Ecology of consumption. Science and technology: Cold fusion could be one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs, if ever realized.

On March 23, 1989, the University of Utah announced in a press release that "two scientists have launched a self-sustaining reaction nuclear fusion at room temperature". University President Chase Peterson said that this milestone achievement is comparable only to the mastery of fire, the discovery of electricity and the cultivation of plants. State legislators urgently allocate $ 5 million for the institution National Institute cold fusion, and the university asked the US Congress for another 25 million. Thus began one of the most high-profile scientific scandals of the 20th century. Print and television instantly spread the news around the world.

The scientists who made the sensational statement seemed to have a solid reputation and were quite trustworthy. Member who settled in the US from the UK Royal Society and ex-president of the International Society of Electrochemists, Martin Fleischman, enjoyed international fame earned by his participation in the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering of light. Stanley Pons, co-author of the discovery, headed the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah.

So what is it all the same, myth or reality?

Source of cheap energy

Fleishman and Pons claimed that they caused deuterium nuclei to fuse with each other at ordinary temperatures and pressures. Their "cold fusion reactor" was a calorimeter with aqueous solution salt through which an electric current was passed. True, the water was not simple, but heavy, D2O, the cathode was made of palladium, and lithium and deuterium were part of the dissolved salt. Through the solution for months non-stop passed D.C., so that oxygen was released at the anode and heavy hydrogen at the cathode. Fleishman and Pons supposedly found that the temperature of the electrolyte periodically increased by tens of degrees, and sometimes more, although the power supply provided stable power. They explained this by the inflow of intranuclear energy released during the fusion of deuterium nuclei.

Palladium has a unique ability to absorb hydrogen. Fleischman and Pons believed that inside the crystal lattice of this metal, the deuterium atoms approach so strongly that their nuclei merge into the nuclei of the main helium isotope. This process goes with the release of energy, which, according to their hypothesis, heated the electrolyte. The explanation was captivating in its simplicity and completely convinced politicians, journalists, and even chemists.

Physicists bring clarity

However, nuclear physicists and plasma physicists were in no hurry to beat the timpani. They knew perfectly well that two deuterons could, in principle, give rise to a helium-4 nucleus and a high-energy gamma quantum, but the chances of such an outcome are extremely small. Even if deuterons enter into a nuclear reaction, it almost certainly ends with the birth of a tritium nucleus and a proton, or the appearance of a neutron and a helium-3 nucleus, and the probabilities of these transformations are approximately the same. If nuclear fusion really takes place inside palladium, then it should generate big number neutrons of a well-defined energy (about 2.45 MeV). They are easy to detect either directly (with the help of neutron detectors) or indirectly (because the collision of such a neutron with a heavy hydrogen nucleus should produce a gamma-quantum with an energy of 2.22 MeV, which again can be detected). In general, the Fleischman and Pons hypothesis could be confirmed using standard radiometric equipment.

However, nothing came of it. Fleischman used his connections at home and convinced the employees of the British nuclear center in Harwell to check his "reactor" for neutron generation. Harwell had ultra-sensitive detectors for these particles, but they showed nothing! The search for gamma rays of the corresponding energy also turned out to be a failure. Physicists from the University of Utah came to the same conclusion. Employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tried to reproduce the experiments of Fleishman and Pons, but again to no avail. Therefore, it is not surprising that the claim for a great discovery was crushed at the conference of the American Physical Society (APS), which was held in Baltimore on May 1 of that year.

Sic transit gloria mundi

From this blow, Pons and Fleishman never recovered. in the newspaper New York Times published a devastating article, and by the end of May science community came to the conclusion that the claims of the Utah chemists are either a manifestation of extreme incompetence or an elementary scam.

But there were also dissidents, even among the scientific elite. Eccentric Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger, one of the founders of quantum electrodynamics, was so convinced of the discovery of chemists from Salt Lake City that he canceled his membership in the AFO in protest.

However academic career Fleishman and Pons ended - quickly and ingloriously. In 1992, they left the University of Utah and continued their work in France with Japanese money, until they lost this funding as well. Fleishman returned to England, where he lives in retirement. Pons renounced his American citizenship and settled in France.

Pyroelectric cold fusion

Cold nuclear fusion on desktop devices is not only possible, but also implemented, and in several versions. So, in 2005, researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles managed to start a similar reaction in a container with deuterium, inside which an electrostatic field was created. Its source was a tungsten needle connected to a pyroelectric lithium tantalate crystal, upon cooling and subsequent heating of which a potential difference of 100–120 kV was created. A field with a strength of about 25 GV/m completely ionized deuterium atoms and accelerated its nuclei so that when they collided with a target of erbium deuteride, they gave rise to helium-3 nuclei and neutrons. The peak neutron flux was about 900 neutrons per second (several hundred times higher than the typical background value). Although such a system has prospects as a neutron generator, it is impossible to speak of it as an energy source. Such devices consume much more energy than they generate: in the experiments of Californian scientists, approximately 10-8 J were released in one cooling-heating cycle lasting several minutes (11 orders of magnitude less than what is needed to heat a glass of water by 1°C).

The story doesn't end there

At the beginning of 2011, interest in cold thermonuclear fusion, or, as domestic physicists call it, cold fusion, flared up again in the world of science. The reason for this excitement was the demonstration by Italian scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi from the University of Bologna of an unusual installation in which, according to its developers, this synthesis is carried out quite easily.

In general terms, this device works like this. Nickel nanopowder and a conventional hydrogen isotope are placed in a metal tube with an electric heater. Next, a pressure of about 80 atmospheres is injected. When initially heated to a high temperature (hundreds of degrees), as scientists say, part of the H2 molecules is divided into atomic hydrogen, then it enters into a nuclear reaction with nickel.

