72 replies to this topic

[Mind]

Perhaps the release of cold fusion battery proposals from George Miley will prompt Blacklight Power to be more forthcoming with information. Although a lot of the description is non-controversial aspects of how to convert heat into electricity if you have a good source of heat. The controversy will not go away until the commercial units are operating and the reaction powders and components are openly available to third party testing and the specific claims are confirmed and reproduced.

Blacklight Power does not have to release a darn thing if they don't want to, but years and years of over-promising and opaque pdf's, will make it tougher for them to convince skeptics and even to sell the product.

[valkyrie_ice]

Perhaps the release of cold fusion battery proposals from George Miley will prompt Blacklight Power to be more forthcoming with information. Although a lot of the description is non-controversial aspects of how to convert heat into electricity if you have a good source of heat. The controversy will not go away until the commercial units are operating and the reaction powders and components are openly available to third party testing and the specific claims are confirmed and reproduced.

Blacklight Power does not have to release a darn thing if they don't want to, but years and years of over-promising and opaque pdf's, will make it tougher for them to convince skeptics and even to sell the product.

I was commenting on the LENR projects more than BLP Mind, as I am in wait and see mode on BLP as I've stated previously. I'm simply keeping up to date with them in my reports. Personally I'm thinking Ultracap batteries are going to have a much bigger impact sooner than LENR, BLP, or any flavor of Fusion. This thread is primarily about energy technologies, not BLP specifically. BLP is either going to prove out soon, or prove out as a fraud soon. The more energy companies that buy into them, the sooner it will be settled one way or the other.

[Mind]

Like I mentioned earlier, whether or not they have discovered some new physics, is somewhat irrelevant. Whether or not they can produce cheaper energy is the key. I hope it is true but like you I tend to keep up some healthy skepticism, seeing that earlier I found that one of their contracts smelled of nepotism, and the first contract is with a company that does not have a website or phone number - seems to be a shell-ish type corporation in NM.

[niner]

Like I mentioned earlier, whether or not they have discovered some new physics, is somewhat irrelevant. Whether or not they can produce cheaper energy is the key. I hope it is true but like you I tend to keep up some healthy skepticism, seeing that earlier I found that one of their contracts smelled of nepotism, and the first contract is with a company that does not have a website or phone number - seems to be a shell-ish type corporation in NM.

Estacado is a subsidiary of these guys. Looks like pretty small-time stuff. I'm not really sure what the point of these agreements is. When (and if) they finally have a working device, people will beat a path to their door. I don't have that hard of a time with the concept of new physics. I looked at the spectroscopic data, and you don't get the kind of doppler broadening they did without a substantial energy blast. This was work done in the gas phase. It was of such a nature that ordinary chemical reactions would be ruled out as causes, though I couldn't rule out that the whole thing was faked. However, there have been physical chemists from respectable outside institutions (aside from Rowan) who have looked it over and not found problems. But you're right, aside from the rewriting of some textbooks, the real question is can they translate it to engineering. It appears that they are making progress, assuming their reports are true. Today is the first I've heard of their new methodology for direct extraction of electricity from a hydrino reaction, along the lines of a fuel cell. It that pans out, it will be fundamentally game changing, going far beyond what has been discussed until now, which after all is kind of like a cheap, non-radioactive nuclear powerplant. That's great, and it would give you cheaper electricity, but the new direct conversion technology that they are now talking about will change everyone's life, should it fully materialize.

[valkyrie_ice]

http://nextbigfuture...res-enable.html

By combining a new generation of piezoelectric nanogenerators with two types of nanowire sensors, researchers have created what are believed to be the first self-powered nanometer-scale sensing devices that draw power from the conversion of mechanical energy. The new devices can measure the pH of liquids or detect the presence of ultraviolet light using electrical current produced from mechanical energy in the environment.

Based on arrays containing as many as 20,000 zinc oxide nanowires in each nanogenerator, the devices can produce up to 1.2 volts of output voltage, and are fabricated with a chemical process designed to facilitate low-cost manufacture on flexible substrates. Tests done with nearly one thousand nanogenerators – which have no mechanical moving parts – showed that they can be operated over time without loss of generating capacity.

The harvesting of mechanical energy from ambient sources could power electrical devices without the need for batteries. However, although the efficiency and durability of harvesting materials such as piezoelectric nanowires have steadily improved, the voltage and power produced by a single nanowire are insufficient for real devices. The integration of large numbers of nanowire energy harvesters into a single power source is therefore necessary, requiring alignment of the nanowires as well as synchronization of their charging and discharging processes. Here, we demonstrate the vertical and lateral integration of ZnO nanowires into arrays that are capable of producing sufficient power to operate real devices. A lateral integration of 700 rows of ZnO nanowires produces a peak voltage of 1.26 V at a low strain of 0.19%, which is potentially sufficient to recharge an AA battery. In a separate device, a vertical integration of three layers of ZnO nanowire arrays produces a peak power density of 2.7 mW cm−3. We use the vertically integrated nanogenerator to power a nanowire pH sensor and a nanowire UV sensor, thus demonstrating a self-powered system composed entirely of nanowires.

