Is Cold Fusion Possible with Palladium and Heavy Water?

Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the possibility of cold fusion involving palladium and heavy water (deuterium). Participants explore various hypotheses, historical context, and experimental challenges related to cold fusion, including its theoretical underpinnings and past claims of success.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation
  • Historical

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express skepticism about cold fusion, citing failed attempts at reproducibility and the rushed nature of initial claims without peer review.
  • Others suggest that the original findings by Pons and Fleischmann may have been misinterpreted, with claims that their results were not actually indicative of fusion.
  • One participant proposes a theoretical approach to cold fusion involving the cancellation of electric charges of protons to facilitate fusion at low energy inputs, suggesting the use of buckyballs to compress protons.
  • Another participant mentions muonic catalyzed fusion as a potential avenue, describing how muons could facilitate fusion by replacing electrons in hydrogen molecules.
  • A participant discusses historical applications of deuterium and tritium fusion, referencing past military applications and the challenges of achieving practical fusion energy due to neutron loss.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally express a mix of skepticism and interest regarding cold fusion, with no consensus on its feasibility. Multiple competing views remain, particularly regarding the interpretation of past experiments and the potential for new methods.

Contextual Notes

Participants note limitations in the reproducibility of cold fusion experiments and the dependence on specific conditions and definitions related to fusion processes. There are unresolved questions regarding the mechanisms proposed for achieving cold fusion.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be of interest to those exploring alternative energy sources, researchers in nuclear physics, and individuals curious about the historical context and ongoing debates surrounding cold fusion.

Kojac
Messages
26
Reaction score
0
how about cold fusion? I know it's got avid supporters as well as those who say it's total B.S. last I heard, it had something to do with the way Palladium acts in hard water... I'm going to go look some of that up. I want input! anyway, i hear it's possible.

edit: thanks...didn't even notice i put in hard instead of heavy. Yadda yadda water with deuterium instead of normal hydrogen. I'm not actually stupid...just verbally retarded.
 
Last edited:
Engineering news on Phys.org
The folks who said they had discovered it rushed to get their "findings" out to the public without running it past peer review.

Every attempt to reproduce the experiment by third parties has failed.

Unfortunately, it's not possible (at this time... another method could be discovered in the future).
 
enigma said:
Every attempt to reproduce the experiment by third parties has failed.
Actually, it was my understanding that their results have finally been reproduced, the problem at the time was Pons and Fleischman wouldn't tell anyone what they did. The problem is, of course, the effect they witnessed wasn't fusion.

And that's heavy water, Kojac. The hypothesis was that deuterium infused in a palladium matrix (essentially a solid solution) would push the deuterium together enough to cause fusion. It didn't. IIRc, what they ended up with was an expensive but mundane electrolytic cell.
 
Ah. I haven't been following up on the topic.

Russ's comments are most likely closer to reality than mine.
 
Can cold fusion be encouraged by cancelling the electric charges of protons so they will come together at a low energy input? Presumably one would need to
find a source of negative charges that could be injected between the quarks of a proton.How about trying to trap protons in a C-60 buckyball to squeeze them together.
Apparently buckyballs can be compressed until they are hard as diamonds, so the bonds between the carbon atoms must be hard to break.
 
I have heard about muonic catalized fusion. When I studied this I was told that it was produced by a bombardment of such particles over H-H molecules. They could get rid of the electrons shared, and put together the two nucleus due to the muon greater mass. But I'm not sure.
 
Kojac said:
how about cold fusion? I know it's got avid supporters as well as those who say it's total B.S. last I heard, it had something to do with the way Palladium acts in heavy water... I'm going to go look some of that up. I want input! anyway, i hear it's possible.

I had heard, over 50 years ago, that "HOT" Palladium metal would fractionally separate hydrogen from other molecules like methane - i.e., it was a sieve that passed only hydrogen isotopes.

There have been "warm" application of DD and DT fusion. As far back as 1951, the US Pu bombs that previously contained an inertially activated "Tom" Po/Be triggering neutron source (that produced nominally 6 neutrons in the 5 or so microsecond Pu burn-time) were altered by replacing the Po/Be with Deuterides or Tritides of Uranium, Hafnium etc that were inertially compressed and that thus yielded as many as a billion fusion neutrons. The "tom" was renamed "Nemo".
Later there was invented a vacuum tube that had a triton "gun" that accelerated with 180 Kilovolts, a relatively continuous stream of tritons into a deuterated target - this latter vacuum tube was used in labs as well as in bombs. Not only is the DT process 50-fold more easy to produce fusion neutrons than the DD process, but the energy of the DT neutrons is 14.5 MeV compared to the 2.5 MeV energy of the DD neutrons.

The secret reason why a fusion "reactor" is so out of reach (without improved technology) is because most of the fusion energy is carried off by the neutrons that flow rather freely through walls of the reactor. Frankly, I believe that a thick water or paraffin jacket could expedite the liberation of ordinary hydrogen (neutron bombardment of water, unlike electrolysis that produces both oxygen and hydrogen gases, produces only hydrogen gas). The hydrogen fuel cell energy would then be available to sustain an electronically induced continuous fusion. Cheers, Jim
 

Similar threads

Inertial confinement fusion (First light, NIF, etc)
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
2K
What evidence supports the possibility of nuclear fusion in palladium cathodes?
  • · Replies 30 ·
2
Replies
30
Views
19K
A few questions about atoms splitting and some about cold fusion
  • · Replies 4 ·
Replies
4
Views
5K
  • Poll Poll
Writing: Input Wanted Designing the Nuclear-Fusion Reactor for my Generation Ship
  • · Replies 12 ·
Replies
12
Views
3K
Hot core and preheating for fusion
  • · Replies 18 ·
Replies
18
Views
8K
Chernobyl Did Chernobyl divers prevent a multi megaton explosion?
  • · Replies 66 ·
3
Replies
66
Views
28K
My Theoretical Fusion Reactor- Looking For Feedback
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
2K
Graduate Can Electrolysis and Cold Fusion Work Together to Generate Energy?
  • · Replies 10 ·
Replies
10
Views
5K
Graduate Cosmic ray induced nuclear fusion
  • · Replies 38 ·
2
Replies
38
Views
9K
Can liquid conductors be used to improve the efficiency of electric motors?
  • · Replies 4 ·
Replies
4
Views
4K