Brillouin Energy has made progress since the 2016 SRI report. The 2017 SRI report indicated that the reactions were at a few watts and fairly reliable coefficient of power (COP) of 1.2 to 1.4 and 2 to 3 watts of reaction heat. The 2017 SRI report showed 4 to 6 watts of reaction heat and COP of up to 1.6. Since that report, Brillouin is now at about 50 watts of input and 100 watt of output. The coefficient of power is currently claimed to be reliablly and consistently at 2 in their recent tests.
Above is Robert Godes holding a catalytic rod. They believe that sending many short electric pulses down the rods that they are producing the conditions that generate extra heat. There is a di-electric layer with appropriate materials.
Any coefficient of power over 1.0 is amazing or impossible for traditional chemistry. The systems are generating more power output than is input.
Brillouin Energy is working in the long process of developing what was called Cold Fusion and then was more accurately called low energy nuclear reactions (LENR).
Addressing the Elephants in the Room by Looking at the Controversial History
This is a reviewing of the controversial start and a quick run through of the history of LENR.
This started with the work of chemists in the 1980s. Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah. They used heavy water and the electrolysis of Palladium. They produced heat and effects that were beyond chemistry. This was announced on commercial television and not at peer-reviewed journals before the TV announcement.
The case can also be made that a fully credible and funded cold fusion/LENR program would disrupt hundreds of millions per year for Government labs and universities working on hot fusion.
Pons and Fleischmann needed to not call it cold fusion. They should not have speculated that it was fusion before they had more evidence. However, they were just respected and knowledgeable chemists. They should have just said they had highly interesting tests with anomalous heat. It was anomalous relative to known chemistry and with conditions of temperature which should not bring other known forces based upon the known understanding of those fields.
Why the anger from scientists? I think it is because very smart people dropped important what they were doing to check out what was claimed to be cold fusion. They could not initially replicate what seemed like a simple recipe. These scientists were at the top of their fields in physics and nuclear energy and chemistry. They could not get the cold fusion souffle to rise. The scientists consider themselves experts.
The scientists believe either the initial work was sloppy or fraudulent. They are not entertaining the possibility that something more complex or that valid measurement were made of an inconsistent and complex phenomenon. The claimed cold fusion recipe had not been delivered via peer-reviewed papers. Bad recipes and mistakes get worked out via the regular recipe checking process of peer-review. Instead, Pons and Fleischmann went public in the science equivalent of the Home Shopping Network or late-night infomercials. The scientists felt burned. They gave something with a lot of hype a shot and when it do not return results after months of effort then the conclusion was that it was all bad and a waste of valuable time. This leaves the field tainted and the area can ruin reputations. The belief is that only fools or frauds would believe it or try to make it work.
Some products on Home Shopping Network and late-night infomercials can still work or they can have valid innovations. You will not get a lot of professionals going through and testing those products for actual innovations.
The Super Soaker actually has interesting technical innovations. Super-Soaker is a brand of recreational water gun that utilizes manually-pressurized air to shoot water with greater power, range, and accuracy than conventional squirt pistols. The Super Soaker was invented in 1982 by engineer Lonnie Johnson.
What if the Super-soaker had initial flaws and was not reliable out of the gate? The technology and engineering were not all worked out?
Why I Believe the Phenomena is Just More Complex and Insufficiently Studied
Many reports and follow up work indicate that the difficulty in replications was because of material dependent issues. The nickel and palladium needed to not have internal microcracks and other problems that prevented the required gas loading. The replication protocol was not understood for years and the material science was more complicated.
I have spoken directly to people who have worked on LENR with valid decades of background at research labs. They have described complexity with solid state effects, materials and nanomagnetics. Could they be wrong and have some of them been wrong? Yes.
Nextbigfuture decided many years ago that there are valid, difficult and complex problems and possibly worthwhile phenomena. I believe that there are honest researchers in the field. Many of them could have had better careers and made more money in other areas. Many have to truly believe that the phenomena exist to work in the scientific wilderness.
Rossi made huge claims in this field that were never fully substantiated and he never allowed any truly independent testing of his systems. Enough time and benefit of possible doubt have been provided to support a conclusion that Rossi made fraudulent claims. Rossie also committed and was arrested for fraud for production of oil from waste. Does this mean that area of biofuel and waste to fuel technology is all fraudulent? Biofuel may not be the best economic energy solution or technology and it can still generate pollution. However, there are honest people working on biofuels and biofuels is a valid area of investigation.
