Cold fusion: experiments create energy that shouldn't be there

• Translation

This area is now called low-energy nuclear reactions, and real results can be achieved in it - or it can turn out to be stubborn junk science.

Dr. Martin Fleischman (right), an electrochemist, and Stanley Pons, chairman of the University of Utah's chemistry department, answer questions from the Science and Technology Committee regarding their controversial work in cold fusion, April 26, 1989.

Howard J. Wilk is a synthetic organic chemist who has been out of business for a long time and lives in Philadelphia. Like many other researchers in the pharmaceutical field, he has been the victim of a decline in R&D in the pharmaceutical industry in recent years and is now in non-scientific part-time jobs. With time to spare, Wilk tracks the progress of the New Jersey-based company, Brilliant Light Power (BLP).

It is one of those companies that are developing processes that can be broadly referred to as new energy technologies. This movement is, for the most part, a resurrection of cold fusion, a short-lived phenomenon in the 1980s associated with the production of nuclear fusion in a simple tabletop electrolytic device that scientists quickly dismissed.

In 1991, BLP founder Randall L. Mills announced at a press conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that he was developing a theory that an electron in hydrogen could transition from a normal, ground energy state to previously unknown, more stable, lower energy states. , with the release of a huge amount of energy. Mills named this strange new type of compressed hydrogen, "", and has since worked to develop a commercial device that collects this energy.

Wilk studied Mills' theory, read papers and patents, and did his own calculations for hydrinos. Wilk even attended a demonstration at the BLP site in Cranbury, New Jersey, where he discussed hydrino with Mills. After that, Wilk still can't decide if Mills is an unreal genius, a delusional scientist, or something in between.

The story began in 1989, when electrochemists Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons made the astonishing announcement at a press conference at the University of Utah that they had tamed the energy of nuclear fusion in an electrolytic cell.

When the researchers applied an electric current to the cell, in their opinion, the deuterium atoms from the heavy water, which penetrated the palladium cathode, entered into a fusion reaction and gave rise to helium atoms. The excess energy of the process was converted into heat. Fleischmann and Pons argued that this process could not be the result of any known chemical reaction, and added the term "cold fusion" to it.

After many months of investigating their cryptic observations, however, the scientific community came to an agreement that the effect was unstable, or absent altogether, and that errors were made in the experiment. Research was discarded, and cold fusion became synonymous with junk science.

Cold fusion and hydrino production is the holy grail for endless, cheap and clean energy. Cold fusion disappointed scientists. They wanted to believe in him, but their collective intelligence decided it was a mistake. Part of the problem was the lack of a generally accepted theory to explain the proposed phenomenon - as physicists say, you cannot believe an experiment until it is confirmed by theory.

Mills has his own theory, but many scientists do not believe her and consider hydrino to be unlikely. The community rejected cold fusion and ignored Mills and his work. Mills did the same, trying not to fall into the shadow of cold fusion.

Meanwhile, the field of cold fusion changed its name to low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), and continues to exist. Some scientists continue to try to explain the Fleischmann-Pons effect. Others have rejected nuclear fusion, but are exploring other possible processes that could explain the excess heat. Like Mills, they were attracted by the potential for commercial applications. They are mainly interested in energy production for industrial needs, households and transport.

A small number of companies created in an effort to bring new energy technologies to market have business models similar to those of any tech startup: identify a new technology, try to patent an idea, generate investor interest, get funding, build prototypes, hold a demonstration, announce worker entry dates. devices for sale. But in the new energy world, timing violations is the norm. No one has yet taken the final step of demonstrating a working device.

New theory

Mills grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, earned a chemistry degree from Franklin and Marshall College, a medical degree from Harvard University, and studied electrical engineering at MIT. As a student, he began to develop what he called the Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics, which he says is based on classical physics and proposes a new model of atoms and molecules, departing from the foundations of quantum physics.

It is generally accepted that a single electron of hydrogen snoops around its core, being in the most acceptable orbit of the ground state. It is simply impossible to move the hydrogen electron closer to the nucleus. But Mills claims it is possible.

