Jun
27
Established Physics Has Another New Fusion Problem
June 27, 2011 | 21 Comments
Brillouin Energy Corp In Berkeley California has another Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) method in the development and proving stage. The new method comes at fusion from a different path than the Rossi E-Cat. The reports have the Brillouin at nearly 2 times the energy coming out from that going in. If this is real the established physicists have a new “won’t fit” phenomena to cope with.
In the simple explanation the Brillouin technique uses an electromagnetic pulse slamming into hydrogen or H1. The pulse pushes some of the hydrogen into dihydrogen or H2 and on to H3 and H4. Finally some hydrogen molecules reach the stage of helium. The method generates heat – more heat energy than electrical energy used to run the pulse.
Brillouin Reactor Simple Block Diagram. Click Image for the largest view.
Using a catalyst the method stimulates a Controlled Electron Capture Reaction (CECR) in the catalyst. The catalyst reaction creates low energy neutrons. The neutrons generate heat as they are captured by other atoms or molecules building up heavier elements.
Does it work or is it scam? The list of folks advising is pretty impressive. The list includes Robert Clear PhD. past Staff Scientist for Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in the Applied Science Division. Then there’s Michael C.H. McKubre PhD., Director, Energy Research Center, Stanford Research Institute. Plus Charles S. Holden, scientific consultant, works with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in development of nuclear Fuel cycles and medical isotopes.
Brillouin’s proprietary electronic pulse generator promotes proton-electron capture reactions. The pulses change some of the protons in metal to neutrons, and surrounding nuclei subsequently captures these produced neutrons. The subsequent neutron capture reactions generate heat, and because the pulses are controlled the thermal output from Brillouin’s proprietary technology safely provides clean heat on demand. It’s a very different take on getting past the Coulomb Barrier.
Brillouin believes its approach enhances the efficiency of making heat with thermal energy production because all costs associated with fuels are avoided. There is no combustion meaning there are no emissions, or need for chimneys, flues or fuel storage.
The high temperature and high pressure system can be adapted to produce hot water or steam in boilers for emission free space heating applications. More advanced applications of Brillouin’s technology could power boilers for ocean going ships and desalinization applications. Refinement and development of the technology could ultimately provide methods that significantly reduce costs associated with electric power generation.
While Rossi seems way out in front at higher temperatures and a larger energy output factor, Brillouin offers a competitive way to produce heat, with just two research and testing stages competed and a third under way shooting for a 3 times heat to electrical input. It’s a long way to catch Rossi, but the chase is on.
Meanwhile, a little digging will show Mr. Robert E. Godes is an electrical engineer with it seems, a penchant for looking at things without the narrowed view of advanced degrees. Godes began in 1992 exploring the science underlying Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. In 1996 he started designing the first experimental hardware and circuitry. From 1996 to 2002, he funded and conducted work that led to the first productive test reactor.
Godes and three others formed Profusion Energy in late 2005 and started the patent process. All the while Godes continued to personally fund all company expenses and operations through the development of the analytical reactor control system. The effort is estimated to have used 5800 man-hours of labor.
The reactor itself required custom equipment and software prior to performing the initial assembly and testing. This work included custom circuit design, comprehensive systems analysis, firmware development, and special testing of various components, all developed and supplied by Mr. Godes. Demonstration of the CECR system for patent lawyers prompted the lawyers to write a second patent on a specific aspect of the hardware.
Profusion Energy ran on Godes’ cash lending and when the wall was hit in 2008 the property of Profusion, patents, property and assets returned to Godes for settlement of the debt. In 2009 with no revenues, but with a working unit and testing results Godes was able to startup with some outside capital. Brillouin started up with services of MCM Group, Inc., Grosvenor Financial Partners, LLC, and the patent lawyers in exchange for founders stock. In February 2009, Mr. Godes transferred his patent applications and other intellectual property to Brillouin. This may sound a little convoluted, but Godes managed to keep the intellectual property in control as the second phase of getting to a business proposition stopped and the third stage got underway. Some will find this suspicious, but its not: its just good business sense.
Godes and Brillouin have experiments underway designed to measure excess heat produced by their proprietary electrical stimulation of metals containing dissolved hydrogen such as nickel and palladium. Other metals are scheduled for testing in the upcoming months.
While Rossi may have hit on the handiest means to fuse hydrogen into nickel Godes is working to close up the gap with a method that might prove even simpler. Whether either one or both prove up in the market, Godes pointed out a truth: “Ignorance of the physics underlying a phenomenon that is difficult to reproduce makes it almost impossible to gain control over that phenomenon. Once the physics is understood, it is a matter of engineering to control it and make it useful.”
Almost impossible.
