Historical research guide · 0411 · 2020

Experimental procedures for excess heat generation from cold fusion reactions

Tadahiko Mizuno · Jed Rothwell

In one minute

Tadahiko Mizuno and Jed Rothwell wrote this as a laboratory manual rather than a report. It is the recipe for a reactor that gives out more heat than the electricity fed into it, set down for someone who intends to build one, and it covers three things in order. First the calorimetry: how to measure the heat honestly, with the air-flow method Mizuno uses in Sapporo and a matched control reactor running alongside. Then the two ways of preparing the reactant, a nickel mesh carrying palladium. Plasma deposition, in which a glow discharge sputters palladium onto the mesh, has produced excess of roughly one hundred per cent — twice the input electricity — and as much as about five hundred watts, but the process is complex and slow. Direct application, putting the palladium on by hand or by plating, works quickly and starts reliably, but returns only about five to twenty per cent above input, usually around twenty watts. Power or reliability: the chapter states the trade plainly.

Connection

Chapter 12 asks whether a hydrogen-loaded metal lattice does real nuclear work at ordinary temperatures, and this is the chapter that hands the question to anyone with a bench: preparation, calorimetry and control reactor, written to be followed. For chapter 1 it is a lesson in what an evidence claim needs — the measurement method comes first in the chapter, before either preparation method is described.

From the source

The purpose is stated as procedure, not argument: these are instructions for generating excess heat, meaning thermal output that exceeds the input energy, written so that another laboratory can run the same experiment.Chapter abstract, first sentence; Chapter 8, pp. 115-156
Two reactant treatment methods are presented and compared: palladium on nickel by plasma deposition, and direct application of palladium to the nickel.Chapter abstract, second sentence
Plasma deposition sometimes yields about one hundred per cent excess — twice as much heat out as the input electric energy — and up to roughly five hundred watts, but the process is complex and time-consuming.Chapter abstract, third sentence
Direct application generates excess heat at lower power levels, about five to twenty per cent above input power, usually at around twenty watts. The trade the chapter names is magnitude against ease and reliability of preparation.Chapter abstract, fourth sentence
The material is laid out in three parts, and calorimetry comes first, ahead of plasma deposition and ahead of direct application. The measurement is treated as the primary problem rather than a supporting detail.Chapter abstract, closing sentence

The way in

https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-815944-6.00008-7

Historical source-access record. This guide links to the original; it does not reproduce the paper text.

Chapter 8, pages 115 to 156, of Cold Fusion: Advances in Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, Elsevier, 2020, ISBN 9780128159446, by Tadahiko Mizuno of the Hydrogen Engineering Application and Development Company in Sapporo with Jed Rothwell, librarian at LENR-CANR.org. The chapter is closed at the publisher, whose deposited licences are the Elsevier text-and-data-mining user licences rather than any licence to readers, and the publisher’s site refuses automated readers, so none of its text is reproduced here. The summary and claims below were written from the authors’ own chapter abstract as deposited by the publisher and read in full, together with the peer-reviewed papers the chapter draws on, each of which has its own sheet: the 2017 report of the slow plasma-deposition method at /library/stm-a10865fe7a, the 2019 comparison of that method with direct application at /library/stm-9f6f5dd47b, and the 2025 stainless-steel reactor results at /library/stm-9da7e7d695. Read those three for the calorimetry in detail; read this chapter for the procedure written out as instructions.

How to cite it

Tadahiko Mizuno, Jed Rothwell (2020) Experimental procedures for excess heat generation from cold fusion reactions doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-815944-6.00008-7

Where it sits in the curriculum

Lattice confinement fusion