Posted on 12/11/2011 8:19:37 PM PST by Kevmo
The Ascendancy of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions
December 9, 2011 |
Brian Wang put up two posts today [(1) + (2)] that link to what should seen as seminal events in the basic view of LENR (low energy nuclear reactions). Time passing as more hard credence evolves into research and the results, will show us which of the various physics are the activities of nature in LENR. The progress cannot come fast enough .
Piantelli's LENR Experiment Apparatus. Click image for the largest view .
As the technology sits today The Rossi E-Cat is in production facility exploration. Blacklight is making presales, The Australian hint of a technology is said to be nearing a prototype. Many others are closing in on solidifying their ideas into consistency and reliable energy release. It’s a seminal period that looks to be far past the notion LENR is mental magic .
Mr. Wang’s first post offers us the slides that Brian Ahern would have used if he had been able to do his presentation at Citi5. Running 16 pages the slides offer a set of clues on what would have been a marvelous overview on Ahern’s understanding of the physics. While incomplete as a lesson, a text or audio would be appreciated with gratitude. But it’s a gift for now and seed for thought .
The second post noted above links to a report and slides from a NASA LENR workshop held in Cleveland. The striking comments center on Dennis Bushnell the chief scientist at NASA Langley. Then as one goes through the page written by the heavily biased Steven Krivit, a laundry list of troubles from unidentified sources involving the NASA review with Rossi are presented .
But the Krivit page links to the presentation slides of Bushnell, NASA scientists Michael Nelson and Joseph Zawodny .
Wow. The Zawodny slides are a short review of the technology, an organizational chart and a short list of the engineering needed to take LENR one more step closer. The prime notation might be slide 30, pointing up the need to engineer both the composition and structure of reactor materials .
Zawodny also offers us an informative slide worthy of long term and widespread dissemination. Simply put, chemical energy release compared to fission nuclear = 1:1,900,000 ; fusion nuclear = 1:7,300,000 ; LENR = 1:8,000,000. This clears up why the non-mainstream physicists and the followers are so tenacious on staying with the technology until it become useful. Thank you Mr. Zawodny .
Michael Nelson has a very different perspective. The Nelson slide set covers his take of the late news about Rossi’s E-Cat, discloses, without naming the NASA personnel meeting with Rossi back in July, and what one presumes to be allowed, in a very likely nondisclosure agreement, public information. It clears up a lot of supposition and Nelson includes better graphics than seen anywhere else with solid credibility .
Nelson spends some pages considering the premise – is the phenomena cold fusion or LENR. While the consideration of the titling is entertaining, it’s nothing more than a waste of time, energy and emotions that should embarrass everyone involved. Yet Nelson offers a succinct and practical view of Rossi and the E-Cat, offering a conclusion that Rossi merits watching and attention .
Nelson also offers us the best tight overview of the Piantelli research that Rossi seems to have used as his preamble for his development. With superb graphics and explanations and a history to lead off, the segment sets up a comparison between where Piantelli’s work is and where Rossi takes the technology. At page 34 the variances known to date are listed .
Finishing up Nelson explains quite briefly why LENR can be so very important and sets out a sensible set of steps that NASA could adopt to integrate the technology into future plans. The slide set ends with web links and a synopsis of LENR history .
Bushnell takes a fully responsible view, which one expects from a chief scientist, and gets straight to the ‘State of the Art’. His view with 20 years of accumulating data, Rossi nearing a breakout to commercial, his man Zawodny working to zero in on theory to optimize engineering bring discipline to the science. Bushnell comes to the point that experimentation is needed to promote creative thinking. This technology is at its beginning and needs optimization at the most basic level .
Without saying so, Bushnell reveals NASA has looked into the numbers. LENR offers some astonishing potential. While most folks are bedeviled by the cold fusion, LENR titling, where to look for theory or lay credit for progress and discovery and the rest of the human psychological needs and the opponents throwing disinformation, Bushnell comes straight to the point – LENR offers a massive shift in power to weight ratios for energized work .
The power to weight ratio comes from the huge reduction in the fuel weight and the power plant. As Zawodny and Nelson point out too, the applications can run from agriculture up to space exploration. Such massive reductions offer calculations where fuel is a negligible portion of weight and cost – something opposite from the situation today .
