Chapter 1 - Production of helium in cold fusion experiments

Abstract

It is now known that cold fusion effects are produced mainly by certain palladium materials made under special conditions. Most palladium materials do not produce any excess heat, and no helium production is observed. The palladium used in our first 6months of cold fusion experiments in 1989 at the China Lake Navy laboratory never produced any measurable cold fusion effects. Therefore, our first China Lake results were listed with CalTech, MIT, Harwell, and other groups reporting no excess heat effects in the DOE-ERAB report issued in November 1989. However, later research using special palladium made by Johnson-Matthey produced excess heat in every China Lake D2O-LiOD electrolysis experiment. Further experiments showed a correlation of excess heat with helium-4 production. Two additional sets of experiments over several years at China Lake verified these measurements. This correlation of excess heat and helium-4 production has now been verified by cold fusion studies at several other laboratories. Theoretical calculations using a new equation show that the amounts of helium-4 appearing in the electrolysis gas stream are in the parts-per-billion (ppb) range. The experimental amounts of helium-4 in our experiments gave reasonable agreement with the theoretical amounts. The helium-4 detection limit of 1ppm (1000ppb) reported by CalTech and MIT was far too insensitive for such measurements. Unusually large excess powers leading to the boiling of the electrolyte would be required in electrochemical cold fusion experiments to even reach a detection limit of 1000ppb helium-4 in the electrolysis gas stream.