Posted on 11/02/2013 7:44:26 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
In Oct. 2013, Toyota published a paper in the peer-reviewed Japanese Journal of Applied Physics which confirmed important experimental results that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had first published in 2002. MHI had claimed transmutation of Cesium into Praseodymium via the forced diffusion of Deuterium gas through a thin-film heterostructure containing elemental Palladium using a permeation method pioneered by Mitsubishi; it is capable of triggering nuclear reactions in condensed matter systems under modest temperatures and pressures.
Importantly, all of this experimental data is predicted and fully explained by the peer-reviewed Widom-Larsen theory of low energy nuclear reactions (LENRs).
While the Mitsubishi permeation method is not a suitable embodiment for commercial power generation systems based on LENRs, it has proven to be an excellent laboratory tool for demonstrating that nuclear transmutations can be triggered at will without the use of huge macroscopic temperatures and pressures. In other words, aging stars, supernovae, fission reactors, and thermonuclear explosions are not necessarily required; nucleosynthesis can occur in tabletop experiments that surprisingly do not have or need any radiation shielding.
At an American Nuclear Society meeting held in November 2012, Yasuhiro Iwamura of Mitsubishi revealed the Toyota Motor Company itself had recently become involved in LENR R&D, along with other large Japanese companies that he declined to name publicly. Given Japanese companies well known excellence at long-term strategic thinking, it would not be surprising if their ongoing LENR R&D programs aim to ultimately replace the internal combustion engine.
The slides basically cover the experiments in which cesium is converted to praesodymium under mild energy conditions in a "cold fusion" approach, but there is much background LENR info included.
Link to slides.
Anyway, it looks interesting. Thanks for posting.
Hmmmm, Toyota? Kind of doubt they’re faking it...
So this outlandish claim has been around for over a decade and nothing has come of it, except another outlandish claim.
I’m still looking for either Mitsubishi or Toyota to publish this on their own websites . . .
Wow. This is really something. If their results can be duplicated, it’s a game changer.
Pons and Fleischmann should go down in history, and probably will.
They’re the opposite of Michelson and Morley. M&M set out to prove something big, and when they didn’t... opened the door to something even bigger. AFAIK, no one laughed at them when they announced that they could not find evidence of the “luminiferous aether.”
P&F set out to prove something big and did so. Because of university politics surrounding them, they were driven off the stage by catcalls and thrown tomatoes.
I think P&F be remembered in much the same way as Davisson and Germer, who demonstrated the existence of electron spin - a purely quantum effect - using macroscopic apparatus. By showing that quantum mechanics governed the behavior of particles with mass just as it does photons, they played a huge role in defeating the last of the quantum skeptics (what today we would call “quantum deniers” LOL).
It will fall to others to do the same for P&F, but if these results hold up, it will be done for P&F. Only a matter of time.
When will MIT - the center of gravity of the anti-LENR backlash back in 1989 - start asking for federal money to do LENR research? That’ll be when the dam bursts.
Toyota - IIRC - took P&F under their wing after the 1989 uproar subsided. They’re not stupid, obviously.
pingaling ... LENR revisted
Put yourself in the place of a member of the Saudi royal family. Try to imagine what you'd be thinking when you read that, especially when you think of the track record of the advanced countries when it comes to applying the results of scientific research.
Not needed. The Toyota work "is" the needed replication of the Mitsubishi work. More confirmations would be "nice" but this is the essential validation of the earlier work.
And you are remembering correctly that Toyota did set up P & F in a laboratory in France with good equipment and funding. Unfortunately, that was done at the behest of the chairman of Toyota, and when he died, support from Toyota waned. But P&F did, at that laboratory and time period, replicate and extend their earlier work from Utah. Not much was published involving the mechanisms (Toyota and the trade secret meme), but they DID publish proof that their original calorimetry and excess heat measurements from Utah were correct.
Ah, but that is exactly what the skeptopaths will say....just another bunch of charlatans and/or incompetents.
Yes indeed. I should have read the article before I posted!
This is mighty exciting news.
If LENR can be developed as an energy source (as seems inevitable) I wonder what OPEC will do? "Go Nova" (raise prices in a last attempt to raid the cookie jar before imploding utterly) or try to do "the long fade" by cutting prices to keep research funds away from LENR alternatives.
The problem (for them) is that the environmental movement (which they've funded, nurtured and encouraged) is going to keep going either way, and that hurts them too.
This is great news, truly great.
The first problem will be getting it to scale. Right now it appears to be the 21st Century equivalent of the potato clock.
Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore dreamed of putting an IBM 360 on a single silicon chip. When they had that dream - in 1969 - it seemed like madness. IBM had constructed what looked like an unshakable fortress of monster heavy iron machines, with their glittering rows of scintillating light bulbs and spinning tape drives.
The pulled it off when they released the i386 in 1985 and 1986; it had taken them 17 years to do it. The '486 was basically an IBM 370 on a chip.
By accomplishing that, they (and others it must be noted) shrank IBM to a shadow of its former self. What was once an unstoppable behemoth become an endangered species.
The amount of capital that was mobilized in the effort to accomplish this was staggering.
I believe that the amount of capital that will come out of the woodwork to make LENR power generation into reality will be similar if not greater. If it can happen it will happen. Probably sooner than anyone expects.
It’s a low-energy reaction, so they’re going to have to figure out how to speed it up if they’re going to make power.
Neither of these scenarios is necessary.
A few bribes in advanced countries, and governments will find that LENR are "too dangerous" and that no research can be done. Laws will prevent this threat to moslems.
BTTT! The House of Toyota vs The House of Saud...Toyota wins this one!
I suspect neither. My bet is that they will try to "move upstream" to higher value added products (plastics and other petrochemicals). Unfortunately, Muslims have not proven very successful at higher level science/technology, and the strict Islamic culture doesn't lend itself well to attracting "wild geese" sorts of non-Muslim sci/tech types.
It is only "low energy" compared to other nuclear reactions or fusion. It is plenty high enough to produce lots and lots of power compared to burning coal, oil, or gas.
Yes and no. The reaction itself is NOT low energy (24+MEV/nucleon formed--for the PD/D2 case). Getting more nucleons to react CONTROLLABLY is what is needed, and the tech is just getting to that point. But for the very small reactors used, the "energy density" is greater than that for a fission reactor.
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