Nuclear Project: Preliminar Study of the Hydrogen Flux in Palladium Film under Electric Field

NUCLEAR (Nuclear CLEAn Reactor) Project arises from a scientific collaboration among of the Department of Industrial Engineering and the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania, and the TECFIS Division of the Frascati Research Center of ENEA. Aim of the project is to develop a device prototype able to check the production of clean energy trough Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reactions LANR. The first step of the project is to study an engineered version of an experiment realized at ENEA Frascati in 1992 by one of the authors (ADN). It has been shown that whenever a flux of deuterons crosses a strong deuterated palladium membrane, an anomalous excess heat is produced which cannot be accounted for conventional chemical reactions. That experiment was realized in electrolysis of heavy water in order to produce a flux of d(+) towards a cathode made out of 500 microns thick palladium membrane. The thermal anomaly has been shown to be related to the flux of atoms crossing the metal. The new design of the experiment avoids the obstacle of electrolysis such as the poisoning of the materials, due to long time running, using Polymer Electrolyte Membranes (PEM) such as those used in fuel cells. Furthermore is possible to drive the current of positive ions applying an electric field across the PEM. Preliminary measures have shown that the flux obtained in such a configuration is even greater than the flux obtained in electrolysis with several hundreds of milliampere and it is linearly related to the voltage across the PEM. The condition of the experiments thus result to be easily and accurately controlled and reproducible.