The new leader is Brillouin Energy with a new process named the Hot Tube Boiler. Sterling Allen at PESN interviewed Brillouin's Robert W. George II, CEO; and the inventor, Robert Godes, the Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Allen learned Brillouin has had two significant independent validations of their scientific model and claims. One of those was by Los Alamos National Laboratories. The other was by Dr. Michael McKubre of Stanford Research International (SRI), who subsequently joined their board of advisors.
What puts Brillion out in front first is the temperature output. Brillouin expects the test of the new Hot Tube model at SRI will be capable of delivering steam at temperatures from 400ºC to 500ºC (750-932ºF). These kinds of temperatures are called superheated or deliver "dry steam", a steam form that does not contain water mechanically suspended. Dry steam is what's needed for generating power and moving heat because it saves a great deal of water and is more efficient. Pressures, especially for turbine drives can be much higher.
Brillouin Hot Tube Boiler.
The second Brillouin advantage is control and predictable output. The Brillouin team noted Dr. McKubre has joined the Brillouin Board of Directors because of the consistency of the results. So far as we know, Brillouin is the first cold fusion or LENR process that is able to repeat tasks every time, without exception.
Brillouin believes they understand how LENR works, and if operating results are proofs, then the company has the idea worked out.
Robert Godes explained it's not a nickel-hydrogen fusion reaction. Nickel is merely a catalyst. "A tiny amount of hydrogen protons are converted into neutrons. These newly produced neutrons are soon captured by hydrogen ions or other atoms in a metallic (e.g. nickel) lattice near to where the hydrogen ions were converted to neutrons. The captured neutrons generate heat because the new atoms that are one neutron heavier shed excess binding energy as heat to the lattice, resulting in a dramatically clean, low-cost, hi-quality heat output."
Godes goes on to explain the error in "cold fusion" and "LENR", instead using the terms Controlled Electron Capture Reactions or "CECR", for "phonon-moderated hydrogen reactions."
For documentation the suggestion is in the firm's business summary, "Evidence suggests this reaction involves the synthesis of neutrons, which accumulate on hydrogen dissolved in a matrix (lattice), which progresses to deuterium, then tritium and on to quadrium that decays to helium. In a Brillouin reaction the process is promoted and catalyzed in a highly energized nickel matrix. The process releases thermal energy far in excess of what is possible from chemical reactions. The important feature is that neutrons are generated and accumulate in a comparatively low-energy environment, and this accumulation generates heat."
Simply stated, hydrogen in a nickel lattice exposed to Brillouin's proprietary electro-stimulation will yield heat and at the end, helium.
Brillouin 4-steps to Heat and Helium.
Godes noted that 1.024 ml, a volume about the size of a #2 pencil eraser, of water provides as much energy as two 48-gallon drums of gasoline. "That is 355,000 times the amount of energy per volume - five orders of magnitude."
Refueling and service expectations are extraordinary as well. Godes expects systems will last 3-5 years before servicing, including refills or replacement of the nickel lattice.
Godes points out the nuclear process Brillouin utilizes is the same albeit better understood and thus controlled, as is being used by the competition including Andrea Rossi's E-Cat, Defkalion's Hyperion, Piantelli's Nichenergy, George Miley's LENUCO, and Celani's Cold Fusion Energy Inc.
Is there a business model in this that makes more sense than the seemingly odd reports about Andrea Rossi or the off/on information flow out of Defkalion?
The Brillouin CEO is Robert W. George II, who was a Managing Director at Grosvenor Financial Partners. Mr. George has honest, real and practical experience in bringing startups to market. It's very likely that George can find a way to get the technology into customer's hands at a price that's attractive enough to attract even more customers.
The premise now should be that Brillouin has the technology worked out. Note that three patents have been filed - so far no issues because of the US Patent Office's inability to recover from being mislead by experts over the Cold Fusion Debacle over twenty years ago. But the prior art is on file, copycats be warned . . .
Yet Godes points out that there are certain aspects that he has filed for patent protection on, and still others that he plans to maintain as proprietary or trade secrets. The intellectual property, or the know how to do the electro-stimulation, have to do with the circuitry used to control the CECR technology. "These trade secrets constitute a challenging barrier to entry for competitors," said Godes.
The electro-stimulation is more complex than what is presumed to be going on at the E-Cat or Defkalion efforts. The Brillouin documentation says in the Business Summary, "One of the intellectual property methods claimed in Brillouin's Patents, and being used in both systems, is designed to aid stimulation of phononic activity by introducing Q pulses. These are high current pulses through the lattice of our CECR reactor. The Q pulses cause electromigration, which means the nickel atoms and the hydrogen ions get moved by passing electrons. In other words, electromigration causes the creation of cold neutrons, which is an endothermic reaction. The cold neutrons accumulate on the hydrogen nuclei, from 1H to 2H to 3H to 4H then to 4He in milliseconds (see "step" block diagram below). Each time a neutron is added to the hydrogen nuclei it is an exothermic reaction. Unlike plasma physics, where high-energy particles would be emitted, this binding energy is released as pure heat."
Mr. Allen has met Andrea Rossi, visited Defkalion and talked with the Brillouin people and without realizing it has hit on the key measure we have for now, "when I was watching the data emerge from the Defkalion set-up, when I was in Greece, I was expecting to see a steady curve, but instead what I saw were intermittent spikes from the nuclear events. The Brillouin curve would be steady."
Allen believes that Brillouin can turn the reaction on and off, govern it up and down, and run it in steady state, capabilities that none of the competitors are reported to have yet.
By whatever the name, cold fusion is looking marketable - one of these is sure to get trails one day soon. Then the improvements will come, miniaturization, and the human tendency to exploit good ideas with the whole of good minds intuition and imagination.
By. Brian Westenhaus
Brian is the editor of the popular energy technology site New Energy and Fuel. The site’s mission is to inform, stimulate, amuse and abuse the… More
Comments
Here in New Zealand, we are fighting to preserve our beautiful, pristine environment from being sold to greedy investors who want to charge us the maximum or market will bear for our own electicity and other things (http://aotearoaisnotforsale.com/). This is going to change everything.
When? When can we have it? We can't wait for this! What a world we will make!
Too bad the US Patient Office appears to be universally declining all "cold fusion" applications. Perhaps if Brillouin can minimize economic disruption by only introducing replacement boilers for existing power plants, they will get annointed by the powers-that-be. Second generation decentralized heat generating Brillouin boilers could be marketed eventually.
A COP of 2.9 for the “wet system” that Brilliuon Energy has currently developed is not going to be competitive in the marketplace for providing
hot water. The Q-wave stimulant of the reaction is not efficient in my opinion.
The “dry system” where hydrogen is used in the envelope similar to Rossi is a total unknown quantity and might not produce increased COP as Brilliuon
Energy hopes.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Brilliuon Energy is concerned about the low efficiency of their reaction in terms of COP. This area may be a weak spot in the Brilliuon Energy reaction approach.
Rossi uses chemical assistance to improve reaction efficiency. IMHO, there is currently no positive indication that Brilliuon Energy’s Q-wave
stimulant will equal the efficiency of Rossi’s reaction and simultaneously provide precise control of the Brilliuon Energy reaction.
And that's not the biggest of the whoppers you can find at peswiki.com. Sterling routinely reports positively on obvious free energy and magnet motor scams such as Steorn, Mylow and Carl Tilley. He's been fooled and scammed time and again.
If Brillouin has some convincing data of large amounts of power for a long time, properly measured independently by reliable experts, I have yet to see it. It certainly is not appearing on Sterling's web site. All I read there are claims.
Just curious: do you still believe Rossi and Defkalion's claims?
3H does decay through beta, to release helium and beta particle.
Did you guys get something wrong here?
It would be like expecting your furnace to not need maintenance every now and then just become it is better built than someone else's furnace.
"Glen Wurden
There is not now, and has not been "an independent validation" by Los Alamos National Laboratory.
I am the Fusion Program Manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory."
Here: http://pesn.com/2012/04/19/9602078_Brillouin--Understanding_How_LENR_Works_Will_Enable_Us_to_Be_First/ (scroll down the comments section)
How would you know if I am a scientist and what difference does it make? How is Rossi doing these days? What has Defkalion done recently? Where are their clients? Where are their factories? Where are their machines? Who's tested them independently? How do you know they are not simply flagrant scams? Stop attacking the person, Roger, that's simply stupid. Try addressing some facts for a change.