He now works as a researcher at Airbus Defense & Space, and says he has not tracked Mills' activities since 2007 because there was no clear indication of excess energy in the experiments. “I doubt any later experiments were scientifically selected,” Rathke said.

“I think it is generally accepted that Dr. Mills's theory, which he put forward as the basis for his claims, is contradictory and incapable of predicting,” continues Rathke. One might ask, "Could we have so fortunately stumbled upon an energy source that simply works by following the wrong theoretical approach?" ".

In the 1990s, several researchers, including the Lewis Research Center team, independently reported replicating Mills' approach and generating excess heat. The NASA team wrote in a report that "the results are far from convincing," and did not say anything about the hydrino.

Researchers have proposed possible electrochemical processes to explain heat, including the unevenness of the electrochemical cell, unknown exothermic chemical reactions, and the recombination of separated hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water. Critics of the Fleischmann-Pons experiments also used the same arguments. But a team from NASA clarified that researchers shouldn't dismiss this phenomenon, just in case Mills stumbles upon something.

Mills speaks very quickly, and is able to talk about technical details forever. In addition to predicting hydrinos, Mills argues that his theory can perfectly predict the location of any electron in a molecule, using special molecular modeling software, and even in complex molecules like DNA. Using standard quantum theory, scientists have a hard time predicting the exact behavior of anything more complex than a hydrogen atom. Mills also claims that his theory explains the phenomenon of the expansion of the Universe with acceleration, which cosmologists have not yet fully figured out.

In addition, Mills says that hydrinos are created by burning hydrogen in stars such as our sun, and that they can be found in the spectrum of starlight. Hydrogen is considered the most abundant element in the universe, but Mills argues that hydrinos are dark matter that cannot be found in the universe. Astrophysicists are surprised to hear such suggestions: “I've never heard of hydrinos,” says Edward W. (Rocky) Kolb of the University of Chicago, an expert on the dark universe.

Mills reported successful isolation and characterization of hydrinos using standard spectroscopic techniques such as infrared, Raman, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In addition, he said, hydrinos can enter into reactions that lead to the emergence of new types of materials with "amazing properties." This includes conductors that Mills says will revolutionize the world of electronic devices and batteries.

And while his claims contradict public opinion, Mills' ideas seem less exotic compared to other unusual components of the universe. For example, muonium is a well-known short-lived exotic entity consisting of an anti-muon (a positively charged particle similar to an electron) and an electron. Chemically, muonium behaves like an isotope of hydrogen, but is nine times lighter.

SunCell Hydrine Fuel Cell

Regardless of where the hydrino is located on the likelihood scale, Mills said ten years ago that BLP has already moved beyond scientific confirmation, and it is only interested in the commercial side of the issue. Over the years, BLP has raised over $ 110 million in investments.

BLP's approach to making hydrinos has manifested itself in different ways. In early prototypes, Mills and his team used tungsten or nickel electrodes with an electrolytic solution of lithium or potassium. The supplied current split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and under the right conditions, lithium or potassium played the role of a catalyst for the absorption of energy and the collapse of the electron orbit of hydrogen. The energy arising from the transition from the atomic ground state to a state with a lower energy was released in the form of a bright high-temperature plasma. The associated heat was then used to create steam and power an electric generator.

BLP is currently testing a SunCell device in which hydrogen (from water) and an oxide catalyst are fed into a spherical carbon reactor with two streams of molten silver. An electrical current applied to silver triggers a plasma reaction to form hydrinos. The reactor's energy is captured by carbon, which acts as a "blackbody radiator". When it heats up to thousands of degrees, it emits energy in the form of visible light, captured by photovoltaic cells that convert light into electricity.

When it comes to commercial development, Mills sometimes looks paranoid and sometimes a down-to-earth businessman. He registered the trademark "Hydrino". And since its patents claim the invention of hydrino, BLP claims intellectual property for hydrino research. In this regard, BLP prohibits other experimenters from conducting even basic research on hydrinos that can confirm or deny their existence, without first signing an intellectual property agreement. “We invite researchers, we want others to do it,” Mills says. "But we need to protect our technology."