Randell Mills at Brilliant Light Power has repeatedly made huge claims and has NOT delivered products.
Japan Treats LENR as a Normal Science Field
The case in favor of this field is the peer-reviewed papers by Mizuno and others. Japan has been and remains far more open to a normal scientific inquiry in this area. The case for this being a valid field for inquiry is that Japan’s science and technology community has not dumped the field after three decades. Japan’s communities know all of the anti-cold fusion arguments but persist in the research and report interesting results and phenomena. There are test product evidence that indicate some kind of solid-state or lattice related nuclear activity has occurred.
There is tracking of the field at lenr-canr.org.
This is an area which requires a balance of open-mindedness and skepticism. A lot of care is needed from the researchers and any investor.
Alternatively, you can just stick with non-controversial energy areas like solar, wind, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion and antimatter. Nextbigfuture covers all of those areas and there are many exciting projects and trends. However, there are failures in regular energy. I think the International Tokamak project is wasting many billions of dollars over 30 years. The ITER project was started by Ronald Reagan.
I believe in nuclear fusion programs but not every nuclear fusion project. I think the plug should be pulled on ITER. I can even like other tokamak projects. I like the Commonwealth Systems. Just because I think the approach is better does that mean Commonwealth Systems will succeed or not mistakes? Could they miss targets and deadlines? Yes. 90% of startups fail. We can miss deadlines a decades on a bridge after making thousands of bridges. Regular nuclear plants, hydro dams, solar projects can all miss deadlines and miss them badly on budget and time.
I believe in space and rockets but we should pull funding from Space Launch System.
There has been the Solyndra bankruptcy in solar energy, but I believe that solar energy has many uses. However, rooftop solar is far worse than nuclear power and does not work with the current energy grid.
We can achieve any of our energy goals with regular energy. Using an analogy of football, a team can win with a game plan of running the ball and a short passing game. Is it worth it to throw a long bomb pass attempt? There might be new physics or new science to be found in this work and it might be able to produce clean energy.
SRI Report Highlights – Related to Brillouin Energy
There were two SRI reports. There were reports in 2016 and 2017.
In 2016, the COP was about 1.3 and SRI results were about 2 watts.
This is a link to the 2017 SRI report.
Brillouin Energy Dec 2018 Status
They have already achieved over 4X Coefficient Of Performance (“COP” – achieving over 4.1X the electrical energy that is put into the reactor core (catalyst rod), in net LENR heat output) in a consistent, controllable and verifiable manner (repeatedly turning it on and off). Those 4X COP results were produced from a single core over the span of a two-week lab test in early 2015. This core was then damaged during further testing, due to an unanticipated electrical short from a faulty connection – not a problem with the core itself.
After analysis, Brillouin believes the superior performance was the result of a better thin film di-electric.
They are demonstrating thermostat control and increasing total wattage in outputs, and producing some COPs at higher operating temperatures (up to a utility grade 600°oC) – all important achievements. SRI’s LENR Research Program Emeritus Director has continued to verify the calorimetry of all of our latest COP results including our most recent crossing of the important 2X mark.
Because they now know what the missing materials characteristics are, they are proceeding with advanced engineering work to continue scaling our COPs, while separately continuing to improve our thermostat control and operating temperatures. Here is a graphic showing a string of increasing COP up to and then maintaining across several runs and in different test systems COP of 2+.
Because of the above engineering progress, they are confident of being able to build commercially viable prototype reactors that will produce at least in the repeatable, controlled 4X COP range (competitive) within the next 12 months, subject to raising at least the next $10 million of financing.
Their path forward involves building a facility to make their catalyst tubes. Currently, they have to send out for fabrication and it takes about 3 to 4 weeks with up to 5 transports between shops. If they have their own facility then they can test multiple variations on the tubes each day.
It is still experimentation to get to higher levels of power coefficients and to higher wattages.
Precision on Measurements Quote from Brillouin Energy
This is a statement in response to “what methodology and careful work has been performed by Brillouin to ensure confidence in the Coefficient of Power (COP) and heat measurements”.