And now, self powering devices. Nanoscale now, but appearing to be scalable to macroscale. Harvesting energy from the environment. Will our clothes soon power our personal electronics? Have we found a perfect energy source for nanomachines?

Regardless of BLP, LENR and Fusion, we're discovering new ways to produce energy. It's going to be interesting to see which becomes dominant first.

[bgwowk]

"The harvesting of mechanical energy from ambient sources" is a euphemism for the technology used by a self-winding watch. Anybody remember those? Basically, if you wear an electronic device, your own movements can supply the energy to power it. There's no new physics. Conservation of energy is not violated. It's not in the same league as cranky "free energy" companies.

[Luna]

a really cool thing would be something which will collect heat (like the "heat wasted due to the second law of thermodynamics") and store it in a battery as usable energy I wonder how possible it is.

[niner]

a really cool thing would be something which will collect heat (like the "heat wasted due to the second law of thermodynamics") and store it in a battery as usable energy I wonder how possible it is.

According to the Second Law, not very... It depends on the temperature. The hotter the heat source relative to the surroundings, the more energy you can get from it.

[Luna]

a really cool thing would be something which will collect heat (like the "heat wasted due to the second law of thermodynamics") and store it in a battery as usable energy I wonder how possible it is.

According to the Second Law, not very... It depends on the temperature. The hotter the heat source relative to the surroundings, the more energy you can get from it.

yeah well my hope is that we will find the second law was made by primitive savages

besides it says "in nature"

[valkyrie_ice]

"The harvesting of mechanical energy from ambient sources" is a euphemism for the technology used by a self-winding watch. Anybody remember those? Basically, if you wear an electronic device, your own movements can supply the energy to power it. There's no new physics. Conservation of energy is not violated. It's not in the same league as cranky "free energy" companies.

harvesting mechanical energy is certainly not new. Harvesting it on the nanoscale in useful amounts to power nanoelectronics is. Being able to scale it up to the macroscale is also new. One of the biggest questions in Nanorobotics is "how do we power the damn thing?" And this is an answer. That it can be ramped up to the macroscale is also something which presents the radical possibilities of self powering devices, similar to ZPE, LENR, BLP, and Fusion. That it's a radical new application of an old tech is rather besides the point.

[valkyrie_ice]

Well, it looks like it's put up or shut up time for BLP:

http://nextbigfuture...dation-and.html

Blacklight Power claims to have a revolutionary and highly controversial energy generation process that is about one hundred times more powerful than chemical processes. They have a new 169 page technical presentation, but the main point of interest is on the bottom of the page three slide.

Validations and Technical Due Diligence - underway with National Labs, defense contractors, electronics manufacturers, large conglomerates, multi-national energy companies and others.

This would suggest that they have widely distributed something for those organizations and institutes to test and validate. It is probably the powders which are supposed to generate more heat than normal chemical processes. Those powders were validated by researchers at Rowan University. If there is something being widely validated then one would think that it would be in Blacklight Power's interest to widely publicize results by those third parties (assuming success). Also, it should not take more than a few weeks to perform the actual tests and no more than months to verify. It would be highly suspect if none of these validations were published by the end of 2010.

We're either going to have proof of function, or proof of chicanery.

If proof, some physics textbooks are going to have to be rewritten, but our fossil fuel dependence will end. But either way, it will soon be over one way or the other.

[valkyrie_ice]

From Next Big Future.

http://nextbigfuture...ight-power.html

There is new theory for explaining one category of LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions - what was called cold fusion.) results involving nickel as the active host; and in particular the Arata-Zhang results and numerous replications.

Nickel-64 can be purchased at 95% enrichment for about $100,000 for 5 grams. The ratio of isotopes is not controversial. Can these reactions be catalyzed ? Is that what is happening with many LENR and Blacklight Power experiments ?

I say yes, but experiments can be done to confirm or falsify this theory.

This theory has been updated by Jones Beene (H/T to Froarty in the comments)
An earlier version of the theory focused on Halo Nuclei but now it does not.
The O-P effect would give 59Ni as the activated nucleus - but this has a very long half-lie - thousands of years so that does not help us very much. However, with 64Ni you get 65Ni as the activated nucleus and it has a 2.5 hr half life and decays to copper. This is the range half-life that can explain "heat after death" and also the delay in heat buildup over time.

