Electricity directly from atmospheric muons. Help with the set up!

  • Hi all,


    I was planning to replicate Holmlid's experiment since I have the necessary equipment in my home lab. However, I gleaned from various sources, including Holmlid himself, that using the decay of the muons directly is better than converting heat to electricity. So I would rather start from here.


    In my research I stumbled upon this patent : Electricity generation from muons.pdf


    The basic idea is that you trap the atmospheric muons with an alternating magnetic field which you create by running an AC current through a copper coil at a frequency wich is " an integer multiple of the Compton wavelength of the muon". Then the trapped muons decay and the electrons are trapped by another coil that sits inside the first one and flow to a load.


    They say the COP is 380, which is tremendous.


    The idea seems simple enough. In practice ( and because I am a humble amateur chemist and I know little about electronics) I need to know :


    1) if this is doable with a commercial signal generator such as this one ( signal generator ).

    2) what frequency are we talking about exactly ? I found one website according to which the Compton wavelength of the muon is 11.734 441 11 x 10-15 m


    If 1) is no then could someone tell me what to get to replicate this patent ? Thanks.

    • Official Post

    I haven't read your link, but thank you for posting- we need more genuine experimenters here for sure.The wavelength you quote is a frequency way up there in the many terahertz range, and because of inductance you are never going to create a physical coil that runs at that frequency or anything like it. But the trick lies in the 'integer multiple' part of your post. Your signal generator can create a signal to drive a low inductance (not many turns) coil. Then by changing the coil frequency with your signal generator (and an HF amplifier to create a good current in the coil I should think) you use an oscilloscope to look for a 'big bump' signal in a second coil. At it's most elementary, this would be just like tuning in a radio.

    When the grequency of your driven coil is that 'integer multiple' of the CW frequency, you are 'on station' and the music will (might) play.

  • Please excuse me, but I would like to offer an opinion. Your concept only uses just a small fraction of the energy that the Holmlid reaction provides. A more appropriate energy capture mechanism is to convert all of the 1 GeV of energy that each particle decay will produce. Holmlid converts most of the nucleons that decompose into energy. You can capture all that energy as heat and still extract electrons from the last stage of meson decay. If you would use a thick blanket of lead or thorium fluoride salt to capture the meson decay products, you will not only get excess electrons, but also all the meson decay energy which might be 99% of the energy released by the reaction.


    In addition, you could also trigger muon catalyzed fusion which could up the energy production some hundreds of times per muon decay. The heat energy can then be extracted by running the molten heavy metal blanket material through a heat exchanger. The excess electrons will impart a negative charge to the blanket material which could be extracted from the blanket as a battery like DC current source.


    In sum, use of a heavy metal molten blanket could yield hundreds of times more energy that just electron capture alone. Using just electron capture, you will be producing this meson decay and muon fusion generated energy regardless of the efficiency of your energy conversion method except an inefficient method would be uncontrolled and unconfined. An inefficient energy conversion method would deposit energy in the walls and surrounding neighborhood and bodies of the people in those spaces were your reactor is operating.


    Respect the great power that you will be releasing, not only for your own welfare, but also for the welfare of the people withing miles of your reactor.

  • axil ;- I think 380 is quite enough. You have no idea what the required lead or thorium salt shielding would cost (bundles) and no suggestions as to how to usefully use or remove the heat in that - convert it to steam perhaps and use it to generate electricity at 30% efficiency?


    How will the inventor cool the meson decay energy released inside his muon containment coils? That meson decay energy is not going away. For every Kw of electrons captured, 100Kw of heat will be produced.

  • This patent makes no sense on many levels.


    Just one:


    http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.g…se/Particles/muonatm.html


    muon flux is 1/cm2/min

    muons have typical energy 4GeV = 6.4E-10J


    Total power flux from muons (assuming 100% conversion to electricity - many other issues there) is 10pW/cm2 or 100nW/m2 or 100mW / sq km


    Thus harversting 100% of muon power over a square km would deliver only 0.1W power.


    The patent claims 2kW in 700kW (approx) out. That would mean it was harvesting 7000 sq km of area.


    The method is to use a coil. The wavelength is very small, so the coil can only be relevant where its field is significant. That corresponds roughly to the dimensions of the coil.


    Thus: you'd need a coil 1 km square in cross-sectional area to harvest 100mW. And such a coil would have a large inductance and lowish self-resonant frequency. No way it could be driven at even GHz let alone THz.


