Brillouin Energy Corporation (BEC) updates.

Quote from LCC

...their best test shows 152 Watts in and 221 Watts out

Interest from a well-known defence contractor is disclosed for the first time.

A COP of 221/152 is pretty low and won't be sufficient to obtain commercial interest.

Looks like their current harvesting technology is not the best solution.

I would tend to think they need a different technology with higher yield.

Interest from defence is a different issue. It's probably the fundamental cause of energy gain that will interest defence rather than their current product solution. They have more resources to further improve the energy harvesting.

Quote from Rob Woudenberg

A COP of 221/152 is pretty low and won't be sufficient to obtain commercial interest.

Looks like their current harvesting technology is not the best solution.

I would tend to think they need a different technology with higher yield.

From what I gather from the Brillouin release, anything that would produce more than 4,000 Watts with a COP over 1 would be of great interest to boiler makers. If that's the case and we assume scaling is possible, it's mostly an engineering problem that needs to be solved.

Women of BSV interviews Robert Godes, BEC:

Here's more on 'superloading'...

Combining pressure and electrochemistry to synthesize superhydrides

Superhydrides are a materials system where near–room-temperature superconductivity has been achieved but only at very high (megabar) pressures. This work…

www.pnas.org

Quote from Alan Smith

Here's more on 'superloading'...

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/46/e2110470118

Nice, but I fail to see how this relates to Brillouin.

Old good stuff [Lipson + Miley]

Ask Larry + Pam about TRITIATED palladium superconductivity [perhaps you need a FOIA]

DE102008047334B4

Verfahren zur Herstellung hydridischer Raumtemperatur-Supraleiter auf der Oberfläche von Substraten

Hauptanspruch: Verfahren zur Herstellung „hydridi-
scher” Raumtemperatur-Supraleiter aus Palladium, einem
Alkali- bzw. Erdalkalimetall und einem Wasserstoffisotop,
dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass das Alkali- bzw. Erdalkalime-
tall aus einer Alkali- bzw. Erdalkaliverbindung reduktiv auf ei-
nem Palladiumsubstrat abgeschieden wird und die entstan-
dene Palladium/Alkalilegierung bzw. Palladium/Erdalkalile-
gierung anschließend mit Wasserstoff und/oder Deuterium
bei 100–150 bar 10–30 Minuten hydriert/deuteriert wird.

Nothing new, but still interesting to watch:

 posted by Robert Godes.

Showing a 2 liter vessel setup that is suggested to produce 30 KW of thermal energy.

(Keep in mind that Brillouin never showed verified measurements having COP > 4).

Also showing an example electrolysis process in a transparent container giving off some sparks.

The video is VERY impressive.

Godes, McKubre and Hagelstein provide an imprint of scientific authentication which straight away raises the level of credibility from hundreds of other claims.

As does the efforts by Brillouin to have their work verified by SRI in 2018.

But what to make of it?

Brillouin have been overpromising and under delivering for many years.

2016

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Lead Fight for Energy Independence

"Racing such companies as Lockheed Martin Skunk Works division, which also have claimed recent breakthroughs in this area, George explained to Truthout that BEC is only about two years away from a commercial boiler system prototype that a manufacturer could begin reproducing."

2019

Letter from Warren Walborn 2019

"Now the company is raising a $15 million round for the final 18-24 months of development to get them to commercialization, and we are evaluating investor candidates to lead and follow in this round."

So "are we there yet!"

What is the purpose of the video?

It is now 24 months after the previous investment round. Are they after more money?

I made a note of what Jed said in 2019 and I hope he does not mind me quoting him.

"No one will be manufacturing or installing cold fusion devices until there is a library of books describing the reaction, the manufacturing techniques, the dangers, the regulations, and every other aspect of the technology. Modern society, modern governments, and the public will not stand for the kinds of risks and unknowns that were accepted decades ago. The people at Brillouin imagine they will quietly sign contracts, and manufacturers will begin shipping machines to customers. That is a pipe dream. That cannot happen! First, because it is light years away from how modern industry and government works, as I said.

Second, because after 5 or 10 machines are installed, people will find out, experts will say "yes, it is real" and that will be biggest brouhaha of the 21st century. It will be the biggest news story, dominating headlines and news website for weeks. You can no more keep this under wraps than you could keep it quiet if someone invented a machine to convert lead into gold, and began manufacturing tons of gold. ...

I am not suggesting that cold fusion will be banned for safety reasons. Everyone will soon see it is much safer than other energy sources, so it will be allowed. However, it will only be allowed after extensive safety testing. This will take millions of hours and cost billions of dollars."

