Anomalous Heat Effects via Longitudinal and Transversal Excitations in Constantan Wires: Advances in Electromigration and Plasma Generation
F. Celani · C. Lorenzetti · E. Purchi · S. Cupellini · M. Nakamura · P. Cerreoni · G. Vassallo
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source
In one page
Francesco Celani and his group at the Frascati national laboratory have spent years chasing anomalous heat in metal-and-hydrogen systems using the cheapest wire they can buy. Their material is commercial Constantan, a copper-nickel-manganese alloy they adopted in 2011 in place of palladium precisely because it is full of defects — the vacancies and grain boundaries, they argue, are where the effect lives, and ultra-pure palladium showed almost nothing. The wire sits in a small coaxial reactor whose core runs past 900 degrees while the outer jacket stays under 350, and it is driven in two directions at once: sharp current pulses along its length that heat, magnetically squeeze and then let it re-inhale hydrogen, which the team calls wire breathing, and a soft plasma across a two-to-three millimetre gap to a counter-electrode. With both drives running in a half-hydrogen, half-argon atmosphere they measure about 20 watts of heat beyond the 80 watts going in, and their best ratio, about 1.27, arrives at 60 watts. The pulse electronics are a modified commercial light dimmer.
Why it matters hereThis is chapter 12 at its most practical: a funded European programme getting reproducible excess heat out of commodity alloy wire and off-the-shelf electronics, with the drive conditions — not the metal — as the active ingredient. The paired inert-gas control run and the calibration curve are the kind of bookkeeping chapter 1’s evidence ladder is built on.
What it claims
01Anomalous heat in metal-hydrogen systems appears only far from equilibrium and tracks the defect structure of the material rather than its purity: ultra-pure palladium showed little or no effect, while defect-rich Constantan — chosen by this group in 2011 — responded, and it responds to ordinary hydrogen, not only to deuterium.Section 1, Experimental Motivation and Rationale
Published and peer-reviewed02The reactor drives the wire in two orthogonal modes at once: axial current pulses of 100 to 500 amps per square millimetre that raise the surface tens of degrees above the core and squeeze the lattice with Lorentz pinch forces, and a transverse discharge to a counter-electrode 2 to 3 millimetres away, held as a self-quenching dielectric-barrier glow by a porous calcium-strontium-barium oxide coating with a work function below 2 electronvolts.Section 2; Section 3, Core Physical-Chemical Mechanisms
Published and peer-reviewed03Breakdown ignites at about 700 volts where the classical Paschen curve for this gas at 200 millibar predicts 900 to 1000 volts, which the authors attribute to the sub-microsecond rise time of the pulses and the strong local field around the small-diameter wire — waveform dynamics mattering as much as the textbook pressure-times-distance product.Section 2, second paragraph
Published and peer-reviewed04In side-by-side runs at 200 millibar, an inert helium-argon fill under direct current gave no excess heat and the hydrogen-argon fill under direct current set the zero line; pulsing raised the signal and pulsing the counter-electrode as well brought net output to about 20 watts for 80 watts of input after subtracting the 2 to 3 watts the pulser draws, with a coefficient of performance of about 1.27 reached at only 60 watts — double the best result from earlier 170 watt trials, with the core above 900 degrees Celsius and the jacket near 280.Section 7, Some Results, Figure 6
Published and peer-reviewed05Lowering the pressure to 140 millibar and raising the counter-electrode coupling capacitor from 100 to 400 nanofarads kept the discharge alive and produced excess heat matching or slightly exceeding the 200 millibar result, even though the larger capacitor costs an estimated 4 to 5 watts in transformer and limiting-circuit losses.Section 7, Figure 7
Published and peer-reviewed06The effect is fragile in a way that points at its own mechanism: after a two-week interruption while the apparatus was relocated, excess power fell from 15 to 20 watts down to 2 to 6 watts with identical gas and pulse settings, consistent with vacancy clusters relaxing once the lattice cools, and recovery is being pursued by oxidation-reduction cycling and extended pulsing with the counter-electrode energized.Section 8, Speculative Model, Ongoing Adjustments, and Outlook
What to watch
Read it · abstract
Abstract
We present an integrated set of experiments that advance the long-standing search for Anomalous Heat Effects (AHE) in metal–hydrogen systems, with a decisive shift toward inexpensive materials and dynamic drive conditions. Our working medium is commercial Constantan wire (Cu55Ni44Mn1), selected in 2011 to replace palladium due to its lower cost and higher defect density. The wire is operated in a compact INFN-LNF reactor that reaches internal temperatures of 900 C, while the external jacket remains below 350 C. The wire is simultaneously excited in two orthogonal modes: (i) high-density axial current pulses that drive thermionic emission, electromigration, and the characteristic “wire-breathing” pressure wave; and (ii) a transverse plasma, generated either as a Paschen spark or, more desirably, as a self-quenching dielectric-barrier discharge (DBD) stabilized by a Ca/Sr/Ba low-work-function coating, analogous to those employed in thermionic valve cathodes. Custom dimmer-based power electronics (50 Hz mains frequency, 90–95% efficiency) allow real-time adjustment of fall time (with rise time under 1 µs), duty cycle, and polarity. Embedded K-type thermocouples provide in-situ calorimetry accurate to ±1 W. In a 50% H2–50% Ar atmosphere at 200 mbar, direct-current operation serves as the “null” line. Pulsed driving lifts the thermal baseline, and adding a pulsed counter-electrode (CE) increases net excess heat to 20–21 W for an 80 W input (peak COP ≈ 1.27 at 60 W). Reducing the pressure to 140 mbar and enlarging the CE coupling capacitor maintains Paschen/DBD activity and yields comparable—or slightly enhanced—AHE, despite incurring an additional 4–5 W of circuit losses. After two weeks of dormancy, the effect diminishes but can be partially recovered through in-situ redox cycling and extended pulsing, consistent with the involvement of metastable vacancy clusters anticipated by the Fukai–Staker super-loading model. Thermionic emission and electromigration show a strong correlation with excess heat generation, in agreement with Preparata’s coherence framework. Future work will investigate tungsten–NiCu multilayer electrodes driven by SiC pulse electronics, complemented by fast optical and X-ray diagnostics to resolve sub-millisecond dynamics. The reproducibility achieved here—using only commodity components—underscores the potential of Constantan-based AHE modules for high-temperature process heat, lightweight aerospace power systems, and distributed micro-grid applications.
The way in
https://doi.org/10.70923/001c.163329Published as Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science 41 (2026) 25 to 37. The paper carries the line ‘© 2026 ICCF. All rights reserved’ and the journal’s own article metadata records no open licence, so this page carries the summary, the claims and the authors’ own abstract, and sends the reader to the full text at the source. The work was funded by the EU CleanHME project, grant 951974.
How to cite it
F. Celani, C. Lorenzetti, E. Purchi, S. Cupellini, M. Nakamura, P. Cerreoni, G. Vassallo (2026) Anomalous Heat Effects via Longitudinal and Transversal Excitations in Constantan Wires: Advances in Electromigration and Plasma Generation. doi:10.70923/001c.163329
Where it sits in the curriculum