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145) Non-equilibrated solids


Ludwik Kowalski (5/30/04)
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ, 07043


A typical distance between the atoms of a metallic crystal is 0.1 nm (one angsrom). The same applies to ions of hydrogen dissolved in metals when saturation densities (about one ion of hydrogen per atom of a metal) are reached. At such distances the attractive nuclear forces are too large to overcome the repulsive electric forces. That has been the main theoretical argument against cold fusion since its experimental discovery has been announced 15 years ago. But cold fusion has been observed by many investigators. The only way to consolidate theoretical arguments with massive experimental data, according to D. Cravens and D. Letts, is to postulate that cold fusion takes place at locations in which local conditions are far from equilibrium.

What follows is the first section of their practically-oriented paper. The authors refer to excess heat but their observations are probably applicable to all LENR-CANR processes {“Low Energy Nuclear Reactions and Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions” is a new (very auckward) name for what is commonly known as “cold fusion.”}


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Cravens, D. and D. Letts.
Practical Techniques In CF Research - Triggering Methods. in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003. Cambridge, MA: [The entire paper can be downloaded from the library at http://www.LENR-CANR.org.]

1 Background
1.1 Static Equilibrium Often Produces Sporadic Results
The study of nuclear events at low temperatures often has resulted in frustrating investigations. The field of cold fusion has often been marked with sporadic and non-reproducible work. Critics have often pointed to the sporadic nature of the heat generation in electrolytic systems as indication of poor experimental procedure. However, it now seems that the sporadic nature of the results is a characteristic of an electrolytic system, which is initially near equilibrium, and slowly loaded to a transition point which is best described by the mathematical term as a chaotic transition. For example: slowly loading palladium can be driven between beta and gamma states and cause internal fluxes of deuterium.

Electrolytic cells using bulk palladium often require loading times of 10 to 20 times longer than would be expected by diffusion times of deuterium within the metal before they be expected to produce excess heat.1 This was likely the cause of failure of early researchers who rushed to replicate Fleischmann’s and Pons’ early work.2 In the first few years after the announcement, it was easier for a researcher to rush to print and claim negative results than to patiently wait until the system was fully loaded and driven into internal transitions that drive the reactions. As a result, early work more often than not failed to see excess heat.

This work will illustrate methods that will help drive CF systems off equilibrium and trigger internal events that lead to production of excess heat. The viewpoint taken here is that a system must be allowed to depart from static equilibrium before the required reactions can take place.

1.2 Theoretical Limitations
Most simple theoretical models fail to predict that nuclear reactions within a deuterated metal lattice can take place at significant rates. Such models rely on reaction rates that are based on equilibrium placement of deuterium within a metal lattice or on wave functions based on such placements. In particle models, the global average of the deuterium density within the metal is on the order of an Angstrom or more even for extreme loading ratios of D/Pd. It is clear that deuterium at such remote nuclear separations would not be expected to lead to nuclear events.
The imposition of dynamic conditions can cause the local separations of deuterium to be significantly different from the value predicted by the global density alone. It also seems that dynamic conditions provide ways for coupling of energy to drive the reactions and impurities within the lattice can allow for spin exchanges required for spin selection rules. It is a surety that the energy required to drive any nuclear events and energy released from such events are much larger than any external energy available to the deuterium based on a per atom division of energy.3 This means that any external energy driving the possible nuclear events must act in a coherent way to channel energy from a large region of many atoms to the active sites.4,5,6 This coherent channeling must involve over 108 atoms and likely many more. The experimental conditions then must make use of non-equilibrium events acting on a system that has some group coherent nature. The methods described here are simple and practical methods that can be used to produce such dynamic conditions, which may lead to the desired nuclear events. The assumption here is that the reactive nuclear species must be driven to a dynamic active state before the desire events can produce excess energy within the system. . . .

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