Cold Fusion Research Advocates 2060 Peachtree Industrial Court, Suite 312-F Chamblee, Georgia 30341 Phone: 404-451-9890 Fax: 404-458-2404 February 16, 1993 SUMMARY OF ICCF3 IN NAGOYA Peter L. Hagelstein Massachusetts Institute of Technology ABSTRACT We review highlights of the international cold fusion conference that was held recently in Nagoya, Japan. Excess heat results in heavy water electrolysis experiments constitute the observations with the most important potential applications. Expériments in gas phase systems exhibit fast particle and gamma emission that make progress toward elucidating mechanisms. The evidence in support of a light water heat effect has improved. INTRODUCTION The Third International Cold Fusion Conference took place in Nagoya, Japan between October 21 and October 25, 1992. Over 300 attendees participated, listening to about 27 oral presentations and looking over roughly 80 poster papers. Many people have asked me about the conference, and rather than repeating the same things over and over again, I thought that it would be useful to put my thoughts down on paper as a more efficient method of communication. Given the near complete absence of cold fusion sessions in more traditional physics and chemistry meetings, the international conferences represent about the only chance for people in the cold fusion field to get together and learn about what has happened lately. The international conferences, starting with the Salt Lake City conference in 1990, followed by Como, Italy in 1991, and now Nagoya, Japan in 1992, have been and continue to be the most important sources of reliable and relevant information in the field; an important meeting was also held at BYU in 1990 which focused on nuclear products. The field is advancing pretty rapidly these days, and since publications tend to lag with more than a year's delay, the conferences and conference proceedings play a key role in the field. The next international conference was originally scheduled to take place in Hawaii in November, 1993; I understand that it may be delayed until December. The results presented at this conference were overall technically much stronger than last year's conference, and benefitted by a very strong showing from the Japanese contingent. I will first itemize what I thought were some of the most interesting new experimental results presented at the conference. I admit to having numerous biases. One bias is that I believe the observations of excess power are ultimately the most important, both scientifically and technologically. Another bias is that I favor results which in my view help to elucidate reaction mechanisms. Following the discussion of significant positive results, I review abstracts and presentations of negative results. Coming from the theory end of the field, I felt that it was appropriate for me to survey the theory papers which were presented (in the following section); in this case, it was possible to include a larger fraction of the papers submitted. Having my own theory as to the origin of the effect, I warn the reader that my discussion of theory necessarily carries a bias in favor of my world view; it is my hope that this discussion will be useful in spite of this bias. Almost as interesting in some cases as what was presented, was what was not presented; a discussion of work that was absent is presented before the summary and conclusions. For a review as long as this one, there are many issues and many details, most of which I have made a serious attempt to get right. I would hope that I will not make enemies of those whose work I did not include (which at this point will include about half of all papers submitted). This review was constructed from preprints, notes, memory, and discussions with many people in the field -- should the reader note errors or misconceptions, I would appreciate corrections. 1. SURVEY OF POSITIVE RESULTS S. Pons 12 described briefly recent results obtained at the Japanese-funded IMRA laboratory in Sophia Antipolis, France. During the Como meeting (July, 1991), Pons and Fleischmann had announced that they were able to obtain very high levels of excess power production (on the order of 1000 Watts/cm3) corresponding to a factor of 10 power gain, and that they had done so 11 times. Part of their research since then has focused on defining a procedure that would improve on the reproducibility of this very high power effect (at Como, they had Cold Fusion Research Advocates 2060 Peachtree Industrial Court, Suite 312-F Chamblee, Georgia 30341 Phone: 404-451-9890 Fax: 404-458-2404 February 16, 1993 SUMMARY OF ICCF3 IN NAGOYA Peter L. Hagelstein Massachusetts Institute of Technology ABSTRACT We review highlights of the international cold fusion conference that was held recently in Nagoya, Japan. Excess heat results in heavy water electrolysis experiments constitute the observations with the most important potential applications. Experiments in gas phase systems exhibit fast particle and gamma emission that make progress toward elucidating mechanisms. The evidence in support of a light water heat effect has improved. INTRODUCTION The Third International Cold Fusion Conference took place in Nagoya, Japan between October 21 and October 25, 1992. Over 300 attendees participated, listening to about 27 oral presentations and looking over roughly 80 poster papers. Many people have asked me about the conference, and rather than repeating the same things over and over again, I thought that it would be useful to put my thoughts down on paper as a more efficient method of communication. Given the near complete absence of cold fusion sessions in more traditional physics and chemistry meetings, the international conferences represent about the only chance for people in the cold fusion field to get together and learn about what has happened lately. The international conferences, starting with the Salt Lake City conference in 1990, followed by