Predictable Heat Source Reported from 'Heavy' Water Electrolysis
By Jerry E. Bishop
The Wall Street Journal

September 28, 1992

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A California scientist funded by the electric power industry reported he has repeatedly and predictably gotten excess heat from the electrolysis of "heavy" water.

The California experiments are essentially sophisticated variations of the "cold fusion" experiments that created an uproar in 1989. The scientist, however, carefully avoided using the term, apparently reflecting a growing suspicion among researchers that what they are seeing may not be the fusion of hydrogen nuclei as originally thought. Rather, they are beginning to suspect, the heat may be coming from some other, previously unknown phenomenon. No matter what causes the heat, if it can be produced in a predictable and controllable way it could be used to generate electricity.

The new report suggests that researchers pursuing "cold fusion" experiments are beginning to overcome the problems that have caused many scientists to dismiss the experiments as the result of errors.

The claim of reproducibility was made by Michael C.H. McKubre of SRI International, the big contract research institute in Palo Alto, Calif., in a lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology late last week. In July, materials scientist Edmund Storms of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico reported he had successfully replicated a Japanese experiment that produced more power, as heat, than it consumed.

The Japanese experiment was a major factor in prompting the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry to earmark 2.7 billion yen ($22.4 million) for "cold fusion" experiments over the next four years.

Dr. McKubre's experiments, which haven't been published, are being funded by the industry-supported Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, the only source of funds for such research in the U.S. The institute has put some $3 million to $4 million into the SRI experiments so far and has promised additional funding. As far-fetched as some scientists consider "cold fusion," the mere possibility that the researchers are exploring a new source of energy that uses the hydrogen from water as a fuel is too important for the electric power industry to pass up.

The reports by Dr. Storms and now by Dr. McKubre are aimed at overcoming the biggest objections to the claims made in 1989 by chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann. Their claims of room-temperature fusion of "heavy" hydrogen atoms were dismissed by many scientists because neither Drs. Pons and Fleischmann nor scores of others were able to reproduce the experiments on demand.

Dr. McKubre said that so far his laboratory has gotten excess heat from 38 experiments conducted since the spring of 1989. "We can demonstrate that under special circumstances we get a larger energy output than input," he said. The degree by which the output power exceeds the input power is larger than the degree of uncertainty in the measurements, he said. The output power, in the form of heat, exceeds input power by 1% to 30% and is predictable and controllable, he said.

The SRI experiments, although different in detail from other "cold fusion" types of experiments, are similar in that they are simple electrolysis-of-water experiments. An electrode of palladium encircled by a second electrode, a platinum wire, is immersed in a bath of "heavy" water and subjected to an electric current. Heavy hydrogen atoms -- deuterium atoms -- break loose from the water molecules and are absorbed by the palladium metal.

Chances of success were high if aluminum and/or silicon was added to the "heavy" water electrolyte so that it would form a kind of thin, sludge-like film on the palladium's surface, he said. In the experiments with aluminum, 11 out of 12 produced excess power while one control experiment using ordinary light water with aluminum failed to do so, he said.

However, he said, the "bursts" of large amounts of excess power sporadically seen in many experiments are still unpredictable and inexplicable. The SRI group has seen such sudden bursts, ranging up to 300% of the input power, three times in his three years of experiments, he said.

The SRI scientist avoided saying the excess energy was the result of the fusing of the nuclei of hydrogen atoms at room temperature, so-called cold fusion. He titled his talk "Observations of Heat in Electrochemical Studies of the Palladium/Deuterium System . . ." He said, "We are unable to account for the excess temperatures by any artifact or to account for the excess heat by any mechanical or chemical process of which we are aware," he said. Ruling out mechanical and chemical processes leaves only nuclear processes of some sort to explain the experiments.

In introducing Dr. McKubre, his host, MIT theoretical physicist Peter L. Hagelstein, said the mysterious phenomenon producing the excess power in the experiments "probably is not fusion" but he offered no alternative explanation. Dr. Hagelstein has been developing new theories to explain the phenomenon.

The SRI researchers failed to detect any kind of radiation from the experiments although instruments to detect large amounts of neutrons, gamma rays or Xrays were used. Physicists have charged that if "cold fusion" was really occurring there would be large amounts of radiation.

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