On Nov 1, 2009, at 2:32 PM, Michel Jullian wrote:
2009/11/1 Horace Heffner <[email protected]>:
...
as SPAWAR's thermal images show the cathode hot spots arrayed. It
would
seem to make more common sense that they occur first at the
electrode edges,
where presumably the field intensities and currents are larger.
Not to me, thanks for bringing this up Horace. Edge areas, where the
fields and currents are larger, are areas where the electrolytic
pressure pushes hydrogen harder into the lattice, i.e. hydrogen
absorption areas, right?
My point, which you cut, was that I observed similar patterns on
*anodes* during HV electrolysis. There is no hydrogen desorbtion in
that case. Strange that anodes and cathodes would exhibit the same
dot pattern. Holes would erode in the middle part of the anode.
According to my DIESECF hypothesis, I would
expect any LENRs to occur where hydrogen/deuterium is _desorbing_ on
the contrary.
I have not seen those SPAWAR thermal images you mention (a link would
be welcome),
See white dots and color gradients in Figure 1 (b):
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSlenrresear.pdf
SPAWAR states: "The ‘hot spots’ observed in the infrared imaging
experiments are suggestive of ‘miniexplosions’ (Figure 1b7). To
verify this, the Ag electrode on a piezoelectric transducer was used
as the substrate for the Pd/D co-deposition. If a mini-explosion
occurred, the resulting shock wave would compress the crystal. The
shock wave would be followed by a heat pulse that would cause the
crystal to expand. In these experiments, sharp downward spikes
followed by broader upward spikes were observed in the piezoelectric
crystal response. The downward spikes were indicative of crystal
compression while the broader upward spikes are attributed to the
heat pulse and the consequent crystal expansion following the
explosion."
This is similar to what I observed when experimenting with the
electrospark phenomenon, including audible noise. It was difficult to
tell if the noise was due to cavitation instead of an "explosion",
but it seemed likely. I got the impression that a small arc would
expand and heat and partially ionize a gas bubble, and then the
bubble would collapse (I used pulsed DC), but the gas compressed
would already be heated and would quickly ionize in the compression
cycle. I think the noise became more intense when I put a small HV
capacitor across the anode and cathode. The noise effect on the anode
struck me as electrochemically initiated, probably just an unusually
initiated form of cavitation, not the result of an explosion per se.
SPAWAR's low voltage induced cathode spots must be a different
phenomenon, but still the pattern looks so oddly familiar.
but if the hot spots really occur where deuterium
desorbs, this brings strong support to the DIESECF hypothesis, and
more importantly to the LENR hypothesis in general! This is because,
as I wrote recently, desorption spots _should be cold_ if only
chemistry was at play (deuteride formation being exothermic, release
of deuterium from the palladium lattice must be endothermic).
Do correct me someone if I have got it wrong!
Michel
It depends on the source of the hydrogen! As I said earlier, I think
if the hydrogen source is H2 gas and it is pushed through a PD
membrane there is little heating and cooling involved at the
surfaces, with a net heating due to friction. However, in an
electrolyte the source is *not* gas. Hydrated hydrogen is in a lower
energy state and has to be pushed into the metal via an electric
field. The thermal energy released at the interface is primarily
electrical energy. When the hydrogen comes out of the hydride state
at a Pd-hydrogen interface, e.g. at cracks, then the H+H
recombination can provide a net heat to the surface of the cathode,
depending on the structure of that surface. H2 gas is only
spontaneously adsorbed at special (3 atom or more adsorbtion) sites
on a Pd surface. In general it takes energy to push H2 into and
through Pd.
However, this clearly has nothing to do with the hot spots SPAWAR
observed. They are said to be sites of periodic "explosions". It
would be interesting to see if the cathode spots tend to flash at the
same sites repeatedly, just as the anode electrospark flashes do.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
