Yoshiaki Arata receiving Preparata Award in 2007
Photo: S.B. Krivit
Posted on 06/24/2008 7:30:57 AM PDT by dennisw
This is a follow-up to exciting cold fusion demonstration of last month.
PHOTOS-A public demo open to the media and skeptic by professor Arata of Japan
Yoshiaki Arata receiving Preparata Award in 2007
Photo: S.B. Krivit
By Jon Cartwright
Several of you have asked when I'm going to give you an update on Yoshiaki Arata's cold-fusion demonstration that took place at Osaka University, Japan, three weeks ago. I have not yet come across any other first-hand accounts, and the videos, which I believe were taken by people at the university, have still not surfaced.
However, you may have noticed that Jed Rothwell of the LENR library website has put some figures with explanations relating to Arata's recent work online. I've decided to go over them and some others here briefly to give you an idea of how Arata's cold-fusion experiments work. It's a bit more technical than usual, so get your thinking hats on.
Above is a diagram of his apparatus. It comprises a stainless-steel cell (2) containing a sample, which for the case of the demonstration was palladium dispersed in zirconium oxide (ZrO2–Pd). Arata measures the temperature of the sample (Tin) using a thermocouple mounted through its centre, and the temperature of the cell wall (Ts) using a thermocouple attached on the outside.
Let's have a look at how these two temperatures, Tin and Ts, change over the course of Arata's experiments. The first graph below is one of the control experiments (performed in July last year) in which hydrogen, rather than deuterium, is injected into the cell via the controller- (8) operated valve (5):
At 50 minutes — after the cell has been baked and cooled to remove gas contamination — Arata begins injecting hydrogen into the cell. This generates heat, which Arata says is due to a chemical reaction, and the temperature of the sample, Tin (green line), rises to 61 °C. After 15 minutes the sample can apparently take no more hydrogen, and the sample temperature begins to drop.
Now let's look at the next graph below, which is essentially the same experiment but with deuterium gas (performed in October last year):
As before, Arata injects the gas after 50 minutes, although it takes a little longer for the sample to become saturated, around 18 minutes. This time the sample temperature Tin (red line) rises to 71 °C.
At a quick glance the temperatures in both graphs, after saturation, appear to peter out as one would expect if heat escapes to the environment. However, in the case of deuterium there is always a significant temperature difference between Tin and Ts, indicating that the sample and cell are not reaching equilibrium. Moreover, after 300 minutes the Tin of the deuterium experiment is about 28 °C (4 °C warmer than ambient), while Tin/Ts of the hydrogen experiment is at about 25 °C (1 °C warmer than ambient).
These results imply there must be a source of heat from inside the cell. Arata claims that, given the large amount of power involved, this must be some form of fusion — what he prefers to call "solid fusion". This can be described, he says, by the following equation:
D + D = 4He + heat
(According to this equation, there should be no neutrons produced as by-products — thanks to those of you who pointed this out on the last post.)
If any of you are still reading, this graph below is also worth a look:
Here, Arata also displays data from deuterium and hydrogen experiments, but starts recording temperatures after the previous graphs finished, at 300 minutes. There are four plots: (A) is a deuterium and ZrO2–Pd experiment, like the one just described; (B) is another deuterium experiment, this time with a different sample; (C) is a control experiment with hydrogen, again similar to the one just described; and (D) is ambient temperature.
You can see here that the hydrogen experiment (C) reaches ambient temperature quite soon, after around 500 minutes. However, both the deuterium experiments remain 1 °C or more than ambient for at least 3000 minutes while still exhibiting the temperature difference between the sample and the cell, Tin and Ts.
Could this apparently lasting power output be used as a energy source? Arata believes it is potentially more important to us than hot or "thermonuclear" fusion and notes that, unlike the latter, it does not emit any pollution at all.
When you inject as gas into a closed vessel the temperature goes up.....................
It wont matter in the US even if this works.
El Baradei and his ilk guard the US Patent Office
against even the remote possibility of this moving forward.
And the US Congress?
Asleep at the wheel, drunk, partying, ignoring the
security of America and El Baradei’s control, as always.
Do you know enough physics to understand this article? Can you evaluate it?
Arata has generated the biggest cold fusion buzz in years
Is this like a real Flux-Capacitor?
