybe this
is the cold fusion effect everyone's talking about." "It can't be!
Electrolysis has been turned off. It's been off for three days. even
cold fusion doesn't do that, as far as I know. In any case, I think it
would be best to turn off the heater. If we leave it in this state
there is no telling how much higher the temperature will go. If
anything bad happens, they'll never let us continue with this research.
An accident would be disastrous. Also, those explosions we saw at the
beginning of the run bother me. They pushed the pressure well over 100
atmospheres. They recurred hundreds of times." I was terribly worried.

Akimoto said, "Hold on, isn't this a good opportunity? We have been
experimenting for more than two years, and we are finally getting some
honest to goodness heat. I think we should leave it as is, and see what
develops." "Okay, I'm with you. But if something goes wrong here, in
this lab, it would be particularly awkward, so let's move the cell. And
let's keep an eye on the temperature," I concluded. . . . But I still
felt uneasy. I was not confident the cell could survive a sudden
explosion. For many years I had studied the effects of metal that had
been exposed to hydrogen at high pressures and temperatures, so I
thought I understood vessel design well enough to ensure safety. The
truth was that with such a totally unpredictable phenomenon, I was
afraid that my knowledge might prove inadequate.

I left the cell on a steel platform. The next day the temperature had
not fallen a bit. That was a Friday before a long holiday week. I was
afraid to leave the cell in this state, so I made up my mind I would
try to cool it. I filled a large plastic bucket with water and
partially submerged the cell in it. I noted the temperature by directly
measuring the voltage of the sensor, a thermocouple attached to the
cell lid. Voltage was 4.0 mV, or 100 C convened to degrees. It was the
same as it had been. Even though I had turned off the heater and
stopped electrolysis, the heat output maintained itself at 120 watts.
After electrolysis was turned off, total heat energy output had reached
1.2*107 joules. After I submerged the cell in the bucket of water, the
temperature fell rapidly, dropping to about 60 C after an hour. I
figured the temperature would continue to fall under these conditions,
so I left it, and went home.

The next morning I felt anxious as I arrived at the lab, and astounded
when I saw the bucket. The water, which had been around eight-tenths
was nearly all evaporated, and the temperature had once again risen to
around 80 C. By now I was used to weirdness in the lab, but this really
threw me. It took 2*107 joules to evaporate the water in the bucket
(nearly 9 liters). Given the small size of the cell, this energy could
not be the l combustion or any other chemical transformation. Generally
speaking, chemical heat source of this mass will produce on the order
of 105 joules by the most generous estimate, so the energy expended in
evaporation alone was already two orders of magnitude beyond chemistry.
At that point I decided to get a big 20-liter bucket. I filled it with
15 liters of water, enough to completely submerge the cell. When I
returned to have a look three days later on April 30, the water had
again evaporated. The waterline was below the cell, and the cell
temperature was 50 C. For the second time I filled the bucket with 15
liters of water. I recorded the temperature again in my log book by
measuring the thermocouple output, and I left the cell. I added 5
liters on May 1, and again on May 2. Then on May 7 when the holiday
ended, the water was about half gone, the temperature had declined to
35 C, at temperature fluctuations had stopped"

When I began the experiment, I never thought it would be necessary to
keep precise calorimetric data, so unfortunately I can only infer how
much heat the cell had produced based on factors like the amount of
water evaporated. Total heat of evaporation after April 30 came to
8.2*107 joules. Add to this the heat generated by the cell before that
time, and the net total is at least 1.14*108 joules, a whopping amount
of excess heat. . . . My estimation of excess heat is very conservative.

Whenever I consider this anomalous heat, I remain astounded;
unpredictability and profundity of the natural world. I have learned,
able lesson nom this experience. I am appalled at my own inability to
completely shrug off the bounds of conventional knowledge. Weak as they
I verified neutron production. I even detected tritium, although the
figures did not add up to tritium" commensurate" with the neutrons.
But, in my heart, I still harbored the view that the excess heat
phenomenon surely could not occur and, for that reason, I had not made
adequate preparations to measure it. When the heat did appear, I was
totally ill-equipped to deal with it appropriately. You never know when
this heat will appear; later I experienced it many times.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
title: Nuclear Transmutation: The reality of Cold Fusion
author: Tadahiko Mizuno
ISBN 1-892925-00-1
published in 1997
can be oredered at <www.amazon.com>, list price $20 (or $14.70 used)
On Friday, Jul 22, 2005, at 21:15 America/New_York, Ludwik Kowalski
wrote:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ludwik Kowalski
Let the perfect not be the enemy of the good.
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