Instead, Mills has appointed designated validators who claim to be able to validate BLP inventions. One is Bucknell University electrical engineer Professor Peter M. Jansson, who is paid to evaluate BLP technology through his consultancy Integrated Systems. Jenson argues that compensating for his time "does not in any way affect my conclusions as an independent researcher of scientific discoveries." He adds that he "disproved most of the discoveries" he studied.

“The BLP scientists are doing real science, and so far I have not found any errors in their methods and approaches,” says Jenson. “Over the years, I have seen many devices in BLP that are clearly capable of generating surplus energy in meaningful quantities. I think it will take the scientific community some time to accept and digest the possibility of low-energy hydrogen states. In my opinion, Dr. Mills's work is undeniable. " Jenson adds that BLP faces challenges in commercializing the technology, but the obstacles are business rather than scientific.

In the meantime, BLP has held several demonstrations of its new prototypes to investors since 2014, and posted videos on its website. But these events do not provide clear evidence that SunCell actually works.

In July, following one of the demonstrations, the company announced that the estimated cost of energy from SunCell is so low - from 1% to 10% of any other known form of energy - that the company “intends to provide self-contained individual power supplies for virtually all stationary and mobile applications, not tied to the grid or fuel energy sources ”. In other words, the company plans to build and lease SunCells or other devices to consumers, charging a daily fee, and allowing them to disconnect from power grids and stop buying gasoline or solarium, while spending much less money.

“This is the end of the era of fire, the combustion engine and centralized power systems,” says Mills. “Our technology will make all other types of energy technologies obsolete. Climate change problems will be solved ”. He adds that it looks like BLP could start producing products to start MW plants by the end of 2017.

What's in a name?

Despite the uncertainty surrounding Mills and BLP, their story is only part of the overall new energy saga. When the dust settled after Fleischmann-Pons's initial announcement, the two researchers set about studying what was right and what was wrong. They were joined by dozens of co-authors and independent researchers.

Many of these scientists and engineers, often self-employed, were less interested in commercial opportunities than in science: electrochemistry, metallurgy, calorimetry, mass spectrometry, and nuclear diagnostics. They continued to run experiments that produced excess heat, defined as the amount of energy given out by the system in relation to the energy required to run it. In some cases, nuclear anomalies have been reported, such as the appearance of neutrinos, α-particles (helium nuclei), isotopes of atoms, and transmutations of some elements to others.

But in the end, most researchers are looking for an explanation for what is happening, and would be happy even if a modest amount of heat was beneficial.

"NENR is in an experimental phase and has not yet been theoretically understood," says David J. Nagel, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University. George Washington, and former research manager at the Marine Research Laboratory. “Some of the results are simply inexplicable. Call it cold fusion, low-energy nuclear reactions, or whatever - names are enough - we still don't know anything about it. But there is no doubt that nuclear reactions can be triggered using chemical energy. "

Nagel prefers to call the LENR phenomenon "lattice nuclear reactions", since the phenomenon occurs in the crystal lattices of the electrode. The original offshoot of this area concentrates on incorporating deuterium into the palladium electrode by applying high energy, Nagel explains. Researchers have reported that such electrochemical systems can produce up to 25 times more energy than they consume.

Another major offshoot of the area uses a combination of nickel and hydrogen, which produces up to 400 times more energy than it consumes. Nagel likes to compare these LENR technologies to an experimental international thermonuclear reactor based on well-known physics - the fusion of deuterium and tritium - which is being built in southern France. This 20-year project is worth $ 20 billion and aims to produce 10 times more energy than is consumed.

Nagel says the field of NENR is growing everywhere, and the main obstacles are lack of funding and volatile results. For example, some researchers report that a threshold must be reached to trigger a response. It may require a minimum amount of deuterium or hydrogen to start, or the electrodes need to be prepared with crystallographic orientation and surface morphology. The latter requirement is common for heterogeneous catalysts used in gasoline refining and petrochemical industries.

Nagel admits that the commercial side of NENR also has problems. The prototypes under development are, he says, "pretty crude," and there hasn't yet been a company to showcase a working prototype or make money from it.

