Descripción del proyecto
En pos del sueño de la fusión fría como solución a las necesidades energéticas del mundo
En 1989, los electroquímicos Martin Fleischmann y Stanley Pons saltaron a los titulares con su afirmación de haber generado un exceso de calor con un sencillo dispositivo que funcionaba a temperatura ambiente. Su experimento consistió en introducir gas deuterio en una pila de metal de paladio. Dado que muchos científicos no lograron replicar su trabajo, la fusión fría sigue siendo un tema polémico en la comunidad científica. No obstante, una minoría vociferante todavía cree en este fenómeno esquivo. Desde 2015, Google ha estado financiando experimentos sobre fusión fría y, aunque no se han encontrado pruebas sobre este fenómeno, está claro que aún quedan por realizar muchos estudios pioneros en este campo apenas explorado. En el proyecto HERMES, financiado con fondos europeos, se emplearán técnicas y herramientas avanzadas desarrolladas en los últimos decenios para estudiar efectos anómalos del paladio cargado con deuterio a temperatura ambiente e intermedia.
Objetivo
Disruptive energy generation technologies are urgently required to stave off catastrophic climate change. Now, more than ever, is the time to also to consider unconventional options. The subtopic c. Breakthrough zero-emissions energy generation for full decarbonisation of this call aims to answer this need. All of the research areas identified by the call are highly unconventional. As electrochemists, we will contribute to this call by working on hydrogen-metal systems. We propose to study hydrogen (and deuterium) evolution in unconventional conditions, i.e. on metal-hydrides and the main motivation for this work is based on the recent Nature perspective “Revisiting the cold case of cold fusion”. When loading deuterium into the Pd lattice, there is a chance that something very interesting will happen, resulting in production of excess heat. The first report of such reaction was published 30 years ago, but quickly dismissed by the scientific community. But what if there is really something? Can we afford to not to investigate this further, considering the current climate crisis? Google has recently funded a research project in this area, getting some interesting results but failing to produce excess heat. However, the team concluded that it was very difficult to achieve the required conditions reported for starting the excess heat production, and that “there remains much interesting science to be done in this underexplored parameter space.” This is a high risk/high reward project, but with aid of all the improved techniques and tools developed in the last 30 years, we believe that it is worth revisiting the topic. We will use state-of-the-art technologies to prepare, characterize and study electrochemical Pd-D system, both at room temperature and at temperatures up to 1100 K. We will focus on method development, with the special emphasis on reproducibility. If no nuclear effects are observed, we will gain information of the isotope effects for hydrogen evolution.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
Consulte otros proyectos de esta convocatoriaConvocatoria de subcontratación
H2020-EIC-FETPROACT-2019
Régimen de financiación
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinador
20014 Turku
Finlandia