“We are now using almost exclusively something called system Identification. This uses physical parameters of heat capacity, thermal resistance and time to model the calorimeter and then an AI type of process to determine the coefficients for each of the system out to the 4th order. The training data consists of three steps in all types of input power. Heater power on low for 1.5-time constants then adding low, medium, and higher levels of very low-frequency power through the catalyst 1.5-Time constants each, then bumping heater power two more times and same for low-frequency catalyst stimulation at each of the steps of heater power. To verify calibration we run a sinusoidal power on the heater and 5 sinusoidal excitations of the direct resistive heating of the catalyst. If the match is better than 98% then we consider the coefficients good to use for active runs.”
They Believe They Can go to the Consumer Market With Heaters
Brillouin believes that after a short period, where experiments are 30X faster that they will be
able to make a lot more progress on heat and wattages.
They believe that by reaching high levels of COP and wattages that they can get OEM’s to license the technology and take products to market in volumes that would take Brillouin Energy years to build. The OEM’s would get UL certification and just sell it as a heater under there brand name with a sticker with something to the effect of powered by Brillouin Energy in side. The COP greater than 1 would be a selling point and that capability would be used to lower the operating costs of the product.
A product producing 1500 watts of heat that uses 300 watts of electricity would successfully compete with Dyson heaters.
The system does not produce radiation. The claim is any reactions are happening in the solid materials or in the thin film layers.
Although the foundational science of what they are doing is highly controversial, the initial end
result cannot be explained with chemistry.
Brillouin needs to make products that are superior to the best existing products based upon conventional science and technology.
Would you fund a company to try to possibly decarbonize energy? Would you fund one that is working on a technological advantage using controversial science even though the experimental results have independent verification by SRI? The core technology is not done yet and the product design engineering phase has not been reached.
Is this approach to those markets worth the extra risk? Can they partner or get a plan on all the other steps to make a product? Do you believe in the ability of OEM’s to execute on this technology integration of the core technology?
The biggest issues are the what is really happening with the difference-making science and technology and is the progress expected reasonable based upon past trends. You would have to check the specific work that has been done, which Nextbigfuture has not performed.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
I think big oil might welcome something like this. Cars, truck, planes, etc. will run on fossil fuels for decades to come/forever and if LENR comes along and offers a long-term CO2-free option that’ll take much of the environmental pressure off of them. It would also relieve the need to fund ever more expensive remote exploration and recovery efforts – they can concentrate on making profits from existing, easier to work with resources.
“Self sustaining” (unplug the unit from the wall) is not a sign of legitimate. Why do you say that is needed ? Converting heat to electricity is a very inneficient process. Perhaps the best is a steam powered generator which requires high temperatures and pressures.
An “electric” water heater, with LENR inside, that produces the same amount of hot water with far less electric, would be a wonderful and legitimate thing.
“Brillouin is a scam company”
Exactly who/what is your source/evidence of such a nasty accusation, Mr. Tokarev? Have you even visited BEC’s website? I suspect that most of those negatively commenting here have not even bothered to read anything by or about Brillouin Energy, but unfortunately that never seems to stop such types from enthusiastically expressing their ignorant opinions.
Too bad that it’s too late now, we are all goners now, with all the radiation they are pouring into the pacific ocean in Japan. But don’t be down-trodden, God is still in control.
>>”Why the anger from scientists?”
I’m not sure that “anger” is the right word, “disdain” would be a better characterization, I think. Now as to why, I would say that LENR (like EM-Drive) has many of the hall marks of pathological science https://www.revolvy.com/page/Pathological-science (Note that the article in the link lists “Cold Fusion” under the section “newer examples”
As to what it would take for me to begin giving credence, a good start would be to make a device using LENR and switch over so that the input power comes from the output power and observe the device producing net power in stand-alone mode (in like fashion, I’ll start believing in EM-Drive when they are able to make measurable changes to the trajectory an actual spacecraft using it). Until such relatively straight-forward demonstrations that there is, in fact a “there, there” I think a skeptical approach is called for.
See, I don’t care if it’s chemical, nuclear, or a little angel in the box rubbing sticks together. If it can make steam on cue, doesn’t blow things up, and doesn’t use up fuel (at anything like the rate we go through fossil fuel) then I’m happy. Of course, theory will matter to optimizing the process.
Umm I really want to believe that this is true. It would be great! The problem is that people are claiming nuclear reactions and claiming no nuclear byproducts so to me it sounds like a scam.
I’m completely fine with using quantum mechanics in novel ways to get things done. I’m personally invested in LPP. I’m not a permanent skeptic but they are saying that they are getting nuclear reactions without nuclear byproducts. Unless they are magically fusing protons to make deuterium then it isn’t really happening and if they are then they should be able to show this with ease because the differences in isotopes are hard to miss.
