Apr
11
A Synopsis of the Miley LENR Theory
April 11, 2012 | 12 Comments
ColdFusionNow attended the Nuclear and Emerging Technology for Space conference in The Woodlands, Texas last month and had the good fortune to gather information and visit with George H. Miley, Professor Emeritus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne (UIUC). Here we’ll have a look at Miley’s take on the action in LENR, but by all means the article at Cold Fusion now is worth a read as the visit with Miley offers several gems on background with Drs. Fleischmann and Pons and Jim Patterson.
Professor Miley has been experimenting with unique forms of cold fusion cells and designing electrolytic systems that use multi-layered thin-films of metal as electrodes since the Fleischmann and Pons announcement more than 20 years ago.
His team’s latest work has been manufacturing specialty nano-particles coated with thin-films to host to low-energy nuclear reactions.
Dr. Miley’s research has shown both excess heat and a wide variety of transmutation products detecting iron, copper, calcium, zinc, even gold and rare earth elements.
Miley cells are composed of super-thin layers of palladium and nickel atop a metal substrate to form an electrode submerged in a heavy water solution. After cycles of loading and de-loading, Miley hypothesizes that hydrogen (or deuterium) collects in the small cracks and voids between the film layers forming clusters. Superconducting quantum interference devices have confirmed ultra-dense states of deuterons within palladium crystal defects.
Palladium Nickel Layers for Hydrogen Clusters in LENR. Click image for more info.
The clusters are collections of hydrogen nuclei called protons, or deuterium nuclei called deuterons (which are protons with an added neutron). The clusters are thought to be composed of 1000 hydrogen nuclei or more, all bunched up together.
Dr. Miley uses the language of the nuclear active environment or (NAE) to describe these localized clusters that lead to a reaction and a cratering of the surface.
Where Miley’s work gets interesting is when the hydrogen is so close together, a NAE will ultimately produce fusion products, creating both excess heat energy and heavier elements. It is these heavier elements that then may break apart, fissioning, creating the plethora of new transmutation elements directly measured in his cells.
This is also the result that makes some involved in LENR cringe because fission is not only undesirable it complicates things enormously. Still, Miley’s work is there, credible and documented.
The work also calls up another theory for LENR.
As the writer at Cold Fusion Now explains Miley’s view, protons and deuterons are positively charged, repelling each other strongly with a force called the Coulomb force. It is this powerful force that must be overcome for fusion to occur. Dr. Miley visualizes negatively charged electrons shielding the positively-charged hydrogen nuclei from each other just enough for the protons and deuterons to get within range for the strong nuclear force to fuse them together. In his case, he believes that multiple pairs of deuterons are doing the majority of the fusing.
Reversing the polarity of the cell’s electrodes multiple times ‘shakes out’ the loose hydrogen in the electrode. Alternately pushing and pulling the positively charged nuclei through the metal leaves only the most tightly bound clusters. After repeating the cycle half-a-dozen times, the available cracks are almost all filled with clusters, increasing the probability of creating a nuclear active environment, and initiating the energy effect. As the loose protons and free electrons shoot back and forth through the material during this loading and de-loading process, they transfer momentum to the clusters, which also may help to initiate the reaction.
Currently Dr. Miley’s research explores a gas-loaded cell that uses multi-layered thin-film nano-particles in order to increase the number of spaces where clusters can form. The gas-loaded cell type allows for higher temperatures to heat the cell, which has been shown to increase the magnitude of excess heat generated.
Doesn’t read like a theory at all – yet the observations over twenty years seem to make it quite on point for the experiments that Miley has been doing.
The truth in it may be over simplified, yet the observation could apply to a wide range of the experiments to date. We’ll have to wait for the theories that drive further development.
The article at ColdFusionNow includes an interview with Dr. Miley well worth one’s time. Dr. Miley has explored nuclear science and plasma research for more than three decades winning numerous prestigious awards for his pioneering work for which he holds more than a dozen patents. He is also founded The Fusion Studies Laboratory at UIUC.
Miley was an editor of the American Nuclear Society‘s journal Fusion Science and Technology and was one of the few to publish results from early cold fusion experiments.
As simple as Miley’s take is, it is likely the one most correct so far.
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In other words, still no one knows why sometimes perhaps measurable, or perhaps not measurable excess heat is generated when a bunch of elements are smushed together in black boxes?
And this is going to get commercialized—you mean, after we raise a few million dollars more from “investors” (also know as “easy marks”).
