> So cold fusion is viable after all
No, it isn't. There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot. They can't be at room temperature.
No, it isn't. There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot. They can't be at room temperature.
the original cold fusion experiments explanation was lattice confinement in heavy metal (i.e. large electron clouds) like Pt/Pd plus energetic deuterons. What was very unclear is where those deuterons got their energy. It was theorized something along the lines that high electrostatic charges in the metal cracks accelerate the deuterons, etc.
Unfortunately pseudo-scientificity got somehow attached to that research, and that for decades prevented any meaningful research into the source of those deuterons and how to efficiently increase their number and/or how to efficiently add another source. Only passage of time and the name change to LCF - marketing, yea! - has allowed to restart the research, though still without due credit to the original research.
Yes, and that was because no energy source was being used to start the reaction; the metal with deuterons in it was just sitting there.
In these experiments, an energy source (gamma rays) is used to heat up the deuterons to start the reaction. That's a key difference, and it's why a different term from "cold fusion" is entirely appropriate.
If this is true, then LENR can be used to power cosmic apparatus in deep space. Maybe, it can power airplanes on distant routes also, like solar panels, but 24x7.
Sounds pretty much the same as room temperature to me. Also the pictures with the experimental setup suggest that the glass does not melt, which is pretty cool.
The orbitals of the electrons of deuterium are like 1000x bigger than the size of the nuclei. So once the incoming deuterium nuclei approach, it will be much closer to the target deuterium nuclei and it will not see the electrons. Note that most of the energy of the repulsion is when the nuclei are close, not when they are far away.
The erbium are useful to keep a lot of deuterium together, but the electrons shelling is probably very small.
The trick they use is to use a very energetic gamma rays that colides (indirectly) with one deuterium, and this deuterium is very fast that is the same effect you get when you have a very hot deuterium.
That notion of "hot" is not the norm. Most of us think in terms of temperature, not "energy". Would you want to get an X-ray if it were described in a way that sounded like high temperatures going to fry you? No.
When the original cold fusion work was published, physicists across the board declared it impossible, insisting that high temperatures (and/or pressures?) were absolutely required for fusion to happen. The notion of a desktop fusion reaction was categorically ridiculed. Now it's OK so long as we change our conventional definitions to make those earlier denials not seem ignorant. BTW I'm not saying the origial CF worked, just that those rejecting it used words that would also exclude the possibility of LCF (or LENR or whatever we call it now).
The fusor was invented in 1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
The few irradiated deuterons and the products of their collisions have speeds (kinetic energies) many millions times higher than those corresponding to the room temperature.
The average temperature remains low only because few nuclei take part in fusion.
If they would succeed to make enough nuclei to take part in fusion reactions to produce more energy than consumed, it is not clear how great the average temperature of the metal would become.
If the temperature of the metal would not increase excessively, that could happen only if most of the energy produced by fusion would be carried away by neutrons, which would be absorbed somewhere else, generating useful heat, but also creating undesirable radioactive waste.
This approach is indeed very promising, but there are many problems that must be solved, so there is still no chance for a fusion reactor in only a few years.
Certainly not above the melting point of the metal if the lattice structure is required to sustain fusion.
I suspect a magnetic field will help reaction rates too, even though you'll have a hard time finding research supporting or refuting that.
Even I had wondered if firing neutron into a cold fusion cell might be helpful. Turns out it probably is. But then it's not cold, its LCF.
Now, if we could just make tepid superconductors...