Well we know all the stuff in the tube and we know which nuclear reactions are aneutronic and we know that the stuff in the tube can’t result in aneutronic reactions.
Don’t know why people are so down on radioactive daughter products. Finding them would be proof positive that LENR is real and quite amazing.
Right you are. I am confusing Brillouin with Brilliant Light which doesn’t seem like a fair comparison to anybody other than Rossi.
One does not simply absorb neutrons.
You’re right, of course. I have trouble reconciling that, though, with the fact that the world hasn’t reacted the way I’d have imagined the world would react to a new proven alternative to current fuels. My understanding of the world and the way it reacts to things is defective.
Mitch,
SRI did not just “write reports independently confirming Brillouin’s claims”. They physically transported a reactor from Brillouin’s Berkely lab, to their own lab, ran it themselves…using their own power source, and got the same positive results.
No need for a magician in that case.
The fact that SRI has written reports independently confirming Brillouin’s claims should at least give the skeptics pause.
I suppose Brillouin is more concerned with building alliances with conglomerates than with convincing the general public, but it continues to mystify me that no LENR company has, to my knowledge, invited magicians to join with a bunch of physicists to provide a public test. Such a test could use an isolated power source that is physically incapable of feeding more than a certain amount of power into their device and would need to demonstrate sustained power output in excess of the power fed to the device.
I really want to believe in this. It’s encouraging to me that Brillouin has apparently convinced enough people that capital is flowing to it. But the skeptics are correct that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Just boil some water in front of people for a few hours, sending power in over a wire that will melt if enough current to boil (that quantity of) water is fed through it. This sort of test really shouldn’t be difficult.
Brian, Nice article. You have started to do your homework on the subject but there is a lot more going on in LENR than you have stated in this article. After following this for about 10 years I’d say Brillouin Energy, Brilliant Light Power, and Rossi will all eventually produce a working product. These trail-blazers deserve our praise. Criticism is fine ,but outright derision has set progress in this field back 25 years. I am rooting for Rossi just so everyone can eat a little Humble pie.
Rambling op ed with little in the way of facts.
But not paid for.
“Two pizzas delivered”
What about the aneutronic types of fusion like Protons-Borons fusion? That is a cool idea which would produce, IIRC, helium, but very few neutrons.
Brillouin is a scam company but there are good people researching fusion for example Dr. Eric Lerner at LPP Fusion.
The world has been through this so many times, now, that there’s only one thing I’ll believe: a self-sustaining system that is noticeably warmer than the room around it over a long period of time, under constant examination by anyone in the public who wants to look, and available to actively hostile third parties for disassembly and examination after the long test.
By “self-sustaining”, I mean: it is not plugged in. If they are making as much energy as they claim, it should be easy to start up with wall power (allowed) and then unplug it, since the power gain will allow it to make its own electricity.
By “warmer than room around it”, I mean: no calorimeters or other fancy equipment. If they can’t make it noticeably warmer, or light up an LED bulb continuously over a period of months, or something equally obvious, then I don’t care.
By “a long period of time”, I mean months. And by publicly available, I mean exactly that. The thing has to sit in a room on, say, a nonconductive wooden frame or table. They can put a plexiglass cover over it or something. The wooden frame or table on which it sits should be supplied by an actively hostile third party, such as an academic physicist.
The purpose of the post-test examination by actively hostile third parties is not to understand how the device works. It is to ensure there were no other processes, such as batteries, antennas, fuel tanks, or anything else that might contribute to the appearance of energy generation.
Mr goat. Thanks for the clear picture of plasma physics viewpoint.
You neglect that energy for neutron synthesis can be in the proton as well. Confined protons have, due to uncertainty, large energy levels sometimes. See the BEC paper. PNNL supercomputer simulation showed that election capture is expected of you confine the proton enough.. Which metal matrix might do with a phonon shock wave. Think the opposite of a Bose Einstein condensate.
Your neutron accumulation numbers based on cross section are correct for gas or plasma. But what have they to do with LENR? Neutrons are synthesized cold and stationary with respect to the metal lattice. Protons tunnel thru driven by the electric field. The only place protons can tunnel to are the exact spots the neutrons are. As far away from metal nucluie as possible.
You are talking random 3 space fusion like in the sun. LENR is more like SLAC. Everything lined up on target.
