Posted on 05/27/2008 1:35:26 PM PDT by Red Badger
On May 22, researchers at Osaka University presented the first demonstration of cold fusion since an unsuccessful attempt in 1989 that has clouded the field to this day.
To many people, cold fusion sounds too good to be true. The idea is that, by creating nuclear fusion at room temperature, researchers can generate a nearly unlimited source of power that uses water as fuel and produces almost zero waste. Essentially, cold fusion would make oil obsolete.
However, many experts debate whether money should be spent on cold fusion research or applied to more realistic alternative energy solutions. For decades, researchers around the world have been simply trying to show that cold fusion is indeed possible, but they´ve yet to take that important first step.
Now, esteemed Physics Professor Yoshiaki Arata of Osaka University in Japan claims to have made the first successful demonstration of cold fusion. Last Thursday, May 22, Arata and his colleague Yue-Chang Zhang of Shianghai Jiotong University presented the cold fusion demonstration to 60 onlookers, including other physicists, as well as reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios. If Arata and Zhang´s demonstration is real, it could lead to a future of new, clean, and cheap energy generation.
In their experiment, the physicists forced deuterium gas into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide, which absorbed the deuterium to produce a dense "pynco" deuterium. In this dense state, the deuterium nuclei from different atoms were so close together that they fused to produce helium nuclei.
Evidence for the occurrence of this fusion came from measuring the temperature inside the cell. When Arata first injected the deuterium gas, the temperature rose to about 70° C (158° F), which Arata explained was due to nuclear and chemical reactions. When he turned the gas off, the temperature inside the cell remained warmer than the cell wall for 50 hours, which Arata said was an effect of nuclear fusion.
While Arata´s demonstration looked promising to his audience, the real test is still to come: duplication. Many scientists and others are now recalling the infamous 1989 demonstration by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who claimed to produce controlled nuclear fusion in a glass jar at room temperature. However, no one - including Fleischmann and Pons - could duplicate the experiment, leading many people to consider cold fusion a pseudoscience to this day.
But one witness at the recent demonstration, physicist Akito Takahashi of Osaka University, thought that the experiment should be able to be repeated.
"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy [heat] from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi told New Energy Times. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers [J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008]. This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."
In addition, researchers will have to repeat the experiment with larger amounts of the palladium and zirconium oxide mixture in order to generate larger quantities of energy.
via: Physics World and New Energy Times
BlackLight has invented a new primary energy source with applications to heating, distributed power generation, central power generation, and motive power based on a new chemical process of releasing the latent energy of the hydrogen atom, the BlackLight Process. In this process, the electron in an ordinary hydrogen atom is induced to move closer to the proton, below the prior-known ground state to form more stable hydrogen atoms called hydrinos. The large energy released exceeds that required to extract hydrogen from water, such that water may serve as the hydrogen fuel source for the process.
We are on the verge of multiple breakthroughs in technology.
BlackLight Power Inc. Announces Commercial-Ready Alternative Energy Solution
Cranbury, NJ (May 28, 2008)—BlackLight Power, Inc. today announced the successful testing of a new energy source. The company has successfully developed a prototype power system generating 50,000 watts of thermal power on demand. Incorporating existing industry knowledge in chemical and power engineering, BlackLight Power (BLP) is pursuing the immediate design and engineering of central power plants utilizing the BlackLight Process. BLP plans on developing pilot plants with architecture and engineering firms with anticipated delivery in approximately 12 to 18 months. The BLP process has been replicated and validated by independent scientists and has received interest from financial institutions and power utility plant operators around the world. BLP plans on licensing its technologies.
“If you make cheap heat, you can make cheap electricity, and if you can make cheap electricity you can make cheap hydrogen” says Randell Mills, Chairman, CEO, and President of BlackLight Power, Inc. “The BlackLight Process generates enormous amounts of cheap, non-polluting heat that will replace the thermal power in coal, oil, gas and nuclear power plants that is then converted to electricity.”
