User:Abd

Replicable cold fusion experiment: heat/helium ratio is my paper (Current Science, 2015). The abstract:

Cold fusion effects have often been called ‘unreliable’, even by those convinced of their reality. The chaotic nature of material conditions, so far, has made ordinary reliability elusive. However, the Fleischmann–Pons experiment produces more than one effect, and two major ones are heat and helium. Miles, in 1991, measured both, and found that they were correlated, within an order of magnitude of the ratio expected from deuterium fusion. Miles was amply confirmed, and precision has increased. While there are outliers, there is no experimental evidence contradicting the correlation, and only the exact ratio remains in question. In this, we have direct evidence that the effect is real and is nuclear in nature; the mechanism remains a mystery well worth exploration.

"Cold fusion" was a premature name. At the time the name was coined as applying to the FP Heat Effect, in 1989, there was no evidence of a nuclear product at the necessary levels to explain the claimed heat, that was not announced until 1991 (by Melvin Miles), and it took years before that work was confirmed.

The name causes a problem, because the mechanism for the FPHE is unknown. That deuterium is the apparent fuel and helium the apparent product, and with no major radiation leakage of energy, makes it look like "d-d fusion." But, in fact, d-d fusion is a very well-known form of fusion, and would only very rarely produce helium, and then the helium would always be accompanied by a very energetic gamma ray, and would not produce correlated heat at the "deuterium fusion" ratio of energy to helium. Something else is happening.

I know the field reasonably well, and I see no imminent prospect of any practical devices, because the effect is seen in extremely complex material conditions and nobody knows yet how to control them adequately for practical use. (If such devices exist, they have not been independently confirmed.)

Often I see claims that cold fusion is theoretically impossible. The reality is that it was unexpected, but it is not impossible that some unknown catalytic condition can exist that allows fusion at low temperatures. A great example is muon-catalyzed fusion, which is studied at temperatures close to absolute zero. Could there be some other form of catalysis? Without having a specific proposal, it is impossible to predict rate (and it is rate that is the issue, because there is a fusion rate at any temperature) from unknown conditions. Classic analysis of the situation in palladium deuteride was based on an approximation, assuming that plasma analysis could be used, i.e., that it was a 2-body problem. There are some proposals for possible mechanism, but my basic stand is that until there is much more experimental evidence, developing a successful theory of cold fusion is probably a fool's errand. It is basic research that is needed (and this was the conclusion of both U.S. Department of Energy reviews of cold fusion or "LENR" {"Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions"

The purpose of this wiki is stated: "The FusionWiki is a specialist wiki for information on fusion and plasma physics research." Absent muon-catalyzed fusion, "fusion" is considered a field studied within plasma physics, as it is only known to occur at collision energies such that the material will become a plasma immediately if it is not already.

I have come to the personal conclusion that the FPHE indicates on some form of fusion, the evidence is strong for that, but it may be multi-body fusion or something else. I call it "fusion" because it the strong preponderance of the evidence shows that it takes deuterium and converts it to helium, but "fusion" is not some specific mechanism. The laws of thermodynamics require that the energy from mass deficit in a helium nucleus from twice as many deuterons be the same, regardless of mechanism (as long as all energy flows are considered. That is, the form of energy may be different, it might be a gamma or it might be heat or neutrons, or whatever, but the energy will be the same, and that is the experimentally measured ratio, within experimental error, estimated by one author as +/- 20%. There is work under way, and fully funded, to improve the precision of that measurement.)

I think some coverage of cold fusion on this wiki may be appropriate, but am not planning on rushing into that. I will respond to invitations and questions.