Try that with your automobile engine and see what happens…
Does that make your engine useless?
Lots of machines don’t work at arbitrary temperatures.
NASA is on it! Check Dennis Bushnell at NASA Langley. They don’t have a lot of discretionary funding though.. congress makes sure they don’t hurt big Oil, as with the other govt labs. Govt scientists are Not allowed to help or hurt any corporation,or do anything commercially viable. Which is to be “left to industry”. The definition of commercially viable is “cheaper than oil”. That’s the charter of DOE “Advanced research”. Don’t mess with the oil industry.
That depends on the energy density. Even strong force nuclear decay was commercialized slowly. It had to start with glow in the dark watch dials, and then xray machines. Long before it got to commercial power.
So LENR may start out slow… just better than heat pump. As long as the claims that there is no radioactive materials or emissions are true, it would be nice to heat living spaces and indoor farms for free. That would allow agriculture to evolve and we could give the farmland back to nature.
You can add a lot of neutrons to nickel and its still stable nickle. If you overdo it you get copper 65 which has been reported along with abnormally heavy nickel isotope distributions, in some literature.
When one entrepreneur selling stock in a gold mine fails, that does mean gold mines can never work.
Pay attention to how measurements are made.
Independent experimental scientists and engineers quickly sort out these things, if they are given a chance.
That’s why BrillouinEnergy is worth a close look.
Neutrons don’t need any energy to be absorbed; actually the lower their energy, the easier they will be absorbed.
The general public took a look at that “60+ years of commercial experience” and found it wanting.
It doesn’t matter how fit for the purpose it is, pressurized water reactors -maybe even the unpressurized- is simply not commercially viable on a large scale.
These brillouinEnergy guys work tirelessly within their budget to measure as scientifically as possible. And they don’t avoid inspection by smart teams. (Unlike some others in the field.) Smarter the better! Ideas for better measurements and easier-to-follow proof are always taken up assuming they are affordable.
The reactors are small, portable, and have replaceable parts.
The article doesn’t mention that they usually operate in a closed state. “Nothing goes in but measured amounts of electricity- nothing comes out but measured heat.” And no chemical changes to the reactor or gasses are detectable.
I like to say that LENR would be described as Fusion by a Chemist, but never by a Physicist. Because a chemist will note the inputs, H, and the outputs, D, T, He, and over 20Mev per He, and say… that’s smells like Fusion.
A physicist will say… Hell no, I don’t see any neutrons or Gamma Rays (or at least a million times too few.) In fact Pons and Fleishmann might have killed their laboratory assistants with neutrons and gamma rays if the amount of heat they reported had been from the plasma fusion reactions we are so familiar with in stars and H bombs. So while the ingredients and ash products are alike, the mechanism is totally different.
It’s like saying a Hydrogen powered car must have an internal combustion engine like Arnold Schwarzenegger Hydrogen Humvee did. But then fuel cells came along…
Also different is the analysis and theory tools. Classic mechanics- billiard balls explain Fusion. You need quantum field theory to understand solid “condenced mater”.
So they are both right.
So new name. “LENR” not “Fusion”.
On the twelfth day of Christmas
“Doctor” Rossi sent to me:
Twelve Fraudsters Defrauding
Eleven Investors Investing
Ten Regulators Regulating
Nine “Certificators” Certificating [all “indipendent”!]
Eight Factories Heated
Seven Virtual Particles Appearing
Six Workers Working
Five LENR Loons!
Four New Customers
Three Robots
Two Swedish Dopes
and an E-Cat SK magic Coke can. (500 ml of pure enjoyment!)
Brian, Thank you for a balanced article on both BEC, and LENR in general. Not many venture into reporting on the topic, as it does invariably draw the sharp criticisms that it is impossible. Ironically, that is what almost every LENR researcher thought before attempting their first replication, but low and behold they saw something they could not explain, and became believers.
For most, becoming believers was a curse, as their pursuit of the phenomenon cost them their reputation within the scientific community. But continue on they did, and still do. Amazing group of talented, tough, and driven people.
BEC is not the only company, or group of people seeing some success. There are others around the globe, from Russia, to Japan, to India, to Italy, England, France, and here in the US making headway. Some questionable, but others rock solid, with quality names backing them.
We talk of all these developments on Lenr-Forum. All interested are welcome, and yes…even you skeptics.
