Cold fusion (?) device based on high voltage pulses introduced to membrane for reverse osmosis

1st Official Post

    Interesting cold fusion (?) device based on high voltage & frequency pulses introduced to membrane for reverse osmosis with COP > 120. Device is able to heat 500 grams of water from 22 ° C - 93 ° C during 720 seconds with using of battery input 1.7 Watts. Average life-time of membrane is 35 minutes. YT videos 1, 2. This device wetted my interest, as it show the way, how to do plasma electrolysis without actually doing a plasma. As you can imagine, during plasma electrolysis lotta energy gets wasted for formation of vapor film at the electrode and its ionization. This film is necessary for reaching sufficiently high electrostatic gradient, but its formation costs lotta energy. In addition, high frequency spikes are formed with less or more random interruption of arc discharge by cooling of film, which isn't apparently the way, in which the optimal frequency and voltage could be adjusted easily and preciselly.



    The main secret of this device is apparently the semipermeable membrane used. The usage of deionized water of lowest conductivity as possible is reccomended, asi would enable to localize the electrostatic potential and avoid shortcuts. The voltage used is AC only without any DC component and from audioanalysis of video it seems, the frequency used is somewhere around 10 kHz. Such a voltage can be generated easily with AC source for ozonizers. Bellow is commonly accessible wholesale kit for reverse osmosis, IMO it could be directly used as an improvised reactor, once you solve the removal of excessive heat produced in it. Membrane must be kept wet after first usage, or it could be destroyed during drying.

    It should be pointed out, that this device may not actually work on cold fusion principle. In 2007 radio-engineer John Kanzius developed an apparatus for cancer treatment by polarized radiowaves in 13 MHz frequency range. During desalination tests of his device with tube filled by marine watter (~ 3% solution of NaCl) he observed an evolution of hydrogen, which can be ignited by lighter (video 1, 2). Experiments were confirmed and replicated (1, 2) by Rustum Roy, a materials scientist at Pennsylvania State University. During it the excess of energy has been also observed and the production of hydrogen did run with higher than Faradaic efficiency reportedly.


    In 1982, a team of chemists at Western Illinois University reported the room-temperature decomposition of water vapour into hydrogen peroxide and hydrogen using radio frequency waves with around 60 percent yield [S Roychowdhury et al, Plasma Chem. Plasma Process., 1982, 2, 157]. They too used precisely the same frequency of 13.56 MHz - no coincidence really, since this is a common frequency for radio frequency generators. And in 1993 a Russian team reported the apparent dissociation of water into hydrogen and hydroxyl radicals using microwaves[V L Vaks et al, Radiophys. Quantum Electron. 1994, 37, 85]. Neither paper was cited by Kanzius and Roy.

    Quote from Zephir_AWT

    Device is able to heat 500 grams of water from 22 ° C - 93 ° C during 720 seconds with using of battery input 1.7 Watts.



    @Zephir: There might be a slight calculation error: 4 1.5V Cells can store between 6-9 Watt-hours, which could heat 1/2 liter by about max 13 degrees. Thus a COP would need a carefull evaluation ( real watts used).


    The device itself looks like a sonofusion cooker well known from the Stringham experiments. To use cavities (a membrane is a mass of cavities) to enhanse sono-fusion is a good idea, because in open sonofusion you need much of the input energy to produce the reaction cavitities. I guess the frequency used, is well matched with the size (diameter) of the cavity.


    Very promizing!

    The video is great: slick and just like a magicians trick!


    But of course we are trying to evaluate this as science. Before any analysis:
    (1) If this things works as billed it is bomb-proof and will get this guy a Nobel Prize etc pretty quickly. Maybe he does not want such acclaim, but if he is not by now very famous it leads me to suspect there must be some issue with this experiment.
    (2) I'm no good at detecting magic tricks. Therefore if there is any subterfuge here i would not find it. Based on (1), i'd expect there is such, or else we have a major announcement very soon :)


    Analysis:
    (1) ammeter measurement should be ignored since in presence of HF pulses that type of instrument will give highly erroneous readings. (This is not the classic RMS vs average issue, but the fact that RFI kills ammeters)
    (2) total energy available from 4XAAA cells = 20kJ (as W says above)
    (3) total energy needed to heat up 500g water is 2kJ/K. So we have max 10C rise from these batteries


    Caveats (and remember I'm no good at magic, so I'm probably missing the obvious one):

    • Liquid might contain chemical reactants that heat it up
    • Coil device might contain batteries (unlikely IMO, but can't rule out)
    • Thermometers might be much more sensitive than claimed - so actual rise is not more than 10C.