Rossi has lied about so many things so many times, he's the joke of the internet. Or do you still think he works with National Instuments and two famous universities? You know, the ones that deny working with him.
None of the so-called competition has shown robust multiple watt power production for the required time periods (days to weeks) to be credible. Those that claim they have done so have not allowed independent verifications.
There is, thus far, no decent evidence in favor of robust or commercial grade LENR/CF reactions whatever. That LENR/CF even exists is still in grave doubt to anyone who takes a reasonable look at available data. What the believers are doing is confusing claims for credible information. It's not.
The very people that you accuse of being true believers are uncertain either way while you truly believe that Rossi et. al. are a bunch of crooks, without courtroom level proof.
The worse part of your evil behavior is that if and when LENR is proven to be true all you have to do is change your handle to avoid the necessary and righteous blowback that you would be getting.
This individual's paycheck will cause her to denounce free energy even as she calls from her fusion powered cell phone and rides around in her cold fusion powered or water powered car. Good luck, Mary, your time is up. God bless, you'll have to find other employment. Perhaps a pastry chef or something working with the hands, as the mind doesn't seem to sharp.
Good luck, Mary, we got used to you as the dog that barks on the corner lot at every passerby, and we will miss you when your paycheck stops.
I guess this is too big a threat to the staus quo but remember the secrets are being worked out in Japan, Russia , Korea and China. Just like the " omerta" on Japans small domestic fuel cells that cogenerate now being built and installed by Toshiba, Panasonic and Sanyo.
Not good for this market as it is too disruptive to the utilities, insurance co's and hydrocarbon industry. Better to waste the energy and get rich quick. Soon the regulators like the NRC and FERC will step in along with the home insurance boys.
Bindlepete
Godes seems to have the best grasp as to what is going on. I am amazed that he only as a BSEE degree. This makes me think that the real brains employed by the Department of Offense have probably had this worked out long ago.
I find it very interested that oil has dropped $30 per barrel since this story broke in April. Maybe the end-game is here and the speculators know it.
What difference does any technological revolution make if the end result is always the same. Things are worse now than they were before the Internet and fossil fuel. Everyone complains about the government. Everyone thinks government is the problem. Capitalism, communism, co-op, or whatever "ism" you want to try. At some point, whichever system you use, everything will work great until someone starts messing around with the metaphysics of the "ism". If the bankers want to destroy their own currencies nothing will stop them!
Here's the problem with the governments of the world. It has nothing to do with the "system". All the world's problems have to do with people in power. The problem with power is it makes the people in power have contempt for the people under their influence. There is a point where the power-holder no longer respects the humanity (either out of fear or pity) of their subordinates. Something clicks inside the power-holder's head and the power-holder no longer sees their subordinates as human beings but as sub-human animals. The golden rule no longer applies and "insects" are squashed in response to psychopathic emotions.
The power-holder rationalizes their own behavior based on the idea that the sub-human scum are not deserving of any respect or human decency. Any respect given at all would mean the power-holder is no longer in power. This cycle of contempt by the power-holders gets repeated over and over again at every level of society. I pity the power-holders because the pressure created by having the responsibilities combined with all the fears of not being successful, that is, losing their position of power, is proven to be overwelming.
If humanity is going to make any progress, at some point we need to create new tactics to influence our leaders and people in positions of authority. We will need new tactics that will ease our leaders' fears. These new tactics will have to be very subtle. So subtle that they would not create any additional fear-reaction in the power-holder. We need new tactics that will influence our leaders to never stop loving and respecting humanity. Otherwise, we will continue to see false-flag terrorist attacks in order to preserve the status-quo. Or some other type of extreme heinous attack against humanity.
I hope and pray LENR is a great and long lasting technological revolution. But my inner sense is telling me if fossil fuel or the Internet could not make any progress how could LENR make any difference. People love to hurt people. It's in our human nature. Fear is too powerful and overwelming.
Will technology ever make any real progress in the World?
Try to imagine a World where each person in it is treated like a priceless piece of fine art.
In the meantime, has anyone heard any new stuff about the iPhone 5?
That last bit was a joke, by the way...