Brian Ahern getting 8 Watts for over four days of operation in a Low Energy Nuclear Process

Brian Ahern replicated the work of Arata where Arata got small amounts of power without adding any power into his cold fusion set up.

Brian Ahern received his PhD in material science from MIT, holds 26 patents and was a senior scientist for 17 years in research and development at USAF Rome Lab at Hanscom Air Force Base.

Brian Ahern is attempting replications of Rossi and Forcardi and he is getting 8 watts of continuous power output (for over four days of operation) from 10 grams of metal nanopowder. The good news is there is no radiation detectable above background levels . It is also worthy to note that there were no precious metals involved the alloy was Zr66%-Ni21%-Cu13%. The Zirconium becomes Zirconium dioxide when it is baked.

An email at vortex where Ahern provides some description of the processes he used that generated 5 watts for a few days

There is an as yet undisclosed spillover catalysts that amplifies the process. The LENR community is directing its attention to this nanoscale opportunity.

So Brian Ahern is getting some success replicating Rossi and Focardi. Brian Ahern plans to make some adjustments to what he is doing to attempt to get the higher power levels that Rossi and Forcardi have claimed to achieved over the last year or so.

2011 Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reaction/Cold Fusion Colloquium at MIT

Science and engineering of cold fusion, also known as LANR, LENR, and CMNS.
Where: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
It was this past weekend. Saturday and Sunday, June 11 and 12, 2011

Speakers: Peter Hagelstein, Mitchell Swartz, Brian Ahern, Larry Forsley, George Miley, Robert Smith, Fran Tanzella, Xing Zhong Li, and contributions by other colleagues.

I think that the partial replication removes the scenario of complete fraud for the Rossi claims. I suppose there could still be fraud for the kilowatt level of work where the lower power levels replicate. However, Brian Ahern seems to think that he will be able to get to far higher power levels as well based upon his decades of related work and the results that he is getting.

The description of steps taken to get 5 watts for a few days

Ames National Laboratory processed metal alloy foils via arc melting
followed by melt spinning. This is the Yamaura process employed by Arata
and others. The foils were baked in ordinary air at 445C for 28 hours.

The brittle, oxidized foils were placed in a tumble mill for 24 hours.

This resulted in 30 grams of black powder with a median grain size of about
40 microns.Presumably, each grain has about one million nanoscale islands of
NiCu inside.

The 30 grams occupies about 7 ml inside the 50 ml dewar. The system was
vacuum baked at 220C for 24 hours and cooled to room temperature.

H2 gas was added at 200psi. The pressure dropped only to about 185 psi over
twenty minutes. In these replication experiments the exothermic reactions
have had peak temperatures above 220C with substantial loading above 3.0 H/M
ratios. This time the temperature only rose by 2 degrees C.

The system was heated with a band heater to high temperature. There was no
controller. A rheostat was set at an arbitrary position and the system comes
to a an arbitrary temperature.The average power input was 90 watts.

After several hours the hydrated system was evacuated overnight at a
constant high temperature at 530C. The next day H2 gas was again added at
100psi and the temperature rose by 40C to 570C and came back down to 530C
after two hours. At the end of the day the dewar was again evacuated while
still at 530C overnight.

The third day repeated the same procedure. H2 gas was added at 100psi and
the temperature rose by 44C to 574C. However, this time it did not come back
to the initial temperature. It remained at the elevated temperature
overnight.

On the fourth day H2 gas was again added at 100psi and the system rose by
50C to 580C and again stayed at the elevated temperature indefinitely.

A rough calibration suggests that the 30 grams of hydrated nanopowder is
putting out 5 watts of excess power.

Yesterday Peter Gluck suggested that the relationship between loading and
excess power may be a myth. This seemed to be true for electrolysis with Pd
and heavy water where loading levels exceeding 0.9 D/M were a prerequisite
for observing excess power.

My loading level with this nanopowder sample as less than 0.1 H/M.

This 5 watt excess is very much less than Rossi, but it is a real and
repeatable experiment There was no radiation above the background level.

The 8 watt excess process is very similar but the materials are milled for a longer time.

Why Cold Fusion is mostly ignored

Brian Ahern feels that the abject lack of interest by the U.S. population in Cold Fusion and the Rossi work is related the sociological issues around the financial collapse as described in the Big Short. The sociological issue has similar attributes to the 2008 catastrophy in the financial community. None of the money managers foresaw the collapse of the bond market resulting in a trillion dollar bailout by the american middle class.