Jul
9
A Status Update on Cold Fusion
July 9, 2012 | 10 Comments
Your humble writer has been watching for the news out of the International Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Symposium, ILENRS-12 held at The College of William and Mary Sadler Center early last week. At long last, after years of little available event news we’re getting some interesting bits out.
The process of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) or Cold Fusion or your choice on an array of ideas on what to call it, have required the element palladium as a catalyst, that isn’t consumed, but represents an expensive initial outlay. Current commercial efforts use nickel instead, because it is plentiful and cheap and works almost as well.
The fuel of choice has been “heavy water”, which is non-radioactive and can be recovered from ocean saltwater. Four ounces of heavy water today costs about $50 and contains enough energy when converted to electricity to supply the average American with electricity for a lifetime. The commercial efforts are focused on plain fresh water, some with a hydrogen gas flow, now.
A LENR start is dramatic and unmistakable when it occurs – much more heat is released than any conceivable chemical process could generate. Such heat can be used for industrial processes, space heating or hot water, or it can be converted to electricity.
Today’s remaining problems concern reliability and control.
Whatever it is that makes LENR work, the phenomenon seems to have a mind of its own, and decides when to turn itself on and off. The commercial work that seems closest to a resolution of these problems are holding their cards close to their chests, hoping to be first to enter a huge and lucrative market.
A bit of background is in order because for LENR or cold fusion news isn’t appearing in papers published in major scholarly journals – a point we need to keep in mind. The story – very briefly:
Along with government censorship, which we can expect in proper circumstances, political censorship in an effort to not unduly alarm the public in the mainstream media there’s a wall still up of scientific censorship for LENR. The Internet is putting a foundation out for specialty and niche news, blogs and social networks that are exposing more information.
LENR has occupied a scientific backwater now for 23 years. Demonstrations have been repeated again and again, a great deal of know-how has been acquired and shared over the Internet. Scientists who stuck with it have been vindicated to those who are in the interested in the field.
In 1989, Martin Fleischmann, a scientist at the top of his field, with Stanley Pons told the world they had ran a LENR in a test tube. Within a year scientists from prestigious labs around the world spilled announcements they had tried to duplicate what Fleischmann had reported with no success. The results were un-reproducible. Cold Fusion was to become a joke about junk science.
About a year and a half back an Italian entrepreneur named Andrea Rossi demonstrated a cold fusion boiler, and announced the taking orders for 2012 delivery. The following months have brought a lot of others from the personal labs and quiet private researchers out into view.
Mr. Rossi has made a lot of web traffic and the first thing we see from the Symposium is the estimable Jed Rothwell who operates the prime scientific source for the field, LENR-CANR.ORG, starting a forum thread that became a worthy look at Mr. Rossi from those who know him. With subjective understanding a better objective view of Mr. Rossi and what he has going on is covered in the forum thread.
Before one begins a click through to the thoughts on Mr. Rossi his technology and business acumen lets note a fundamental problem – that government censorship.
So far the patent ability for LENR isn’t coming. The US Patent Office has a backlog of dozens of applications on which it is not acting, demanding cumbersome and expensive on-site demonstrations in addition to the usual paper filings. It’s not much better overseas. This puts the inventors in a very unusual spot. With no intellectual property rights, whatever is offered can simply be taken with poor grounds for compensation.
That plus the prospect that whatever works and is verified will become the top media circus in all of mankind’s history. Whatever we have, as reasoned and responsible as we try to be, what we’re getting from the commercial effort is so clouded, confused and in organizational disarray as to be without credibility.
Still, out in the real world, LENR science is in better shape. Italy, Japan, Israel and Greece are the current world leaders. China is suspected to have a major LENR program. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are quietly pursuing the pot of gold, isolated and in secret, avoiding the heavy hand of the US government, which might be a very good thing when commercial prospects get to market.
But the “news” is in a whole new arena. We won’t be getting papers and studies that can connect to existing technology for a long while. The commercial folks are working in a world more primitive than a “Wild West” situation and every bit as likely to go into a cold war framework or legal battles just as soon as someone seems to be making money.
The stakes are huge. Something dramatic is bound to happen, and a lot of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists and academic administrators will be gravely embarrassed – its essentially too late for them already. Yet, they will claim that they were simply surprised, that they could not have seen this coming.
But we aren’t and are looking forward to the future.
