LENR Researchers Perform Experiments at DOE Lab
April 17, 2013 – By Steven B. Krivit –
A team of LENR researchers performed experiments at the Department of Energy Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York several years ago.
The researchers recently published their results in the Journal of Applied Physics, a publication of the American Institute of Physics.[1]
The project was a collaboration among four organizations: the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, in Washington, D.C.; the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment (ENEA) in Frascati, Italy; Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Brookhaven, New York; and Nova Research Inc., in Alexandria, Virginia.
The researchers were able to analyze, for the first time, high loadings of deuterium or hydrogen into a palladium lattice, in situ, during electrolysis. They tested specific cathodes that were able to achieve very high loading ratios, a prerequisite to the anomalous heat effect observed in LENRs. The researchers did not report calorimetry; the paper focused only on loading.
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Researchers used energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction in an electrolysis cell during electrochemical loading of palladium foil cathodes. In the paper, they did not mention “cold fusion.”
The project was organized by Graham Hubler, then head of the Materials and Sensors Branch of the Naval Research Laboratory. Hubler retired from NRL on Aug. 3, 2012, and works for the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Missouri. He is the director of the Sidney Kimmel Institute for Nuclear Renaissance.
On May 4, 2006, Hubler told New Energy Times about the successful high loadings. The researchers used cathodes produced by Vittorio Violante of ENEA and ran them in experiments performed at the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven.
“We just returned from Brookhaven NSLS,” Hubler wrote. “Three of Vittorio’s cathodes went to 0.98 D/Pd and one cathode with H up to H/Pd of 1.1. So his batting average is 100 percent as far as I am concerned.”
Hubler wrote the proposals, obtained the funding, and inspired the NRL researchers.
“One thing my pushing this project has achieved,” Hubler wrote, “I have energized my [thus-far] unfunded group into serious enthusiasm for this subject.
“We are seriously thinking about the best way to do calorimetry because they all want to see heat. We have an excellent cell from Violante, Violante’s collaboration and approval for doing heat and Violante’s cathodes.
“All we need is resources. I am aggressively trying to find the funds.”
Hubler oversaw three LENR projects during 2002-08: this X-ray diffraction analysis; an attempt to replicate the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries transmutation work; and a study involving deuteron bombardment on titanium foils.
Hubler performed his first research in LENRs in 1990, under the direction of David Nagel, then superintendent of the Condensed Matter and Radiation Sciences Division at NRL.
“In 1990, Dave Nagel got me some funds from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and I did ion bombardment at 500-eV to 1.5 keV of d on Pd and Ti,” Hubler wrote. “Also, I performed co-deposition of Pd and H by electron-beam evaporation and simultaneous ion bombardment. We did not achieve anything we could publish, though we saw a few interesting effects that we could not reproduce.
“In 1998, Nagel sent me to visit Yan Kucherov in Salt Lake at ENECO. I saw an experiment that was remarkable. Although Yan could not reproduce it and never published it, I decided that I wanted to work in the area. Later, in 2006, I hired Yan.
“In 2008, I finally was able to get some financial support at NRL to work on LENRs. I had a funded program from 2009 to 2012 and made good progress, but funding has died. There is only a little funding at NRL for the LENRs.”
1 .Knies, David L., Violante, Vittorio, Grabowski, Ken S., Hu, J. Z., Dominguez, Dawn D., He, Jing Hao, Qadri, Syed B., and Hubler, Graham, K., ” In-Situ Synchrotron Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Diffraction Study of Thin Pd Foils With Pd:D and Pd:H Concentrations Up To 1:1,” Journal of Applied Physics, 112, 083510 (Oct. 18, 2012)
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