    THH

    • Quote

      If this things works as billed it is bomb-proof and will get this guy a Nobel Prize etc pretty quickly

      Negative - Fleischmann and Pons device also works, and none of them got some Nobel prize after thirty years. Instead of it, a much more common situation is, the inventors of such things are ridiculed and ostracized.

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      ammeter measurement should be ignored since in presence of HF pulses that type of instrument will give highly erroneous readings

      Ammeter measures the current in DC part of circuit, not the HF/HV one.

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      So we have max 10C rise from these batteries

      Correct. Which is why this device looks so interesting. 8)

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      Coil device might contain batteries

      So that we could have max 20C rise from all these batteries. Still not a big deal...

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      Liquid might contain chemical reactants that heat it up

      The typical boiler noise produced with reactor indicates the source of localized concentrated heat instad.

    • Quote

      Thermometers might be much more sensitive than claimed - so actual rise is not more than 10C.

      A pair of different alcohol-type thermometers has been used. Wouldn't be easier to just immerse a heater into water during videotaping pause?

    To answer these points:


    The big one. This demo as billed has clearly broken conservation of energy by 500% closed system with no calibration or assumptions needed. F&P experiments never did that, or anything like. To say that scientists would ignore this is both highly impolite and just wrong. It is true that most would react as I've done, and reckon it is probably a magic trick. But, this experiment is easily checkable under third party conditions and it would not require any money, nor much effort, to check this was for real in any lab. There would be many people willing to do that, and once we had some credible third party validation the thing would spread with bigger better validators taking an interest.


    As for the others. This is not a competition to see what is the most likely error mode. Given my point about magic there is no way from this video that any positive conclusions can be drawn. If this guy is forthcoming he'd find third party testers.


    Just a few points:

    • Nothing prevents some localised boiling (and it could be nucleation from a reaction) so this is no argument against reactants
    • Coil device could contain high energy density batteries, in theory could be a big deal, as I said in practice not likely
    • I did not mention the liquid. If alcohol we have only half of energy needed for any given temperature rise. So that is another thing to remember :)
    • I don't quite understand your point about thermometers. If one thermometer can be mislabelled so can another...
    Quote from Zephir_AWT

    The typical boiler noise produced with reactor indicates the source of localized concentrated heat instad.


    Quote from THHuxley

    The big one. This demo as billed has clearly broken conservation of energy by 500% closed system with no calibration or assumptions needed.


    Zephir_AWT: What about digging out this guys receipt? And provide it to mfp? We would be eager to see a working sono-fusion device with COP > 4!

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    To say that scientists would ignore this is both highly impolite and just wrong.

    At first, I haven't promise, they would ignore it, at second, the link is three years old, so that they already did it.. ;) I'm the first one, who is reporting about it here.

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    I couldn't find in your description what the electrodes are made of. Do you know offhand

    IMO it actually doesn't matter, I'd would just avoid the iron, chromium steel or some other less noble metals, the precipitate of which fouls and expands the pores of reverse osmosis membranes and thus destroying them. As you can also see, they're pretty well insulated along whole their length, as the shortucuts would decrease the efficiency of the process. You wouldn't want to conduct electricity across bulk of water, only through the membrane sample inside the reactor.

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    We would be eager to see a working sono-fusion device with COP > 4

    IMO this device doesn't work on sonofusion principle, as the pores of reverse osmosis membranes are too small for every bubble thinkable. IMO it tears the water molecules appart and accelerates their fragments along membrane channels.

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    Would be interesting to see MFMP or LFH attempt an exact replication.

