Path: santra!kth!mcvax!uunet!iconsys!mmm
From: mmm@iconsys.UUCP (Mark Muhlestein)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Local News
Keywords: fusion heater
Message-ID: <388@iconsys.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jul 89 01:43:38 GMT
Organization: ICON International, Inc., Orem, UT
Lines: 92

The following article appeared in the Salt Lake City Deseret News, Saturday,
July 8, 1989:

***** BEGIN ARTICLE *****

Hot-water device percolates in Pons' lab

By JoAnn Jacobsen-Wells
Deseret News science writer

A device the size of a thermos that could satisfy the hot-water requirements
of an average home is already percolating in the lab of B. Stanley Pons.

It's the first scale-up of the University of Utah solid-state fusion
experiments that jolted scientists worldwide more than three monts ago.

It was on March 23 that Pons and his co-researcher Martin Fleischmann, of
England's Southampton University, announced they had generated large
amounts of excess heat and signs of nuclear fusion using a simple
table-top device.

Despite widespread skepticism from naysayers that the process will ever
become a commercial source of energy, Pons is convinced his scale-up
demonstration could be developed into a practical application in the near
future.

``It wouldn't take care of the family's electrical needs, but it certainly
could provide them with hot water year-round,'' said Pons, who said he's
always believed that the practical application of cold fusion could happen
this fast.

``You have to know the dangers invloved in scale-up, and that just takes
time,'' he said.

It also involves risks.

Excess energy, he said, gives rise to increased radiation, which is being
closely monitored by sophisticated new equipment in the U. fusion
laboratories.  A more sensitive spectrometer is measuring gamma-ray
activity, which the U. chemistry professor said is increasingly evident.
And two independent methods of making calorimetric measurements are being
used.

Pons and Fleischmann have completed 10 experiments using electrically
charged palladium and platinum electrodes in a vat of heavy water, whose
hydrogen has been replaced with deuterium.

Ten new ones, including the innovative large demonstration test, are
currently running full steam ahead.

According to Pons, the scale-up -- a mini ``boiler'' -- is, in fact, giving
off 15 to 20 times the amount of energy that is being put into the cell.

Simply put, in its current state it could provide boiling water for a cup
of tea.

Yet the electrode used in the newest experiment is the same size as those
in the original tests -- about the size of a finger tip.

The major differences between the experiments are these:  In the test
tubes, heat is transferred out of the cell into a water bath.
Essentially, the outside of the cell is kept at a very constant
temperature, and measurements are made inside the cell.

The new device is a flow-through cell:  As water moves through the jacket,
the heat is transferred to the outside.  Cold water is put in one end and
hot water comes out of the other.

``But the heat output can be increased substantially in the new experiment
because with the jacket, the heat is not boiled away,'' Pons said.  ``The
scale-up is like a cooling radiator.  If it gets too hot, the water can be
circulated faster or the temperature dropped.''

If the newest experiment proves safe -- which only time will tell -- Pons
believes he should turn it over to a second group of researchers who have
the responsibility of taking fusion out of the lab and putting it into
practical, money-making devices.

If successful, the devices have the potential to help solve the world's
energy supply concerns.

***** END OF ARTICLE *****

Accompanying the article is a color photo of Pons with a mesh-covered
cannister about 30 cm high and about 20 cm in diameter with plastic tubes 
entering and leaving the top, with what appear to be temperature probes 
attached to the tubes.
-- 

	Mark Muhlestein @ Icon International Inc.

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