May
3
As Al Fin pointed out yesterday natural gas is priced to a barrel of oil equivalent at about $10-$11 per the estimable Geoffrey Styles view, something less than 10% of the cost of oil. For North Americans adding a viable and hopefully low cost means to make use of gas hydrates could be giant boost to low cost fuel sources and a massive kick to the economy.
For experts the methane hydrates resource is the largest reserve of hydrocarbons in the planetary crust. So far humanity has not devised a process to economically harvest this immense energy wealth. Today’s DOE announcement may point the way to a new era in abundant energy to build out a bigger and better world economy.
By injecting a mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a methane hydrate formation (pdf link) on Alaska’s North Slope, the DOE partnering with ConocoPhillips and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp was able to produce a steady flow of natural gas in the first field test of the new method. The test was done from mid-February to about mid-April this year.
Methane Hydrate Test Site Map of US DOE, CononcoPhillips and JOGMNC Process Test. Click image for more info.
The department said it would likely be years before production of methane hydrates becomes economically viable. Secretary Chu said in his statement, “While this is just the beginning, this research could potentially yield significant new supplies of natural gas.”
Methane hydrates are cold ice crystal-like structures that contain methane the chemical of natural gas. The hydrates are located under the Arctic permafrost and in ocean sediments along the continental shelf and widely spread worldwide.
Methane Hydrate Resources per Der Spiegel. Click image for the largest view.
Gerald Holder, dean of the engineering program at University of Pittsburgh, who has worked with the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory on the hydrate issue, said before the announcement he had been skeptical about what researchers would be able to accomplish.
He said the main problem until now was finding a way to extract natural gas from solid hydrates without adding a whole lot of steps that made the process too expensive, which makes the success of this new test significant.
“It makes the possibility of recovering methane from hydrates much more likely. It’s a long way off, but this could have huge impact on availability of natural gas,” said Holder.
While everyone is suggesting that methane hydrate production is some time in the future, we might note that a partner is from Japan, a country that has been buying via imports virtually all its energy and fuel inputs. A glance at the map of potential reserves shows that Japan may well pour on the intellectual and financial power to get results much quicker than many expect.
On the other hand, for North Americans natural gas is ratcheting down to dirt cheap, with more resources with the new horizontal drilling and reserve fracturing available on land and significant amounts of natural gas at sea in already developed areas.
For everyone the matter of coming up with the CO2 for the injection is going to be a significant issue. First just gathering it remains a significant problem. Making it from – natural gas – is the preferred method today. That raises the question if the CO2 injected is lost to sequestration or is it recycled for reuse, or what proportion is being lost or recycled? CO2 is very useful and it may become a valuable resource in its own right very soon.
Abundance makes a lot of things that weren’t viable at a price possible at lower costs. Abundant fission or cold fusion could make electrolysis viable freeing hydrogen for adding to coal for both liquid fuels and CO2 sources. Scaling could make such concepts usual and common thinking very quickly.
For now though the DOE and partner’s news is very gratifying. It must be giving the futurists at OPEC an OMG moment, again. Things are going to be changing.
Lets hope the DOE and the partners spill some more info soon so we can have a better look.
May
2
There’s A Lot of New Uranium Resources
May 2, 2012 | 1 Comment
The Athabasca basin of Canada hosts some of the world’s largest and highest-grade uranium mines of similar aged rocks. Last week Fission Energy Corp. and its 50% joint venture partner ESO Uranium reported a significant anomalous radioactivity was encountered in the final hole of the companies’ Patterson Lake South property exploration program.
Fission Energy Patterson Lake Uranium Prospect Property. Click image for the largest view.
The Fission exploration follows a find by Hathor Exploration Ltd.. But Fission has a much superior land holding and their find so close to Hathor, which is following the Hathor strike suggests that Fission may have the bulk of the uranium reserve.
Uranium Core Sample Racks. Click image for the largest view.
Fission is chasing a 2011 high-grade uranium boulder field discovery in hopes of finding the originating vein of basement bedrock holding the hoped for reserve. This past winters drill program appears to have successfully refined the boundaries of the uranium boulder field source target area to the west of Canada’s Patterson Lake. Where those high-grade radioactive uranium rich boulders on the surface came from is the million-dollar question.