And with gasoline prices setting record after record, BlackLight CEO Randell Mills, says the BlackLight Process is the breakthrough we’ve all been waiting for. “The hydrogen-burning car has been possible for decades, but there has never been a way to produce cheap hydrogen until today. We are projecting that we will be at the scale of power generation necessary for a power plant to replace the gasoline pumped in a day at a station with hydrogen from water in approximately 24 months.”
Dr. Shelby Brewer, former CEO of ABB Combustion Engineering and Assistant Secretary of Energy during the Reagan Administration remarked regarding today’s announcement “In my nearly 50 years in and around the energy business, I’ve yet to see a breakthrough as promising as this one. When I was studying to become a nuclear engineer in the 1960s, I never imagined I would see a day like today.” Brewer, a current board member of BlackLight Power, added “This breakthrough was entirely supported by private capital with no government investment.”
Michael Jordan, former CEO of Westinghouse and current board member of BlackLight Power, says “The breakthroughs announced by Randell Mills and his team of scientists will go down as one of the most important advances in the field of energy in the last fifty years.”
BlackLight CEO Randell Mills has released a paper outlining the full documentation and explanation of the BlackLight Process that is available at: http://www.blacklightpower.com/ Mills is committed to announcing all future progress as it occurs.
About BlackLight Power
BlackLight Power, Inc. is the inventor of a new primary energy source and a new field of hydrogen chemistry with broad commercial applications such as heating, distributed power generation, central power generation, and motive power based on a new chemical process of releasing the latent energy of the hydrogen atom, the BlackLight Process.
For more information, please visit http://www.blacklightpower.com/
Media Contact:
Ramya Kumaraswamy
Mobile: 510-316-4926
Office: 212-885-0552
ramya.kumaraswamy@hillandknowlton.com
BlackLight Process
BlackLight Power, Inc. is the pioneer of technology based on the patented process of releasing chemical energy from hydrogen called the “BlackLight Process.” BlackLight has mapped the physical structure of electrons in atoms and molecules that has helped generate a prospectively efficient, clean, cheap, and versatile thermal energy source.
· BlackLight Process is a novel chemical process causing the latent energy stored in the hydrogen atom to be released as a new primary energy source.
· This allows the negatively charged electron that is otherwise in a stable orbit to move closer to the naturally attracting, positively charged nucleus to release large amounts of energy.
· This patented process of releasing chemical energy from hydrogen generates power, heat, plasma (an energetic state of matter comprising a hot, glowing, ionized gas), light, and proprietary new compounds.
· BlackLight Process is a breakthrough in power generation by the invention of a solid fuel that uses conventional chemical reactions to generate the catalyst and atomic hydrogen at high reactant densities that in turn achieves very high power densities.
· In principle, power plants would utilize continuous regeneration of the solid fuel mixture using known industrial processes, and the only consumable, the hydrogen fuel, would be obtained ultimately from water due to the enormous net energy release relative to combustion. The catalyst causes the hydrogen atoms to transition to lower-energy states by allowing their electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus with a release of energy that is intermediate between chemical and nuclear energies, the primary application is as a new primary energy source.
· The process is also a new field of hydrogen chemistry. Specifically, energy is released as the electrons of hydrogen atoms are induced by a catalyst to transition to lower-energy levels (i.e. drop to lower base orbits around each atom’s nucleus).
· The net energy released may be over one hundred times that of combustion of the hydrogen fuel with power densities comparable to those of fossil fuel combustion and nuclear power plants.
· As hydrogen atoms and catalyst atoms are normally found bound together as molecules or are bound in other compositions of matter, BlackLight has invented a solid fuel that uses conventional chemical reactions to generate the catalyst and atomic hydrogen at high reactant densities that in turn controllably achieves very high power densities.
· The hydrogen fuel could be obtained by diverting a fraction of the output energy of the process to power the electrolysis of water into its elemental constituents. With water as the fuel, the operational cost of BlackLight Power generators is likely to be very inexpensive. Moreover, rather than air pollutants or radioactive waste, novel hydrogen compounds with potential commercial applications are the by-products.