As a result of this reaction, an isotope of copper is generated, as well as a large number of thermal energy. Andrea Rossi explained that during the first tests of the device, they received from it about 10-12 kilowatts at the output, while at the input the system required an average of 600-700 watts (meaning the electricity supplied to the device when it is plugged into a socket) . Everything turned out that the production of energy in this case was many times higher than the costs, and in fact it was this effect that was once expected from a cold fusion.

Nevertheless, according to the developers, in this device, far from all hydrogen and nickel enter into the reaction, but a very small fraction of them. However, scientists are sure that what is happening inside is precisely a nuclear reaction. They consider this to be evidence: the appearance of copper in more, which could be an impurity in the original "fuel" (ie Nickel); the absence of a large (that is, measurable) consumption of hydrogen (since it could act as a fuel in a chemical reaction); allocated thermal radiation; and, of course, the energy balance itself.

So, did the Italian physicists really manage to achieve thermonuclear fusion at low temperatures (hundreds of degrees Celsius is nothing for such reactions, which usually take place at millions of degrees Kelvin!)? It's hard to say, since so far all peer-reviewed scientific journals have even rejected the articles of its authors. The skepticism of many scientists is quite understandable - for many years the words "cold fusion" have caused physicists to smile and associate with perpetual motion machine. In addition, the authors of the device themselves honestly admit that the subtle details of its work are still beyond their understanding.

What is this elusive cold fusion, to prove the possibility of the flow of which many scientists have been trying for more than a dozen years? In order to understand the essence of this reaction, as well as the prospects for such studies, let's first talk about what thermonuclear fusion is in general. This term is understood as a process in which heavier atomic nuclei are synthesized from lighter ones. In this case, a huge amount of energy is released, much more than in the nuclear reactions of the decay of radioactive elements.

Similar processes constantly occur in the Sun and other stars, because of which they can emit both light and heat. So, for example, every second our Sun radiates in space energy equivalent to four million tons of mass. This energy is born during the fusion of four hydrogen nuclei (in other words, protons) into a helium nucleus. At the same time, as a result of the conversion of one gram of protons, 20 million times more energy is released at the output than during the combustion of a gram hard coal. Agree, this is very impressive.

But can't people create a reactor like the Sun in order to produce a large amount of energy for their needs? Theoretically, of course, they can, since a direct ban on such a device does not establish any of the laws of physics. However, this is quite difficult to do, and here's why: this synthesis requires a very high temperature and the same is unrealistic. high pressure. Therefore, the creation of a classic thermonuclear reactor turns out to be economically unprofitable - in order to start it, it will be necessary to spend much more energy than it can generate over the next few years of operation.

Returning to the Italian discoverers, we have to admit that the “scientists” themselves do not inspire much confidence, neither with their past achievements, nor with their current situation. Few people knew the name of Sergio Focardi until now, but thanks to his academic title of professor, one can at least not doubt his involvement in science. But with respect to a colleague in the discovery, Andrea Rossi, this can no longer be said. On the this moment Andrea is an employee of a certain American corporation Leonardo Corp, and at one time distinguished himself only by being brought to court for tax evasion and silver smuggling from Switzerland. But the "bad" news for supporters of cold thermonuclear fusion did not end there either. It turned out that the scientific journal Journal of Nuclear Physics, in which the Italians published articles about their discovery, is actually more of a blog, and an inferior journal. And, in addition, none other than the already familiar Italians Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi turned out to be its owners. But the publication in serious scientific publications serves as confirmation of the "plausibility" of the discovery.

Without stopping there, and digging even deeper, the journalists also found out that the idea of ​​the presented project belongs to a completely different person - the Italian scientist Francesco Piantelli. It seems that it was on this, ingloriously, that another sensation ended, and the world in once more lost his perpetual motion machine. But how, not without irony, the Italians console themselves, if this is just a fiction, then at least it is not devoid of wit, because it is one thing to play on acquaintances and quite another to try to circle the whole world around your finger.

Currently, all rights to this device belong to the American company Industrial Heat, where Rossi leads all research and development activities regarding the reactor.

There are low temperature (E-Cat) and high temperature (Hot Cat) versions of the reactor. The first for temperatures around 100-200 °C, the second for temperatures around 800-1400 °C. The company has now sold a 1 MW low-temperature reactor to an unnamed customer for commercial use and, in particular, Industrial Heat is testing and debugging this reactor in order to begin full-scale industrial production of such power units. According to Andrea Rossi, the reactor operates mainly by the reaction between nickel and hydrogen, during which the nickel isotopes are transmuted with the release of a large amount of heat. Those. some isotopes of nickel pass into other isotopes. Nevertheless, a number of independent tests were carried out, the most informative of which was a test of a high-temperature version of the reactor in the Swiss city of Lugano. This test has already been written about.

Back in 2012, it was reported that the first cold fusion unit was sold to Rossi.

On December 27, an article about independent reproduction of the Rossi reactor in Russia was published on the E-Cat World website. The same article contains a link to the report "Investigation of the analogue of the high-temperature heat generator Rossi" by physicist Parkhomov Alexander Georgievich. The report was prepared for the All-Russian physical workshop"Cold Nuclear Fusion and Ball Lightning", which took place on September 25, 2014 at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.

In the report, the author presented his version of the Rossi reactor, data on his internal device and the tests carried out. The main conclusion: the reactor really releases more energy than it consumes. The ratio of released heat to consumed energy was 2.58. Moreover, for about 8 minutes the reactor operated without any input power at all, after the supply wire burned out, while producing about a kilowatt of thermal power at the output.

In 2015 A.G. Parkhomov managed to make a long-term operating reactor with pressure measurement. From 23:30 on March 16, the temperature is still holding. Photo of the reactor.

