Historical research guide · 0825 · 2022
Lattice Energy Converter II: Iron Hydrogen Host Material
F.E. Gordon · H.J. Whitehouse
In one minute
A Lattice Energy Converter is about as plain as hardware gets: two electrodes of different metals in a sealed gas, one of them a metal surface loaded with hydrogen. It starts itself, and it delivers a voltage and a current into a load with nothing plugged in and nothing radioactive inside. In the first cells that loaded metal was palladium. Frank Gordon and Harper Whitehouse report here that ordinary iron does the same job — a black iron pipe nipple plated with iron from a solution of iron chloride produced the same spontaneous voltage, the same current, and the same signature of ionising radiation, and other people have replicated it. Iron matters because it is cheap and available everywhere, and because hydrogen moves through iron roughly a hundred times faster than through palladium at room temperature. The authors keep the accounting strict: the cell converts lattice energy, no excess energy is claimed, and a commercial device is still six to ten orders of magnitude away.
Connection
Chapter 12 holds that a hydrogen-loaded metal lattice does real work at ordinary temperatures, and swapping palladium for iron moves that claim out of the precious-metals cabinet and into the hardware aisle. Chapter 6 wants converters that turn a field straight into electricity rather than through heat and a turbine, and this is that device built on a material anyone can buy.
From the source
A working electrode of codeposited iron-hydrogen, plated onto a black iron pipe nipple from an aqueous solution of iron chloride, produced spontaneous and sustained electrical energy and ionizing radiation with capabilities similar to the palladium-hydrogen cells reported earlier, and multiple Fe-H cells did so; the Pd-H and Fe-H results have been replicated by several independent individuals.Abstract; Section 2, Experimental description, closing paragraph, citing references 4 and 5
Hydrogen diffusivity in iron is approximately two orders of magnitude greater than in palladium at room temperature, and roughly equal to palladium’s diffusivity at palladium’s melting point; because iron is far cheaper and available worldwide, the authors argue diffusivity and cost together make it the material to test for economic feasibility.Section 1, Introduction, citing Mehrer reference 3, page 322; Figure 1
The cell is non-ohmic: the current density and the electric field do not go to zero at the same time, and the cell behaves as a current source shunted by a variable voltage conductance. The authors account for this with Eduard Riecke’s 1903 conduction equations, which keep the ion diffusion term alongside the drift term, and with Karl Darrow’s 1932 explanation of the potential difference that must exist to hold equal positive and negative ion concentrations steady.Section 3, the paragraphs following Figure 4, Equations 1 and 2; Section 4, the Darrow quotation; Appendix A
Cell voltage varies with time and temperature and can reverse sign: in a thirteen-hour run the voltage rose while the cell stayed below 100 degrees Celsius, then decayed and changed polarity as the temperature climbed, and a load test at about 160 degrees Celsius reproduced the same current, shunt-current and power curves in absolute value.Section 3, Figures 5 and 6 and the paragraphs describing them
After that temperature run the iron working electrode carried features the authors had not seen before — ejecta forming a cylindrical tower perpendicular to the surface, large enough to see with the naked eye, unlike the few-micron features previously reported from palladium-deuterium electrodes, with interior colouring consistent with oxidised iron.Section 3, Figure 7 and the paragraph describing it
The energy path is a multi-step conversion — thermal energy in the hydrogen-occluded lattice into radiation, radiation into ionised gas and heat, ionised gas into voltage and current in an external load — with total energy conserved and no excess energy produced. The heating implied by the measured ion population is several orders of magnitude below what calorimetry can detect, which the authors read as a reason lattice-enabled reactions may be more common than calorimetric surveys suggest; scaling to a commercial energy device needs six to ten orders of magnitude, through better metallurgy and plating, higher flux from flowing gas, temperature and pressure, better cell and electrode geometry, and applied magnetic or electric fields.Section 4, opening paragraphs; Section 6, Future research and development, the four numbered routes
The way in
https://doi.org/10.70923/001c.72584How to cite it
F.E. Gordon, H.J. Whitehouse (2022) Lattice Energy Converter II: Iron Hydrogen Host Material doi:10.70923/001c.72584