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Cold Fusion is a great idea, but the amounts of energy required (last I read) to begin the fusion reaction, and sustain it are too high yet. I haven't read about it seriously in the last 10-11 years (that makes me feel SO old just saying that), so I can't rightly say what is happening.
Experimental set-up and observations
A cold fusion calorimeter of the open type, used at the New Hydrogen Energy Institute in Japan. Source: SPAWAR/US Navy TR1862In their original set-up, Fleischmann and Pons used a Dewar flask (a double-walled vacuum flask) for the electrolysis, so that heat conduction would be minimal on the side and the bottom of the cell (only 5 % of the heat loss in this experiment). The cell flask was then submerged in a bath maintained at constant temperature to eliminate the effect of external heat sources. They used an open cell, thus allowing the gaseous deuterium and oxygen resulting from the electrolysis reaction to leave the cell (with some heat too). It was necessary to replenish the cell with heavy water at regular intervals. The cell was tall and narrow, so that the bubbling action of the gas kept the electrolyte well mixed and of a uniform temperature. Special attention was paid to the purity of the palladium cathode and electrolyte to prevent the build-up of material on its surface, especially after long periods of operation.
The cell was also instrumented with a thermistor to measure the temperature of the electrolyte, and an electrical heater to generate pulses of heat and calibrate the heat loss due to the gas outlet. After calibration, it was possible to compute the heat generated by the reaction.
A constant current was applied to the cell continuously for many weeks, and heavy water was added as necessary. For most of the time, the power input to the cell was equal to the power that went out of the cell within measuring accuracy, and the cell temperature was stable at around 30 °C. But then, at some point (and in some of the experiments), the temperature rose suddenly to about 50 °C without changes in the input power, for durations of 2 days or more. The generated power was calculated to be about 20 times the input power during the power bursts. Eventually the power bursts in any one cell would no longer occur and the cell was turned off.
basically alot fo the controversy is around HOW the extra heat is being generated. seems as though no one agrees about the cause of the excess heat.
i do not know wether it can ever be something usable, but cold fusion is a got damn awesome subject to read about.
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I didn't think MIT stopped their cold fusion research. Last I heard (a few years ago) they were trying to inject deterium into a very strong magnetic field (multiple fields actually). The idea being the in order for the fusion to work the material could not be touching anything that conducts heat. They were having trouble with the material escaping through "seams" in the fields. Tricky stuff.
PAX