Finally, it was possible to make a long-running reactor. The temperature of 1200°C was reached at 11:30 p.m. on March 16 after 12 hours of gradual heating and has been holding up to this day. Heater power 300 W, COP=3.
For the first time, it was possible to successfully mount a pressure gauge in the installation. With slow heating, the maximum pressure of 5 bar was reached at 200°C, then the pressure decreased and at a temperature of about 1000°C it became negative. The strongest vacuum of about 0.5 bar was at a temperature of 1150°C.

With long continuous operation, it is not possible to add water around the clock. Therefore, we had to abandon the calorimetry used in previous experiments, based on measuring the mass of evaporated water. The determination of the thermal coefficient in this experiment is carried out by comparing the power consumed by the electric heater in the presence and absence of the fuel mixture. Without fuel, a temperature of 1200 ° C is reached at a power of about 1070 watts. In the presence of fuel (630 mg of nickel + 60 mg of lithium aluminum hydride), this temperature is reached at a power of about 330 watts. Thus, the reactor generates about 700 W of excess power (COP ~ 3.2). (Explanation by A.G. Parkhomov, more exact value COP requires more detailed calculation). published

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Cold fusion is known as one of the biggest scientific hoaxes. XX century. For a long time, most physicists refused to even discuss the very possibility of such a reaction. Recently, however, two Italian scientists presented to the public a setup that they say makes it easy to do. Is this synthesis possible after all?

At the beginning this year in the world of science, interest in cold thermonuclear fusion, or, as domestic physicists call it, cold thermonuclear fusion, flared up again. The reason for this excitement was the demonstration by Italian scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi from the University of Bologna of an unusual installation in which, according to its developers, this synthesis is carried out quite easily.

In general terms, this device works like this. Nickel nanopowder and a conventional hydrogen isotope are placed in a metal tube with an electric heater. Next, a pressure of about 80 atmospheres is injected. When initially heated to a high temperature (hundreds of degrees), as scientists say, part of the H 2 molecules is divided into atomic hydrogen, then it enters into a nuclear reaction with nickel.

As a result of this reaction, an isotope of copper is generated, as well as a large amount of thermal energy. Andrea Rossi explained that during the first tests of the device, they received from it about 10-12 kilowatts at the output, while at the input the system required an average of 600-700 watts (meaning the electricity supplied to the device when it is plugged into a socket) . Everything turned out that the production of energy in this case was many times higher than the costs, and in fact it was this effect that was once expected from a cold fusion.

Nevertheless, according to the developers, in this device, far from all hydrogen and nickel enter into the reaction, but a very small fraction of them. However, scientists are sure that what is happening inside is precisely a nuclear reaction. They consider the proof of this: the appearance of copper in a larger amount than could be an impurity in the original "fuel" (that is, nickel); the absence of a large (that is, measurable) consumption of hydrogen (since it could act as a fuel in a chemical reaction); emitted thermal radiation; and, of course, the energy balance itself.

So, did the Italian physicists really manage to achieve thermonuclear fusion at low temperatures (hundreds of degrees Celsius is nothing for such reactions, which usually take place at millions of degrees Kelvin!)? It's hard to say, since so far all peer-reviewed scientific journals have even rejected the articles of its authors. The skepticism of many scientists is quite understandable - for many years the words "cold fusion" have caused physicists to smile and associate with a perpetual motion machine. In addition, the authors of the device themselves honestly admit that the subtle details of its work are still beyond their understanding.

What is this elusive cold fusion, which many scientists have been trying to prove for decades? In order to understand the essence of this reaction, as well as the prospects of such studies, let's first talk about what thermonuclear fusion is in general. This term is understood as a process in which heavier atomic nuclei are synthesized from lighter ones. In this case, a huge amount of energy is released, much more than in the nuclear reactions of the decay of radioactive elements.

Similar processes are constantly taking place in the Sun and other stars, because of which they can emit both light and heat. So, for example, every second our Sun radiates energy equivalent to four million tons of mass into outer space. This energy is born during the fusion of four hydrogen nuclei (in other words, protons) into a helium nucleus. At the same time, as a result of the conversion of one gram of protons, 20 million times more energy is released at the output than when a gram of coal is burned. Agree, this is very impressive.

But can't people create a reactor like the Sun in order to produce a large amount of energy for their needs? Theoretically, of course, they can, since a direct ban on such a device does not establish any of the laws of physics. However, this is quite difficult to do, and here's why: this synthesis requires a very high temperature and the same unrealistically high pressure. Therefore, the creation of a classic thermonuclear reactor turns out to be economically unprofitable - in order to start it, it will be necessary to spend much more energy than it can generate over the next few years of operation.

That is why many scientists throughout the 20th century tried to carry out a thermonuclear fusion reaction at low temperatures and normal pressure, that is, the same cold thermonuclear fusion. The first report that this was possible came on March 23, 1989, when Professor Martin Fleischman and his colleague Stanley Pons held a press conference at their University of Utah, where they reported how they obtained a positive energy output in the form of heat and recorded gamma radiation coming from the electrolyte. That is, they carried out a cold thermonuclear fusion reaction.

In June of the same year, scientists sent an article with the results of the experiment to Nature, but soon a real scandal erupted around their discovery. The point is that leading researchers scientific centers The United States, the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, repeated this experiment in detail and did not find anything like it. True, then followed by two confirmations made by scientists from the Texas A&M University and the Georgia Institute of Technology Research. However, they also got confused.

When setting up control experiments, it turned out that the Texas electrochemists misinterpreted the results of the experiment - in their experiment, the increased heat generation was caused by the electrolysis of water, since the thermometer served as the second electrode (cathode)! In Georgia, neutron counters were so sensitive that they reacted to the warmth of a raised hand. This is how the “neutron release” was registered, which the researchers considered the result of a thermonuclear fusion reaction.

As a result of all this, many physicists were filled with confidence that there is no cold fusion and there cannot be, and Fleishman and Pons simply cheated. However, others (and they are, unfortunately, a clear minority) do not believe in the fraud of scientists, or even that there was simply a mistake, and hope that a clean and practically inexhaustible source of energy can be constructed.

Among the latter is the Japanese scientist Yoshiaki Arata, who studied the problem of cold fusion for several years and in 2008 conducted a public experiment at Osaka University that showed the possibility of thermonuclear fusion at low temperatures. He and his colleagues used special structures consisting of nanoparticles.

These were specially prepared clusters consisting of several hundred palladium atoms. Their main feature was that they had vast voids inside, into which deuterium atoms (an isotope of hydrogen) could be pumped to a very high concentration. And when this concentration exceeded a certain limit, these particles approached each other so much that they began to merge, as a result of which a real thermonuclear reaction was launched. It consisted in the fusion of two deuterium atoms into a lithium-4 atom with the release of heat.

The proof of this was that when Professor Arata began to add deuterium gas to the mixture containing the mentioned nanoparticles, its temperature rose to 70 degrees Celsius. After the gas was turned off, the temperature in the cell remained elevated for more than 50 hours, and the energy released exceeded the energy expended. According to the scientist, this could only be explained by the fact that nuclear fusion occurred.

True, so far Arata's experiment has also not been repeated in any laboratory. Therefore, many physicists continue to consider cold fusion a hoax and quackery. However, Arata himself denies such accusations, reproaching opponents that they do not know how to work with nanoparticles, which is why they do not succeed.

In short, cold fusion usually refers to the (assumed) nuclear reaction between the nuclei of hydrogen isotopes at low temperatures. Low temperature- it's about a room. The word "suggested" is very important here, because today there is not a single theory and not a single experiment that would indicate the possibility of such a reaction.

But if there are no theories or convincing experiments, then why is this topic so popular? To answer this question, one must understand the problems of nuclear fusion in general. Nuclear fusion (often referred to as "thermonuclear fusion") is a reaction in which light nuclei collide into one heavy core. For example, heavy hydrogen nuclei (deuterium and tritium) are converted into a helium nucleus and one neutron. This releases a huge amount of energy (in the form of heat). So much energy is released that 100 tons of heavy hydrogen would be enough to provide energy to all of humanity for whole year(not only electricity, but also heat). It is these reactions that occur inside the stars, thanks to which the stars live.

A lot of energy is good, but there is a problem. To start such a reaction, you need to strongly collide the nuclei. To do this, you will have to heat the substance to about 100 million degrees Celsius. People know how to do it, and quite successfully. This is exactly what happens in hydrogen bomb, where heating occurs due to the traditional nuclear explosion. The result is a thermonuclear explosion great power. But constructively use energy thermonuclear explosion not very comfortable. Therefore, scientists in many countries have been trying for more than 60 years to curb this reaction and make it manageable. To today they have already learned how to control the reaction (for example, in ITER, holding hot plasma electromagnetic fields), but about the same amount of energy is spent on control as is released during synthesis.

Now imagine that there is a way to run the same reaction, but at room temperature. This would be a real revolution in the energy sector. The life of mankind would change beyond recognition. In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Utah published a paper claiming to observe nuclear fusion at room temperature. Anomalous heat was released during the electrolysis of heavy water with a palladium catalyst. It was assumed that the hydrogen atoms were captured by the catalyst, and somehow the conditions for nuclear fusion were created. This effect is called cold nuclear fusion.

Pons and Fleischmann's article made a lot of noise. Still - the problem of energy is solved! Naturally, many other scientists have tried to reproduce their results. However, none of them succeeded. Next, physicists began to identify one error after another in the original experiment, and the scientific community came to an unambiguous conclusion about the failure of the experiment. Since then, there has been no progress in this area. But some liked the idea of ​​cold fusion so much that they are still doing it. At the same time, such scientists are not taken seriously in the scientific community, and to publish an article on the topic of cold fusion in a prestigious scientific journal most likely won't work. So far, cold fusion remains just a beautiful idea.

The scientists who made the sensational statement seemed to have a solid reputation and were quite trustworthy. Martin Fleishman, a Fellow of the Royal Society and ex-President of the International Society of Electrochemists, who immigrated to the United States from Great Britain, enjoyed international fame earned by his participation in the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering of light. Stanley Pons, co-author of the discovery, headed the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah.

Pyroelectric cold fusion

It should be understood that cold nuclear fusion on desktop devices is not only possible, but also implemented, and in several versions. So, in 2005, researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles reported in Nature that they managed to start a similar reaction in a container with deuterium, inside which an electrostatic field was created. Its source was the tip of a tungsten needle connected to a pyroelectric lithium tantalate crystal, upon cooling and subsequent heating of which a potential difference of the order of 100–120 kV was created. A field with a strength of about 25 gigavolts / meter completely ionized deuterium atoms and accelerated its nuclei so that when they collided with a target of erbium deuteride, they gave rise to helium-3 nuclei and neutrons. The measured peak neutron flux in this case was about 900 neutrons per second (which is several hundred times higher than the typical background value).
Although such a system has certain prospects as a neutron generator, it does not make any sense to speak of it as an energy source. Both this installation and other similar devices consume much more energy than they generate at the output: in the experiments of the University of California, about 10 ^ (-8) J was released in one cooling-heating cycle lasting several minutes. This is 11 orders of magnitude less than necessary, to heat a glass of water by 1 degree Celsius.

Source of cheap energy

Fleishman and Pons claimed that they caused deuterium nuclei to fuse with each other at ordinary temperatures and pressures. Their "cold fusion reactor" was a calorimeter with an aqueous solution of salt through which an electric current was passed. True, the water was not simple, but heavy, D2O, the cathode was made of palladium, and lithium and deuterium were part of the dissolved salt. A constant current was passed through the solution for months without stopping, so that oxygen was released at the anode, and heavy hydrogen at the cathode. Fleishman and Pons supposedly found that the temperature of the electrolyte periodically increased by tens of degrees, and sometimes more, although the power supply provided stable power. They explained this by the inflow of intranuclear energy released during the fusion of deuterium nuclei.