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I find that Cold Fusion is like buying a set of 50,000 mile steel belted radial tires. You really hope that you will get 50,000 miles out of the tires. But, regardless of what the manufacturer says some part of your mind keeps saying, ‘It’s never gonna happen.’
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I don’t know if LENR is real or not, but proponents have done a magnificent job of making it look like snake oil.
The only standard I would accept is publication of detailed independent testing by a respected university or National Laboratory.
Censorship? Oh, please.
Cold Fusion has never proved itself. I wish it would. I wish for a lot of things.
The lack of patents is slowing development?
Sheesh–whoever is first with a replicable Cold Fusion machine will make billions in book and movie rights, speeches, consulting and who knows what else.
It just ain’t happening Jack.
It is beyond dispute that excess heat is produced in electrochemical cell experiments with palladium electrodes in heavy water. In short more heat energy is put out than electrical energy that was put in. This effect can now be reliably reproduced, and there is even an ongoing LENR experimental cell at MIT which has been in operation since January 2012, consistently producing 14 times the amount of energy in excess heat, than the amount of electrical energy input.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/05/07/mit-devices-outputs-14-times-input-power-faces-funding-cut-130221/
To put this in perspective these experiments have successfully done what hot fusion scientists have been trying to do for 50 years. Despite $billions spent on this technology, it success is still elusive and could be another 20 years before they reach the break even point where they get as much energy out as they put in.
The question is whether these successful cold fusion laboratory experiments can be scaled up and translated into practical energy producing machines to cleanly replace coal, oil and gas.
if we were to spend even a small fraction of the money that is now being poured into hot fusion, on cold fusion instead we would have a working units in production, quite soon, perhaps in the next 1 to 2 years.
i know how to fuse regular water into iron or even plutonium-239
and how to make gamma ray laser and turn space into energy and
sunlight into thousands of volts and thousands of amps and how to
make a pound of gamma rays in less than a second and how to turn
space into energy and all this with a battery or sun rays and how
to hover a train engine with batteries and light or particles etc.
just google “energy creation by joseph casale” and select “energy
creation” or other sites
i think i may have forgot to put my web address but the particle accelerator in my idea is the size of a dinner plate but trillions of times as effective as the largest particle accelerator in the world and the number of particles it does it to is in the pounds of matter and is also an energy creator and a beem fuser
In the magnetic thruster the thruster works basically on the fact that the mass and charge increases with increased velocity. The mass increase is based off of Einstein’s theory. The charge increase is based off of the mass increase theory that if mass is twice as much then energy must be twice as much. Hence twice the force times distance since force times distance is work or energy and mass is energy. Hence twice the field. The attracting magnet shaped like a funnel attracts the magnet created by the circling protons to encouraged the protons’ magnet. When the circling protons spiral and move along the cylinder shaped device they can move on the wide end of the funnel shaped device and hence closer. Then the protons move faster in a circle to increase in mass and charge and hence a larger magnet as well as greater mass. Then the end magnets push the ring of protons back and forth with the protons spiraling. However the magnet on the larger mass end hits harder than the back end magnet because the mass is less on the back end then the front and at the same time the end magnet is greator on the front end. Hence a net force in the forward direction with no exhaust!!! But note the larger end tends to be dealing with a larger magnet as well as larger mass. Hence the force is four times as much with just the end magnets being twice as much and the funnel magnet being only twice as much. Hence the magnets require twice as much and the work is four times as much!!! Also if the funnel increases and the protons also get closer that’s definitely more for less by N!!! So now the spiraling is faster back and forth from end to end 2*N as much because force is 4*N and mass is two to work with the circling velocity to keep the spiral in proportion so the frequency back and forth gets higher by 2*N to increase the number of hits per time!!! Thus energy creation!!! Now why does energy creation happen. Well one does not really create energy. The space time dimemnsions is really undisturbed energy that has not been stirred up yet!!! When one starts dealing with the mass in Einsteinium physics and changing mass and field by speed then one crosses swords with the way space folds and the way dimensions change to turn space into energy. I almost got this invention perfected. It’s very challenging. I’ve only got it on paper and the circuitry is more compicated than a computer central processing unit. Also I have it in words instead of diagrams and blue prints but the book just for this thruster alone is 150 pages long at least!!! NOW FOR MORE INFORMATION READ THE EARLIER LETTERS FIRST ON “ENERGY CREATION BY JOSEPH CASALE”
there will always be idiots like @Benjamin Cole… i wish we can burn you instead fossil fuels, because idiots like you are plenty and renewable. do your research before commenting
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