Applications
Two of the potential applications of its technology are in heating and electric power production. The heat-generating prototypes have shown the BlackLight Process to be potentially competitive with existing primary generation sources over a range of scales from micro-distributed to central power generation.
The BlackLight Process thermal power source may be ideal for interfacing with commercially available electric power generating equipment including Sterling engines and turbines for micro-distributed and distributed electrical applications, respectively. On larger scales, the BlackLight technology may be well-suited for the utility industries and could reduce or eliminate problems such as those arising from the variable regional supply and price of fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil, the cost of building out a suitable supporting infrastructure and transmission grids, and eliminate pollution, greenhouse gas emission and other market, supply, infrastructure, or environmental adversities. Commercial-scale devices demonstrating means of extracting the energy have been operated in batch mode at BlackLight. BlackLight envisions the scale-up of energy devices to commercial power generation levels will require the application of existing industry knowledge in chemical and power engineering, and not new technology breakthroughs.
BlackLight Process experimental results on its process and compositions of matter are published widely and have been replicated by independent groups.
BlackLight Power, Inc.
BlackLight Power, Inc. is the inventor of a paradigm-shifting new primary energy source and a new field of hydrogen chemistry with broad commercial applications.
BlackLight Power has invented a new primary energy source with applications to heating, distributed power generation, central power generation, and motive power based on a new chemical process of releasing the latent energy of the hydrogen atom, the BlackLight Process.
BlackLight Power, Inc.’s wholly owned subsidiary, Millsian, Inc., is dedicated to developing new molecular modeling applications based on The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics (GUT-CP), a revolutionary approach to solving atomic and molecular structures that uses the solved structure of electrons for the first time.
BlackLight has built an extensive patent portfolio worldwide and will license companies to use commercial processes and systems that it develops in power, heating, lighting, chemical, and laser products as described by its licensing strategy.
BlackLight occupies a 53,000 square foot modern research and development facility equipped with over 10 million dollars worth of laboratory equipment. Its technical core competencies are theoretical physics, chemical engineering, chemical and material characterization, thermal power measurement, characterization of plasma processes, and power engineering. In addition to its Cranbury facility, BlackLight has collaborating labs worldwide.
Senior management and members of the board of BlackLight Power Inc. are as follows:
· Dr. Randell L. Mills, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO
· Dr. Shelby T. Brewer, Director, Vice President - Corporate
· William R. Good, Assistant Corporate Secretary, Vice President - Administration
· Michael H. Jordan, Director
· Michael P. Kalleres, Director
· Albert F. Kirby III, Director
· Merrill A. McPeak, Director
· Neil Moskowitz, Director
· Scott C. Penwell, Corporate Secretary
· George A. Sawyer, Director
· Charles J. Sullivan, Director
· C. Norman Winningstad, Treasurer
For more information, please visit http://www.blacklightpower.com/
Basically, there are companies forming around this hydrogen technology and they’re busy selling the equivalent of swampland. As long as they don’t call it “cold fusion” they will attract participants. Then, when cold fusion is finally replicated in the lab, they’ll just update their websites and documentation and be ready to go.
We could tell the Jihadis to go scratch! Their oil would suddenly be worth as much as their sand!
We could tell the Jihadis to go scratch! Their oil would suddenly be worth as much as their sand!
Ping
I have thought there was something akin to this all along:
“The catalyst causes the hydrogen atoms to transition to lower-energy states by allowing their electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus with a release of energy that is intermediate between chemical and nuclear energies, the primary application is as a new primary energy source.’
About 1/3 of the way down there is a post (and related links) stating that the late Julian Schwinger had performed Quantum Mechanical calculations indicating that "cold fusion is possible because when deuterium atoms are trapped in a palladium lattice, their proximity allows for their quantum mechanical interactions to bypass the hot fusion requirement of high energy collisions.
As Schwinger was a Nobel Laureate and certified genius, that really got my attention.
Your thoughts?
Cheers!
