Cold Fusion? Hrm....

[Supracentral]

Check this out:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-italian-scientists-cold-fusion-video.html

Now I'm seriously suspicious here. And it's extremely likely these guys are scam artists.

However, what they are proposing might just be possbile.

Take a look at this as well:

http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011...evice-probably-real-with-credit-to-piantelli/

From the top article:

"Rossi and Focardi say that, when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31. As for costs, the scientists estimate that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants.

"The magnitude of this result suggests that there is a viable energy technology that uses commonly available materials, that does not produce carbon dioxide, and that does not produce radioactive waste and will be economical to build," according to this description of the demonstration.

Rossi and Focardi explain that the reaction produces radiation, providing evidence that the reaction is indeed a nuclear reaction and does not work by some other method. They note that no radiation escapes due to lead shielding, and no radioactivity is left in the cell after it is turned off, so there is no nuclear waste..."

What they are effectively saying is they are fusing nickel and hydrogen, with the byproducts being copper and radiation which is used to generate power. They state they can generate 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W. But this isn't like perpetual motion or free power. This does use fuel. Just very cheap fuel.

From the article:

The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31. As for costs, the scientists estimate that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh...

If this is fusion, the upside is there's no radioactivity (don't confuse radiation with radioactivity btw...), a rupture of the containment wouldn't be dangerous and there are no radioactive by products. We're talking about a reactor that uses cheap fuel, and doesn't use a lot of energy to burn it.

The second link above suggests that this isn't cold fusion, but that it may very well be a viable way to produce power. If this thing is real at all, I suspect we're looking at a chemical reactor....

Once again, I'm hugely skeptical here. I think it's more likely than not these clowns are full of shit. But I'm willing to allow for the fact they might not be.

 

[OfnaRcR4]

Looks interesting to say the least. Just can't help but think that its like every other new power generation claim that promises energy for cheap but in reality its not possible.

 

[4U2QUIK]

http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/USNavy.htm
maybe something more realstic

 

[Poodles]

Hmmm, this could literally be the engine that works off of air (removing hydrogen from the atmosphere)...

The issues I see is how do you get the fuel (nickel) in and waste (copper) out. While it would drop the price of copper, cost of nickel would go up. Until such time that nickel is as easily mined and refined as hydrocarbons, I don't see this technology changing the world to be honest.

Still, it will have uses if it's legit.

 

[GrimJack]

Truth... to power the world (to US household standard) using this would require 62 million tons of nickel per year. World production of nickel is only 1.4 million tons. I can't see us being able to ramp up production to that kind of level.

It's kind of odd, actually, that everyone has been looking for cold fusion to solve the world's energy problems for near half a century now, while the reality is that it'll likely come from some other field. Geothermal, solar, orbital, or some combination thereof.

 

[Kai]

Nothing wrong with some bigass nuclear plants all over the place

 

[Supracentral]

Nothing wrong with some bigass nuclear plants all over the place

Indeed. But many American's are completely irrational fruit loops on that topic.

 

[OfnaRcR4]

Nothing wrong with some bigass nuclear plants all over the place

+1!!!! Bring them in!

 

[Kangae]

Yeah, some fusion power would be great, but the downfalls of this specific reaction have already been pointed out in this thread. But conventional fission isn't a bad way either, but it somehow got labeled as "dirty".

But as a side note, 1 cent a kwh is silly cheap, my power is 4 cents a kwh and I've got some of the cheapest power in the state (hydroelectric).

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[Poodles]

Nothing wrong with some bigass nuclear plants all over the place

Pipe dream, most nuclear plants are government run (hiding costs) and they always run way over budget. If they were viable, private industry would fund them (and they won't).

But that's really for another thread...

 

[bioskyline]

if the process could be reversed, and the waste copper turned back into nickel, could be on to something

 

[Kai]

Pipe dream, most nuclear plants are government run (hiding costs) and they always run way over budget. If they were viable, private industry would fund them (and they won't).

But that's really for another thread...

That would be why we have private industry building a half dozen new nuclear plants in the UK then....

 

[Kangae]

I thought we haven't had a new nuclear plants built in the US in decades due to environmental issues? How do we know that they haven't improved the technology since then?

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[Keros]

if the process could be reversed, and the waste copper turned back into nickel, could be on to something

Unless alchemists have come up with better magics to convert one element into another, it's not likely to be able to be changed "back".

I didn't read the article or watch any videos, but I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on cold fusion. It's highly, and I stress very highly, unlikely that you could get any two atoms to get close enough to each other to fuse at room temperature. Hydrogen gas is pretty light, and would need to be superheated to get excited enough to hit anything with sufficient force to cause it to fuse. Even a bathtub full of tritium next to a 20MT nuclear fission bomb wouldn't fuse (put a few kgs IN the core of a fission bomb and it adds some bang...). I very much doubt that the math would work to fuse regular hydrogen at room temperature in any attainable circumstances. Also, bear in mind that the hotter a bunch of atoms get, the further from each other they want to be.

You've got a better chance of charging hell with a bucket of water than fusing hydrogen at room temperature.

 

[GrimJack]

Actually, it's not room temperature, so it's not, technically, cold. They mention in the article that they try to keep the temp at or below 400C.

It's only called cold fusion in comparison to 'hot' fusion bits... like... well, the sun, for instance.

 

[RazoE]

we already discovered a cheap solution for power..