I don't really care who delivers LENR to the world, as long as someone does it, and the sooner the better.

But clearly even if Brillouin, or others, have a product this very day then bringing it to market will still take years and a lot of money.

Maybe it needs a national government to get involved to speed things up (as governments did to help Covid vaccines arrive in record time).

Quote from ZenoOfElea

What is the purpose of the video?

It is now 24 months after the previous investment round. Are they after more money?

I made a note of what Jed said in 2019 and I hope he does not mind me quoting him.

"No one will be manufacturing or installing cold fusion devices until there is a library of books describing the reaction, the manufacturing techniques, the dangers, the regulations, and every other aspect of the technology.

No problem quoting me! I stand by that. I think the recent history of self-driving cars bears out what I said. Martin Ford described an event on April 22, 2019. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, "I feel confident producing autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year." He "suggested" (Ford's word) that Tesla would have a million robotaxis operating on public roads by the end of 2020. A robotaxi is a car with no one in the driver's seat, that can drive by itself to pick up passengers, or carry passengers in the back seat with no one in the front. One was demonstrated on surface roads in Tokyo years ago. In other words, robotaxis already exist, but predicting they would be in widespread use by late 2020 was far too optimistic, even without the pandemic.

Musk is a smart cookie. He knows a lot about technology, and the people who advise him know a lot more. But, you see how over-optimistic they can be. There is no doubt robotaxis exist. Probably, if the dire need arose, we could have them now. However, we do not have robotaxis, and I suppose one of the main reasons are the regulatory hurdles. Not the technology per se, although that also may be less ready than Tesla and the others admit.

It is possible Brillouin's technology is all that they claim. The device shown in that video might really produce enough heat for a house, and it might be highly reliable. I wouldn't know about that. But supposing that is true, they cannot simply begin manufacturing and selling these things, because of regulatory hurdles, and social hurdles. The public would not stand for it. That does not mean the public will never stand for it, or that there is no hope of deploying this technology. Not at all! I am sure that when the proper steps are taken and the public is reassured, many people would be happy to buy these gadgets for their houses.

Assuming the Brillouin gadget works, after extensive testing, many people will feel confident that it is safe. Especially people like me, who are used to cutting-edge technology, and who have faith in engineers. When they tell me that self-driving cars are safe, I will be willing to ride in one. I expect I will feel trepidation. My grandmother was a little afraid of flying on airplanes in the 1960s, I suppose because they were dangerous for most of her life. We asked the airlines to give her a seat in the middle, above the wings, not in the back, because my father heard there there were fewer bumps and dips in the middle. I have driven a Tesla but I did not try the automatic lane change feature. I expect it would give me the willies, even though I can see from the big screen radar and camera display that the car senses traffic better than any human. It senses in all directions simultaneously, and computes trajectories. The auto-lane change must be safer than manually changing lanes. It is one thing to understand this intellectually, but another to accept it emotionally.

Some people will be afraid of self-driving cars or Brillouin gadgets despite engineering proof they are safe, just as some people are afraid of mRNA vaccines.

The Rodney Brooks Rules for Predicting a Technology's Commercial Success

"Building electric cars and reusable rockets is fairly easy. Building a nuclear fusion reactor, flying cars, self-driving cars, or a Hyperloop system is very hard. What makes the difference?

The answer, in a word, is experience. The difference between the possible and the practical can only be discovered by trying things out. Therefore, even though the physics suggests that a thing will work, if it has not even been demonstrated in the lab you can consider that thing to be a long way off. If it has been demonstrated in prototypes only, then it is still distant. If versions have been deployed at scale, and most of the necessary refinements are of an evolutionary character, then perhaps it may become available fairly soon.

Electric cars are a relatively easy technology. We have more than 100 years of experience engineering and manufacturing windshield wipers, brakes, wheels, tires, steering systems, chassis, and much more.

We have more than 20 years of experience making digitized drivetrains.

On top of that, we already have a whole infrastructure for driving, including roads, parking spaces, safety standards, auto insurance, and government licensing of both the vehicles and the drivers. So to go from internal-combustion-engine cars to electric cars, you don't have to invent everything from scratch and then figure out how to deploy it at scale.

The self-driving car is arguably the single most anticipated technology right now. Here the difficulty lies in attempting something that has no real precedent.

Last year I wrote in this magazine on one aspect of the problem: the unexpected consequences that self-driving cars might have on human behavior. I pointed out that pedestrians and the drivers of other cars might find autonomous cars a tempting target for antisocial behavior. I also noted that the owners of self-driving cars may use them in ways that they would never use a regular car, perhaps succumbing to antisocial behavior themselves.