Let’s assume Arata’s cold fusion demonstration can be repeated. Can cold fusion be harnessed to boil water to turn a steam turbine to make electricity? What kind of temperature rises are we seeing here? My guess only 10 or 30 degrees
Who really cares about cold fusion if it cannot generate commercial levels of electricity?
...and then on the engineering aspects of it (e.g. can you coax it to work just as well on a fine mesh or thin sheet of palladium, thereby lowering the cost per Joule)
you could end up with a source of heat which could substitute for other fuels in a number of applications.
Cheers!
Cheers!
I’m only interested in cold fusion if it can heat water high enough to run steam turbines which a friend says is optimally about 400 degrees. I doubt that it can
If there is another way to harness cold fusion and is commercially viable then great nd let’s do it
I thought the whole point of cold fusion was an energy revolution. Meaning mankind gets a new source of energy. Not scientists getting rocks off by producing 2 watts of anomalous energy
I agree that the amount of heat generated would be the determining factor in the usefulness of this phenomenon as a widespread energy source.
But even as a minor energy source, if it is cost-competitive with oil/coal/solar/etc. etc., will help.
Cheers!
I suspect that the first lab experiments demonstrating nuclear fission were equally unimpressive as regards total energy release, and look where THAT went.
Cool article. Also notice in the same article that they’re saying Arata’s results have already been replicated:
At the latest International Conference on Cold Fusion which took place between 25 June and 1 July 2007, at Sochi, Russia, at least two different research groups reported replication of Arata and Zhang’s results using a variant of the procedure that involved loading D2 gas into nano-scale palladium black.
That guy Schwinger reminds me of Richard Feynman, with whom he shared the Nobel prize.
Here’s a great speech he gave on Cold Fusion in 1991:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJcoldfusiona.pdf
Here’s the simple story behind all the guffaws that mock this field of inquiry. It is a classic disruptive technology.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WITH COLD FUSION
AND WHY IS IT COMING BACK?
http://newenergytimes.com/Library/2005KrivitS-WhatReallyHappened-Paper.pdf
International Congress of Nanotechnology 2005
San Francisco, CA, USA, Oct. 31-Nov. 4, 2005
Table IV. Comparison of Hot and Cold Fusion
Government-Sponsored Research — Hot Fusion : Cold Fusion
Years Studied 54 : 16
Estimated U.S. funding to date $16 Billion : $25 Million Committed worldwide government funding > $12 Billion : None
Experimental Qualities
Shows potential for large-scale power generation Yes : No
Potential for power production at point of consumption No (too big) : Yes
If it works, which is in doubt, the real problem would be scaling up. It would be bigger by far than an ordinary nuke plant if it is to do the job of a nuke plant. Bigger than a coal plant. Much bigger. Not cheap either.
Platinum, Palladium Futures Decline in N.Y. as Dollar Gains
By Halia Pavliva
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFl6NqHkbd9E
May 29 (Bloomberg) — Platinum plunged the most in almost two months and palladium fell as the dollar rallied against the euro, reducing demand for the precious metals as hedges against inflation.
The dollar rose for the third straight day on speculation the Federal Reserve will raise borrowing costs later this year. Before today, platinum jumped 36 percent this year, partly because of mining disruptions in South Africa, the world’s biggest source of the metal.
The metals ``are inversely following the dollar,’’ Walter Otstott, a senior broker at Dallas Commodity Co. in Dallas, said in an e-mail. ``This is temporary, as mining difficulties in South Africa cannot be ignored.’’
Platinum futures for July delivery fell $72.90, or 3.5 percent, to $1,994 an ounce at 10:50 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. A close at that price would mark the biggest percentage drop for a most-active contract since April 1. The metal has dropped 14 percent from a record $2,308.80 on March 4.
Palladium futures for September delivery dropped $3.70, or 0.8 percent, to $436.05 an ounce. Earlier, the price touched $433, the lowest since May 15. Before today, the metal gained 16 percent this year.
Platinum and palladium are used to make jewelry and pollution-control parts for cars.
To contact the reporter on this story: Halia Pavliva in New York at hpavliva@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: May 29, 2008 10:52 EDT
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.