Benjamin: Do we really know what electricity is? That has not stopped us from using it for the past 150 years.
And what stops us using cold fusion? Theoretical embarrassment, or the fact that not a single erg of commercially useful energy has been produced reliably from even one of these experimental set ups? Theory or no theory, if it worked it would be used, but it doesn’t.
Craig: It appears from your post that you do believe LENR works (more energy out than put in) but you criticize that “not a single erg of commercially useful energy has been produced reliably”. May I point out just how important more energy out than in is, and that hot fusion scientists have been working for fifty years and spent billions of dollars without, more energy in than out. Be patient, see you back here in one year.
“Be patient, see you back here in one year.”
So said the promoters to the “investors.”
Wait ’till next year. Well, as a lifelong Dodger fan, it does have a certain ring.
Bernie
I have been following this controversy for a year. I have sifted through ons of BS in that time, and have watched promised dates pass time after time. See my many posts in the fusion threads in this blog. And now you’re telling me to come back in a year?!? Sometimes I think the cryofusionists have brains wired up differently from those of other mortals, to put it politely.
“Hot” fusion works. It is understood by theorists. It happens in nature. The sun and other stars put out more energy than they gt in. Hydrogen bombs do too. The technical issue is whether a hot fusion generator can be controlled effectively. NOT whether hot fusion is theoretically possible.
In fact I incline not to believe in cold fusion; I dont think it has been demonstrated, although people have been trying to do this since the 1920s.
Have a look, Bernie, at the material from over a year ago. It’s on the thread following an article on the Rossi e-cat from March 9 2011. There are 325 published comments. Have a look at the absurd optimism and credulity of many of the pro LENR and pro Rossi contributors. Here’s an example
March 24, 2011 5:35 PM “The Factory will start in October this year! He is not asking for money up front! Not a dime! He will sell electrical energy for 1 cent of US$ per kWh.”
This sort of thing is why I’m not going to reserve judgement on the promise of some wonderful development “in one year”. THIS is next year, and we have NOTHING. No factory, no one cent kilowatt hours. Nothing.
Craig: Here are 16 independent researchers who have made LENR work. http://nickelpower.org/2011/12/30/replicators-as-if-december-30-2011/#more-227
I know several super skeptics like you and I have given up trying to change their minds. If I were you I would simply stop reading anything about LENR. You will simply be one of those who, four years after the Wright Bothers flew, said: “so they got off the ground, big deal, it will never amount to anything.”
Bernie
I am familiar with Brucefast’s lists, and I am not impressed. Stop talking about he Wright Brothers. They flew. What has Rossi done? I asked why I should wait a year, after the repeated disappointments of the last year. Do you answer that question? No, because you can’t. You simply call me a super skeptic, whatever that may mean.
We were promised a factory and commercialisation by Rossi last October. We were promised publicly conducted tests by Defkalion last February. Where are these things? Nowhere. So why should I wait another year? What will be different next year? You know the answer. Nothing.
Craig: You sound like a spoiled child, “why should I wait another year”, “why I should wait a year, after the repeated disappointments”. Who are you to demand anything from these scientists/inventors who are working on their own tab. You are asking me to sooth your disappointment, well Craig that is life, it is full of disappointments.
It is simply enough for me to follow and realize that LENR is a fact and there are now four unassociated men and their companies saying they will put LENR devices on the market. If you do not want to follow these men and their machines, go read a novel.
There is more truth in a novel than in magic energy machines coming into existence next year, given our experiences last year. Rossi, Defkalion and the others are refusing to provide any evidence. Yet you believe everything they tell you. Of course they say they’ll put LENR on the market. They say that to the public, but they were saying it last year too, with promises for October and February. Did they deliver?
When the Florida nuclear inspectors came calling, Rossi had a different story for them. There are no nuclear reactions, no gamma rays and no machines being produced in the USA. Defkalion has fallen silent after promising us independent tests. These men are not “unassociated”. Rossi once worked along with Defkalion, but later fell out with them and attacked them as liars and thieves. Still, you believe.
No wonder there are so many successful swindlers, charlatans and mountebanks making a good living from peddling rubbish to credulous victims.
The key problem in nuclear fusion of deuterons is Coulomb repulsion. There is a Matsushita EP-A 0394980 patent application relying on negatively charged deuterons (ions with two electrons) occluding Li present in a palladium lattice. These ions are said to accelerate nuclear fusion of deuterium (see Example 3).