№ 2 definitely happens in water-moderated nuclear power plants, the “neutron cross section” of hydrogen being 0.332 barns or so. (Not huge, but large enough to occasionally pick up neutrons). № 3 definitely doesn’t. The neutron cross section is way too low. And there’s not much deuterium around (unless its a heavy-water reactor).
The tritium generated by fission reactors largely comes from spalling boron, and as a direct fission-fragment phenomenon. In addition to the usual binary splits, there is a small probability of trinary ones.
And “sort of” in the slow-vs-fast neutron department. Fast neutrons have a tendency just to “bounce” off intervening hydrogen nuclei, whether ¹H or ²H (or ³H).
Just saying,
GoatGuy
While I’m not conversant in these questions, it is true that reactions 2 and 3 happen in nuclear power plants – correct?
So with enough water in an area of the right size, those reactions will happen. Although I guess those are relatively fast neutrons, so they have a better chance of fusion to a proton than the above slow neutron, more or less?
LOL: “we cannot all heard goats, can we”?
I’m not sure I agree with the Thorium Is The Answer argument, but at least we’re on the right track. Fission.
Very often, thorium is cited as the cure-all for most everything nuclear.
№ 1 – it is different
№ 2 – it is safer
№ 3 – it solves the proliferation problem
№ 4 – it will cost less
№ 5 – it can be made walk-away failsafe
№ 6 – it can be sub-scaled more effectively
№ 7 – From № 6, the Grid isn’t going to crash
№ 8 – Its nuclear ash is way safer/less
№ 9 – There is a LOT of fuelstock sitting in pegmatites
Right?
Well … “different” is nice, but with that comes a host of “lacking 60+ years of commercial experience”. There will be more accidents, just because its limits aren’t as well defined.
№ 2, “safer” just seems to be an amalgam of “doesn’t explode so easily” and “more nuclear ash burn-off”. I’m not sure I agree with either.
Proliferation isn’t a problem. The nuclear waste reprocessing cycle can EASILY be monitored, even from space.
Lower cost? I’m not sure how, since todays nuclear is “value priced” astronomically off-chart.
Sub scaling (making less than 250 MWe) is good. Put ’em where you need ’em. I like this one.
The feedstock abundance shouldn’t be over hyped. We’ve discovered there is a LOT of uranium in the ground, too. And we’re a-processing it.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
Looks like China’s navy has announced they working nuclear fission with MSR , the 1960’s Oak Ridge techology that JFK started and Nixon canceled (because it wasn’t in his home state of California.)
China never does anything first, so they are probably using stolen plans from the US Navy. The US Navy says NOTHING.
But Fission is great for submarines. Radiation can be dealt with. You don’t want fission products in your house!
LENR makes 10^6 less radiation than would be expected from fusion or fission, and most of it can’t escape the reactor.
Randy…
I do wonder how his Chicanery Corp is doing.
I mean, they were on the verge of commercializing…
… a hydrino powered, liquid silver burning PV extracting arc light.
That’d generate far more power OUT than consumed to light it.
Or so was the marketing videos.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
In short, you propose:
1) ¹H + e → ¹n
2) ¹H + ¹n → ²H
3) ²H + ¹n → ³H
4) ³H + ¹n → ⁴H
5) ⁴H → ⁴He + e
Let’s start with:
1) ¹H + e → ¹n
Classical physics (Thompson’s era) said that the electron should radiate away its orbital energy and collapse onto the proton in a Hydrogen atom. It does not. The quantum physics revolution showed why: because on the scale of electron orbitals, it behaves as a wave instead of a particle. There simply isn’t a particle to collapse onto the proton. No amount of wrangling can change that.
However, if we accelerate electrons to high enough energies, their effective quantum wave cross section decreases enough that you CAN collide one with a proton in a hydrogen atom. The result indeed is: a neutron is born. It takes a LOT of energy though to relativistically compact wave-electrons to near-points.
2) ¹H + ¹n → ²H
Then there is this gem. The cross section of ¹H to neutron capture is 0.336 barns. Rather small, improbable.
3) ²H + ¹n → ³H
This has a cross section of 0.000516 barns. Over 650× less likely than (1)
4) ³H + ¹n → ⁴H
The cross section is listed as zero. It probably is a very small № like 10⁻⁸ or more. Beyond measuring. And statistically 0.
5) ⁴H → ⁴He + e
Well, our ⁴H unobtainium is now also unicornium, gifted with the unique ability to become ⁴He without stepping out for a smoke.
I’ve already moved on.
GoatGuy
We wait and see how the future goes. LENR may give us a bright future, if not I hope that the Thorium fission reactor will be quickly developed for the survival of humanity to avoid anarchy and chaos. We can’t all herd goats, can we Goatguy?
Another interesting course of study would be required neutron energy to absorb a neutron for H, H2 and H3 verses the required neutron energy to absorb into nickel. This may give some protection from Metal absorption.
After the formation of the Neutron, it has very low energy due to the endothermic nature of the electron/proton combination reaction.
Not that I have any idea how to check that.
True enough, and that may be a problem for the reactor lifetime. From memory, metals absorbing neutrons get weaker the greater the neutron absorption. The LENR people claim that He is detected in the reaction, so the Nickle/Neutron absorption must not be the *exclusive* reaction.
On the twelfth day of Christmas
“Doctor” Rossi sent to me:
Twelve Fraudsters Defrauding
Eleven Investors Investing
Ten Regulators Regulating
Nine “Certificators” Certificating [all “indipendent”!]
Eight Factories Heated
Seven Virtual Particles Appearing
Six Workers Working
Five LENR Loons!
Four New Customers
Three Robots
Two Swedish Dopes
and an E-Cat SK magic Coke can. (500 ml of pure enjoyment!)
After step 1, the neutron could be absorbed by e.g. a nickel nucleus, generating 8.5 MeV. For step 1 you need 0.8 MeV, so a gain of 10 .
I did try to contact Brilliant Light Power and ask if could invest. Randal Mills sent me back a nice but short note saying that they are fully funded for the foreseeable future and had no need for investors.
I woudn’t call that conclusive, but it seems that “looking for the next round of funding” is not *exactly* true.
The physics of LENR are not that controversial:
1) Hydrogen atom (proton) is collided with an electron in some sort of apparatus to form a neutron.
2) Before the Neutron splits back apart into a electron and proton, it collides with another proton in a crystal matrix to form a deuterium nucleus (which gives off heat).
3) Another neutron from step 1 then collides with the deuterium atom to form tritium (producing more heat).
4) Another neutron from step 1 then collides with the tritium atom to form H4 – which produces a lot more heat
5) H4 then beta decays to He4, which takes back some of the heat. This completes the H->He conversion. No proton -> proton fusion ever happens.
The apparatus to make all this happen may be very difficult to pull off, but the basic physics is only controversial at step 5.
Step 5 supposedly can’t happen because H4 will neutron decay back to H3 rather than beta decaying. The evidence for this is high energy collider experiments from the 60s. The claim by the LENR people is that the neutron decay of H4 can only happen in a high energy environment – such as a collider. In a low energy environment such as LENR, the energy given off by the H4 production is dissipated as heat in the crystal before the Neutron decay can occur. Since the energy of the H4 is dissipated, it can’t neutron decay because the energy in the H4 isn’t sufficient to produce the highly endothermic neutron decay.
LENR is real
Really? Anything nuclear is going to have fusion (or fission) daughter products. They’re going to be real, and not teleported to Saturn’s rings barring observation. Real fusion will also inevitably bring forth a LOT of radioactive daughter isotopes. Can’t avoid it, by what is known of weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces. Likewise, fission also inevitably brings a lot of radioactive daughter species to the table. Same reasons why.
most certainly is not D-D fusion
Well, that’s helpful. What is it then? What brand of nuclear reaction is capitalizing on the binding energy differences of the original reactants and their reaction products, to emit copious energy? With bated breath, I await.
The explanation of Widom-Larsen theory, which postulates an electro-weak process. https:\en.wikipedia.orgwikiWidom-Larsen_theory (repl with slash)
Hmmm… yah. Might want to follow that linkie. It manages in rather few words, to capture the core contentious issues that mainstream science has raised regarding WL theory.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
LOL. I’m going to have to wipe off the tea, nose-blasted onto the I-believe button on my keyboard. … GoatGuy
You REALLY ought to do some rudimentary Googling… turns out that even the least contentious “e-cat” working-for-a-year certification was marred by fictitious measurements, basic violations of the laws of thermodynamics and physics. Not even the controversial stuff… like “e-cat is a LENR device”. Rather, just cooling water and steam flows. Pressures, temperatures, and data that was clearly more mythical than factual.
