SRI Report Independently Verifies Brillouin LENR Reactions (report included)

1st Official Post
    • Official Post

    LENR News 2018-03-13

    Researchers at SRI International (https://www.sri.com) have issued a Technical Progress Report covering their review and independent validation of Brillouin Energy’s on-going testing and scaling efforts of its most advanced Isoperibolic (“IPB”) Hydrogen Hot Tube™ (HHT™) component prototypes, which generate controlled Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (“LENR”).




    In their 2017 Report, SRI’s researchers confirmed that they have continued to successfully replicate “over-unity” amounts of thermal energy (heat) in Brillouin Energy’s IPB HHTs, now at materially greater output levels than was seen in their prior replication efforts that were documented in their 2016 Report. SRI conducted extensive review and third-party tests of Brillouin Energy’s technology throughout 2017. This included review of considerable test data from Brillouin’s four individual IPB HHT™ LENR reactor test systems, plus 34 different HHT™ reactor cores that were designed to increase scaling of power outputs and reactor control. Dr. Francis Tanzella was again the principal investigator assigned to SRI’s testing of Brillouin Energy’s LENR systems and conducted all of the third party validation work.



    “Brillouin Energy has made real progress in defining the engineering pathway forward, and in demonstrating increased potential to scale total power production in its reactors. This is reflected in SRI’s 2017 Report as compared to SRI’s 2016 Report. Their growing list of technical achievements are leading to a number of results that we have not seen before. Increased COP’s, increased repeatable excess power outputs, increased LENR heat, better calorimetry, and transportability of multiple reactor systems performing independently – it’s continuing to point to a potential breakthrough,” said Dr. Tanzella, Manager of the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Program, Energy & Environment Center, SRI International.


    “The results validated in the 2017 SRI Report are the strongest proof yet that Brillouin Energy is on the path to commercialization,” said David Firshein, Chief Financial Officer of Brillouin Energy. “The company has proven with increasing scientific evidence, which SRI has independently verified, that its reactor systems can produce actual LENR heat at lab scale, which is both controllable on demand and repeatable, in multiple reactor systems and components manufactured and run the same way.


    Mr. Firshein added, “this is the second Progress Report from SRI International that verified Brillouin Energy’s technical claims. The results validated in this year’s Report are up to three times greater than those validated in the previous year’s Report. The company’s current growth capital raise will fund the next stage of scaling heat outputs to industrially useful levels.”

    The 2017 Technical Progress Report summarizes all of the data and conclusions from SRI International’s year-long validation test review of Brillouin Energy’s IPB HHT™ LENR reactor systems. To view the 2017 Report, click here:


    source



    About Brillouin Energy Corp

    Brillouin Energy is a clean-technology company based in Berkeley, CA, which is developing an ultra-clean, low-cost, renewable energy technology that is capable of producing commercially useful amounts of thermal energy from LENR. Brillouin’s LENR technology includes a proprietary method of electrical stimulation of nickel metal conductors using its Q-Pulse™ control system. The process stimulates the system to produce LENR reactions, which generate excess heat. Other than the heat output, there are no (zero) toxic or CO2 bi-product emissions of any kind.

    • Official Post

    Very easy to read, even for someone not skilled in the art like myself. I like that they brought in a third party to advise on, and improve the calorimetry. As I recall, the earlier criticisms revolved mostly around the Q-pulse, and whether it was being properly accounted for in the energy balance. Tanzella seems have laid that concern to rest.


    It will be interesting to see what kind of COP they get once they engineer the system to target more of the heater input, and Q-pulse to the core instead of being wasted. And also start running it at the more optimal 700c range.


    Congratulations to BEC and SRI. As David said, it will be interesting to see if this is picked up by the science feeds. If anything, it should be reassuring to the other LENR researchers, that what they seek is not some illusion.

    So called Q-Pulses are supposed to marry an electron to a proton thereby creating a neutron:


    http://brillouinenergy.com/wp-…20Energy%20Hypothesis.pdf


    As the lattice breaths the compression cycle is where the electron capture events occurs but after the capture event the relaxation cycle leaves the newly formed neutron in a vacuum resulting in a low energy neutron(s) - low enough that the cross section allows it to combine with nearby or migrating hydrogen nuclei. The distance between the lattice nuclei and the migrating hydrogen atoms make the probability of combining with another hydrogen much higher than combining with Pd.


    This is an incredibly nutty idea. But, since experiment rules, I suggest that Brillouin or SRI demonstrate a lot of neutrons. Just saying that they immediately are absorbed is no excuse.


    Well, suppose we have free neutrons. Can they react with protons? Somebody on the web says:


    Yes, hydrogen can absorb neutrons and emit the released energy as a gamma-ray photon. Your value is a bit too large, however. The Table of Isotopes (Firestone 1996) lists the neutron separation energy of deuterium (which is the same process in the other direction) as 2224.57 keV.


    These over 2 MeV gamma photons would be easy to detect. Where are they?


    Note that the Q-Pulses contain a very wide band of frequencies. This makes it difficult to measure the power accurately. You will miss the part of the spectrum that falls outside the sensitivity band of your instrument. The "good" thing with this is that you underestimate the input power thus getting a better COP.

    Quote from oldguy

    from table E.1looks like the COP goes down as the system goes from 300 to 340C.

    The COP is not very encouraging. <2 Not much better than a "typical" electrochemical cell.

