Here's an example...
Sorry...I am being a smart-aleck.
Posted on 06/04/2012 10:26:18 PM PDT by Windflier
BlackLight Power, Inc. (BLP) announced last week a major breakthrough in clean energy technology, which experts agree holds tremendous promise for a wide range of commercial applications. The announcement comes on the heels of BlackLight’s recent completion of a $5 million round of financing to support commercial development of its new process for producing affordable, reliable energy from water vapor.
In six separate, independent studies, leading scientists from academia and industry with PhDs from prestigious universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology, confirm that BlackLight has achieved a technological breakthrough with its CIHT (Catalyst-Induced-Hydrino-Transition) clean energy generating process and cell. The Process is fueled by water vapor that is a gaseous component of air and present wherever there is any source of water. The CIHT cell harnesses this energy as electrical power output and is suitable for essentially all power applications including transportation applications and electrical power production completely autonomous of fuels and grid infrastructure at a small fraction of the current capital costs.
“BlackLight’s continuously operating, power-producing system converts ubiquitous H2O (water) vapor directly into electricity, oxygen, and a new, more stable form of Hydrogen called Hydrino, which releases 200 times more energy than directly burning hydrogen,” said Dr. Randell Mills, Chairman, CEO and President of BlackLight Power, Inc., and inventor of the process. Hydrogen is not naturally available and has to be produced using energy. But, H2O vapor is ubiquitous and free, obtainable even from ambient air. Dr. Mills says that BlackLight has achieved critical milestones in scaling its new technology with typical electrical gain of more than ten times that which initiates the process, operating over long duration at the 10 Watt (W) scale. A 100 W unit is planned for completion by the end of 2012, and a 1.5 kiloWatt (kW) pilot unit that can serve the residential power market, as an initial target commercial application, is expected to be operational by 2013. (One kW is equal to 1000 W, and 1.5 kW is the typical, average power consumption of a US home.)
BlackLight has raised a total of $75 M for the development and commercialization of its breakthrough energy technology, and has license agreements with companies to use its patented commercial processes and systems in heating and electric power generation. The new BlackLight Process validation reports, including full documentation and results of theory evaluation, replication and testing of the CIHT systems, and Hydrino characterization, are publicly available at http://www.blacklightpower.com/. The website also includes links to validator resumes and to technical and business support materials, including recent presentations that further explain the BlackLight Process and a technical paper providing the detailed chemistry and identification of Hydrinos by analytical methods, which laboratories can follow and replicate.
I'm more than a little skeptical of this. The first thing I would check is to see if the cathode and anode are being chemically changed. If this is acting as a big battery when the electrolyte gets wet you could get electricity and hydrogen and oxygen without any mythic "low energy" form of hydrogen. You'll just be getting energy from the corrosion of the plates like it is a potato battery.
I have some oceanfront property in Wisconsin, if you are interested.
Now that Rossi and his e-cat have been pretty much discredited, we need another “free energy” device to entertain us.
Where’s Kevmo?
Bingo.
Article claims this "new, more stable form of Hydrogen", but fails to give us any chemical description thereof, and the universe fails to produce it despite its propensity to seek lowest-energy-levels of pretty much everything. A quick search turns up descriptions of it, claiming hydrogen atoms "shrink" when banged against other atoms and transfer energy. Between the simplicity of the alleged process vs. the universe's lack of "hydrinos" one must conclude the theory is flawed on its face. Descriptions also follow the exciting results with a series of caveats which gloss over the math not adding up; if it does happen, there's not enough to cover the energy cost of splitting water in the first place (a required first step) in hopes that a rare "hydrino" may occur.
And with that...
Let's review the Three Laws Of Thermodynamics:
1. You can't win (and this guy is claiming a "win").
2. You can't break even (perpetual motion doesn't happen).
3. You can't get out of the game (can't isolate a system 100%)
Some things are, in fact, worth dismissing out of hand.
A basic premise of math & physics is: some things just don’t happen, and long ago we proved they don’t. Any new novel claims that such things do happen may be dismissed because we know, from proof, they don’t.
Some people just don’t grok the meaning of “proof”.
Out of the box, it had the sound of perpetual motion, something for nothing, but I’m not a scientist and the laws of thermodynamics are not burned into my memory, no pun intended.
Back when I was in higher ed, a certain individual was tinkering with Hydrogen power in automobiles, and the answer and technology were just about ready to go. That was over fifty years ago and despite fifty years it still is nowhere.
Sounds like the type of scam Obama would fall for and use taxpayer’s funds to promote its demise.
This, alone, is reason to doubt what's going on. WTF is "hydrino" supposed to be? Chemical names mean something, and this simply doesn't.
A 2 fer.
:-)
I bought a small dehumidifier for an upstairs room that gets too humid. I pour out a gallon of water from the machine every 24 hours. How pure is that water? Is it like distilled water?
Order of targets:
US government: The range of applications is enormous, and it's hard to find a more ‘cash rich’ customer. Even if the maximum scale was 1.5kw - if it required minimum servicing, 20 of them in McMurdo would power the whole center there. Or even just powering our embassies around the world - dedicating the space for that goal wouldn't be that difficult, and it'd be a great showcase for American technology.
Large retailers: There are likely few retailers out there who wouldn't want to have a ‘green’ store to show off to the public. Since you'll eventually need retail channels to mass market your product, an early partnership with a retailer to power their stores would not only give a showcase for your product, but also add a valuable stream of hard cash to produce the units.
Fortune 500: Amazon, Facebook and Apple are spending massive amounts of cash to make their datacenters be ‘carbon neutral’ as possible. Easy sales for a green energy source, as many a company can already attest. Another stream of cold hard cash.
Small business: Give up half a stockroom to get rid of that monthly electric bill? Plus have something to show off to consumers about how my business cares? Sign me up.
But instead, the supposed ‘next target’ is home use.
This, from a company that initially said that the technology would deliver 750 miles of driving on a liter of water. Con men driving...
And let’s add “Law 0” of Thermo:
“The universe is a game and you have to play.”
Laws 0 and 3 are where we straight, white male engineers oppress the caring, loving, “out of the box” thinkers who are supposedly unconstrained by “classical physics” into our oppressive worldview.
Laws 1 and 2 are where we tell people that, no, unicorn farts and Smurfberries won’t make our need for coal go away tomorrow.
Ideally it would be, but it will pick up dust and other impurities from the coils it is condensing on. And since dehumidifier water isn't meant to be drunk the manufacturer doesn't have to follow the same rules it would for food-safe usage so can do thing like use lead solder which it couldn't on water pipes.
Here's an example...
Sorry...I am being a smart-aleck.
I wonder if I could use it in my iron? I buy distilled water so I don’t get gunk built up in there.
This is a potato 2 wires a screw. This will work great!
On a related note: Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304
Summary:
1. The authors don’t use TeX.
2. The authors don’t understand the question.
3. The approach seems to yield something much stronger and maybe even false (but the authors never discuss that).
4. The approach conflicts with a known impossibility result (which the
authors never mention).
5. The authors themselves switch to weasel words by the end.
6. The paper jumps into technicalities without presenting a new idea.
7. The paper doesn’t build on (or in some cases even refer to) any previous work.
8. The paper wastes lots of space on standard material.
9. The paper waxes poetic about “practical consequences,” “deep philosophical implications,” etc.
10. The techniques just seem too wimpy for the problem at hand.
That’s how distillation works.
The only caveat to an instant “yes” is, as noted, surfaces and atmospherics may introduce impurities as the manufacturer did not intend the purity of the results.
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