Fission Energy is only the latest in a series of high-grade uranium discoveries in the Athabasca region of Canada.
Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, India, may have one of the largest reserves of uranium in the world. India has been importing uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants from across the world. A new processing plant has been commissioned to handle the new discovery – or more accurately, upgrade on the known reserve.
New studies indicate that Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh is endowed with one of the largest uranium reserves in the world, some 10 times the original estimates. They have shown that the Tummalapalle location in the district could have reserves of 150,000 metric tons of uranium.
The reserve in India is very different from the Canadian one. Instead of base rock laden with uranium the Indian reserve is dolomite limestone based uraniferous ore. The Indian effort follows the 2004 discovery of the uranium ore.
Botswana in Africa is also a new hotbed of activity. The first discovery came in 2006 with the Lethlakane deposit near Serule. This is no small project either, with a 261-million-pound uranium oxide resource at a grade of 150 parts per million in the rock. The district exploration is still early as well. Three other new deposits and a new emerging discovery at the Red Hills prospect have started exploration.
The Lekabolo deposit, discovered in 2010, is at an advanced exploration stage, although a resource is yet to be defined. Drilling indicates that the deposit has the potential to host about five million pounds of uranium oxide at a grade of 150 ppm, a similar grade to that of the Letlhakane deposit, only 20 km (12.5 miles) away.
Small deposits have been found at Mosolotsane and Morolane, each probably hosting about two million pounds of uranium oxide at a similar grade to that of Lekabolo.
An even more curious discovery is at Red Hills. Here is a large alteration system that indicates large uranium bearing mineralized systems occuring in rocks much older than the Karoo-aged sandstone and mudstone at Letlhakane. The large Red Hills alteration system is about 1 km × 1.5 km and about 200 m thick. It contains a significant amount of low-grade rare-earth elements and uranium, as well as base and precious metals, namely lead, zinc and silver.
The operating company Impact Minerals calls the Red Hills area a ‘halo’ that could be pointing to a large high-grade uranium deposit. The system may be similar to the high-grade uranium deposits found in similar aged rocks in the Athabasca basin of Canada, which hosts some of the world’s largest and highest-grade uranium mines.
Meanwhile in the major exporting country Kazakhstan, Inkai, a joint venture between Canada’s Cameco Corp. and Kazakhstan’s state-run miner Kazatomprom, is seeking the Kazakh government’s approval by the end of this year to boost uranium output by 33 percent. Inkai wants authorization to increase production from 1,500 metric tons to 2,000 tons.
Inkai is feeling the heat from all the new competition. Kazakstan is already a major exporter and means to hold markets share while dozens and soon hundreds of new reactors come on line in the coming years.
It’s going to take along time for even a large growth of reactors to burn through all this uranium. All the plans to date are for comparatively inefficient reactors getting, optimistically, 5% efficiency.
While the U.S. dawdles over its hysteria and political inhibitions, India can build cheaper nuclear reactors – than even South Korea. Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, secretary in the Department of Atomic Energy, said India can now manufacture nuclear reactors at $1,700 per unit.
Banwejee said, “Indian companies manufacturing components and systems for nuclear reactors can now do the same work for much less cost. For instance, he said, L&T, which supplies many critical components for the Indian nuclear and defense sectors, can make the large reactor vessel in their new Hazira plant. This is something of an achievement because it’s traditionally been the preserve of Japanese engineering expertise.
There’s plenty of uranium fuel and it looks like hundreds of reactors are going to get built. For a lot of the world economic development and growth are going to be powered and grow quickly with very cheap electrical power.
So be it, while the U.S. left its nuclear gold standard to be picked to pieces by the competition, billions of dollars in sales and thousand of jobs were lost. Not to mention the incredible risks of proliferation spreading planet wide.
May
1
Another Horror For Energy Consumers
May 1, 2012 | 1 Comment
Harstad, who is associate professor of managerial economics & decision sciences at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said, “Both on the demand-side and the supply-side the result is ‘carbon leakage’, which is an increase in pollution abroad relative to the emission-reduction at home.” Carbon leakage describes the process by which carbon-cutting measures in one location cause a bump up of emissions elsewhere. The term is defined by the International Panel on Climate Change as “the increase in CO2 emissions outside the countries taking domestic mitigation action divided by the reduction in the emissions of these countries.”
