Journal Publishes Toyota’s Independent Replication of Mitsubishi LENR Transmutation
Toyota Replicates Mitsubishi
Oct. 22, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –
Low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) researchers at Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories have published a replication of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries deuterium gas-permeation experiment.
The research appeared in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics earlier this month.
New Energy Times reported this replication last year (Mitsubishi Reports Toyota Replication) after the inventor of this LENR method, Yasuhiro Iwamura of Mitsubishi, reported the news at the American Nuclear Society meeting in San Diego, Calif., in November 2012.
The publication in the journal, however, marks a significant achievement both for the field and for this category of LENR research. This is the first mainstream, peer-reviewed journal publication of a replication of the Iwamura experiment.
The replication, by one of the world’s largest industrial companies, signifies the importance of LENRs, as well as the credibility of the controversial research. It may also be the first published LENR replication by a major industrial laboratory.
Several years ago, researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., led by Kenneth Grabowski, failed in an attempted replication of the Mitsubishi experiment. NRL paid Mitsubishi at least $200,000 as part (Phase 1) of the research agreement, according to a document obtained by New Energy Times under a Freedom of Information Act request.
After NRL researchers failed in their replication attempt, one of them, researcher David Kidwell, took an unexpected walk around the Mitsubishi lab to collect environmental samples. To everyone’s surprise, laboratory contamination of praseodymium appeared after Kidwell completed his survey.
Kidwell said this contamination, which he ascribed to, among other things, “lucky tweezers” used by a careless Mitsubishi researcher, explained the extraordinary results obtained by Iwamura and his group at Mitsubishi.
In a brief, five-minute rebuttal at a conference in Rome in 2009, Iwamura explained the multiple, logically inconsistent detials of Kidwell’s contamination scenario. (See NRL 2008—The LENR Null Results Laboratory and NRL 2009—The LENR Null Results Laboratory, Again.)
In the experiment, researchers pass deuterium gas through a multilayered substrate. Cesium ions are implanted before the experiment, and after the experiment, researchers observe a significant amount of new praseodymium and a decrease in cesium.
Researchers at Mitsubishi observed an increase of praseodymium that was three orders of magnitude larger than un-permeated samples.
Researchers at Toyota observed an increase of praseodymium that was one order of magnitude larger than un-permeated samples. They performed 13 un-permeated blank experiments and found a maximum amount of praseodymium from the 13 samples at 1E11/cm2. Six of those samples were less than their detection limit.
The Toyota researchers performed three permeation experiments using the Pd/CaO/Pd multilayered substrate, cesium-ion implantation, and deuterium gas. They observed 1E12/cm2 of praseodymium from every run, placing this type of experiment at 100 percent repeatability for the Toyota researchers.
Iwamura has also reported that he can repeat his LENR transmutation experiments every time, on demand. This type of LENR transmutation experiment stands in contrast to the excess-heat LENR experiments, which exhibit poor repeatability.
Iwamura told New Energy Times that he is aware of several parameters that were different at Toyota and could have explained the lower transmutation rate. Chief among these was a lower deuterium permeation rate.
Partial Abstract From Toyota Paper:
The increase in the amount of praseodymium could be explained neither by deuterium permeation-stimulated segregation of praseodymium impurities nor by external contamination from the experimental environment during the permeation. No increase in praseodymium was observed for permeation with hydrogen. These findings suggest that the observed increase in praseodymium with deuterium permeation can be attributed to a nuclear origin, as reported by Iwamura and co-workers.
Reference:
Hioki, Tatsumi, Takahashi, Naoko, Kosaka, Satoru, Nishi, Teppei, Azuma, Hirozumi, Hibi, Shogo, Higuchi, Yuki, Murase, Atsushi and Motohiro, Tomoyoshi, “Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry Study on the Increase in the Amount of Pr Atoms for Cs-Ion-Implanted Pd/CaO Multilayer Complex with Deuterium Permeation,” Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 52 (October 4, 2013)
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