    This device is apparently suitable for replication in way wider circles than just MFMP or LFH. I'll definitelly attempt for its replication too.

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    We have the membranes, at least


    I have few of them at home too. The nice point about commercial reverse osmosis membranes is, they're already designed pretty well like the heat exchanger. In addition, they enable to insulate electrical inputs each other very well. The drawback is, they have high surface area. In the above demo, just one square centimeter of membrane is able to work with 2 Watt input. Whereas even the smallest commercial units have surface area by many orders of magnitude larger - around 0.45 m2 i.e. 4.500 cm2. One of possible solution is to use the filter unit in its original form, but to load it in pulsed regime with duty cycle within range 1:100 to 1:1000. The commercially avialable power sources of carbon dioxide lasers are able to manage it with TTL logic.


    Zephir_AWT, thanks again for the interesting links. Btw, several of the links are broken, and at least one passage comes unattributed from this source.


    Regarding the Kanzius device, which splits salt water using radio waves:

    • This might be LENR.
    • Radio waves are (very approximately) in the meV to peV, and water has a bond energy of 5.7 eV, so there is an interesting mystery as to how there could be water dissociation (maybe DAK or Kirk Shanahan can comment).
    • Here is a throwaway possibility for LENR: the radio waves induce electron capture in 22Na, and the 88 eV Auger electrons that follow lead to bond dissociation in nearby water molecules. Here the assumption is that the 1274 keV gamma from the de-exciting Ne daughter is somehow avoided. (Or maybe not. This gamma should at any rate be sought.)
    Quote from Zephir_AWT

    IMO it actually doesn't matter, I'd would just avoid the iron, chromium steel or some other less noble metals, the precipitate of which fouls and expands the pores of reverse osmosis membranes and thus destroying them.


    We could only conclude that the electrode composition in the reverse-osmosis device doesn't matter, or that avoiding iron, chromium steel or other less noble metals is important, if we had prior theoretical biases about what must be going on in the system. But at any rate a replicator will need this information to do a careful replication.

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    so there is an interesting mystery as to how there could be hydrogen dissociation

    It's explained here. I use this system like the molecular analogy of cold fusion collisions (which run at the level of atom nuclei) - even the ratio of energy is similar. We can observe the splitting of water molecules, requiring activation energy of about 1,3 eV by radiowave frequency energy density range (13 MHz) - i.e. 5.10E-8 eV). This is the same ratio of energy density, like inducing cold fusion requiring 10 MeV for activation by electrochemical potential 1.23 eV within palladium cell. Both these phenomena can have similar high-level mechanism and I presume, the water molecules get arranged along a narrow lines within the pores of membrane, which allows to collide them in similar way, like the atom nuclei arranged along lines within crystal lattices.

    Quote from Zephir_AWT

    It's explained here. I use this system like the molecular analogy of cold fusion collisions (which run at the level of atom nuclei) - even the ratio of energy is similar. We can observe the splitting of water molecules, requiring activation energy of about 1,3 eV by radiowave frequency energy density range (13 MHz) - i.e. 5.10E-8 eV).



    @Zephir_AWT: Sorry all links are more or less broken: Can you try to find an actual source?? Please!

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    That is not a logically correct inference!

    Why not? The scientists should look for all possible sources of inspiration of future progress - in the same way, like me. They're even payed for it with compare to me.
    Wyttenbach: source for what? I could give you a specific answer, if you put the specific question.

    Quote

    Why not? The scientists should look for all possible sources of inspiration of future progress - in the same way, like me. They're even payed for it with compare to me.


    Because you assume:
    (1) that this demo was presented to scientists in a form they could derive information from (as a working third party testable setup)
    (2) that (if it was so presented and accepted) it worked when tested third party


    Without both those things true your inference does not hold and it is an example of how sloppy logic can distort the arguments about LENR.

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    that this demo was presented to scientists in a form they could derive information from


    Above you can see the information, which I derived from it. IMO it contains everything necessary for replication testing.
    I don't understad your remark about third party test. The scientists are supposed to be that party instead.

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