Much of the legitimacy of cold fusion rests in the very counter-intuitive phenomena of physics at the very small scale.
For example, a type of shrimp can create a small cavitation bubble that explodes with a force strong enough to stun or kill its prey. Interesting trivia, made relevant because the internal temperature of that bubble, for just an instant, is about 5000 degrees Kelvin (8500 degrees Fahrenheit).
At a thousandth or more of the scale of this cavitation bubble, you might be able to produce temperatures high enough to force a nuclear reaction.
I’m no physicist, but this equation...
D + D = 4He + heat
...would lead me to believe that a simple verification would be to check for Helium.
OSAKA, JAPAN -- Against a monumental backdrop of bad publicity for cold fusion since 1989, researchers in Japan on May 22 demonstrated the production of excess heat and helium-4, the results of an historic low-energy nuclear reaction experiment.
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"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy (heat) from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi wrote. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers (J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008). This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."
Takahashi wrote that 60 people from universities and companies in Japan and a few people from other countries attended, as well as representatives from six major newspapers (Asahi, Nikkei, Mainichi, NHK, et al.) and two television stations.
In an earlier conversation with New Energy Times, Arata offered his perspective on "cold fusion" research, which he calls solid nuclear fusion.
"Some people say we have reached the end of science, that there are no more great discoveries that remain. In my view, nature always has more secrets to reveal," Arata wrote. "I always stay on guard not to be too possessed by my own current knowledge. History has shown us repeatedly, for example, the foolishness of denying 'heliocentricism,' which resulted from individuals adhering too strongly to their own knowledge or to what was common sense in the past."
New Energy Times will have a more complete report in the next issue on July 10.
That’s what I get for trying to FReep and work at the same time...I end up doing neither well.
Thanks for the post!
ping
The explanation looks pretty tight and well documented to me.
The next step for him, to go further than what Ponds and Fleishman could, is to sell — or provide the setup so others can reproduce the heat differential and H4 generation effects.
Many other labs would be willing to take something, plug it in, and confirm the observation.
In the heyday of cold fusion, even though it was nearly impossible to reproduce, people were filing patents like crazy, even those who were most skeptical of the outcome.
Do you have a wild guess what his equipenat costs? $10,000??
http://physicsworld.com/blog/2008/06/coldfusion_demonstration_an_up_1.html#comment-54675
http://physicsworld.com/blog/2008/06/coldfusion_demonstration_an_up_1.html#comment-55112
http://physicsworld.com/blog/2008/06/coldfusion_demonstration_an_up_1.html#comment-53934
More my speed.
Is there a Reader’s Digest version of this article? Whew! My brain hurts!
Thanks for posting this.
I’m almost done reading Beaudette’s book “Excess Heat”.
Note that Steven Krivit, editor of New Energy Times, is a Freeper. I’ve pinged him a couple of times, no response.
I suggested a Cold Fusion contract on Intrade, and to my surprise they put it up. Currently trading at about 15% probability of being replicated in a peer reviewed journal by the end of this year.
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/common/c_cd.jsp?conDetailID=615448&z=1214364789375
Dr Yoshiaki Arata’s Cold Fusion Experiment
Contract Bid Ask Last Vol Chge
ARATA.COLD.FUSION.DEC09
Dr Arata’s experiment to be replicated in peer-reviewed scientific journal on/before 31 Dec 2009 M Trade 15.1 25.0 12.5 8 0
Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed (2nd Edition) by Charles G. Beaudette (Paperback - May 2002)
Here is a web site for very similar research, probably around $2,000 would get you a working setup with deuterium. The gas can be freely purchased, 250 liters for — I think — around $400.
Beyond that would be an ounce of palladium, just under $500, and a way to get it mixed in with Zirconium — I don’t know whether that means deposited on the surface of it, impregnated into it, or how it is blended.
If you google “palladium zirconium” you get several articles on using a palladium catalyst . Something there might be relevant, it should be easy for these other labs to follow cook-book procedures, many of them tried the cold-fusion equipment and couldn’t make it work.
Sandia national labs should be a good candidate to watch for results.
These things are all supposed to be ‘peer review’ you know.
Is there a LENR ping list?
I found copies from this link provided by Brian Josephson on the Physicsworld.com blog posting #25 located here.
Are you aware he won the Nobel Prize?
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