Como, Italy in 1991, and now Nagoya, Japan in 1992, have been and continue to be the most important sources of reliable and relevant information in the field; an important meeting was also held at BYU in 1990 which focused on nuclear products. The field is advancing pretty rapidly these days, and since publications tend to lag with more than a year's delay, the conferences and conference proceedings play a key role in the field. The next international conference was originally scheduled to take place in Hawaii in November, 1993; I understand that it may be delayed until December. The results presented at this conference were overall technically much stronger than last year's conference, and benefitted by a very strong showing from the Japanese contingent. I will first itemize what I thought were some of the most interesting new experimental results presented at the conference. I admit to having numerous biases. One bias is that I believe the observations of excess power are ultimately the most important, both scientifically and technologically. Another bias is that I favor results which in my view help to elucidate reaction mechanisms. Following the discussion of significant positive results, I review abstracts and presentations of negative results. Coming from the theory end of the field, I felt that it was appropriate for me to survey the theory papers which were presented (in the following section); in this case, it was possible to include a larger fraction of the papers submitted. Having my own theory as to the origin of the effect, I warn the reader that my discussion of theory necessarily carries a bias in favor of my world view; it is my hope that this discussion will be useful in spite of this bias. Almost as interesting in some cases as what was presented, was what was not presented; a discussion of work that was absent is presented before the summary and conclusions. For a review as long as this one, there are many issues and many details, most of which I have made a serious attempt to get right. I would hope that I will not make enemies of those whose work I did not include (which at this point will include about half of all papers submitted). This review was constructed from preprints, notes, memory, and discussions with many people in the field -- should the reader note errors or misconceptions, I would appreciate corrections. 1. SURVEY OF POSITIVE RESULTS S. Pons12 described briefly recent results obtained at the Japanese-funded IMRA laboratory in Sophia Antipolis, France. During the Como meeting (July, 1991), Pons and Fleischmann had announced that they were able to obtain very high levels of excess power production (on the order of 1000 Watts/cm3) corresponding to a factor of 10 power gain, and that they had done so 11 times. Part of their research since then has focused on defining a procedure that would improve on the reproducibility of this very high power effect (at Como, they had announced that complete reproducibility had been attained on achieving consistent excess power at lower levels). At Nagoya, Pons reported that this had been accomplished; that very high levels of heat production (more than 1 kilowatt/cm3) were now obtained reproducibly accompanied by a factor of 4 power gain. The key to the new results included some advances that they outlined. One such improvement involves the observation that the excess power generation increases at higher temperatures. The cathode is charged at intermediate current densities at temperatures below 50° C for several days, and then the current is stepped up. Due to the relatively low thermal loss of the cell and calorimeter, the cell temperature rises, but the loading is maintained. This rise improves the excess power generation, which in turn drives the temperature higher; the positive feedback leads to very high excess power generation and vigorous boiling. Pons and Fleischmann perform their calorimetry using open cell systems, which have the advantage of being cheaper and more accessible, and allows them to do more experiments at a time. The particular method of calorimetry which they have developed was motivated in part by the existence of the positive feedback described above -- Pons and Fleischmann are able to achieve good calorimetric precision with time-varying electrolyte levels, cell temperatures and cell voltages. Most others have sought in their work to maintain either constant temperature or power, or else require the presence of steady-state conditions in their system to obtain accurate results. Very few groups have so far taken advantage of such sophisticated methods to obtain excess power values from their raw data; no other groups have yet reported the ability to obtain reproducibly the high power and boiling mode reported by Pons and Fleischmann. It was pointed out by Pons that the calorimetry could be checked during the very high excess power burst by measuring the time taken to boil away the electrolyte, and using a knowledge of the heat of vaporization to compute the total energy and hence power generation. He presented the results of this analysis for one cell, which he said was in agreement with the calorimetric results. Pons stated that 2.5 moles (close to 50 cc) of D2O were boiled away during a time of about 10 minutes, during which time the average iv input power was 37.5 watts. The numbers can be checked, as follows: The heat of vaporization of heavy water is about 41 kJ/mol at 100° C, and 2.5 moles of heavy water corresponds to 102.5 kJ; the energy lost during this time in the calorimeter (primarily radiative) is 6.7 kJ. The input electrical iv energy during this time is 22.5 kJ. The excess energy produced is the output energy (102.5 + 6.7 kJ) minus the input energy (22.5 kJ), or 86.7 kJ. The production of 86.7 kJ in 10 minutes corresponds to an excess power of 144.5 watts, and a power gain of 3.85. The volume of the cathode was given to be 0.0785 cm3, which was noted by many |