From: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Subject: Electrochemistry; CNF finance.
Reply-To: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 15:16:39 GMT


I want to prevent a misunderstanding that Jed Rothwell
<72240.1256@compuserve.com> inadvertently might be causing. The word now is
that CNF is terribly difficult, and that it is not

>relatively easy to get the fanatical level of cleanliness the electrochemists
>want. You do not need to manually wash glassware 20 times with hot water
>and 10 times with cold water.

I have already referred to the bit about "20 times.." etc. What I want to
correct here is the idea that electrochemists always "want" such fanatical
levels of cleanliness. This might put off some younger readers of this group
from going into electrochemistry. It all depends on what you are doing;
electrochemistry is a very wide area. Industrial electrolysis is dirty as
hell, and so is organic electrosynthesis. Electrolytic removal of metals from
solution, who cares about cleanliness? In some electroanalysis, a trace of
gunk might not matter either. But if you are investigating, say, double layer
behaviour at a solid metal, then yes, indeed, ultrapure everything - the sort
of thing Bockris used to do and is still famous for. You, Jed, have seen only
one leg of the elephant electrochemistry, but there are many other aspects to
it. I find it a bit hard to swallow that ultracleanliness should be The
Secret. It sounds to me like an ad hoc explanation for why group A gets
results, and group B does not. I could be wrong.

Then, Jed, you are badly informed when you write

>DB has the impression that there is $25 million in funding available in the
>U.S. for CF. Did Hal Fox say that? I don't know exactly what Hal said, but
>I am quite certain there is not even one tenth that amount available per
>anum in all of North American. Perhaps Hal was referring to the total
>capitalization that he expected would be possible from his venture. I am not

In Fusion Facts Vol.3, no. 8, Feb-92, page 2, you will find the statement
"With a release time of 12 noon, Saturday, February 22, 1992, it has been
announced that a consortium of Utah and Washington corporations have pledged
over $25 million over the next few years for the development of cold fusion
energy systems. The participating corporations include two Utah corporations
and one Washington corporation. Fusion Energy Applied Technology, Inc. (FEAT),
Fusion Information Center, Inc. (FIC), and Eden-Barn Industries, Inc., joined
to make the annoucement. [... info on these corporations...].
The goal of this consortium of American corporations is to begin immediately
to commercialise cold fusion and have the first manufacturing prototype
completed by the end of 1992".

There you go, lots of money. As you yourself said a day or so ago, there are
lots of people in the US working on this, so stop griping about the lack of
money for cold fusion.
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Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
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Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion