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Posted on 11/04/2005 5:06:51 PM PST by Anthem
· Scientist says device disproves quantum theory
· Opponents claim idea is result of wrong maths
It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. If that does not sound radical enough, how about this: the principle behind the source turns modern physics on its head.
Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. Independent scientists claim to have verified the experiments and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market. And he claims to be just months away from unveiling his creation.
"Avionics" is shorthand for "aviation electronics." What does this have to do with bumble bees?
My mistake, wrong word there ... should have said aerodynamics
That's aerodynamics. Avionics merely says the Bumble Bee isn't equipped to fly IFR.
If it sounds too good to be true, IT IS.
Think about it: if this energy idea was so obvious, don't you think someone would have discovered it long before now?
Common sense defeats fraudsters and charlatans every time.
LOL!
:
This is not necessarily true.
Take radio, for example. The modulation, if you tried to listen on just a plain wire, you would not be able to hear anything.
Only when you hook it up to a diode does the waveform that we audibly hear emerge.
Radio is a remarkably simple idea. But unless you have a way of chopping off and throwing away that lower half of the waveform, you would never hear it.
I thought I'd throw this in for the hell of it.
WEST ORANGE, NEW JERSEY, USA -- Imagine a non-polluting power plant, the size of a local gas station, that would quietly and safely power 4,000 homes, for a few tenths of a penny per kilowatt-hour, compared to 4-6 cents/kw-h of coal or natural-gas-powered plants. One technician could operate two dozen of these stations remotely. The fuel, widely available, is barely spent in the clean fusion method, and would only need to be changed annually.
That is what inventor Eric Lerner envisions with his focus fusion technology in which hydrogen and boron combine into helium, while giving off tremendous amounts of energy in the process.
The size and power output would make it ideal for providing localized power, reducing transmission losses and large-grid vulnerabilities. The cost and reliability would make it affordable for developing nations and regions.
Thomas Valone on Focus Fusion - When asked 'What energy technology looks most promising, that is not getting due attention', well-known and revered energy researcher and U.S. Patent reviewer, Tom Valone, Ph.D., answers: "Focus Fusion".
(Sterling Allan's interview with Tom Valone at the ExtraOrdinary Technology conference in Salt Lake City, July 28-31, 2005; produced by OSEN.)
Cutaway of the ITER Tokamak
Dr. Thomas Valone, of Integrity Research Institute calls it "the most ideal fusion project," and he even points to it as the most feasible, but neglected, energy technology in general. (See interview.)
With proper funding, implementation of Lerner's vision could begin within half a decade. The capital investment of a few millions that he needs seems miniscule compared to the 10 billion dollars being pumped into the multinational Tokamak fusion project in France. (Ref.)
While both processes are considered "hot fusion", focus fusion is not "fission." As stated on the focus fusion website: "A fission reactor is the type of nuclear reactor we are all used to, and these use chain reactions which can lead to meltdown. They also have problems with radioactive waste." Focus fusion has no such problems.
Lerner has been pulling together the theoretical basis for this technology for two decades. Since 1994 he has been able to secure funding, beginning with a grant from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That initial grant enabled him to test key components of his theory. Though that funding has dried up apparently due to cuts in NASA's propulsion research, Lerner has been able to land ongoing funding to keep the research advancing.
It is no wonder that NASA would be interested, inasmuch as the modeling predicts that a craft using Lerner's technology could reach Mars in just two weeks. The ionic particles would be escaping out the rocket nozzle at 10,000 kilometer per second, compared to the 2 km/s of present rocket propellant.
Efficiency and Safety
In the case of electricity generation, the speeding ionic particles would be coupled directly to the generation of electricity through a beam of ions being coupled by a high tech transformer into currents that are fed to capacitors, which would both pulse the energy back through the device to keep the process going, as well as send excess energy out for use on the grid.
This direct coupling is one of the primary advantages of this technology. It sidesteps the centuries-old approach of converting water to steam in order to drive turbines and generators. That process accounts for 80% of the total capital costs required in a typical power plant. By going straight from the fusion energy to electricity, Lerner's fusion process eliminates that need altogether, enabling streamlining of the process and a much smaller size to achieve equivalent power output.
And his device could be fired up and shut off with the flip of a switch, with no damaging radiation, no threat of meltdown, and no possibility of explosions. It is an all-or-nothing, full-bore or shut-off scenario. Because it can be shut off and turned on so easily, a bank of these could easily accommodate whatever surges and ebbs are faced by the grid on a given day, without wasting unused energy from non-peak times into the environment, which is the case with much of the grid’s energy at present. (Ref.)
How the Theoretical Focus Fusion Reactor Works
The proposed focus-fusion reactor involves two components: the hydrogen-boron fuel, and a plasma focus device. The combination of these into the focus-fusion process is the invention of Eric Lerner.
The plasma-focus technology has been well established elsewhere, and has a forty-year track record. Invented in 1964, the Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) device is used in many types of research. (Ref.)
As described on the Focus Fusion website, the DPF device consists of two cylindrical copper or beryllium electrodes nested inside each other. The outer electrode is generally no more than six to seven inches in diameter and a foot long. The electrodes are enclosed in a vacuum chamber with a low-pressure gas (the fuel for the reaction) filling the space between them.
.
The Dense Plasma Focus device is roughly the size of a coffee can.
Next comes the fuel. The gas Lerner plans to use in the DPF is a mixture of Hydrogen and Boron. Their site gives an explanation of the research steps needed to use this type of fuel with the DPF. (Ref1; Ref2.)
According to their site, the way the proposed focus fusion reactor would work is as follows:
A pulse of electricity from a capacitor bank is discharged across the electrodes. For a few millionths of a second, an intense current flows from the outer to the inner electrode through the gas. This current starts to heat the gas and creates an intense magnetic field.
Guided by its own magnetic field, the current forms itself into a thin sheath of tiny filaments -- little whirlwinds of hot, electrically-conducting gas called plasma.
Picture of plasma filaments:
Schematic drawing of plasma filaments:
Photo of hot plasma vortex filaments
Hot plasma vortex filaments pinched together by their own magnetic fields in a plasma focus fusion device.
Photo taken by Winston Bostick & Victorio Nardi using an exposure time of a few nanoseconds. (Ref)
This sheath travels to the end of the inner electrode where the magnetic fields produced by the currents pinch and twist the plasma into a tiny, dense ball only a few thousandths of an inch across called a plasmoid. All of this happens without being guided by external magnets.
The magnetic fields very quickly collapse, and these changing magnetic fields induce an electric field which causes a beam of electrons to flow in one direction and a beam of ions (atoms that have lost electrons) in the other. The electron beam heats the plasmoid, thus igniting fusion reactions which add more energy to the plasmoid. So in the end, the ion and electron beams contain more energy than was input by the original electric current.
These beams of charged particles are directed into decelerators which act like particle accelerators in reverse. Instead of using electricity to accelerate charged particles they decelerate charged particles and to produce electricity. (Ref. The above quote was slightly edited.)
Some of this electricity is recycled to power the next fusion pulse, at a frequency expected to be optimal at around 1000 times per second. The excess energy from each pulse is available as net energy, and is output as product electricity from the fusion power plant for sale to the grid – or will be, once this is all proven and implemented.
X-Ray Shielding
While the process would not create residual radioactivity, it does give off strong x-ray emissions, which can be harnessed by a high-tech photoelectric cell for additional energy capture in a process similar to a photovoltaic solar cell. The primary difference is in the concentration of particles. "Solar energy is diffuse," said Lerner, explaining that the focus fusion process would be highly concentrated: 10,000 kilowatts per square meter, compared to 1 kw / m2 with solar. So the cost-to-yield ratio would be extremely favorable in the case of the x-ray energy capture.
There will also need to be shielding from the pulsing electromagnetic fields generated by the reactor.
In addition to x-rays, the process would also yield "low energy neutrons", Lerner said. These would not produce long-lived radioactivity, but at most would only produce "extremely short-lived elements with very short half-lives. Only 1/500th of the total energy would be carried by the neutrons."
"You could walk into the facility a second after turning it off, and would not be able to detect any radiation above background," he said. The materials of which the reactor and facility are constructed would not build up any radioactivity either, even over time.
For safety, Lerner said that a layer of lead and a layer of boron shielding surrounding the reactor would be adequate protection for the focus fusion plant.
As for possible accidents with the reactor, there is "not really anything that could go wrong," and, because of the way the reaction stops immediately, "there is [no possibility] for runaway." Lerner affirms, "It's 100% safe."
Some heat is vented into the environment, but it is not to such an extent that a generating plant could not be situated in a neighborhood, such as where substations presently are located.
About the worst thing that could happen would be a capacitor failure, but that would not even damage the building, he said.
Of course there are always the risks of electrocution, and shorting-out hazards associated with electricity, but those would be present in any power-plant situation.
Remember, with this technology, on-site personnel are not needed on a daily basis, reducing the exposure of persons to such hazards. Maintenance would be rare. One technician could operate a dozen facilities by him or herself.
Politics and Present Status
Cropped view. The vacuum chamber in Texas with and without insulation. The copper coils were for heating it in preparation for using decaborane fuel. (Ref.)
Imagine! At the flip of a switch, going from room temperature (or from the temperature of boiling water in the case of the liquid decaborane fuel), all the way up to a billion degrees, and then up to 6 billion degrees, all in a fraction of a second; then with another flip of the switch, when you are done, going back down to ambient temperature. And in the interim, you have produced excess energy from fusion -- safely, cleanly.
Part of that theoretical equation has been proven. Part has yet to be proven.
Lerner credits the field of astrophysics as playing a significant role in serendipitously developing much of the theoretical basis behind focus fusion, due to the parallels between neutron star research and plasma physics.
Mary-Sue Haliburton, chief editor for PESN and OSEN news, points out that the plasma filaments in the plasma focus are a microcosmic version of the Birkeland currents visible in the sun's corona, as well as in interstellar and even intergalactic space. (Ref [site shows photo of Birkeland current in sun's corona.)
Based on his focus-fusion research done through the grant from JPL at the University of Illinois, his subsequent research at Texas A&M University, and research done at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lerner et al. have proven the ability to attain, and even to surpass, the billion degree benchmark. (Ref)
Valone said that such an achievement should have been front page news in the NY Times and Washington Post. (Ref.)
Though Lerner and his colleagues went beyond the pre-determined performance standard, NASA chose to not publicize that breakthrough. Instead of honoring Lerner et al. with the accolades they deserved, an administrator at LANL threatened the University and the professor involved, saying that they were not to compare their results with pet-project Tokamak. The professor was so intimidated he stopped working with Lerner.
Lerner's persistent quest to find other federal monies has thus far been unfruitful. "This administration does not want to fund any serious competitor to oil or gas," Lerner said. He has also approached some foreign governments.
Eric Lerner, physicist, inventor
Executive Director of the non-profit, Focus Fusion. He is also President of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc., the corporate interest bringing this technology forward.
Despite the political setbacks, Lerner is pressing forward, and has been successful in acquiring limited funding. However, he needs substantially more to reach the next milestone of building a break-even prototype. To achieve the fusion process with measurable energy output, he needs $1.5 to $2 million dollars. This is a mere pittance compared to the $10 billion being sunk into Tokamak, which Valone considers to be an inferior design.
Once that milestone is accomplished, "funding will not be a problem," Lerner said.
A full proof-of-concept prototype will be next, which will enable the harnessing -- not just measurement -- of the output energy in the form of usable electricity.
Then, it’s a matter of tooling up for production. Lerner expects that the capital cost – estimated at $200,000 to $300,000 for a 20 MW plant – will be much lower than that of traditional electrical generation plants, perhaps only one percent in up-front costs.
Coming to a Car Near You?
Lerner said that the applications of this technology will be limited on the smaller end to local power-plant-sized operations for the near future, and that putting one of these in your garage or in your car will be years yet into the future. Miniaturization is a long-term dream that is sure to be achieved as the technology takes hold, just as it has in other industries such as computers and batteries.
http://www.opensourceenergy.org/txtlstvw.aspx?LstID=95defd1e-f25c-4a33-8002-a69aca481e6a
Man, this is a tough crowd! /grin .... see my correction on post #45
October 6, 1999
REPRINT FROM DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Researcher Claims Power Tech That Defies Quantum Theory
By ERIK BAARD NEW YORK -- A researcher based in New Jersey is presenting
to a gathering of chemists in Ontario, Calif., Wednesday the science that
he says will underpin a multi-billion dollar energy and materials company.