Bushnell offers several pages of comments. While the emotions are busily steaming on many fronts, Bushnell says right on point, “The two decades of experiments and the weak interaction theories have removed the existential risk, what is remaining is to engineer for improved performance.”
The NASA men make a seminal point. LENR (or cold fusion, if one isn’t too specific on linking the phenomena to word definitions) works. LENR is a massive improvement that deserves our intense attention, the best creativity, intuition and insight we can muster .
So far a determined group has taken an over 90 year old phenomena to the breakout point. Instead of exploiting our intellect and making the science become fruitful, most people are soaked in emotion and childish conduct while one of history’s great technologies languishes. It’s a humiliating embarrassment .
For now we’re being pulled along by a revolt of independent thought, research and now a commercial attempt. The technological mountain is unassailably there; its time to climb, mine and develop .
Rossi deserves a note. Observation is telling us Mr. Rossi has innovated Piantelli’s work with a Thomas Edison like will and found a shortcut with a catalyst to get things going, his place in history is assured. Whether he can keep his lead as others find the theories to guide engineering is yet to be seen, but for now if even just one sale is running excess power- the rush will be on .
We will see a major change in viewing energy for personal use. Fusion from Lerner or Bussard or others, fission in smaller lower cost reactors, and there is still is huge supply of fossil sources to use and technologies coming to supplant and replace it are coming. If governments can wake up or populations bear upon them we could see a race to the lowest possible cost for energy and another long term boom in human social and economic development reaching to everyone for the first time .
Perhaps you would like to have a crack at my post #11. Free Vulcan seems to have lost interest.
Don't you think it is fairly evident that if Rossi scammed people he would end up in jail and be considered the lowest of low by so many people? Where could he go to escape people's scorn? What would his ultimate goal and benefit be?
Well I’ve got you, and I’ve got a couple of NASA scientists that says there may be something there.
Who to believe...who to believe...hmmmm...
BTW, LENR does not necessarily mean cold fusion. That red herring started stinkin’ a long time ago.
Then what does it mean? Can reaction rates be calculated and accurately predict energy output?
Not sure what your point is. If anyone can come up with a consistently working technology, all I care about is the mass-energy balance and cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. The scientists can get into the details of the reaction rates, I’m concerned about consistency and cost.
For every known legitimate energy source, scientists can calculate reaction rates and energy output with a high degree of accuracy. That's how consistency and known costs are achieved. So can the same be done for LENR and cold fusion? I know it can be done for muon catalyzed cold fusion. That's how we know that muon catalyzed cold fusion uses more energy than it produces, every time, consistently.
Don't you think it is fairly evident that if Rossi scammed people he would end up in jail and be considered the lowest of low by so many people? Where could he go to escape people's scorn? What would his ultimate goal and benefit be?Are you aware that Rossi has been convicted of fraud at least 4 times? LINK
The most recent time I've been able to discover was for bankruptcy fraud, and resulted in an 8-year prison sentence. Note that Rossi and his fans are wrong when they regurgitate Rossi's claim that he was only convicted because of laws that came effect after his actions, and that all the convictions were overturned. In fact, the Petrol Dragon convictions were only a small part of his criminal activity in Italy.
Ha Ha!! There is no record of ANY Rossi criminal activity or conviction in the Italian CID system.
BUT is makes fun copy.
Meanwhile the United States Naval Research Center SPAWAR has published a video of their LENR talk at Missouri:
Ha Ha!! There is no record of ANY Rossi criminal activity or conviction in the Italian CID system.Do you have any evidence of this, or are you just making stuff up?
Since Rossi admits to having been convicted, you are obviously wrong.
Since I've documented a decade's worth of newspaper articles about Rossi's various convictions, you are obviously wrong.
If you're going to come here and lie, you should at least learn to lie well. Pay attention to Rossi for tips on how to do so.
Can you state what the reaction/process being catalyzed in the ecat is?
I thought it was Ni + 1/2 H2 -—mystery catalyst-—> Cu + heat
That reaction seems to imply fusion to me. What is the eCat reaction?
The energy input and output can simply be measured without knowing reaction rates. That’s going to be good enough for most business applications, if they know how much mass or energy put in v. what they get out, and if it runs consistently with minimal downtime.
Rossi and whatever he’s doing is a sideshow to me. He isn’t the only one getting into this field. I’m looking at it as a whole and trying to determine exactly what’s there and if it’s possible to come up with a viable tech that can be marketed.
I’ve never heard exactly what they think it is.