Another problem is what are called edge cases, which involve robotic cars bumping up against the limits of their capabilities. Some of those limits are not known ahead of time.

Driverless cars will not simply replace cars that have human drivers. Instead, we'll install special lanes, even geofencing the self-driving cars into lanes or entire roads, of their own, to protect them from human-driven cars and vice versa. Also, we'll change the norms for where it's acceptable to pick up and drop off people, where to park, and many other things.

We'll need changes in safety regulations and in how we assign legal liability. And for the laws to change, attitudes must change.

At first the cars will operate in restricted geographies and markets, such as malls, industrial campuses, and other places where human-driven cars are not allowed. Perhaps they will be restricted to certain times of day and certain weather conditions. The various problems of the self-driving car will be solved—eventually. But it will all unfold more slowly than the enthusiasts think."

I agree with him about the HyperLoop. Nice idea in a science fiction story but in reality sending people down small tunnels at great speed in an earthquake zone does not seem smart to me.

Most technologies start very slow and then once market penetration commences they speed up dramatically, digital watches, desktop computers, mobile phones etc.

As far as LENR is concerned, once the process is mastered and proven safe we do not need any AI, we just need it to plug into the grid, or where the home boiler sits, and generate heat or power.

So according to Rodney Brooks rules I would guess LENR is more like an electric car than a self-driving car.

In the UK at the moment people are being encouraged to swap out their gas boiler and replace it with a heat pump.

Maybe in ten years we will be able to swap out the heat pump and replace it with a Brillouin boiler.

Quote from JedRothwell

A robotaxi is a car with no one in the driver's seat, that can drive by itself to pick up passengers, or carry passengers in the back seat with no one in the front. One was demonstrated on surface roads in Tokyo years ago. In other words, robotaxis already exist, but predicting they would be in widespread use by late 2020 was far too optimistic, even without the pandemic.

The relevant committee, a mix of lawyers, politicians, transport company bosses, and actuaries is still discussing this in theory, although it has not met since since the spring. I suspect it will be a good while before they reach any decisions.

Quote from ZenoOfElea

The self-driving car is arguably the single most anticipated technology right now. Here the difficulty lies in attempting something that has no real precedent.

Yes!

Quote from ZenoOfElea

As far as LENR is concerned, once the process is mastered and proven safe we do not need any AI, we just need it to plug into the grid, or where the home boiler sits, and generate heat or power.

So according to Rodney Brooks rules I would guess LENR is more like an electric car than a self-driving car.

I agree. There are fewer human interactions with a hot water heater than an automobile. There are fewer ways to commit mayhem. You don't need a license to operate a hot water heater or space heating furnace.

That is not to say space heaters are perfectly safe. In the 1960s, a gas fired heater exploded and leveled my uncle's house. (A small house.)

It is possible cold fusion will need AI. I hope not, because AI is still new. I would prefer not to combine two new technologies in one gadget.

Quote from Alan Smith

The relevant committee, a mix of lawyers, politicians, transport company bosses, and actuaries is still discussing this in theory, although it has not met since since the spring. I suspect it will be a good while before they reach any decisions.

Years ago, NHK reported that committees and standards organization experts were conducting many meetings in Japan and the U.S., hammering out regulations for self-driving cars. They are not waiting until the technology is perfected. Good for them!

Another update from Brillouin:

- They had a problem with the seals of the HHTs melting because of the heat generated. Problem has been solved (along with a few others such as electro-magnetic interference) and they are now going back to improving COP. The goal is to send tech-packs to manufacturers once 2X COP out-of-the-wall has been reached.

- Their ongoing funding round is about to be closed.

Quote from LCC

Another update from Brillouin:

- They had a problem with the seals of the HHTs melting because of the heat generated. Problem has been solved (along with a few others such as electro-magnetic interference) and they are now going back to improving COP. The goal is to send tech-packs to manufacturers once 2X COP out-of-the-wall has been reached.

- Their ongoing funding round is about to be closed.

Thanks, Can you point to a source? Or you had access to this privately?

That’s from my exchanges with their CFO but it is information he will provide (and more) to anyone expressing an interest in investing (though as the funding round is closing I assume that openness might be curtailed in the future).

Quote from LCC

The goal is to send tech-packs to manufacturers once 2X COP out-of-the-wall has been reached.

What exactly is meant by ‘tech packs’?

Quote from orsova

What exactly is meant by ‘tech packs’?

I believe the tech-packs will be the instructions for testing the HHTs that will be sent to the manufacturers and their engineers.

Brillouin seem to be doing very well - except I can't see why they haven't sent out their 'tech packs' already. I just hope their transparency continues and it doesn't end up like Leonardo Corp.!!!