Harstad claims those leakages are in the order of 5 to 25%, but they can be higher when small coalitions of special interests execute ambitious policies over longer timeframes. Though some leakage may be mitigated by trade tariffs, that only limits and distorts trade further. Harstad asserts the answers lay on the supply side.
Harstad’s study, “Buy Coal! A Case for Supply-Side Environmental Policy”, has been published in the latest edition of the Journal of Political Economy. The idea fits those with a desire to see a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
It seems like a new, albeit obvious, notion. Fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas left in the ground cannot emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, so the more you buy and leave there, the more emissions are prevented. The current administration and others are actually practicing the idea now with limiting reserve exploration and development, lease revocations, and other subtle actions to take resources out of the market.
Harstad’s explanation is a tempting and plausible concept, but the effect is more damaging because it influences fuel markets and need not be done in a large way to drive markets to higher process.
The environmentalist’s fundamental problem from adopting a “demand-side mindset” that implements policy to reduce fossil fuel consumption is that not everyone takes part. An international agreement between coalition countries to curb oil consumption would initially have the desired effect of reducing overall demand, but this will lower the price of oil, giving a strong incentive to countries outside of the agreement to buy and use more.
On the other hand, if an international agreement decides to limit oil extraction and supply, the price will go up, and the countries outside of the agreement would just produce more for export.
Harstads’ answer for the predicament is to buy up production rights in countries outside of such agreements. Now the economics get tricky, having sold its rights to produce Harstad believes supplies would be less sensitive to price for those countries, enabling the countries limiting demand to proceed without the concern others would increase demand. That would get to the “universal price and demand equalization”. “The analysis shows that progress on international climate policy is best achieved by simply utilizing the existing market for extraction rights,” said Harstad.
Obviously, the idea would be wildly expensive, at risk for production rights being revoked, and for the most part impractical, as much of the world isn’t using the developed world’s property rights principles.
But that’s not to say the extremists won’t try it and achieve some success. For consumers its not the disappearance of some reserves that matter on a production basis, it’s the production of the last few barrels each day that decide if supplies are adequate or not. The reserves the extremists would buy up would only be replaced by other more expensive ones.
Yet the capacity of extremists to conjure up viable scenarios with theoretical public benefits and affect policy, regulations and legislation is notorious. Their lobbying success and election influence is unassailable.
Consumers worldwide are in danger from another idea out there to drive costs higher and further stall economic development.
Apr
30
Fusion- Where the Possible Meets Impractical
April 30, 2012 | Leave a Comment
The ITER project, an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, remains a project seeks to do the possible with impractical tools. There is no doubt that humanity can accomplish fusion in a quick and dirty way by making a bomb, or run reactions that don’t produce useful amounts of energy outputs, but unlike fission the ability to run a steady state reaction the produces more energy than it takes to drive the reaction eludes us.
The ITER effort is based on the tokamak, a donut looking thing that circulates fuel plasma around endlessly at temperatures and pressures that could get a net energy gain if the fuels are hot enough and at high enough pressure. It really is the leading way to get to solar temperatures and pressures here on earth. It is very possible – and incredibly impractical.
ITER has the money to worry away at the problem. Very hot, light element plasmas, and incredible pressures are huge problems. Hydrogen at room temperature is a devil to contain for any length of time, warm it up to perhaps billions of degrees and pressurized to perhaps millions of atmospheres and the control problems are, shall we say, monumental.
Still, the tokamak is the strongest potential to get to hot fusion containment. To solve the control problems electronics engineer Maria Goretti Sevillano has come up with some tools in her thesis defended at the University of the Basque Country. Her thesis is entitled Tools for plasma control in Tokamak nuclear fusion reactors: Astra-Matlab integration and control in real time. Two papers have been published about her work, one in the journal Informatica and the other in the journal Energy.
Maria Goretti Sevillano
Sevillano has detailed how they function: “The materials used in fusion must have certain specific features, and these materials have to be turned into plasma. At the same time, the plasma has to be restricted to a limited space to enable the reaction to be generated and the energy to be used. To achieve this, magnetic confinement is applied in the case of the tokamaks.” In other words, the magnetic field creates lines that act as a wall to keep the plasma in the space where it is meant to remain. But the plasma and the device itself have several problems that have yet to be solved, and Sevillano has been working on some of them.