E-Cat from Rossi

One striking attempt to commercialize NENR was made by an engineer at Leonardo Corp, based in Miami. In 2011, Rossi and his colleagues announced at a press conference in Italy that they were building an Energy Catalyst, or E-Cat, tabletop reactor that produces excess energy from a nickel-catalyzed process. To substantiate the invention, Rossi demonstrated the E-Cat to potential investors and the media, and ordered independent reviews.

Rossi claims that his E-Cat is a self-sustaining process in which incoming electrical current triggers the synthesis of hydrogen and lithium in the presence of a powdered mixture of nickel, lithium and lithium aluminum hydride, resulting in a beryllium isotope. Short-lived beryllium breaks down into two alpha particles, and excess energy is released as heat. Some of the nickel is converted to copper. Rossi says there is no waste or radiation outside the apparatus.

Rossi's announcement caused scientists the same unpleasant feeling as cold fusion. Rossi is distrustful of many people because of his controversial past. In Italy, he was accused of fraud due to his previous business machinations. Rossi says these allegations are a thing of the past and does not want to discuss them. He also once had a contract to create thermal installations for the US Armed Forces, but the devices he supplied did not work according to specifications.

In 2012, Rossi announced the creation of a 1 MW system suitable for heating large buildings. He also assumed that by 2013 he would already have a factory that annually produces a million units of 10 kW and the size of a laptop, intended for home use. But neither the factory nor these devices ever happened.

In 2014, Rossi licensed the technology to Industrial Heat, a public investment firm Cherokee that buys real estate and cleans up old industrial areas for new development. In 2015, Cherokee CEO Tom Darden, a lawyer and environmentalist by training, called Industrial Heat "a source of funding for NENR inventors."

Darden says Cherokee launched Industrial Heat because the investment firm believes the NENR technology is worthy of research. “We were willing to be wrong, we were willing to invest time and resources to see if this area could be useful in our mission to prevent pollution [the environment],” he says.

Meanwhile, Industrial Heat and Leonardo had a fight, and are now suing each other over violations of the agreement. Rossi would receive $ 100 million if the annual test of his 1 MW system was successful. Rossi says the test is over, but Industrial Heat doesn't think so and fears the device isn't working.

Nagel says E-Cat has brought enthusiasm and hope to the LENR field. In 2012, he argued that, in his opinion, Rossi was not a fraud, "but I don't like some of his approaches to testing." Nagel believed that Rossi should have acted more carefully and transparently. But at that time, Nagel himself believed that devices based on the LENR principle would be on sale by 2013.

Rossi continues research and has announced the development of other prototypes. But he says little about his work. He says the 1MW devices are already in production and he has received "the necessary certifications" to sell them. Home devices, he said, are still awaiting certification.

Nagel says the status quo has returned to the NENR after the downturn in the joyful mood associated with Russia's announcements. The availability of commercial NENR generators has been pushed back by several years. And even if the device survives the reproducibility issues and is useful, its designers will face a fierce battle with regulators and user acceptance.

But he remains optimistic. “NENR may become commercially available before they are fully understood, as was the case with X-rays,” he says. He has already equipped a laboratory at the University. George Washington for new experiments with nickel and hydrogen.

Scientific heritage

Many researchers who continue to work on NENR are retired scientists who have already taken place. This is not easy for them, because for years their work was returned unviewed from mainstream journals, and their proposals for reports at scientific conferences were not accepted. They are increasingly worried about the status of this research area as their time runs out. They want to either fix their legacy in the scientific history of NENR, or at least calm down that their instincts did not let them down.

"It was very unfortunate when cold fusion was first published in 1989 as a new source of fusion energy, not just some new scientific curiosity," says electrochemist Melvin Miles. "Perhaps research could go on as usual, with more accurate and precise scrutiny."

A former researcher at the China Lake Aeronautical Research Center, Miles occasionally worked with Fleischmann, who died in 2012. Miles thinks Fleischmann and Pons were right. But even today he does not know how to make a commercial power source for the system from palladium and deuterium, despite many experiments, during which excess heat was obtained, correlating with the production of helium.

