Historical research guide · 0725 · 2006
Reply to “Comment on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion”, E. Storms, Thermochim. Acta, 2006
Kirk L. Shanahan
In one minute
This is Kirk Shanahan’s reply, in the same journal, to a letter from Edmund Storms. Storms argued that the excess heat Shanahan attributes to a shift in a calorimeter’s calibration constant is real heat, on four grounds: hydrogen and oxygen bubbles cannot mix at the electrode because bubbles rise; recombination could not release enough heat anyway; calibration studies of these calorimeters show no such shift; and Shanahan has misread the published data. Shanahan answers each in turn. He points to Fleischmann and Pons’ own report that liquid moves sideways in the cell about seven times faster than it moves up, so gas can be carried where buoyancy alone would not take it. He puts the ceiling on recombination heat at the thermoneutral voltage times the current. He argues that pulsing a calibration heater cannot test his mechanism, because it needs heat to move rather than to be added. And he replots Storms’ own runs to show a drift over time.
Connection
Chapter 1 is the evidence ladder, and this is the exchange working at full stretch: two chemists reading the same calorimeter runs and each naming the measurement that would decide between them. Chapter 12 is where it lands, because the heat claimed for palladium and deuterium lattices is a calorimetry claim before it is a nuclear one.
From the source
Shanahan states his own model in three parts — an unrecognised calibration constant shift during a run can produce an apparent excess power signal with no excess heat source present, such a shift can arise from a redistribution of heat sources inside the cell, and that redistribution can arise if recombination begins at the electrodes below the electrolyte surface — and notes that Storms does not dispute the mathematics of the first two parts, only the chemistry and physics of the third.Discussion, opening paragraphs
Against the objection that bubbles simply rise, Shanahan cites Fleischmann and Pons’ own report of radial transport in an electrolysis cell about seven times faster than vertical transport, and a computational fluid dynamics study of downward bubble flow in a gas and liquid system, and he reads the SPAWAR infrared video of an active electrode as showing spots of order 0.2 millimetres across on a 4 square centimetre cathode, with no bright spots below the midpoint of the electrode.Storms point 1, Mass transport in an electrolysis cell
The heat available from recombination is bounded by the thermoneutral voltage times the applied current — 1.54 volts for heavy water, 1.43 for light — so one ampere makes up to 1.54 watts available, and a calibration constant ratio greater than one can magnify the apparent signal beyond the recombination heat actually released.Storms point 2, Recombination heat
Pulsing a calibration resistor or the electrolysis current does not test for the proposed shift, because the mechanism requires a heat source to move to a zone of different heat-capture efficiency rather than a new source to be added; on the same reasoning, calibration runs on inactive electrodes cannot exclude the effect, since by definition an inactive electrode shows no Fleischmann–Pons–Hawkins effect to shift anything.Storms point 3, Cold fusion calorimetric studies
Plotting the ten run-specific calibration constants from Shanahan’s 2002 reanalysis against sequence number, in four series separated by the negative excess-power events in Storms’ figures, shows the constants trending upward toward the values measured with an inactive platinum electrode as the active electrode deactivates, and three of the four negative excess-power events fall at the breaks between those series.Storms point 4, Figure 1 and its caption
What Shanahan says the field should do next: build a cell that simulates the postulated at-the-electrode recombination so the chemical explanation gets an honest experimental test; work with platinum cathodes rather than palladium, since platinum forms no bulk hydride and so removes loading, loop-punching and the light-water control problem from the question; and study the surface state directly, because on his accounting Storms’ observed 0.8 watts in a 3 ampere sweep corresponds to about 17 per cent recombination, inside the 10 to 30 per cent unexpected recombination range shown in Storms’ own figure.Some final comments on optimum experimentation; Conclusions
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tca.2005.11.029How to cite it
Kirk L. Shanahan (2006) Reply to “Comment on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion”, E. Storms, Thermochim. Acta, 2006 doi:10.1016/j.tca.2005.11.029