Historical research guide · 0430 · 2026
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
In one minute
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.
Connection
This 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.
From the source
Anomalous 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
The 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
Breakdown 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
In 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
Lowering 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
The 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
The way in
https://doi.org/10.70923/001c.163329How 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