Department of Physical Chemistry, Lajos Kossuth University,
Debrecen, 4010 Hungary
Introduction
Since the fundamental discovery of cold fusion by Fleischmann, Pons [1] and Hawkins [2], that is a nuclear reaction involving deuterons occurs when heavy water is electrolysed using Pd cathode, hundreds of papers were published on this subject. Unfortunately, the behavior of the studied systems is rather erratic: about the same number of studies corroborated the original findings as the experiments in which no indication (neutrons, tritium production, excess heat) of nuclear reaction was found. This situation inclined a number of experts to relegate the phenomenon of cold fusion to the category of pathological science [3].
Here an explanation of the contradictory observations is given and a method for not irreproducible cold fusion is elaborated.
The hypothetical explanation of the erratic behavior
As it is well known, polywatyer can be easily formed under different conditions. Consequently, any natural water may contain a certain fraction of polywater. According to our experiments [4] the polywater content of water is never less than 10-24 and sometimes may achieve as much as 10-2 mole fraction. Undoubtedly, deuterated polywater can be formed from heavy water as easily as ordinary polywater from water. Consequently, it is likely that in the heavy water used by the different experimenters in the cold fusion experiments, an uncontrolled fraction of deuterated polywater could be present. In considering that the density of polywater is much higher than that of the ordinary water, the distance between deuterons in the deuterated polywater is much less than that of the deuterium atoms in the ordinary heavy water. The barrier between the fusion of the two deuterons is therefore much less and the probability that this fusion occurs in the electrolysis using Pd cathode is much higher.
Experimental test of the hypothesis
Mixtures of heavy water and deuterated polywater were electrolysed using a conventional cell of 100 ml. The Pd cathode and Pt anode were of the same size (20 x 20 x 1 mm). The potential difference between the cathode and the anode was 6.28 V, the current density 122.3 mA/cm2. The electrolyte was in all cases 1 M LiOH. The temperature at the beginning of the electrolysis was 25o C, and to avoid evaporation of the liquid during the long lasting experiments strong cooling could be applied.
Polywater was obtained from the Laboratory of Non-existent Compounds Inc., Thule. The deuteration of polywater was made by repeated fractional distillation of mixtures of heavy water and polywater. The highest extent of deuteration of polywater exceeded 99%.
The excess heat was measured in an adiabatic precision calorimeter, the neutron flux was determined by a NE 213 scintillation detector. Our limited possibilities did not permit to determine the energy spectrum of the neutrons and to detect tritium. We do hope that such measurements will be soon made by others.
In accordance with our hypothesis, no indication of cold fusion has been found when no deuterated polywater was added to the electrolyte. (This does not mean that no traces of deuterated polywater were present, but in these experiments the mole fraction of deuterated polywater was ceratinly less than 10-4.) According to our experiments the limiting fraction of deuterated polywater for any extent of cold fusion, in terms of excess heat and/or evolution of neutrons, is 0.0322. It did not escape our attention that this value equals the value of p-3, but it would be premature to give a theoretical explanation of it. There is no doubt, however, that a number of sophisticated and convincing explanations will be soon offered.
One must be very cautios in making electrolysis at higher concentrations of deuterated polywater. If the mole fraction of deuterated polywater equals to or higher than 0.1015 the amount of excess heat is so high that the evaporation of liquid cannot be avoided. Note that the value of p-2 is 0.1013. We believe that in the case of the explosions observed sometimes in the electrolysis of heavy water, the concentration of deuterated polywater inadvertently much exceeded this concentration.
References
1. Fleischmann, M. and Pons, S.: J. Electroanal. Chem., 261,
301 (1989)
2. Fleischmann, M., Pons, S. and Hawkins, M.: J. Electroanal. Chem., 263,
187 (1989)
3. Langmuir, I.: Electric Technical Information Series. Report No. 68-C-0035,
1968 April
4. Unpublished results. (Several versions of the paper were submitted to
and their publication were refused by 25 prestigious and not very prestigious
journals. Manuscripts are available for bona fide scientists.)