I think this LENR label is all marketing. Until we have the science defined, making distinctions between calling the mystery reaction LENR or Cold Fusion seems rather silly, does it not?
(Except that ‘Cold Fusion’ doesn’t work as well as ‘LENR’ in focus groups.)
If scientists can't work out reaction rates, and energy output is unpredictable, Cold Fusion/LENR isn't going to work in business either. Economists and accountants need to know costs and benefits.
Consider muon catalyzed cold fusion. Scientists know precisely how it works and how much energy it produces. Until muons catalyze more reactions or are cheaper to produce it isn't economically viable.
You’re hanging yourself on a pyrrhic cross. If I can consistently measure a consistent given output of energy for a given quantity of input, I can figure the cost. It’s done all the time without figuring reaction rates. That’s all I’m looking for out of LENR or any energy technology - consistent and measurable output for a consistent and measurable input.
Because it may not be fusion. There’s more than one theory about what it could be. Focus is starting to turn on weak nuclear reactions.
ok - I have an Idea.
Until Rossi comes out with a independently verifiable claim as to what is happening in his eCat lets call the reaction “Antiveritas Rossimungus.”
But you could accurately calculate the energy output and input costs if needed. You may not need to do it, but someone does for a process to be economically viable (How would you know what to order, or determine a fair price?). You can't do it for the ecat or anything else claiming cold fusion or LENR.
But what bothers me about awnest's arrogance, is that he has absolutely nothing to back it up. You made yourself a fool by not knowing how your Volt works (which I doubt you own) and a rhetorical request about Edison. Eighth grade level stuff and you were crowing how wrong I was but when I put up as I'm not a coward, you went silent.
You are not a good spokesmen for the LENR subject although I doubt you're a good spokesman for anything.
So how much time do you get off at our High School for Christmas break?
Did you know his companies in the U.S. are in a fifth floor apartment?
Did you know he claims to have heated his factory for two years with an Ecat? Three things.
1) What did this factory produce before it burned down?
2) Where is the Ecat that heated his factory for two years.
3) If you have been following this for a year, you would see that Rossi's prototypes look like plumbing pipe in an L shape. Now, within twelve months he has a new design that is ready for sale? You believe this?
He claims he is building in a self destruct device so competitors can't reverse engineer it.
He claims a degree from Kensington university, a diploma mill shut down in California.
I could go on and on. So, are you buying what he's selling?
Since someone was whining about this being about LENR in general and not just Rossi's scam, I include the following:
Randall Mills, a man with two real degrees, one an MD from Harvard.
Link to Randall Mill's Wiki page
Founder and CEO Randell Mills
Randell Mills graduated from Harvard Medical School,[2] and studied biotechnology and electrical engineering at MIT.,[15] and a degree in Chemistry from Franklin & Marshall College in 1982.[citation needed]. Mills claims that Blacklight's power source "represents a boundless form of new primary energy", and says that he "think[s] it's going to replace all forms of fuel in the world.".[16]
An article in the technology column of the New York Times described in 2008 how Mills had kept plugging on and getting $60 million in venture funding despite his theories being rejected and ignored by the scientific community for years.
Randall Mills is working with Hydrogen and Nickle as well, he call his result, hydrinos. despite millions in funding, he still can't scale it up enough to produce power. Nevertheless, he is open with what he is doing, he doesn't build in secret self destruct mechanisms and is working with Rowan University.
He still can't get it to work. He's even written and posted on BLP site a TOE.
While Randall Mills may be chasing nothing, he has a university looking into his results, Rowan Univ, they've supported some of his claims so, is BLP a real thing? Mills gave up a career as a Harvard MD to work on this and has a lot of smart degreed folks working for him. I have yet to see the Randal Mills traveling road show a la Rossi. I wonder why? Maybe because he has investors and his building isn't housed on the fifth floor of an apartment building. I think GE occupies the fourth floor.
Finally, while people like to cite Jed Rothwell, he is a librarian at lenr-canr.org so before you get the vapors over the guy, you might want to check into his biases. He also thinks he is the gatekeeper to all LENR results, definitions and explanations, you think we're bad, he inserts himself into everything using his post as librarian to get in. While I have no problem with librarians, I've never met one that was a nuclear engineer. I tried to find Jed's degree but failed miserably. Possibly one of his sycophants can find it. I hope it's not from Kensington College.
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