Google is our friend, at times.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
No, he found that the system was not ready for the market. It needed his attention nearly daily and major parts were ‘worn’ after a year of operation. This made him think and to reconsider commercialization. During the 1 year Doral test of the 1 MW reactor he did another invention which he further developed and this is the ‘Ecat-QX’. This plasma-based process produces a lot of light, heat and some electricity at a high COP (>10).
Together with a new high profile partner this was developed further to the Ecat SK (SK is to honor Sven Kullander, who believed in Rossi), which has a output power of 20 kW. This is now heating a factory hall to the satisfaction of his customer. This will be demonstrated on 31st of January 2019. This year he built a plant to mass produce the SK reactors. From 31st of January he will formally start selling heat to customers to a price which is 20% lower than where they can make it for themself using conventional or other heating processes. As far as I can see this cannot be fraudulent. At this moment he is building a multi Ecat SK 40 MW unit for his partner that is intended to produce electricity.
That’s only a problem if it’s claimed to work indefinitely without replacing the materials. If there’s something nuclear going on then it could work quite a long time until that’s necessary.
人生如白驹过隙，每天浏览几篇博客，学习学习，充实自己！
Wrong. Naval reactors are proven, functional and funded. With reactor campaigns matching ship life cycle duration, Navy does not need anything to replace them, especially anything that is not proven, questionably functional and not funded. Same for NASA, which is far more conservative than military, and far less funded.
EM drive is next….. Truth is that human perception should drive science, and not a methodology of consistent cause and effect that lineary expand our understanding. That should be an assisting, not a constraining methodology as it has become.
Personally, I think this is possible, but just in not anyway it is being tried now. When universal AI quantum computers come truly into their own, they will show us how to produce cold fusion by using sophisticated simulations.
The deal about LENR is that both the skeptics (physics community) as well as the advocates were right at the same time. LENR is real but is most certainly not D-D fusion as its early experimenters claimed. The skeptics were right about this. I met a group of (conventional) fusion researchers. Most of them thought that P&F had discovered a real phenomenon, but that it was not fusion.
The most credible explanation I am aware of is Widom-Larsen theory, which postulates an electro-weak process.
As per the common descriptions of it, these things have the problem that over-heating destroys the reaction and most likely the device.
Heat has to be continually removed to keep them within their operational range. And even there, the conditions making them work aren’t 100% known, and therefore they aren’t 100% reliable.
Would you buy a heater that works 70% of the time and that can easily stop working altogether because it got some dirt in it?
Using LENR for space heating is like using a nuclear rocket to fly a kite.
If it worked, NASA would beat their doors down to use for deep space power. The Navy would kidnap them until they produced designs to replace submarine nuclear reactors. The shipping fleets would make them trillionaires replacing diesel. Alaska’s villages would knight them.
After all of that was done, then they would do industrial heat, then commercial, then utility, and finally, after every other application on or off the planet, $50 space heaters.
Did Andrea Rossi sell enough of his 1MW Energy Catalyzers, produced in his many robotized factories, over the last decade to make himself a billionaire?
I think you are mistaking them with Randell Mills’ Brilliant Light company, which has been a long-time in the business of “looking for the next round of investor funding” without producing any working reactor or independent tests.
Brillouin is another company whose main claim until recently was to have a controllable LENR reactor with a very low COP of 1.2-1.4 or so, producing a few watts only. Not anymore after this update.
Brillouin lost me when they started talking about Q waves and making quadrinos and maybe forming dark matter and possibly having an alternate universe of fractional electron orbitals.
Oh and it all dovetails with solar PV because… oh I give up.
The less you talk about the physics of Brillo power the more reasonable it sounds.
In fairness i’m quite open to weird and quirky quantum effects and people who want to manipulate them. QM is really what makes the universe work. At the same time Brillo seems to be… overzealous in their marketing.
Yeah, I too think there are some real phenomena behind the cold fusion/LENR brouhaha.
They were just so poorly understood and uncontrollable, that it has been really hard to get mainstream physics to accept their existence. Still not accepted in many places.
And yes, the field has many legit researchers and a few crooks. Wherever there is ignorance and uncertainty, charlatans thrive.
But if Brillouin has found a reliable recipe that just works, it won’t be long before it has to be accepted everywhere, because you can’t deny a product that works.
You know if you can get 4x the power out as power in then you could put these in to a very well insulated box, keep pumping power in until the metal parts are getting near melting and then draw off the high temperature heat to do something like spin a turbine and make net energy.
Just sayin’