The catch is that his theory - that hydrogen atoms can be shrunk in a
stable form - is an impossibility in the established understanding of
quantum physics. Still, Dr. Randell Mills, a Harvard University-trained
medical doctor who has done postgraduate studies in physics and chemistry,
isn't going it alone. His start-up, BlackLight Power Inc. of Cranbury, New
Jersey, has received support and advice from utilities Conectiv (CIV) and
PacifiCorp (PPW) and from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. (MWD). Other
major companies are waiting in the wings, Dr. Mills claimed.
"We have stayed supportive of this in the face of fairly significant
scientists saying it can't be," a senior executive with Morgan Stanley
Dean Witter, who asked that he not be identified, told Dow Jones
Newswires. Pending further verification and commercial commitments, Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter plans to usher BlackLight Power to an initial public
offering within two years, the executive said. The investment bank will be
an underwriter and hasn't put its own money into the start-up, the
executive said, but another source close to the situation said Morgan
Stanley Dean Witter had made an overture to that end.
Dr. Mills claimed the process of transforming hydrogen atoms into smaller
"hydrinos" by chemical catalysis will provide "a virtually unlimited
supply of energy" through distributed power turbines. The hydrinos
themselves combine with other elements, he said, to make compounds that
could be the basis for batteries to power cars 1,000 miles at highway
speeds before recharging; a plastic that conducts electricity and shares
magnetic qualities with iron; and super-strong coatings, among other
things. There could be "potentially thousands, if not millions" of novel
compounds, he said. He also said that compounds such as the ones
BlackLight Power is creating account for the more than 90% of the mass of
the universe that scientists say is so far unobservable.
Dr. Mills hasn't made acceptance easy for himself or his sponsors by
claiming he has found the holy grail of a grand unified theory of
classical quantum mechanics and that the effect of his work on humanity
will be "bigger than fire." Indeed, Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning
physicist at Stanford University, said in September "it's extremely
unlikely that this is real, and I feel sorry for the funders, the people
who are backing this." Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at City
College of New York cited another time-honored law that might apply to
BlackLight Power investors: "There's a sucker born every minute."
The American Chemical Society forum is the first open peer review of
BlackLight Power's findings, while mainstream quantum mechanics,
scientists point out, has evolved from decades of tests and analysis.
BlackLight Power has sent its work out for numerous tests at independent
laboratories over the past several years and has seen positive results,
Dr. Mills said. Conectiv is "really on the optimistic side," albeit
"cautiously" so, said David Blake, Conectiv vice president and BlackLight
Power board member. "It's getting more and more difficult to argue with
the results Dr. Mills is presenting and the validations he is starting to
accrue," Blake said. Both Dr. Mills and Conectiv's Blake say "two major
corporations" are currently testing crystals provided by the labs, but
they declined to name them.
"These folks are spending their time and energy, and the money it takes
to pay technical people, on this. You don't do that unless you've got some
inclination that you'd better look at this," Blake said. But are Conectiv
and PacifiCorp making a "Hail Mary pass" in a once stolid industry thrown
into turmoil by deregulation? "Utilities...especially on the second tier,
like Conectiv and PacifiCorp, are really looking for edges because they
don't have the size and scope" of mega-utilities that are forming through
mergers all around them, said Robert Rubin, a utilities analyst with Bear
Sterns Cos. in New York. Shareholders will forgive managers for making a
few odd bets because "the payoff could be huge," Rubin said. Still,
"there's a difference between investing $2.5 million and $250 million."
"Randy has had no trouble raising the funds he needs," the Morgan Stanley
Dean Witter executive said.
Dr. Mills confirmed that the company had $10 million, largely from the
two utilities, and equipment and property bringing its capital up to about
$30 million. BlackLight Power will present about 10 compounds to the
American Chemical Society and "five papers that give explicit details and
is absolutely reproducible," Dr. Mills said. "I have a unified field
theory that's absolutely testable at every stage and on every item."
