In past articles e-Cat Site has explored the LANR patents of Belgium industrial chemist and patent attorney Mr. Joannes Van den Bogaert. He has been kind enough to do a write up for this site regarding the catalyst reported to be used in some cold fusion devices, including the e-Cat of Andrea Rossi. In this piece, he also touches on some principles of chemistry, as well as the work of Prof. Piantelli, Dr. Randell Mills of BlackLight Power and some well-respected German chemists that you may or may not be aware of. Once again, I cannot vouch for this material in terms of its industrial utility, but the information has been well-researched, and I do feel it informative and thought-provoking at the very least. I would also add that past articles regarding Mr. Van den Bogaert's LANR patents, found here and here, continue to be a popular feature of this site. If you have not viewed his previous material, I would certainly recommend it.
Lastly, some of this material has been translated from German, so the translations may not be exact, but I think they are accurate enough to convey the message intended. Some of the material has also been processed using an OCR program, so an odd character or word may pop up from time to time. I have tried to correct such errors to the best of my ability but my presbyoptic eyes may have missed a thing or two. If you notice something glaring, please alert me with an e-mail.
As you know, Andrea Rossi explains the working of the E-Cat reactor operating with an exothermic reaction, relying strongly on the transmutation of nickel into copper by hydrogen in particular circumstances of pressure and temperature, using nickel powder in the presence of an undisclosed catalyst (USPO application #2011/10005506 Al). Francesco Piantelli, in his method for producing energy (USPO application #2011/0249783 A1), uses micro/nanometric clusters of a transition metal, preferably nickel, capturing negatively charged hydrogen atoms, i.e. H- ions (a proton surrounded by a pair of electrons), having opposite spin following Pauli's Exclusion Principle of differing quantum status of some Fermi particles (here electrons). According to Piantelli, said H- ions can be obtained by treating, under particular operative conditions, hydrogen H2 molecules that have been previously adsorbed on said transition metal surface, with heating needed to cause lattice vibrations, causing an interaction with valence electrons of the metal and formation of H- ions.
According to Piantelli, the conditions are created for replacing electrons of metal atoms with the H- ions having a mass 1838 times larger than the electron mass. Such H- ions tend to go towards deeper layers (towards the positive nucleus), and on their way through the electron shells cause the emission of Auger electrons and of x-rays while being captured by the metal core, causing a structural reorganization and freeing of energy by mass defect. Piantelli puts forward that the H- ions can now be expelled as protons, and can generate nuclear reactions with the neighboring cores. Piantelli makes it clear that the actual process cannot be considered as a fusion process of hydrogen atoms, in particular of hydrogen isotope atoms. Instead, the process has to be understood as an interaction of a transition metal and hydrogen in general in its particular form of an H- ion.
In that connection I draw attention to the resemblance of an H- ion to a muon, which is a negative particle being 207 times more massive than the electron, and are used in muon-catalyzed fusion. From the muon, it is said, when it replaces one electron in a hydrogen molecule, the nuclei are consequently drawn 207 times closer than in a normal molecule. When the nuclei are this close together, the probability of nuclear fusion is greatly increased, to the point where a significant number of fusion events can happen at room temperature. Unfortunately, current techniques for creating large numbers of muons require large amounts of energy, larger than the amounts produced by catalyzed fusion reactions. So, I propose to try to produce in an economic way much more massive D- ions to obtain deuterium (tritium) fusion.
For the Piantelli invention, it is my hypothesis that negatively charged hydrogen ion particles (H- ions) are not hindered from contacting the positively charged transition metal nuclei, as no repulsive Coulomb barrier exists between oppositely charged particles. Consequently, the negatively charged hydrogen ions have only to tunnel at relatively modest energy through the relatively largely spaced electron shells of the positively charged transition metal ions of the metal lattice to combine with a nickel nucleus, leaving 1 more proton and thereby transforming that nickel nucleus into a copper nucleus and expelling the surplus electron to be captured again in the electron sea of the electro-conductive metal and therefrom to the positive potassium ion left, that way regaining the catalyst. One electron of the H- ion becomes a valence electron of the copper nucleus, restoring in that manner charge neutrality in the metal lattice.
Now is there still the question: Where does the energy come from?
The energy set free comes in my opinion from the difference in mass between a free hydrogen ion (H+) and a proton (p+) locked up into the nickel nucleus now becoming a copper nucleus associated with 1 electron more than nickel. In that case no neutrons have to be set free and cannot be detected.
Turning now to the production of H- ions it is not so exotic as one may think. About six years ago dealing with the "hydrino" theory of Dr. Randall Mills I came across a method for producing said ions from metallic hydrides, more particularly alkali metal hydrides and earth alkali metal hydrides.
It is further mentioned that the H- ion is practically of the same size as the F- ion, such being 1.36 Angström. On page 560 of said German chemical textbook , I found : "Alkaline earth metals calcium, strontium, and barium form salt-like hydrides with H- ions as lattice elements," which means that H- ions are linked to said earth alkaline metals in their crystal structure.
Under the heading "Hydride" in the German textbook "Chemical Lexicon," Prof. Dr. Hermann Römpp is mentioned as stating "lithium hydride is the most durable; the other hydrides of the alkali metals are decomposing above 400°C." From this it may be concluded that free H- ions may be obtained by heating the hydrides of alkali metals above 400°C, such as sodium and potassium, and likewise the hydrides of calcium, strontium and barium.
I wrote a letter to the Dutch journal "Natuurwetenschap & Techniek" (July/Aug. 2005), in which I expressed the idea that H- ions were produced in the Black Light reactor of Dr. Mills. As described in the article of Ernst van Eijk in said Dutch journal, referring to an experiment of Prof. Dr. Kroesen of the University of Eindhoven, potassium (vapor) was used in a hydrogen atmosphere with the intention of producing energy and "Black Light".