Palladium has a unique ability to absorb hydrogen. Fleischman and Pons believed that inside the crystal lattice of this metal, the deuterium atoms approach so strongly that their nuclei merge into the nuclei of the main helium isotope. This process goes with the release of energy, which, according to their hypothesis, heated the electrolyte. The explanation was captivating in its simplicity and completely convinced politicians, journalists, and even chemists.

Heating accelerator. A setup used in cold fusion experiments by UCLA researchers. When a pyroelectric crystal is heated, a potential difference is created on its faces, creating an electric field of high intensity, in which deuterium ions are accelerated.

Physicists bring clarity

However, nuclear physicists and plasma physicists were in no hurry to beat the timpani. They knew perfectly well that two deuterons could, in principle, give rise to a helium-4 nucleus and a high-energy gamma quantum, but the chances of such an outcome are extremely small. Even if deuterons enter into a nuclear reaction, it almost certainly ends with the birth of a tritium nucleus and a proton, or the appearance of a neutron and a helium-3 nucleus, and the probabilities of these transformations are approximately the same. If nuclear fusion really takes place inside palladium, then it should generate a large number of neutrons of quite a certain energy (about 2.45 MeV). They are easy to detect either directly (with the help of neutron detectors) or indirectly (because the collision of such a neutron with a heavy hydrogen nucleus should produce a gamma-quantum with an energy of 2.22 MeV, which again can be detected). In general, the Fleischman and Pons hypothesis could be confirmed using standard radiometric equipment.

However, nothing came of it. Fleischman used connections at home and persuaded the staff of the British nuclear center in Harwell to check his "reactor" for neutron generation. Harwell had ultra-sensitive detectors for these particles, but they showed nothing! The search for gamma rays of the corresponding energy also turned out to be a failure. Physicists from the University of Utah came to the same conclusion. Employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tried to reproduce the experiments of Fleishman and Pons, but again to no avail. Therefore, it is not surprising that the claim for a great discovery was crushed at the conference of the American Physical Society (APS), which was held in Baltimore on May 1 of that year.

Schematic diagram of a pyroelectric fusion setup, showing a crystal, equipotential lines, and deuterium ion trajectories. A grounded copper mesh shields the Faraday cup. The cylinder and target are charged up to +40 V to collect secondary electrons.

Sic transit gloria mundi

From this blow, Pons and Fleishman never recovered. A devastating article appeared in the New York Times, and by the end of May, the scientific community had concluded that the claims of the Utah chemists were either a display of extreme incompetence or an elementary scam.

But there were also dissidents, even among the scientific elite. The eccentric Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger, one of the founders of quantum electrodynamics, became so convinced of the discovery of chemists from Salt Lake City that he canceled his membership in the AFO in protest.

Nevertheless, the academic careers of Fleishman and Pons ended quickly and ingloriously. In 1992, they left the University of Utah and continued their work in France with Japanese money, until they lost this funding as well. Fleishman returned to England, where he lives in retirement. Pons renounced his American citizenship and settled in France.

• Translation

This area is now called low-energy nuclear reactions, and it can achieve real results - or it can turn out to be stubborn junk science.

Dr. Martin Fleischman (right), an electrochemist, and Stanley Pons, chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of Utah, answer questions from the science and technology committee about their controversial cold fusion work, April 26, 1989.

Howard J. Wilk is a long time out-of-work chemist and synthetic organics chemist who lives in Philadelphia. Like many other researchers working in the pharmaceutical field, he has been the victim of a decline in R&D in the drug industry that is taking place in last years, and is now engaged in part-time jobs that are not related to science. With free time, Wilk tracks the progress of New Jersey-based company Brilliant Light Power (BLP).

This is one of those companies that are developing processes that can be generally referred to as new technologies for energy production. This movement, for the most part, is a resurrection of cold fusion, a short-lived phenomenon in the 1980s associated with obtaining nuclear fusion in a simple desktop electrolytic device that scientists quickly brushed aside.

In 1991, the founder of BLP, Randall L. Mills, announced at a press conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that he had developed a theory that an electron in hydrogen could move from an ordinary, basic energy state, into previously unknown, more stable, lower energy states, releasing huge amount energy. Mills named this strange new type of compressed hydrogen "hydrino" and has been working ever since to develop a commercial device to harvest this energy.

Wilk studied Mills' theory, read papers and patents, and did his own calculations for hydrinos. Wilk even attended a demonstration at the BLP grounds in Cranbury, New Jersey, where he discussed hydrinos with Mills. After that, Wilk still can't decide if Mills is an unreal genius, a delusional scientist, or something in between.

The story began in 1989, when electrochemists Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons made a startling claim at a University of Utah press conference that they had tamed fusion energy in an electrolytic cell.

When the researchers applied an electric current to the cell, in their opinion, the deuterium atoms from heavy water, which penetrated into the palladium cathode, entered into a fusion reaction and generated helium atoms. The excess energy of the process is converted into heat. Fleishman and Pons argued that this process could not be the result of any known chemical reaction, and added the term "cold fusion" to it.

After many months of investigating their puzzling observations, however, the scientific community agreed that the effect was unstable, or non-existent, and that there were errors in the experiment. The study was discarded, and cold fusion became synonymous with junk science.

Cold fusion and hydrino production is the holy grail for producing endless, cheap, and clean energy. Cold fusion disappointed scientists. They wanted to believe in him, but their collective mind decided that this was a mistake. Part of the problem was the lack of a generally accepted theory to explain the proposed phenomenon - as physicists say, you can't trust an experiment until it's backed by a theory.

