On the Reaction Product and Heat Correlation for LENRs

“Low Energy Nuclear Reactions”, or LENRs, typically involve electrolytes containing light water along with electrodes made of metals such as Ni, Ti and Pd. In these experiments a variety of reaction products (isotopes), with masses both higher and lower than that of the host electrode material, have been observed at the University of Illinois (U of IL). Related results, often termed “transmutation” studies, have been reported by other researchers. These observations suggest that proton-metal initiated reactions occur in such LENR cells. This paper discusses evidence that the production of these reaction products is correlated with the excess heat also frequently observed in LENR cells. Such a correlation for LENR reactions would be equivalent, in principle, to the correlation of He-4 with excess heat that is reported for heavy water-Pd experiments where a D-D reaction is postulated. Introduction Considerable research effort has been devoted to the establishment of a correlation between He-4 and excess heat from D-D reactions postulated to occur in Pons-Fleischmann type cold fusion cells. Good progress has been made and recent measurements of the reaction product He-4 have achieved levels where background helium is a less significant factor in interpretation of the results [1]. These results indicate, with a reasonable confidence level, that a direct correlation exists between He-4 production and excess heat, supporting the D-D reaction hypothesis. In contrast, in the case of LENRs, a variety of reaction products (isotopes) with masses both higher and lower than that of host electrode material imply that proton-metal initiated reactions occur [2, 3]. Earlier G. Miley, et al. [3, 4] considered the possible correlation of these reaction products with the excess heat observed in these experiments. Additional results are presented here that further support this conjecture. Still, uncertainties in absolute values of both heat and product measurements leave open a fairly large error band for the correlation; thus, some important issues remain e.g. whether or not some reactions also occur in LENRs that involve electrolyte salts. Indeed, as discussed later, due to the rich variety of conceivable contributing mechanisms in LENR experiments, the reaction product-heat relationship is less useful for specifying a unique reaction responsible for excess heat than is He production in D2O-Pd cells. Still, the data provides important circumstantial evidence about the reacting species, hypothesized to be protons-metal atoms for LENRs. Prior Reaction Product Measurements The earlier measurements of LENR reaction products at the U of IL are described in references [2, 3]. Several precision analytical methods were used to analyze both the metal electrodes and electrolyte before and after runs. A characteristic result, shown in Fig. 1, indicates that a variety of reaction products occur with masses lying well below and above that of the base electrode metal (Ni and Pd in this figure, of cf. numbers defined in the references).