Tanzella, F., & McKubre, M. C. (2009). Calorimetry Of Pulse Electro-Melting of PdDx Wires. In 15th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (pp. 42-46).
Introduction
Several groups have reported anomalous effects in thin PdDx materials stimulated by different forms of electro-diffusion. The ultimate extrapolation of this technology is the electrical heating of thin PdDx wires resulting in destructive high-speed melting – “exploding wires”. Exploding wire technology has been used for over 150 years to make fine metal particles.
Using the techniques of Celani et al., we are loading thin Pd wires electrochemically up to high loading and sealing their surface electrochemically. The wires are immersed in liquid nitrogen in a cryogenic nitrogen boil-off calorimeter. A short duration (~100ms) high current (~100A) electrical pulse is used to instantaneously melt the wire. The energy from the pulse and any excess energy produced from the extremely fast electro-migration inside the PdDx will boil off a known amount of nitrogen. This nitrogen boil-off mass-flow calorimeter is used to compare the energy released from PdDx wires to that released by pure Pd or Pt wires. This cryogenic exploding wire technique may yield very high power density anomalous energy releases.