The Oppenheimer-Phillips process, or deuteron stripping reaction, is a type of deuteron-induced nuclear reaction which depends on charge shielding. In this process, the neutron component of an energetic deuteron fuses with a target nucleus, transmuting the target to a heavier isotope while ejecting a proton. An example is the nuclear transmutation of carbon-12 to carbon-13.

Let us make the clear distinction that this is a fusion reaction, followed by beta day of the heavier nucleus. The fusion is between deuterium and nickel. The ash is a proton, and eventually a beta particle and a transmuted element (to copper). The mechanics of interaction allow a nuclear fusion interaction to take place at much lower energies than would be expected from a calculation of the Coulomb barrier between a deuteron and a target nucleus.

This is because as the deuteron approaches the positively charged target nucleus, it experiences a charge polarization where the "proton-end" faces away from the target and the "neutron-end" faces towards the target. The deuteron must be accelerated of course, but the rate of acceleration, being a function of time, is expected to be influenced by time distortion within a Casimir cavity. In this hypothesis, the Casimir cavity of 2-10 nm is required. The fusion proceeds when the binding energy of the approaching neutron and the target nucleus exceeds the binding energy of the deuteron and the trailing proton. That proton is then repelled from the new heavier nucleus. This is one indication of the reaction - hydrogen in place of deuterium - which will poison the reaction unless removed.
Copper 65 is the stable atom that results.


Nickel is about 1% Nickel 64 (although this can vary quite a bit. It is higher from certain meteorite sources.)

The energy release occurs mostly by de-excitation through γ emission of the intermediate excited Ni* compound nucleus. The characteristics of this γ emission (depending upon the levels of the excited nucleus), are very well known. This represents (on average) some 8 MeV (balance after deduction of the energy required for the "virtual neutron" formation, i.e 0,782 Mev). The remaining comes from the decay of the ground states of the radioactive intermediate species formed (59Ni, 63Ni, and 65Ni).
1% of 67 keV8 MeV is 80 keV per Nickel Atom and 1.3 keV per neutron or proton. Thus these reactions would have one thousand times the energy density of hydrogen chemical reactions.

Halo Nucleus at wikipedia.

In nuclear physics a stripping reaction is a nuclear reaction in which part of the incident nucleus combines with the target nucleus, and the remainder proceeds with most of its original momentum in almost its original direction.

Deuteron (proton and neutron) stripping reactions acting on nickel isotopes could also be part of what is happening.

Deuteron stripping example at Britannica

Robert Oppenheimer and Melba Philips in Phys rev. 1935 published the concept of deuteron stripping reactions and it is also called the Oppenheimer-Phillips process.

The Oppenheimer-Phillips process allows a nuclear interaction to take place at lower energies than would be expected from a simple calculation of the Coulomb barrier between a deuteron and a target nucleus. This is because as the deuteron approaches the positively charged target nucleus, it experiences a charge polarization where the "proton-end" faces away from the target and the "neutron-end" faces towards the target. The fusion proceeds when the binding energy of the neutron and the target nucleus exceeds the binding energy of the deuteron and a proton is then repelled from the new heavier nucleus




Proposed Experiment and Deuterium Fusion as Secondary Reaction

If a side by side experiment involving nickel cathodes - one of which is enriched in Ni-64 and the other is normal or depleted - show a significant variation in energy release favoring heavy nickel, then that is a prima facie case for the hypothesis that LENR part of the energy release is a result of non-fusion beta decay. Another test would be to look for copper as the transmutation product.

Once again, although this sounds suspiciously like Widom-Larsen theory it is far removed from what they are claiming, and in fact the beta decay itself would be the driver for real deuterium fusion as a secondary step in LENR.

This would be a two step process, where indeed the main energy comes from deuterium fusion, but the "driver" for that fusion is in situ beta decay. BTW the effective mass of the beta particle (fast electron) could be in the range of a muon on occasion due to the velocity - and it could well turn out that this the type of reaction is actually based on "(substitute) muon catalyzed deuterium fusion."

[Mind]

I have been meaning to call the power companies who have apparently purchased this technology to ask if the Blackpower generator is working as expected...one of these days.

I finally got around to calling the first company to license the technology - the electric cooperative in New Mexico - and blogged about it: http://addins.waow.c...fact-or-fiction

Here is the relevant information I found out:

Ok, so I called (just now) the Electric Cooperative in New Mexico that was the first to license the Blacklight technology. According to the manager, they have not yet received any device or product from Blacklight, they only have an agreement to use it, when becomes available. I asked if Blacklight had given them a time frame to expect delivery and he couldn’t really say. He only mentioned that Blacklight is currently working on how to best integrate the hydrino device into their current power generation and distribution equipment. Blacklight still sounds a bit fishy to me.