Sevillano explains, “To develop Tokamaks, many of the plasma’s parameters must be controlled, as well as the whole device itself; the currents that are going to be used, the voltage, the intensity, etc. Until all these things are controlled, it will not be possible to use these machines to produce marketable energy,” she points out.
In connection with this, Sevillano has embedded a code known as ASTRA into the Matlab software; ASTRA is frequently used to simulate the behavior of Tokamak reactors, and the embedding of this code into Matlab will facilitate the development of controllers suited to these devices. The control problems are of several kinds, but in this case some very specific parameters relating to the plasma have been explored in depth.
Sevillano continues, “Control of the parameters is necessary to obtain the maximum energy possible from the plasma, and the amount of this energy that can be extracted is calculated on the basis of the current: the greatest amount of current possible has to be maintained during the longest time possible. That is why these parameters have to be controlled by means of the control, in turn, of the numerous coils and voltages within the structure.”
Sevillano points out that her PhD thesis has produced only a single branch of what would be a complete tree by saying, “All I have achieved is no more than a step towards doing more things. The aim of all these tasks is to design a machine capable of generating marketable energy within the ITER project.”
Its an awe inspiring challenge with a five decade history stacked up so far and the scientists calculate they will obtain some results around the year 2050, some four more decades.
Tokamak and Problems. Click imabe for the largest view.
Fusion is a tantalizing power source and emulating the sun seems a logical and sensible path. Fusion is possible, we use its’ natural form continuously. Yet the primary questions remains unanswered. By what means can humanity get matter to fuse? Then, which is the most practical?
Taxpayers in the EU, India, Russia, China, South Korea, Japan and the United States must wonder how the political momentum got so far on such thin practical certainty. French Nobel laureate in physics, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, said, “We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don’t know how to make the box.”
The building of the tokamak has begun, with no clear idea how to control it successfully. Whether or not Sevillano’s concept’s will make a difference is a question to be answered years out.
Meanwhile the basic question about what the most practical means are to generate fusion is off limits for most of the research world. The research system is very serious about the ITER project – the competency and credibility of the research system’s desire to get to the goal of commercial fusion is not.
Apr
27
Paint Your Own Solar Cell
April 27, 2012 | 1 Comment
If the team gets to commercial market, the projection is a pathway to cheap, stable solar cells made with a liquid ink that can be painted or printed onto clear surfaces.
Solar Cell Nanocrystals. Click image for the largest view.
Richard L. Brutchey, assistant professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and USC postdoctoral researcher David H. Webber developed the new surface coating for the nanocrystals, which are made of the semiconductor cadmium selenide.Their research was featured as a “hot article” this month in the international journal for inorganic chemistry Dalton Transactions.
Brutchey explains, the solar nanocrystals are about four nanometers in size – meaning you could fit more than 250,000,000,000 on the head of a pin – and float them in a liquid solution, “like you print a newspaper, you can print solar cells.”
The first problem is liquid nanocrystal solar cells are cheaper to fabricate than available single-crystal silicon wafer solar cells but are not nearly as efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. The second problem is conducting the electricity out.
Brutchey and Webber solved the second of the key problems of liquid solar cells: how to create a stable liquid that also conducts electricity.
In the past, organic ligand molecules were attached to the nanocrystals to keep them stable and to prevent them from sticking together. These molecules also insulated the crystals, making the whole thing terrible at conducting electricity.
“That has been a real challenge in this field,” Brutchey said.
Brutchey and Webber discovered a synthetic ligand that not only works well at stabilizing nanocrystals, but also actually builds tiny bridges connecting the nanocrystals to help transmit the current.
With a conducting solution the poor efficiency can be addressed both by efficiency gains, but sheer area of application.
The team’s build process is a relatively low-temperature operation. The method also allows for the possibility that solar cells can be printed onto plastic instead of glass without any issues with melting, resulting in a flexible solar panel that can be shaped to fit anywhere.
For the research future Brutchey said he plans to work on nanocrystals built from materials other than cadmium, which is restricted in commercial applications due to toxicity. “While the commercialization of this technology is still years away, we see a clear path forward toward integrating this into the next generation of solar cell technologies,” Brutchey said.