"Thank God we're getting our day in court," Dr. Mills said. Also speaking
at the meeting about the reported hydrogen energy release, in the form of
visible and ultra-violet light, is Dr. Johannes Conrads, who retired last
week as the director of the Institute for Low Temperature Plasma Physics
at the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald, Germany.
The BlackLight Power research done at the institute was funded by the
company, but "my research was completely independent," said Dr. Conrads,
who has studied plasma since 1959 and has worked for NASA and taught at
Princeton University. Dr. Conrads has flown to the society's meeting in
California to report that he's seen "a few astonishing things" from the
hydrino process, he said. "Something from the Mills cell is releasing
energy, and remarkably high energy, that is clear," Dr. Conrads said.
Equally compelling is that energy in the Mills cell decays at a rate
independent of the removal of outside electricity, and the reaction works
only with BlackLight Power's catalyst, he said. But Dr. Conrads stops
short of vindicating the hydrino theory.
"None of my experiments so far is falsifying Randy's theory, but
unfortunately none of my experiments is verifying it, either," Dr. Conrads
said. Dr. Conrads said he's taking his time to examine Dr. Mills' theory
because "this is not for sensation. I am an old professor in physics." Dr.
Conrad, who emphasized his lack of credentials as a materials scientist,
said he has sought Dr. Mill's permission to invite peers at
DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX) to examine the hydrino crystals. Dr. Conrads
parts with Dr. Mills somewhat by standing with traditional quantum
mechanics as it applies to the ground state that the Mills theory claims
to breach. But Dr. Conrads says he could see Dr. Mills work as a chemical
approach to the new science of non-ideal plasmas. This unusual plasma is
composed of charged particles at low temperatures and as densely packed as
a solid, he said. Indications are that in such an environment,
conventional quantum rules might not apply, he said. With more sensitive
equipment, however, he expects to find stronger evidence for "fractional"
hydrogen, he said.
"Everyone was telling us that heat was too nebulous," Dr. Mills said. To
put his work on more solid ground, he manufactured hydrino-based crystals
in mass, he said. "The hydride ion cracked the nut, right there, that did
it," he said. BlackLight Power's laboratory cabinets are stacked with
vials of crystals of varied colors and forms. Other scientists have been
supportive. On the BlackLight Power board sits Dr. Shelby Brewer, a
nuclear engineer and physicist who is also the former chief executive of
ABB Combustion Engineering and an assistant secretary in the U.S.
Department of Energy from 1981 to 1984. Dr. Melvin H. Miles, an
electro-chemist researching batteries at the U.S. Navy facility in China
Lake, Calif., said the BlackLight crystals put Dr. Mills "way ahead of
cold fusion in that he has a tangible product to show people."
"Randy Mills impressed me that he may also be brilliant. He talks off the
top of his head in a way that other scientists can't. But that doesn't
mean he's right. I think his results are right, but doesn't mean his
theory is right," Miles said.
That makes two of us. I fully expect major developments to continue to unfold as time goes forward. If that weren't the case, we'd still be riding horses. It never ceases to amaze me when some new idea is put forth and the instant, AUTOMATIC reaction from the alleged scientific minds is a knee-jerk hecklefest like the one unfolding here.
As for this idea in particular, I know little enough about quantum physics to say I know virtually nothing, but I DO know that the current theory--it's rather full of things no one understands--has always sounded like it would ultimately need a wee bit o'fleshing out, and that major new understandings would undoubtedly unfold over time. Perhaps this will be one of them.
MM
"It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste."
At first I thought this was referring to all of the hot air exuded by Howie Dean and the Dims, but, alas those folks produce waste.
The church pew effect is magnified exponentially during a wedding or funeral.
I'd like to see a demonstration and a reproduction of results. the article is a lot of fluff and not much substance.
Bees have avionics? Around here the bees are less high tech and fly by the seat of their abdomen.
As far as what fluid dynamic theory predicts for the realm of extremely low Reynolds number flight I don't see any problem with bees flying. It's pretty basic stuff. At that scale air is pancake syrup and they're just paddling through it.
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