Mills has his own theory, but many scientists do not believe it and consider hydrinos unlikely. The community rejected cold fusion and ignored Mills and his work. Mills did the same, trying not to fall into the shadow of cold fusion.

Meanwhile, the field of cold fusion has changed its name to low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), and continues to exist. Some scientists continue to try to explain the Fleischmann-Pons effect. Others have rejected nuclear fusion but are investigating other possible processes that could explain the excess heat. Like Mills, they were drawn to the potential for commercial applications. They are mainly interested in energy production for industrial needs, households and transport.

A small number of companies created in an attempt to bring new energy technologies to market have business models similar to those of any technology start-up: define a new technology, try to patent an idea, attract investor interest, get funding, build prototypes, conduct a demonstration, announce worker dates devices for sale. But in the new energy world, breaking deadlines is the norm. No one has yet taken the final step of demonstrating a working device.

New theory

Mills grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, received a degree in chemistry from Franklin and Marshall College, degree in medicine in Harvard University, and studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a student, he began to develop a theory which he called "The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics", which he says is based on classical physics and offers new model atoms and molecules, departing from the foundations of quantum physics.

It is generally accepted that a single hydrogen electron darts around its nucleus, being in the most acceptable ground state orbit. It is simply impossible to move the hydrogen electron closer to the nucleus. But Mills says it's possible.

Now a researcher at Airbus Defense & Space, he says he hasn't tracked Mills' activity since 2007 because the experiments didn't show clear signs of excess energy. “I doubt that any later experiments passed scientific selection' Rathke said.

“I think it is generally accepted that Dr. Mills's theory, which he puts forward as the basis of his statements, is inconsistent and incapable of making predictions,” continues Rathke. One might ask, "Could we have been so lucky to stumble upon an energy source that simply works by following the wrong theoretical approach?" ».

In the 1990s, several researchers, including a team from research center Lewis, independently reported replicating the Mills approach and generating excess heat. The NASA team wrote in the report that "the results are far from conclusive" and said nothing about hydrinos.

Researchers have proposed possible electrochemical processes to explain the heat, including electrochemical cell irregularities, unknown exothermic chemical reactions, recombination of separated hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water. The same arguments were made by critics of the Fleishman-Pons experiments. But the NASA team clarified that researchers shouldn't dismiss the phenomenon, just in case Mills stumbled upon something.

Mills speaks very quickly, and is able to talk forever about technical details. In addition to predicting hydrinos, Mills claims that his theory can perfectly predict the location of any electron in a molecule using special software for modeling molecules, and even in complex molecules like DNA. Using the standard quantum theory hard for scientists to predict precise behavior anything more complex than a hydrogen atom. Mills also claims that his theory explains the phenomenon of the expansion of the Universe with acceleration, which cosmologists have not yet fully figured out.

In addition, Mills says that hydrinos are produced by the burning of hydrogen in stars such as our Sun, and that they can be found in the spectrum of starlight. Hydrogen is considered the most abundant element in the universe, but Mills claims that hydrinos are dark matter that cannot be found in the universe. Astrophysicists are surprised at such suggestions: "I've never heard of hydrinos," says Edward W. (Rocky) Kolb of University of Chicago, an expert on the dark universe.

Mills reported the successful isolation and characterization of hydrinos using standard spectroscopic techniques such as infrared, Raman, and spectroscopy. nuclear magnetic resonance. In addition, according to him, hydrinos can enter into reactions leading to the appearance of new types of materials with " amazing properties". This includes conductors, which Mills says will revolutionize the world of electronic devices and batteries.

And although his statements contradict public opinion, Mills' ideas seem less exotic than other unusual components of the universe. For example, muonium is a well-known short-lived exotic entity, consisting of an anti-muon (a positively charged particle similar to an electron) and an electron. Chemically, muonium behaves like an isotope of hydrogen, but nine times lighter.

SunCell, hydrine fuel cell

No matter where the hydrinos are on the credibility scale, Mills told a decade ago that BLP had already moved beyond scientific confirmation, and she is only interested in the commercial side of the issue. Over the years, BLP has raised over $110 million in investments.

BLP's approach to creating hydrinos has manifested itself in many ways. In early prototypes, Mills and his team used tungsten or nickel electrodes with electrolytic solution lithium or potassium. The applied current split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and at right conditions lithium or potassium played the role of a catalyst for the absorption of energy and the collapse of the electron orbit of hydrogen. The energy arising from the transition from the ground atomic state to a state with a lower energy was released in the form of a bright high-temperature plasma. The heat associated with it was then used to create steam and power an electric generator.

The SunCell device is currently being tested at BLP, in which hydrogen (from water) and an oxide catalyst are fed into a spherical carbon reactor with two streams of molten silver. An electrical current applied to the silver triggers a plasma reaction to form hydrinos. The reactor's energy is captured by carbon, which acts as a "black body heat sink". When heated to thousands of degrees, it emits energy in the form of visible light, which is captured by photovoltaic cells that convert the light into electricity.

When it comes to commercial developments, Mills sometimes comes across as paranoid and sometimes as a practical businessman. He registered trademark Hydrino. And because its patents claim the invention of the hydrino, the BLP claims intellectual property for the hydrino's research. In this regard, the BLP prohibits other experimenters from conducting even basic research on hydrinos, which can confirm or disprove their existence, without first signing an intellectual property agreement. “We invite researchers, we want others to do it,” says Mills. “But we need to protect our technology.”

Instead, Mills appointed authorized validators who claim to be able to validate BLP's inventions. One is an electrical engineer at Bucknell University, Professor Peter M. Jansson, who is paid to evaluate BLP technology through his consulting company, Integrated Systems. Jenson claims that his time compensation "does not affect my conclusions as an independent researcher in any way. scientific discoveries". He adds that he "disproved most of the discoveries" he studied.