According to said experiment, a plasma had been produced using potassium carbonate in a hydrogen atmosphere, precipitated on a metal screen surrounding an electrically heated tungsten spiral, with said plasma emitting a bluish light. Following the opinion of Dr. Randall Mills, "hydrinos" are formed from the hydrogen atoms present in the plasma.
When we have in the reactor free potassium (K) atoms, atomic hydrogen (H) can react therewith, forming a not very stable hydride (K-H), wherein potassium is positively charged (K+) and hydrogen negatively charged (H- ) (see the above mentioned German chemical textbook). When the reactor contains nickel clusters, atom transmutation may take place with a said negatively charged hydrogen ion (H- ), which may enter a nickel nucleus to transform it into a copper nucleus representing an example of atom transmutation through a catalyst, in this case potassium atoms.
Please note that Dr. Kroesen has repeated the experiment with strontium grains, obtaining likewise a plasma and bluish light. By combining strontium with atomic hydrogen, 2 H- ions are formed, and according to my expectation, in the presence of nickel nuclei zinc nuclei are obtained.
"Moreover, it has been found that, after having generated energy, the used powders contained both copper and lighter than nickel atoms (such as sulphur, chlorine, potassium, calcium). He mentions "This demonstrates that, in addition to fusion, also a nickel nucleus fission phenomenon generating lighter stable atoms occurs".
"The neutral mini-atoms of high energy and very short wave length, which is in phase with the "cyclic" orbit (de Broglie) are statistically captured by the nickel nuclei of the crystal structure with the speed of nuclear reactions (10-20 sec)".
If such would happen, gamma-rays of the annihilation should be detectable. Further I like to point out that if hydrino atoms would be formed in a "Black Light" reactor, they can in my opinion be rather easily be detected with a mass spectrometer coupled to that reactor.
If neutral hydrino atoms (having a reduced radius with respect to normal hydrogen atoms and lower mass) are found, then the Randell Mills theory is on sound basis. I think that certainly H- ions having a radius, as present in F- ions, will be found, confirming my theory that potassium and alkaline earth metals such as calcium and strontium are the real catalysts in forming H- ions, penetrating the Coulomb barrier and yielding atom transmutation.
For the latest news and updates see the Live News Feed in the sidebar. News updates courtesy of E-Cat News.net.
This entry was posted in Articles, Science and tagged Belgian LANR Patents, BlackLight Power, Franceso Piantelli, Joannes Van den Bogaert, Randell Mills. Bookmark the permalink.
Aren't these two paragraphs contradictory? More generally, I am still trying to wrap my head around what reaction is yielding the heat from the LENR exothermic reaction – is it beta-decay? Frankly, I am still kind of stuck on the ultra-low momentum neutron idea.
This thread on Vortex might help explain the seeming inconsistency. It also discusses the work of some of the SPAWAR people who are now working at a company called Global Energy Corporation (GEC).
A LENR route to green fission?
The two paragraphs are in my opinion relating to two different techniques of producing energy. Fusion (actually joining nuclei) operates with elements like hydrogen and elements of poor atomic weigth., whereas fission operates with heavy elements such as uranium having a lot of neutrons. The heavy nuclei split under the bombardement of additional neutrons and fall apart into smaller nuclei, e.g. barium and krypton. In either case fusion or fission there is a mass-defect (radiation and kinetic energy of the particles formed). Elements close to iron such as nickel are the most stable with regard to fission.
Atom transmutation is a kind of fusion that may take place when the Coulomb barrier can be surmounted; such may be done in my opinion by using negatively charged (H-) hydrogen ions. According to calculations of mine the transmutation reaction using a nickel 58 isotope (Ni58) and hydrogen (H) added thereto yields a copper 59 isotope (Cu59) . The fused hydrogen nucleus once joining the Ni nucleus looses mass becoming a proton of the copper nucleus (less angular momentum?). The mass defect that occurs that way results in gamma radiation that correspond with 20.08 MeV energy and a frequency of about 4.85x10exp21 Hertz.
For those who speak German it'll be great if you could include links to the German original.
As far as I know, these German textbooks are not available on-line. You probably can find them in a public library or a university library. Ask for them by the ISBN number listed below. The titles of these books in German are Grundlagen der allgemeninen und anorganischen Chemie (ISBN 3-7941-0162-6 ), page 431, 560; Chemie Lexikon (ISBN 3-13-734809-9), paged 2242-2243. An abstract for the latter may be found here.
Yeah Ben, hydrides are interesting. Sodium hydride (NaH) readily decomposes in water (it's very reactive) but cuprous hydride (CuH) is stable in water. This is because Na+ is a hard acid by Pearson's Hard Soft Acid Base rules (HSAB) and Cu+ is a soft acid so Cu+ forms a strong polarizable bond with hydride (H-) which is a soft base.
Bulk metals (like nickel, and palladium) are considered to be soft acids by HSAB. F&P's had the idea that heavy electrons from the conduction band might be behaving like muons. If some the hydride is made from these heavy electrons their metal hydride bond would be even shorter than a normal metal hydride bond. Maybe it would be short enough to achieve H-Ni fusion (or D-Pd fusion).
Note: hydride is a proton with two electrons. H+ e- e- > H- So, think of hydride being formed from one or two heavy electrons instead of normal electrons.
Is the "Weak Force" the Key to LENR?
Richard K. Lyon in his May 15, 1989 letter to C&E News, http://newenergytimes.com/v2/inthenews/1989/1989May15CEN-Letters.pdf mentions that Pons and Fleischmann were thinking about heavy electrons.