Electrically induced anomalous thermal phenomena in nanostructured wires
Francesco Celani · Cesare Lorenzetti
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In one page
Francesco Celani has spent two decades at Italy’s Frascati national laboratory trying to make a cheap wire give back more heat than the electricity going into it. This chapter, written with Cesare Lorenzetti for Elsevier’s 2020 survey of the field, is his group’s account of the whole run: how the experiments began, how the apparatus changed, and — the part the authors stress — a step-by-step guide so another laboratory can build one. The material is constantan, a copper-nickel-manganese alloy from 1897 sold cheaply for thermocouples. Celani chose it in 2011 because published simulations said a nickel-copper alloy releases two to three electronvolts when it splits a hydrogen molecule into two atoms, which turns the wire surface into a hydrogen dissociator. The wires are drawn thin, roughened by high peak power pulses into a sub-micrometric texture, knotted at intervals, sheathed in glass fibres soaked in strontium, iron and potassium, and run hot in hydrogen or deuterium. The authors are plain about the size of the effect: still modest, and now controllable.
Why it matters hereChapter 12 is about nuclear reactions inside a loaded metal lattice, and this is the chapter where the longest-running European programme on that question writes its recipe down rather than its results up. It belongs to chapter 1 as well, because the authors make reproducibility the headline — the claim being made is not a bigger number, it is a procedure another laboratory can follow.
What it claims
01The chapter describes the last twenty years of research at the Frascati National Laboratories of Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics on cold fusion phenomena in wires under the influence of electrical currents or fields, presenting the development of the experiments from their inception to the most recent setup, with attention to the material-science approach that has been the focus of the work.Chapter abstract, Cold Fusion, Elsevier 2020, pages 101 to 113
On the bench now02The authors state their own position on the size of the result without softening it: the reported effects are still somewhat modest, but the progress in reproducibility and control opens up unprecedented opportunities to understand the phenomenon while allowing an extrapolation to practical applications. The chapter is written as a step-by-step guide to reproducing an effect that had remained elusive and difficult to control until these advances.Chapter abstract, closing sentences
On the bench now03The choice of material has a stated reason. Celani’s group introduced constantan to the field in 2011 as a hydrogen dissociation promoter, on the hypothesis that the initiator in the early Andrea Rossi demonstrations was not the nickel powder but the iron-constantan thermocouple sitting in the reactor with it. Simulations by Romanowski and colleagues predict that nickel-copper alloys supply two to three electronvolts for splitting a hydrogen molecule into two atoms, the best composition being about three-eighths nickel to five-eighths copper at more than three electronvolts.Companion paper, J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci. 29 (2019) 52 to 74, Section 1 and Table 1
Published and peer-reviewed04The preparation is the experiment. High peak power electrical pulses are applied to increase the dimensionality of the wire surface into a multilayered nanostructured texture; the wire is inserted into fibreglass sheaths of micrometric fibres impregnated with a solution of the electron emitter strontium, with iron and potassium added later to both the wire surface and the sheaths; and equally spaced knots are tied along the wire to produce thermal and magnetic gradients.Companion paper, Abstract; Section 1, The Choice of Constantan
On the bench now05Adding a noble gas of low thermal conductivity — xenon in particular — to the hydrogen or deuterium atmosphere produces a considerable rise of temperature in the reactor, which the authors suggest may be the gas acting as a catalyser in the generation of excess power. Measured by isoperibolic calorimetry, which deliberately holds the wire in non-equilibrium conditions, the procedure reached a gain of almost a factor of two at the highest temperature, though with limited stability over time.Companion paper, Abstract, the isoperibolic calorimetry passage
On the bench now06The same group also ran the harder test, air-flow calorimetry, whose conditions they say are less favourable to the effect, and reported it anyway. Their two best runs: a 100 micrometre wire in deuterium at one bar with ninety watts input gave anomalous heat above 12 plus or minus 2 watts before the wire broke after a day; and a 200 micrometre wire in a xenon-deuterium mixture at a tenth of a bar each, with 120 watts input, gave 6 to 7 watts stably for weeks.Companion paper, Abstract, results (a) and (b)
Published and peer-reviewed
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-815944-6.00007-5WHAT THIS IS. Chapter 7, pages 101 to 113, of Cold Fusion — Advances in Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, edited by Jean-Paul Biberian, Elsevier, published 17 January 2020. It is a book chapter, closed at the publisher, and Elsevier’s site refuses automated requests, so no text is reproduced here. SOURCES FOR THE CLAIMS. Claims one and two are the chapter’s own published abstract, read from the Crossref record. The remaining claims are read from the same authors’ contemporaneous full-length paper on the same programme and the same apparatus — F. Celani, B. Ortenzi, A. Spallone, C. Lorenzetti, E. Purchi, S. Fiorilla, S. Cupellini, M. Nakamura, P. Boccanera, L. Notargiacomo, G. Vassallo and R. Burri, ‘Steps to Identify Main Parameters for AHE Generation in Sub-micrometric Materials: Measurements by Isoperibolic and Air-flow Calorimetry’, Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science 29 (2019) 52 to 74, free to read at https://jcmns.org/article/72494.pdf — and each of those locators names that paper rather than the chapter. RELATED PAGES. The same group’s later constantan work is on this site at /library/stm-d30e420211 (the written-down activation protocol, 2024) and /library/stm-458152e275 (the transverse plasma discharge, 2026).
How to cite it
Francesco Celani, Cesare Lorenzetti (2020) Electrically induced anomalous thermal phenomena in nanostructured wires. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-815944-6.00007-5
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