“BLP scientists are working on real science, and so far I have not found any errors in their methods and approaches, - says Jenson. “Over the years, I have seen many devices in the BLP that are clearly capable of producing excess energy in meaningful amounts. I think that the scientific community will need some time to accept and digest the possibility of the existence of low-energy states of hydrogen. In my opinion, Dr. Mills' work is undeniable." Jenson adds that BLP faces challenges in commercializing the technology, but the barriers are business rather than scientific.

In the meantime, BLP has held several demonstrations of its new prototypes to investors since 2014, and has posted videos on its website. But these events do not provide clear evidence that SunCell actually works.

In July, after one demonstration, the company announced that the estimated cost of energy from SunCell is so low – 1% to 10% of any other known form of energy – that the company is “going to provide off-grid individual sources supply for almost all stationary and mobile applications that are not tied to the power grid or fuel sources of energy”. In other words, the company plans to build and lease SunCells or other devices to consumers, charging a daily fee, and allowing them to get off the grid and stop buying gasoline or solar oil, while spending several times less money.

"This is the end of the era of fire, engine internal combustion and centralized systems power supply, says Mills. “Our technology will make all other types of energy technology obsolete. The problems of climate change will be solved.” He adds that BLP appears to be able to launch production to start MW plants by the end of 2017.

What's in a name?

Despite the uncertainty surrounding Mills and BLP, their story is only part of a larger saga of new energy. As the dust settled after Fleischman-Pons' initial statement, the two researchers began to study what was right and what was wrong. They were joined by dozens of co-authors and independent researchers.

Many of these scientists and engineers, often self-employed, were less interested in commercial opportunities than in science: electrochemistry, metallurgy, calorimetry, mass spectrometry, and nuclear diagnostics. They continued to run experiments that produced excess heat, defined as the amount of energy a system put out relative to the energy needed to run it. In some cases, nuclear anomalies have been reported, such as the appearance of neutrinos, alpha particles (helium nuclei), isotopes of atoms, and transmutations of one element into another.

But in the end, most researchers are looking for an explanation for what is happening, and would be happy even if a modest amount of heat were useful.

“LENR are in an experimental phase and not yet theoretically understood,” says David J. Nagel, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University. George Washington, and former Research Manager at Research laboratory morphota. “Some of the results are simply inexplicable. Call it cold fusion, low-energy nuclear reactions, or whatever - the names are enough - we still don't know anything about it. But there is no doubt that nuclear reactions can be started with chemical energy.”

Nagel prefers to call the LENR phenomenon "lattice nuclear reactions" because the phenomenon occurs in the crystal lattices of the electrode. The original offshoot of this area focuses on the incorporation of deuterium into the palladium electrode by feeding great energy explains Nagel. The researchers reported that such electrochemical systems can produce up to 25 times more energy than they consume.

The other major offshoot of the field uses a combination of nickel and hydrogen that produces up to 400 times more energy than it consumes. Nagel likes to compare these LENR technologies to an experimental international fusion reactor based on well famous physics- the fusion of deuterium and tritium - which is being built in the south of France. The cost of this 20-year project is $20 billion and the goal is to produce 10 times the energy consumed.

Nagel says the field of LENR is growing everywhere, and the main obstacles are lack of funding and unstable results. For example, some researchers report that a certain threshold must be reached to trigger a reaction. It may require a minimum amount of deuterium or hydrogen to run, or the electrodes may need to be prepared with crystallographic orientation and surface morphology. The last requirement is common for heterogeneous catalysts used in gasoline refining and in petrochemical industries.

Nagel acknowledges that the commercial side of LENR also has problems. Prototypes under development, he says, are “rather crude,” and there has yet to be a company that has demonstrated a working prototype or made money from it.

E-Cat from Rossi

One notable attempt to commercialize LENR was made by engineer Andrea Rossi of Miami-based Leonardo Corp. In 2011, Rossi and colleagues announced at a press conference in Italy that they were building a tabletop Energy Catalyst Reactor, or E-Cat, that would produce excess energy in a process where nickel is the catalyst. To justify the invention, Rossi demonstrated the E-Cat to potential investors and the media, and appointed independent reviews.

Rossi claims that his E-Cat has a self-sustaining process in which an incoming electrical current triggers the fusion of hydrogen and lithium in the presence of a powder mixture of nickel, lithium and lithium aluminum hydride, which produces an isotope of beryllium. Short-lived beryllium decays into two α-particles, and excess energy is released in the form of heat. Part of the nickel turns into copper. Rossi talks about the absence of both waste and radiation outside the apparatus.

Rossi's announcement caused scientists to do the same unpleasant feeling, which is cold fusion. Rossi is distrustful of many people because of his controversial past. In Italy, he was accused of fraud due to his previous business frauds. Rossi says those allegations are a thing of the past and doesn't want to discuss them. He also once had a contract to build thermal installations for the US military, but the devices he supplied did not work to specifications.

In 2012, Rossi announced a 1MW system suitable for heating large buildings. He also assumed that by 2013 he would already have a factory producing a million 10 kW, laptop-sized units annually for home use. But neither the factory nor these devices happened.

In 2014, Rossi licensed the technology to Industrial Heat, a public Cherokee investment firm that buys real estate and clears old industrial estates for new development. In 2015 CEO Cherokee, Tom Darden, a trained lawyer and environmentalist, called Industrial Heat "a source of funding for LENR inventors."

Darden says Cherokee launched Industrial Heat because the investment firm believes the LENR technology is worth exploring. “We were willing to be wrong, we were willing to invest time and resources to see if this area could be useful in our mission to prevent [environmental] pollution,” he says.

