Water bath calorimetry on a catalytic reaction of atomic hydrogen

Abstract

Plasmas of certain catalysts such as Sr + and Ar + mixed with hydrogen were studied for evidence of a novel energetic reaction. These hydrogen plasmas called resonant transfer- or rt-plasmas were observed to form at low temperatures (e.g. ≈ 10 3 K ) and extraordinary low field strengths of about 1–2 V/cm when argon and strontium were present with atomic hydrogen. Time-dependent line broadening of the H Balmer α line was observed corresponding to extraordinarily fast H (25 eV). When an argon–hydrogen hollow-anode glow discharge plasma with strontium metal contained in the cell was optimized for Sr + emission, an average hydrogen hot atom temperature of 50.2 eV with a 83.5% population and an excess power of 28.5% of the input power were observed. Using water bath calorimetry, an excess power of 2.85 W was measured on rt-plasmas with Sr + and Ar + as catalysts and atomic hydrogen as a reactant, compared with controls with no hydrogen and no catalyst present. The energy balance was high. Given an argon–hydrogen (95/5%) flow rate of 1.0 sccm and an average excess power of 2.85 W, energy balances of over - 7.7 × 10 4 kJ/mol H 2 were measured.