    What does that mean? All ordinary electrochemical cells have a "COP" less than 1. They never produce any excess heat. There is always a deficit, because calorimetry never captures all heat. In this case, with a COP of 1.6 and a Qreaction of 5 W, input is ~8.3 W and output is ~13.3 W. That is not "typical"; it is impossible with normal electrolysis.


    ("Qreaction" is defined as output minus input, on p. 13.)


    If you mean a typical cold fusion electrochemical cell, the ratio is meaningless because it can be adjusted and it is often infinite. What matters most of all is control. According to this report they have good control. What matters next is the s/n ratio. Any reasonable calorimeter can measure 8.3 W in, 13.3 W out with a very high s/n ratio. 5 W excess is high by the standards of electrochemical cold fusion. If they can get 5 W most of the time, and they are willing to demonstrate it to experts, they can quickly convince everyone in the world that cold fusion is real.


    I have not gone over this report in detail so I cannot judge whether the calorimeter is reasonable, but knowing SRI I assume it is.



    (I wish they would not use that term "COP." It is not a COP!)

    Quote from Seiber Troutman

    That report looks like a bunch of crap - seeding to derail others from looking to do this type of research. Some new world order bait ~

    I cannot imagine what this sentence means. Why would this report "derail" others? Because it is discouraging? What is discouraging about it? It looks encouraging to me, so I suppose it would spur others to replicated.


    Also what is the "new world order"? Oh wait. Perhaps I should not ask!

    Quote from David Nygren

    Will be interesting to see how these news will be received.

    It will be ignored. However, as I remarked above, if they can make this happen on demand (most of the time, anyway), they can bring in friendly experts, and they can soon convince the world that this effect is real. That will probably set off research in thousands of labs, so perhaps they do not wish to do this. Perhaps they have some other reason to keep it relatively quiet. I have no idea what their business strategy might be. But, anyway, 5 W excess can be demonstrated with a large s/n ratio in a good calorimeter.


    As noted above, the input power has been the major problem with these Brillouin experiments. I hope that has been addressed.


    Assuming the numbers are correct, I think the magnitude of the reaction (the power level) is high enough. I cannot imagine any serious observer will think 5 W is too small. Someone like Mary Yugo would say that, of course, but a serious observer will know that at this stage power makes no difference as long as you can measure it with confidence. Control is all that matters. The COP also makes no difference whatever. I wish they would include it only as a footnote. It is a distraction!

    Jed, I have seen many electrochemical "CF" cells on the order of 10W in and 12 to 14 W out with error bars of around 0.25W. When you get an active cathode, 20 to 30% excess is often the general level you get. Some high current versions have much higher "COP" or what ever you want to call it. I do not see that Brillouin has much more than that and I still have doubts on the input measurement to their system. Notice they do not include their equipment overhead in their report.

    The report would be of more help is the actual numbers for a representative run were included in a separate spreadsheet. In any case, I read the results as 15W of heater power + 5W of Q power in (for a total of 20W) and 20W out. If you assume that only 50% of the Q power is absorbed, then you have the COP of 2 as they apparently do not count the 15W of heater power. Am I missing something?


    BTW: Isn't the H2 LEL 5%?

    Quote from oldguy

    Jed, I have seen many electrochemical "CF" cells on the order of 10W in and 12 to 14 W out with error bars of around 0.25W. When you get an active cathode, 20 to 30% excess is often the general level you get.

    Where did you see these? Which published reports describe such large errors, and where is 20 to 30% described as the "general level"? The papers I have seen from places like SRI, Los Alamos and Amoco do not fit your description.

    Quote from DAK

    In any case, I read the results as 15W of heater power + 5W of Q power in (for a total of 20W) and 20W out.

    No, the ratio is 1.6 (1 W in, 1.6 out), and 5 W is the excess. So, where X is input power:


    X * 1.6 - X = 5 W


    X (1.6-1) = 5 W


    X = 5 W / 0.6


    Which is 8.33 W


    (5 W and the ratio of 1.6 are from Table E.1. "Qreaction" is defined as output minus input, on p. 13.)

    • Official Post

    I woke up this morning excited to read about this. I go to bed wondering what it will take to catch the attention of the science establishment? Not your mainstream academic types...they will never get on board until a product is out, but any of the science news feeds. Not a thing reported so far though.


    Sites like "Science Daily" will link to almost any science report, no matter how "exotic". I just can not understand why they shun this. SRI is a reputable institution. Tanzella has gone up against the likes of Garwin and Lewis, and came away with his reputation intact. This is follows an earlier successful test. It had tighter calorimetry, is repeatable, transportable, reliable and overunity. They brought in a third party...What am I missing?


    Oh well, maybe I will wake up tomorrow, and see it all over the news.

    Quote from Shane D.

    They brought in a third party...What am I missing?

    Not gonna happen. There is no way any mainstream news outlet will cover this. The editors will squash it, and the reporter would be fired. However, be of good cheer. We don't need that. We need this to be a bridge to wider acceptance. There are tens of thousands of influential, technically sharp people from major institutions who are interested in cold fusion, and willing to look at something like this. I can tell that by analyzing the log files at LENR-CANR.org. People have downloaded 4.2 million papers, and I have the Apache HTTP server log file record for every one of those downloads. That's a lot of data! See p. 6:


    http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthefuturem.pdf


    It all depends on what the people at Brillouin decide to do. If they want the public to believe their claims, they have the means to accomplish that goal. I hope they realize they have the means, and it would be in their interests. I will tell them. Unfortunately, people seldom listen to me.

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