In fairness to others the idea of painting solar cells isn’t new. The news releases have been popping up for years. But the USC team has reached into the fundamental problem, getting the power out.
The USC team may think that years are involved, but the conduction solution could fine a market right away. Reading the paper is free with a registration.
Solar is still regarded by most people a very expensive, a perspective not far from the truth. But a “paint your own solar cell” available in a box or kit at a big box home improvement store would shift the view to a more positive outlook. Adopted in mass though will pose problems.
Wind and solar plus the private generators already out there pose frequency problems for the gird, but management is getting a grip on of the power factor problems.
So if you think you have a great solar cell material that just needs hooking up, get in touch with the USC team.
Apr
26
Thermoelectric Gains Performance With Better Materials
April 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment
The intense interest in harvesting energy from heat sources has led to a renewed push to discover materials that can more efficiently convert heat into electricity. A team of Boston College and MIT researchers report developing a novel nanotech design that boosts the thermoelectric performance of a bulk alloy semiconductor by 30 to 40 percent.
Using a process known as a 3D modulation-doping strategy, the researchers are finding the gains by re-designing materials that scientists have been working with for years.
3D Modulation Doping Boosts Thermo Electric Performance. Click image for more info.
Silicon Germanium is valued for its performance in high-temperature thermoelectric applications. The team found by altering the design of bulk SiGe with 3D modulation doping, a process borrowed from the thin-film semiconductor industry, helped produce a more than 50 percent increase in electrical conductivity.
Boston College Professor of Physics Zhifeng Ren and graduate researcher Bo Yu, and MIT Professors Gang Chen and Mildred S. Dresselhause and post-doctoral researcher Mona Zebarjadi paper has been published in the journal Nano Letters.
The 3D modulation-doping strategy succeeded in creating a solid-state device that achieved a simultaneous reduction in the thermal conductivity, which combined with conductivity gains to provide a high figure of merit value of ~1.3 at 900 °C.
Modulation doping is widely used in producing microelectronics and photonic devices such as computer chips and camera and scanner sensors. The purpose is to reduce impurity scattering and enhanced mobility of the doping material.
The team’s innovation to apply the doping to the SiGe enhanced the power factor significantly by using a thirty percent volume fraction of boron doped silicon nanoparticles in the base silicon germanium. The improvement to the power factor signifies a new strategy to improve the electron performance in bulk materials.
The team has developed a simple model based on mixture rules to interpret the experimental data. Without any fitment parameters, the team is able to explain the experimental data within a maximum uncertainty of ± 20%. The team expects that similar modulation-doping strategies can be applied to other thermoelectric materials following the developed general guidelines.
Bo Yu explains the research paradox, “To improve a material’s figure of merit is extremely challenging because all the internal parameters are closely related to each other. Once you change one factor, the others may most likely change, leading to no net improvement. As a result, a more popular trend in this field of study is to look into new opportunities, or new material systems. Our study proved that opportunities are still there for the existing materials, if one could work smartly enough to find some alternative material designs.”
There’s a bonus in the research from a cost standpoint. Professor Ren pointed out that the performance gains the team reported compete with the state-of-the-art n-type SiGe alloy materials, with a crucial difference – the team’s design requires using 30 percent less Germanium. “Using 30 percent less Germanium is a significant advantage to cut down the fabrication costs. We want all the materials we are studying in the group to help remove cost barriers. This is one of our goals for everyday research,” said Ren.
The calculation of the lost energy to escaped heat in the U.S. is about 60%. Or not quite double of what you bought is simply lost. From huge industrial and power generation stations down to the hot water pipes in homes, a stunning loss takes place every time fuels are used. For transportation the numbers are even worse.
How the Boston College and MIT team’s work will translate into products is yet to be seen. But a certainty is the thermoelectric performance is going to improve and costs will start to fall as mass production scales up.
Apr
25
Business in Outer Space Getting Underway
April 25, 2012 | 2 Comments
April 24, 2012 is a noteworthy day as Planetary Resources came out with their early details. Thanks to Brian Wang’s NextBigFuture and Al Fin there is a wealth of information scattered about. So lets get those briefs and links lined up for those of us quite interested and curious over the potpourri of the enthused.