“Why would anyone continue to research or be interested in a topic that was declared a mistake 27 years ago? Miles asks. "I am convinced that cold fusion will someday be recognized as another important discovery that has been accepted for a long time, and a theoretical platform will emerge to explain the results of the experiments."

Nuclear physicist Ludwik Kowalski, professor emeritus at Montclair State University, agrees that cold fusion was the victim of a bad start. “I'm old enough to remember the effect the first announcement had on the scientific community and the public,” says Kowalski. At times he collaborated with NENR researchers, "but my three attempts to corroborate the sensational claims were unsuccessful."

Kowalski believes that the first shame earned by the research resulted in a bigger problem, inappropriate for the scientific method. Whether the NENR researchers are fair or not, Kowalski still believes that it is worth getting to the bottom of a clear “yes” or “no” verdict. But it won't be found until cold fusion researchers are considered "eccentric pseudoscientists," says Kowalski. "Progress is impossible, and no one benefits from the fact that the results of honest research are not published, and no one independently verifies them in other laboratories."

Time will show

Even if Kowalski gets an unambiguous answer to his question and the statements of the NENR researchers are confirmed, the road to the commercialization of the technology will be full of obstacles. Many startups, even those with reliable technology, fail for reasons unrelated to science: capitalization, liquidity flows, cost, production, insurance, uncompetitive prices, etc.

Take Sun Catalytix, for example. The company exited MIT with the backing of hard science, but fell victim to commercial attacks before it entered the market. It was created to commercialize artificial photosynthesis developed by Harvard chemist Daniel G. Nocera to efficiently convert water into hydrogen fuel using sunlight and an inexpensive catalyst.

Nocera dreamed that the hydrogen produced in this way could power simple fuel cells and provide energy to homes and villages in the backward regions of the world without access to power grids, and enabling them to enjoy modern conveniences that improve living standards. But the development took much more money and time than it seemed at first. Four years later, Sun Catalytix gave up trying to commercialize the technology, dived into stream batteries, and was bought by Lockheed Martin in 2014.

It is not known whether the same obstacles impede the development of NENR companies. For example, Wilk, the organic chemist who has followed Mills' progress, is preoccupied with trying to figure out if the attempts to commercialize BLP are based on something real. He just needs to know if a hydrino exists.

In 2014, Wilk asked Mills if he had isolated the hydrino, and although Mills has already written in papers and patents that he succeeded, he replied that this has not happened yet, and that it would be "a very big task." But Wilk thinks otherwise. If the process creates liters of hydrine gas, this should be obvious. “Show us the hydrino!” Wilk demands.

Wilk says that Mills' world, and with it the world of other people involved in NENR, reminds him of one of Zeno's paradoxes, which speaks of the illusory nature of movement. "Every year they cover half the distance to commercialization, but will they ever get to it?" Wilk came up with four explanations for BLP: Mills's calculations are correct; This is a fraud; this is bad science; it is a pathological science, as the Nobel laureate in physics Irving Langmuir called it.

Langmuir invented this term more than 50 years ago to describe the psychological process in which a scientist subconsciously moves away from the scientific method and is so immersed in his occupation that it develops the inability to objectively look at things and see what is real and what is not. Pathological science is "the science of things that are not what they seem," Langmuir said. In some cases, it develops in areas such as cold fusion / LENR, and does not give up in any way, despite the fact that it is recognized as false by most scientists.

“Hope they're right,” Wilk says of Mills and BLP. "Indeed. I do not want to refute them, I am just looking for the truth. " But if “pigs could fly,” as Wilkes says, he would accept their data, theory, and other predictions that follow from it. But he was never a believer. "I think if hydrinos existed, they would have been discovered in other laboratories or in nature many years ago."

All discussions of cold fusion and NENR end this way: they always come to the conclusion that no one has released a working device on the market, and none of the prototypes will be commercialized in the near future. So time will be the final judge.

Tags:

• cold fusion
• nayyar
• low energy nuclear reactions
• suncell
• Russia
• e-cat

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