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Interesting backers! For Charles Holden see:
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/05/third-thorium-energy-alliance-marks.html
“Presentations by Kirk Sorensen, DavidLe Blanc and Charles S Holden indicated that they were either currently involved in entrepreneurial activities or were seeking entrepreneurial opportunities. … At this point I will stop, and pronounce Holden’s reactor DOA. Too much material goes into it, and too little electricity will come out. Fundamental questions are left unanswered, for example startup. 1600 kgs of U-233 is probably more U-233 than exists in the whole world right now. Where is the U-233 going to come from? There are quite a few more problems and questions.”
I’ve already had a look at McKubre. His name is a familiar one. See my post at: forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=198040&page=40
Hope it works for these guys this time! But I won’t hold my breath.
At forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=198040&page=45 the exponents of “Established Physics” have started banging on about the absence of neutrons from H1, as if that might be an obstacle to the achievement of “slamming”-based transmutation, H1 to helium.
Can Messrs Clear, McKubre or Holden help with this?
The typical 3 points of disbelief are and addressed as follows.
1. Over coming the coulomb barrier
a. LENR is a weak interaction and only involves the accumulation of low energy neutrons.
2. No fast neutrons.
a. This reaction is due to the accumulation of cold neutrons and Beta decay. Similar to the S process in solar nuclear synthesis which is responsible for the valley of stability in the Chart of Nuclides.
3. No Gamma rays.
a. The 4H system is formed well below 1eV and does not change parity or spill with the Beta decay event. With no spin parity change, electric dipole radiation of gamma rays is forbidden and the energy is transferred to the lattice as phonons. (Julian Schwinger)
Based on the Brillouin Energy Corp.(BEC) hypothesis and supporting experiments at Brillouin Energy, LENR is driven by a weak interaction. Any material with a unit cell or molecule able to include hydrogen nuclei and obtain or exceed a Molecular Hamiltonian of 782KeV due to the superposition of phonons (dT < fSec) has the potential to run a Controlled Electron Capture Reaction (CECR) process, providing the system has conduction or valence band electrons available for capture. Peter Hagelstein showed that this is possible starting on page 24 of his article in RLE Progress Report 145. The electron capture event provides a natural reduction in energy of the system instantly removing 782KeV of energy from the unit cell nanoparticle or molecule. That energy represents the removal of a proton from the bounding Coulombic box, an electron, and conversion of energy to mass.
A detailed paper / Hypothesis is available at the links below. It stays within the current (2011) standard model of physics. This reaction involves several steps that require some knowledge in several different disciplines. The first link provides the background necessary. I strongly recommend LISTENing to the power point at
http://www.brilloui nenergy.com/ BE25Tec.PPS at least once before reading the full hypothesis at
http://www.brillouinenergy.com/BrillouinEnergyHypo thesis.pdf
Robert
I tried to use your link, and got this hilarious scam message:
“You have entered an incorrect User Name and Password or requested a page that does not exist on BrillouinEnergy.com. If you were attempting to log in for more information on investing in Brillouin energy please go or call us for a username and password.”
And presumably if you’re not looking for “more information on investing” you can f*** off.
Just as cited in my first comment above, these guys are “either currently involved in entrepreneurial activities or were seeking entrepreneurial opportunities”.
Which means, looking for suckers, in plain language. I don’t need knowledge in several different disciplines to work that one out.
Craig,
I did not realize the links were broken. Thank you for pointing out the problem in such a diplomatic way,~0 The technically savvy individual would have figured out the links should have been
http://www.brillouinenergy.com/BE25Tec.PPS
and
http://www.brillouinenergy.com/BrillouinEnergyHypothesis.pdf
We are (as of 7-25-2011) looking for investors and this is not a scam of any sort.
The work has been replicated by Dr. Winthrop Williams at UCB and was presented at ACS in San Francisco in April 2010 and was recently nearly replicated (produced Tritium) completely independently at LANL. We are currently doing the paperwork for me to do some collaboration with LANL on the technology BEC is creating.
Robert
Yes I found the http://www.brillouinenergy.com/BrillouinEnergyHypothesis.pdf soon after. You are looking for “investors” on the basis that some stuff has been nearly replicated. What have you produced in terms of commercially viable power? What dividends? What profits? What products? In other words, where’s the beef?
Imagine yourself to be a rational observer: you encounter someone of whom it is stated publicly (see article above) that he has “a penchant for looking at things without the narrowed view of advanced degrees”. If you were sick, would you consult a physician possessing these credentials?
