Why Not Use Low-Energy Deuteron Collisions for Cold Fusion?

[zare]

why they don't use good ol' accelerator smashing? bring two deutrons to couple of KeV (witch is not a particular problem) and collide them in some vacuum chamber. same charge repulsive force will be couple of magnitudes smaller than force on paticle under acceleration, so where's the problem?

 

[heumpje]

Because two particles only deliver an amount of energy that can only be detected by the best detectors. To get a sufficient amount of energy you would need an apparatus that is not rendable anymore. Such an apparatus WOULD be a technical challenge.

 

[zare]

well not two particles, i meant continuusly smashing deutrons into same collision point, like thousands of deutrons per second.

 

[neutroncount]

Originally posted by zare
well not two particles, i meant continuusly smashing deutrons into same collision point, like thousands of deutrons per second.

And using a hell of a lot more power to do that in the process then you'd get out of it.

 

[zare]

correct me if i am wrong, but when linear accelerator is used, it doesn't matter if one or a million particles is inside the core, you use same power to accelerate them all. you can simplyfie the equation by substracting vectors and cateresian functions out, so you get F = B * q * v * sin(alpha), where B is magnetic field strength, q is charge (in our case +e), v is initial velocity of particle that comes into system, and alpha is angle of intitial particle trajectory relative to electromagnetic field lines. if emag. field with B stregth reacts with force F on one deutron that comes in, that same field will react with force F to any amount of deutrons that comes in (well not any, just that density doesn't compromise vacuum's permeability, and the limit is well beyond our system). right?

i already see a problem here. since particle cannot enter accelerator with zero angle eleveation (F=0), it must be delivered with some angle (preferably greater than 60deg). system would need to use some sort of accelerator optics, to sort out deutrons in beam-like formation, and to deliver them into linear accelerator tube. then the mutual collision percentage would be really high.

another thing, are deutrons stable enough for high energy acceleration?

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by zare
why they don't use good ol' accelerator smashing? bring two deutrons to couple of KeV (witch is not a particular problem) and collide them in some vacuum chamber. same charge repulsive force will be couple of magnitudes smaller than force on paticle under acceleration, so where's the problem?

So what exactly is your definition of "cold"? "Temperature" is a measure of average particle kinetic energy. A couple of KeV is a ton of kinetic energy. To me, that sounds a lot like "hot fusion."

Pons & Flesichman's "cold fusion" was an electrochemical process. Essentially they hoped to achieve fusion at energy levels associated with chemical processes instead of nuclear ones. To me that's a contradiction in terms, but eh - people are still trying.

 

[zare]

i see your point. it is no more "cold fusion" but it's a way without introducing high energy in form of temperature (using the energy to drive electromagnetic acceleration) that are occurring in the Sun or thermonuclear explosives.

cold fusion is in essence a chemical process, where metals like palladium or titanium apsorb high amounts of deuterium (electrolytical process of "heavy water", D2O, with palladium or titanium electrode). scientist hoped to achieve dense deuterium structure inside grids of these two metals that have high specifications for hydrogen (and isotope) apsorbtion. needless to say, it didnt work in 90% of attempts, and in others it worked with unpredictable results (most of the time excessive heat, but no highenergy neutrons).

i wanted to approach the case with physics point-of-view.