Meanwhile, Industrial Heat and Leonardo had a falling out, and are now suing each other over breaches of the agreement. Rossi would receive $100 million if the annual test of his 1MW system was successful. Rossi says the test is over, but Industrial Heat doesn't think so and fears the device isn't working.

Nagel says the E-Cat has brought enthusiasm and hope to the LENR field. He claimed in 2012 that he did not think Rossi was a fraud, "but I don't like some of his testing approaches." Nagel believed that Rossi should have acted more carefully and transparently. But at the time, Nagel himself believed that LENR devices would be commercially available by 2013.

Rossi continues research and has announced the development of other prototypes. But he doesn't say much about his work. He says the 1MW units are already in production and he has received the "necessary certifications" to sell them. Home devices, he said, are still awaiting certification.

Nagel says the status quo has returned to LENR after the downturn associated with Rossi's announcements. The availability of commercial LENR generators has been pushed back several years. And even if the device survives the reproducibility issues and is useful, its developers will face a fierce battle with regulators and user acceptance.

But he remains optimistic. “LENR may become commercially available even before they are full understanding like it was with X-rays,” he says. He has already equipped a laboratory at the University. George Washington for new experiments with nickel and hydrogen.

Scientific legacies

Many researchers who continue to work on LENR are retired scientists. This is not easy for them, because for years their work has been returned unseen from mainstream journals, and their proposals for talks on scientific conferences did not accept. They are increasingly worried about the status of this area of ​​research as their time is running out. They want to either fix their legacy in scientific history LENR, or at least reassure that their instincts did not fail them.

“It was very unfortunate when cold fusion was first published in 1989 as a new source of fusion energy, and not just some new scientific curiosity,” says electrochemist Melvin Miles. "Perhaps research could go on as usual, with a more accurate and accurate study."

A former researcher at the China Lake Naval Research Center, Miles occasionally worked with Fleishman, who died in 2012. Miles thinks Fleishman and Pons were right. But even today he does not know how to make a commercial energy source for the system from palladium and deuterium, despite many experiments in which excess heat was obtained, which correlates with the production of helium.

“Why would anyone continue to research or be interested in a topic that was declared a mistake 27 years ago? Miles asks. – I am convinced that cold fusion will someday be recognized as another important discovery, which has been accepted for a long time, and a theoretical platform will appear to explain the results of the experiments.

Nuclear physicist Ludwik Kowalski, professor emeritus from Montclair state university agrees that cold fusion fell victim to a bad start. "I'm old enough to remember the effect the first announcement had on the scientific community and the public," says Kowalski. At times he collaborated with LENR researchers, "but my three attempts to confirm the sensational claims were unsuccessful."

Kowalski believes that the first infamy earned by research resulted in a larger problem unbecoming of the scientific method. Whether the LENR researchers are fair or not, Kowalski still thinks it's worth getting to the bottom of a clear yes or no verdict. But it won't be found as long as cold fusion researchers are considered "eccentric pseudo-scientists," Kowalski says. “Progress is impossible and no one benefits from the fact that the results of honest research are not published and no one checks them independently in other laboratories.”

Time will tell

Even if Kowalski gets a definitive answer to his question and the claims of the LENR researchers are confirmed, the road to commercializing the technology will be full of obstacles. Many startups, even with reliable technology, fail for reasons unrelated to science: capitalization, liquidity flows, cost, production, insurance, uncompetitive prices, and so on.

Take, for example, Sun Catalytix. The company exited MIT with the backing of hard science, but fell victim to commercial attacks before it entered the market. It was created to commercialize artificial photosynthesis, developed by chemist Daniel G. Nocera, now at Harvard, to efficiently convert water into hydrogen fuel using sunlight and inexpensive catalyst.

Nosera dreamed that the hydrogen produced in this way could power simple fuel cells and provide energy to homes and villages in backward regions of the world without access to the grid, and enabling them to enjoy modern conveniences that improve living standards. But the development took much more money and time than it seemed at first. Four years later, Sun Catalytix gave up trying to commercialize the technology, went into flux batteries, and was then bought by Lockheed Martin in 2014.

It is not known whether the development of LERR companies is hindered by the same obstacles. For example, Wilk, an organic chemist who has been following Mills' progress, is preoccupied with wanting to know if attempts to commercialize BLP are based on anything real. He just needs to know if the hydrino exists.

In 2014, Wilk asked Mills if he isolated the hydrinos, and although Mills has already written in papers and patents that he succeeded, he replied that this had not yet been done, and that it would be "very big task". But Wilk seems different. If the process creates liters of hydrine gas, it should be obvious. “Show us the hydrino!” Wilk demands.

Wilk says that Mills' world, and with it the world of other people involved in LENR, reminds him of one of Zeno's paradoxes, which speaks of the illusory nature of movement. “Each year they cover half the distance to commercialization, but will they ever get there?” Wilk came up with four explanations for the BLP: Mills' calculations are correct; This is a fraud; it is bad science; it is a pathological science, as the Nobel laureate in physics Irving Langmuir called it.

Langmuir coined the term over 50 years ago to describe the psychological process in which the scientist subconsciously moves away from scientific method and so immersed in his occupation that he develops the impossibility of objectively looking at things and seeing what is real and what is not. Pathological science is “the science of things that are not what they seem,” said Langmuir. In some cases, it develops in areas such as cold fusion/LENR and does not give up, despite being recognized false majority scientists.

"I hope they're right," Wilk says of Mills and BLP. "Indeed. I don't want to refute them, I'm just looking for the truth." But if "pigs could fly," as Wilkes says, he would accept their data, theory, and other predictions that follow from it. But he was never a believer. “I think if hydrinos existed, they would have been found in other laboratories or in nature many years ago.”

All discussions of cold fusion and LENR end up like this: they always come to the conclusion that no one has put a working device on the market, and none of the prototypes can be put on a commercial footing in the near future. So time will be the last judge.

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