Would that same rational person entrust his or her life savings to someone of whom it is publicly stated (see article above): “This may sound a little convoluted, but Godes managed to keep the intellectual property in control as the second phase of getting to a business proposition stopped and the third stage got underway. Some will find this suspicious, but its not: its just good business sense.”? As sure as hell I wouldn’t!
Would a rational financial advisor counsel a client to invest in a company with this history (see article above) “Profusion Energy ran on Godes’ cash lending and when the wall was hit in 2008 the property of Profusion, patents, property and assets returned to Godes for settlement of the debt.”
You’re a big boy, Robert, and you know that the “free energy” field consists virtually entirely of scams and delusions. There is nothing in the material you have presented in public to suggest that you are in any way different from your rivals and predecessors. So I call you a scammer, because unless you’re a lunatic, that’s what I am morally certain you are.
But if you can refer me to scientifically-valid peer-reviewed confirmation of, or support for your “hypothesis”, I will be open minded enough to consider it.
And you haven’t explained the “If you were attempting to log in for more information on investing in Brillouin energy” on your broken link. But my scam theory explains it beautifully, not so?
Craig,
You sound like a member of the moral majority.
Statements like “Would that same rational person entrust his or her life savings”
shows that you have no concept of risk capital, never had any and never will.
Several PhD’s have reviewed my work including
Dr. David Sloan Stanford University, Ph.D., Experimental High Energy Physics (1974)
Dr. Cathy Cretsinger University of Rochester, Ph.D., Physics (1996)
and that is how Brillouin Energy now has multiple patent applications.
You say of investment “As sure as hell I wouldn’t!” Actually I doubt you could even if you wanted to.
Robert
I don’t know about majority, but I try to be moral, at least in terms of financial honesty. Sorry if that is not your way of doing things.
Risk capital isn’t the same as “throw your money at me” which you seem to think it is.
I don’t give a toss how many patent applications you have, as anyone can apply for them. I wouldn’t even care how many patents you had (and I notice you say nothing about this) because having a patent doesn’t prove that the patented device works. Reference to “patent applications” to impress “investors” is a well-known scam tactic.
PhDs reviewed your work in 1974 and 1996. Wow! What aspects of your hypothesis were reviewed, please? Their conclusions, please?
Is this the best you can offer? Reviews that happened so 37 and 15 years ago are the reason why Brillouin Energy “now” has “multiple patent applications”? That’s a truly bizarre statement.
I offered 2 possibilities, one of which is you’re a scammer. But the alternative hypothesis looks increasingly attractive.
Craig,
You seem to lack the ability to comprehend what you read. This would explain much of your ranting above. The dates an times of your last post are when those people graduated university, not when they reviewed the material.
I am not asking people to “throw your money at me”. I am looking for investors with some risk capital and offering a substantial return on investment once the business becomes cash flow positive. We expect that could be in as little as 12 months if we had 1% of the hot fusion budget in America for 1 year.
Above you make the statement “What have you produced in terms of commercially viable power? What dividends? What profits? What products? In other words, where’s the beef?”
I suppose you think the steam engine, light bulb, telephone, radio, computer, fission based nuclear power plants, TV, cell phone, ipod… just appeared out of thin air.
Lets look at the hot fusion crowd. Hundreds of millions of dollars per year for fifty years. What have THEY produced in terms of commercially viable power? What dividends? What profits? What products?
So where is the SCAM?
At this point in time BEC has only raised $450,000 in out side capital. We have already shown more than twice as much thermal energy out as electrical energy in for hours. The hot fusion camp. Not even close. They have barely achieved 1:1 for … 6 seconds. Yet we (Americans) are all forced to put hundreds of millions of dollars down that rat hole for 50 years now.
The first step in being a moral individual is to engage your brain and comprehend what you are criticizing. If you don’t comprehend then engage in questions instead of just attacking what you don’t comprehend.
“I am not asking people to “throw your money at me”. I am looking for investors with some risk capital and offering a substantial return on investment once the business becomes cash flow positive. We expect that could be in as little as 12 months if we had 1% of the hot fusion budget in America for 1 year.”
And if you don’t get that, do the investors get their money back. As to hot fusion, it works. The sun does it. Can it be made to work profitably on earth, is the question. Cold fusion has never been shown to work.
You’re a plain scammer.
You simply choose to be ignorant. LENR has been proven at SPAWAR, LANL, NRL, BARK (India) and these are just some of the government labs.
Ether you lack the ability to comprehend what you read or you simply choose to keep you head buried in sand.
Scam.
This guy is going out of his way to prove he is scamming!
When asked for proof he dodges!
When asked for peer reviewed articles he dodges!
and top that off with – “a penchant for looking at things without the narrowed view of advanced degrees”.
As the Aussies say “seems a bit dodgy to me”!
