The following comment was submitted by Zeddicus23
I’m not sure where is the best place to post this but I’ve been reading Jean-Paul Biberian’s summaries of the ICCF20 talks (http://blogde-jeanpaulbiberian.blogspot.ro/) and I have a few thoughts on LENR.
(1) Several talks indicate that the optimum temperature for excess heat is around 300 C. A claim has also been made that this corresponds to a wavelength for deuterium which “matches” the lattice. I’ll leave this aside for now since this corresponds to a wavelength of around 1 Angstrom for protium, and I don’t quite see how this matches the lattice. Also, the dependence of wavelength lambda = h/sqrt(3 m kT) on temperature is relatively weak.
(2) Several talks (Celani, Takahashi) indicate that the reaction is a non-equilibrium process and only occurs when driving H/D into or out of the system. This could be via a pressure change in the gas, a mechanical shock, heating up or cooling down, or last but not least EM or electrical stimulation or pulses. The latter could provide “non-equilibrium shocks” via local heating or charged particle (p, H-) acceleration or motion through an interface or defect, or even magnetostriction. This is also consistent with Brillouin, as well as with Fralick’s results and Piantelli’s statements.
(3) Item 2 above also suggests that defects (e.g. nanocracks) and/or the surface may play an important role, since it is through the “surface” (broadly defined to include the boundaries of cracks etc.) that the H/D can be “pushed” through. (A lot of this is I believe also consistent with F&P type Pd/D electrolysis experiments.)
(4) The fluctuation/non-equilibrium idea is also consistent with Vysotskii’s ideas of oscillating nanocracks creating a coherent state, and perhaps also consistent with Storms’ nanocrack idea.
(5) For metals at least (as opposed to say bacteria) attaining sufficient fluctuations may require higher temperatures (e.g. 300 C or higher) and also nano or micro structures, which may be dynamic, either at the surface or near the proper defects. This is also consistent with Rossi’s “microtubules”, Clean Planet’s micro/nanostructures, Miley’s nanoparticles, Swartz’s Nanor’s. In particular, it might explain why Swartz’s Nanors work so well (even though the heat output is very small due to the small size). The optimum temperature might be related to a competition between the thermal wavelength of protium (which decreases with increasing temperature) and the need for sufficient thermal fluctuations (which increase with increasing temperature).
(6) There is a related idea of Dubinko involving solitons or large amplitude/energy nonlinear oscillations. I imagine that these could also play a role.
(7) Somewhat unrelated but Peter Gluck (and also Focardi, Piantelli etc.) have emphasized that for Ni/H systems, a high-temperature “degassing” period in a very high vacuum is necessary to “clean” the system of impurities which could either “trap” the H or not allow it to penetrate into the Ni. I’m not sure if Celani/Takahashi/MFMP are all doing this but I imagine that a number of their preparation procedures may be comparable.
I guess a lot of this has been speculated before but it’s nice to see some of these ideas being confirmed experimentally at ICCF20. Also, while I had previously thought of “shocks” as “compressing” or inputting large amounts of energy locally (to overcome for example the Coulomb barrier) I had not thought of this in terms of driving H/D through the system via non-equilibrium conditions. Also, perhaps because I would have expected them to be random, I had not connected the idea of non-equilibrium fluctuations with Vysotskii’s correlated states ideas.
I would appreciate any thoughts, comments, or insight (especially from those who are at ICCF20 but not excluding those who are not).
Zeddicus23
