Sometimes simplicity is just what is lost in madness…

Some people, are nowadays still raking over the cold fusion mythology, claiming that they can generate energy by a so called nickel/hydrogen nuclear reaction or pile… seems that this people they still haven’t heard the old Einstein’s quip that “A good joke should not be repeated too often.”

In brief: “The Focardi-Rossi approach considers this shielding a basic requirement for surpassing the Coulomb barrier between the hydrogen nuclei (protons) and the Nickel lattice nuclei, resulting into release of energy, which is a fact, through a series of exothermic nuclear processes leading to transmutations, decays, etc.”

A est… 10,000.0 watts power of cell
B est… 1.0 hours est. demo time
C def… 3,600.0 J/Wh
D = A*B*C 36,000,000.0 J (joules) power produced
E def… 1.60E-19 J/eV
F = C/D 2.25E+26 eV power in eV produced
G PER Nucleon:
H def… 511,000.0 eV per positron
I est… 727,000.0 eV per K-shell e-capture
J est… 103,000.0 eV per dynamics
K = sum 1,341,000.0 eV (sum) est. from physics
L = F/K 1.68E+20 num transmutations req'd.
M est… 1.0 kg est nickel mass
N def… 6.02E+23 num avogadros num
O def… 63.5 mol-g for nickel
P = 1000*M*N/O 9.49E+24 atom/kg
Q = L/P 1.77E-05 ratio fraction of Ni transmuted
R =… 17.7 ppm same, in part/million


Their major claim is therefore that they are going to be able to produce “large amounts of energy by a nuclear fusion process between nickel and hydrogen, occurring below 1000 K” http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2011/03/09/updating-the-rossi-focardi-cold-fusion-reactor/


In their cumbersome approach they claim, among other things, that in the experiment the energy is released from the hydrogen nucleus binding into the nickel. Unfortunately On the other hand every College student is aware that there is no known matter in the universe with binding energy higher than 8.7946 MeV/nucleon (which is the case for 62Ni). As far as we know there is nothing higher! The energy from the so called Nickel/Hydrogen cold fusion reaction would not enough to lead to an extra proton being bound in with an atom where the nucleons have av. 8.7 MeV binding energy! So there is no way that a 62Ni nucleus could be transformed exothermically into anything!

In simple terms:
Isotopic mass of nickel-62 N(n) = 61.9283451(6) u
Isotopic mass of hydrogen-1 H = 1.00782503207 u
Sum: 62.9361701

But sometimes simplicity is just what is lost in madness…