And what is up with the boxing glove?
Maybe it would work if “you took the gloves off”?
I just want to know if the EPG setup has any correlation to Rossi’s E-CAT. It was hinted at in another review from a reader. After thorough research it appears Rossi does have a Radio Frequency Generator for kick starting his reaction. He often utilises it through manual operation to re-start his device. It also appears there is no “Secret catalyst” as the preparation for the nano powder is provided by the same laboratory that provides Energetics Technologies although at a different specification. The catalyst in my judgement is the RFG.
What are scientists’ thoughts on LENR energy production technology?…
Only time will tell whether Rossi is a fraud or not. I’d rather keep my fingers crossed. Meanwhile, there other companies like Deflakion and Brillouin Energy working out to control the rate of excess heat. Btw the excess heat and it’s nuclear origin …
Howdy! This post couldn’t be written any better! Looking at this post reminds me of my
previous roommate! He constantly kept talking about
this. I most certainly will forward this post to him.
Fairly certain he’s going to have a good read. Thank you for
sharing!
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Despite the argument above, there seems to be one overriding failure that has plagued every LENR claim, and that is an utter lack of scientifically repeatable PEER-REVIEWED (or at least peer-reviewable) evidence to back up the claims. I would be more than happy to throw paltry savings at this company, and back it up by throwing a couple grand every month at the company so long as the DISINTERESTED [that means neither I, nor any other rational investor or scientist CAN (trust me, I WANT TO BELIEVE cold fusion is possible) believe what scientists who have not only a financial stake in people’s believing the feasibility of LENR, but also their careers.] SCIENTIFIC community at large can VERIFY your findings.
Another comment is that NEITHER of the “corrected” links work. They are as follows:
http://www.brillouinenergy.com/BE25Tec.PPS
http://www.brillouinenergy.com/BrillouinEnergyHypothesis.pdf
I am not sure if I am just not “tech-savvy” enough, or if these links are now dated or what.
Then I see how you compare your technology to that of radio, nuclear fission, and other monumental inventions/ discoveries. And, here is my take on it, to my knowledge, none of these technological advancements were shrouded in a veil of a secrecy with no scientific studies to back it up. I know you will point to the Manhattan Project to find fault in this however, Einstein’s theories on relativity are so insanely complete (even his “greatest blunder” or whatever he called it, turned out to be the cosmological constant, if only my mistakes were so productive). Then many other scientists published papers talking about the potential of these theories.
So, if you, Rossi, and whoever else is championing cold fusion as a current reality can allow for these results to be completely peer-reviewed, maybe then I could finally give in to my WISHES and BELIEVE in cold fusion. And while Rossi has had two separate groups “independently” verify his results, the problem is that HE set up the experiment, and then from what I understood based on what the research report said, HE CHANGED THE FUEL AFTER THE TEST. That’s the equivalent of a magician transforming a bunny to a bird. Maybe next time we could do without the legerdemain. Furthermore, the other “independent” verification, that I am aware of, was conducted by a Russian (I use that only to differentiate him from a couple other “attempts,” not that his being Russian has anything to do with his credibility, after all, the guy who solved the Poincare Conjecture was Russian) who has been touting LENR for years. Also, his results were shrouded in secrecy as to what “special sauce” was used.
Another fallacy I see you committing is in comparing the amount of money needed to the amount of funding for hot-fusion. Well, the facilities needed for nuclear fusion power as we currently know it are massive. The safeties that must be in check are numerous, to say the least. However, with LENR, we are talking about generators that can fit two to a semi truck, possibly smaller. Unless you need Diamond, gold, platinum, and iridium components, what is the problem associated with cost to build ONE SINGLE WORKING PROTOTYPE? That is all that is needed to silence the doubters (me, not to mention the scientific community at large). No one asking you to build a power-plant capable of sustaining New York City. IT would only take ONE small prototype.
Another fallacy I see is the confusion of “risk-capital” being equated to “blind faith.”
Lastly, this is the most ridiculous statement ever made: “a penchant for looking at things without the narrowed view of advanced degrees”. Really, “an ability to look at things through untrained and ignorant mind,” is somehow a strong point? Are you serious?
One more thing I forgot, It is now March 30th, 2015. These claims have been going on for over 5 years, some going back 10 to 15 years, and yet, here we are with no viable commercial LENR to speak of… Really?
Well considering that we have only spent ~$8MM on the technology development so far it is quite amazing that we are way farther along than the hot fusion crowd. We have replicated 4X more heat out than power delivered to the Ni catalyst at both our lab in Berkeley Ca and at SRI. I will have a poster at ICCF19 April 12 – 16 2015 in Padua Italy where you can see the progress we have made.