A Bulgarian researcher who now works in Salt Lake City says he has made a major discovery: cold fusion not only is real, but it can be used to cool objects as well as heat them.
The assertion is made by Kiril Chukanov, who left Sofia, Bulgaria, to work in a lab at Sunnyvale, Calif., and later migrated to Research Park at the University of Utah. Fusion Energy Applied Technology Inc., which sponsors his work, is a private company not affiliated with the U.Chukanov said he uses a special alloy and secret technology in his experiments. "I can produce energy from cold fusion every time," he said. "And this energy sometimes is very big."
Ever since former University of Utah researchers B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced in 1989 that they had discovered what came to be called "fusion in a jar" - using palladium, deuterium and other material to produce the nuclear energy that powers stars - researchers have been trying to duplicate the process. It remains one of the most-disputed claims in the recent history of science.
A focus of the dispute are claims and counterclaims about excess heat energy. Now Chukanov says he also gets cooling.
Chukanov says he uses "gas loading" to add hydrogen to his material. "Cold fusion can start a few minutes after the beginning of gas loading," while other researchers must wait days or weeks before noticing any effects.
"I can start cold fusion between a few minutes and a few hours, depending on the alloy," he said.
Some materials will release so much energy, Chukanov added, that an explosion results. "Solid metal becomes powder in a fraction of a second. The temperature of the alloy drops at the moment of the explosion."
It will drop by 15 to 20 degrees Celsius, while at the same time, the temperature of an object near the alloy will raise 20 to 40 degrees, he said. Chukanov provided a chart of rapid fluctuations in temperature from his experiment, with pulses going from 35 degrees Celsius to below zero within a minute or less.
"From this alloy comes forth a very powerful flow of charged protons, energy about a few kilo-electron-volts."
The charged particles released are absorbed by a light layer, so the process isn't dangerous, he said.
According to Chukanov, his experiments in the related field of ball lightning show that cold fusion is not a result of nuclear reactions, but the action of something called quantum boundaries. He said he has made major discoveries in ball lightning research.
Quantum boundaries, he said, force -atoms' protons to move within an alloy. "The hydrogen nucleus begins to move very fast," he said.
The result is a release of energy. "There is violation of the law of conservation of energy," he said. "Cold fusion can produce not only heat, but cold."
He said he made the discovery in his laboratory on Sept. 25. The technology, he believes, could be used to power a new type of refrigerator.
"I can at wish produce positive energy and negative energy, without any input power," he said. "This is very important: without any input power."
Chukanov's sparsely furnished laboratory is in the building once occupied by the National Cold Fusion Institute, 390 Wakara Way in Research Park. Although the institute is now defunct, the building still sports a big "NCFI" awning.
Inside, his wife worked at a word processor writing a report of his discoveries, to be forwarded to a fusion conference in Nagoya, Japan.
Chukanov showed off lab equipment hooked to a computer. Blocks of household wax, the type used to make paraffin seals for canning, are piled into walls about waist-high. The wax is to block neutrons released in one of his fusion chambers, which is in the center of the wax barricade.
"Inside there are four sensors that measure neutrons. All data are transmitted to this computer," he said. Among the forces measured is temperature, he said.
Chukanov flexed flat metallic disks and said these palladium segments are expensive, and their properties can be used up by fusion. However, he said, he has found a secret material that is much better and can start fusion quickly.
He showed a stack of small disks made of the secret material. They were magnetic and looked similar to the "super-strong rare-earth magnets" sold by Radio Shack at two for $1.49; they seemed to have the same gritty lead-like texture and color, and held together as if magnetic.
Showing a plastic bag of metallic powder, he said this was the result when material was pulverized in a fusion explosion.
According to Chukanov, cold fusion may be secondary someday to ball lightning as a source of usable energy.
"Ball lightning and cold fusion are the same phenomenon. This is new physics," he said.
"I discovered the quantum boundaries of the world, a new state of matter. If matter reaches these quantum boundaries, ordinary laws of physics are replaced by these quantum boundaries."