The ‘why’ in all of this was found by Phil Plait at the Bad Astronomer who spoke with Planetary Resources President and Chief Engineer Chris Lewicki on the phone. Lewicki was Flight Director for the NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Mars Rover missions, and also Mission Manager for the Mars Phoenix Lander surface operations.
Like most of us Plait assumed that the motive is profit, and while that’s a very long-range purpose, Lewicki’s answer surprised Plait, “The investors aren’t making decisions based on a business plan or a return on investment. They’re basing their decisions on our vision.”
The name “Planetary Resources” fits – the early investors want to be sure there are available resources at hand to assure a future in space for people. The other motive is to understand asteroids and figure out how to deflect the ones inevitably going to crash into Earth.
Actually it’s more fundamental to the human mind. While many or most are content to be well enough off to be comfy and entertained, a few are simply eager to tackle challenges. Getting a private foothold off planet is a major challenge and it can be done. There are people not just willing but eager to get on with it.
The ‘who’ leading the first private concern being Planetary Resources is Chris Lewicki with John S. Lewis from the University of Arizona joining the advisory board. The founders are entrepreneur and aerospace engineer Eric Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis, M.D. Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. The hands on guys are Lewicki and Chris Voorhees. The current advisory board list counts seven, and nine investors have permitted their names to be disclosed.
The ‘what’ of it being about is much more than just mining an asteroid. Diamandis put it best saying “Everything we hold of value on Earth – metals, minerals, energy, water, real estate – are literally in near-infinite quantities in space.” Once folks off planet have this stuff, home for them is “out there”. Some might say it’s the next step, a way out of the confines of life on earth, finally a place where people can live the way they want. The motive is much like the first immigrants to the new world of America. Joss Whedon, the rather famous science fiction creator whose short lived television series ‘Firefly’ and the movie ‘Serenity’ that followed are set in a future where governments overwhelmed the free outposts, predicted the concept. It’s an idea as old as and a response to – “civilization” and the unpleasantness that comes with it.
The ‘when’ is a bit problematic. There are three proposed parts to the plan – survey, prospect and extract. The firm is reported to have already contracted for robotics and worked up a roadmap kind of plan. The first launches are expected in 24 months. Still, the survey will focus on water to start, as water is needed for the extraction step. Once surveys identify high value candidates, prospecting can prove up what is the best first choice.
‘Where’ all this takes place is deep space as compared to close up in earth’s orbit. It’s too soon to say that a certain distance is too far, once asteroids are prospects, one can be sure someone will be willing to put it where it needs to be for a fee. The where does have limits, too close to the sun would be quite uncomfortable and offer heat stress for extra engineering issues and too far would be about the opposite factors. But asteroids are in this solar system for the most part, handily, in the useful range. Asteroids are sure to be moved, but in time the extraction facility will go to them and the products moved where they need to be.
‘How’ is an open question. The first step is destined to be robots doing the survey. From there the plans aren’t firm, understandably.
That leaves us with the problems. Technology is or can rise to the challenge to get it done. Management is much like the situation faced by earlier explorers. One can remember the competition and results in the Amundsen and Scott race to the South Pole where smarter planning won and the best of intentions resulted in disaster.
There are the real risks to the capital and our futures. Just as the earlier and likely these explorers were seeking a life as chosen, government is sure to follow. Governments may not wait – there is a lot of money involved and government’s favorite honey above all others is other people’s money. Fees and taxes, perhaps an export to orbit tariff and other ideas are sure to pop up. Planetary Resources had better figure on millions for lobbyists.
Then there are the legal matters. One can not expect governments to stay out of the way. Some bureaucrats are going to feel threatened as well as seek rents and opportunities. Jurisdiction fights are sure to come up. One suspects that getting living people up there as fast as possible is a crucial to long-term success.
The leaders and investors in this effort deserve our acclaim. The whole endeavor is fraught with risk from every angle – and still they choose to press on.
Its audacity, courage and the human spirit come to life once more in assaulting the next frontier and making it our own. Godspeed to one and all.
Apr
23
Three Cold Fusion Processes Coming to Market
April 23, 2012 | 3 Comments
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 Brillouin 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. Click image for the largest view.
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. Click image for the largest view.
The latest visual explanation comes from Brillouin with a YouTube video:
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.
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