    If it worked at 100% efficiency. Direct conversion of electron energy is possible but not easy, you need to decelerate the electron by a potential equal to the energy, and match potential to energy for high efficiency. Low efficiency you have soluble cooling issues. The patent suggests letting the electrons be caught by a wire. The issue there is what energy you get per captured electron which depends on the wire potential.

  • This patent makes no sense on many levels.


    They indeed do not mention the size of their device.


    @ Axil


    My plan would be to use this in ultra dense protium excitation, which produces heat and muons ( see Holmlid's and Kotzias's works). So any sign that it does indeed produce electricity would be satisfactory. D µ D fusion complicates things too much atm due to safety and I need to get a rig going before I buy some deuterium, failure can also quickly get expensive. So, I will stay with protium for now.



    According to NIST, the muon's Compton wavelength is indeed 11.73444111 x 10-15 m as given in the opening post. That's about 11.7 femtometers.


    That's 25.6 Zettahertz.

    Convenience link for double checking the result: https://www2.chemistry.msu.edu…ch/virttxtjml/cnvcalc.htm


    What then would be the "integer multiple of this frequency" ? I am sorry I have to ask I do not have lots of time.


    So to recap I would need a signal generator, an HF amplifier and an oscilloscope. I had a look at the HF amplifiers on ebay, these definitely are not cheap hobby electronics devices.

  • It just means a whole number multiplier like 10,000X or 50,000 times the wavelength, ot whatever suits you. Your coil wire will also need to be a multiple of the wavelength and it's resistance matched to the amplifier output. Take care you don't drown out too many local TV sets with static when you fire it up.


    It does not make sense (I said many levels) when you crunch the numbers. The highest Q you can sensibly get from a non-superconducting coil is say 10,000 (actually it will be much lower, I'm allowing X10 for safety).


    Therefore if you choose 10,000X the wavelength your standing wave peaks (which make a comb in freq spectrum) will all merge together to make uniform response. and then this is just the same as any coil driven by any frequency.


    10,000 wavelength is 1E-10m = 0.1nm. Now that is too small a wavelength - it corresponds to x-rays - and cannot be accessed using electronics which will stip being usable at a few 100GHz (10,000,000X lower in frequency).


    So the whole idea is a non-starter and obviously so. That BTW is No 2 absurdity in the patent, believing everything it says, and crunching the numbers. What is interesting is that both these issues are things that DONT WORK quantitatively by factors of much more than 1,000,000.

  • I actually was going to drop the idea but they address the issue of surface muon flux. From the patent : Electricity from muons good patent.pdf (from the US patent office, this one gives more details).


    "The order of magnitude of muon flux at the earth's surface is about 10−4/m2·s and therefore, the flux of muons is negligible. For example, to achieve a power of 760 kW (equivalent to 4, 7·1015 eV/s), considering that each muon has an energy of 4 GeV, it would take a flow of the order of 1015 muons/s. To compensate for said negligible flow, it would be necessary to increase the capture area of muons with coils of areas equivalent to the area of several cities, which would be totally inviable. Nevertheless, and very surprisingly, the device according to the present invention can capture a sufficient number of muons to enable a realistic extraction of muonic energy from the air and is highly economical in an area of less than half a square meter. Without being limited to a probable physics theory, it is believed that the explanation is as follows:


    A magnet has “closed” and “open” field lines, which form an angle Θ between them tending to zero. Likewise the magnetic field from the primary coil of the muonic generator according to the invention also has both types of magnetic lines. Thus the “open” field lines propagate to high altitudes including the region of the formation of muons, at an altitude of 10 kilometers, forming a magnetic funnel whose top “opening” can have a radius of dozens of kilometers. It is these lines that will collimate atmospheric muons into the coil of the generator of the present invention, whose diameter is for example only a few centimeters. Thus, the magnetic field of the coil acts as a muon drain, which is oscillating in time. This frequency of oscillation of the field has a wavelength λB that is a fraction multiple of the Compton wavelength of the muon λC (λB=n·λC=n·5, 88×10−23 m) so that the energy of the magnetic field used in the captation process is reduced as much as possible and is selective of muons only. The whole process above applies in cases in which the coil of the muonic generator presents its axis horizontally, vertically or at any angle between these."


    I did not see any mention of superconducting magnets.



  • You could use Alan's muon generator for your muon source. You will get about 1 GeV per particle. I would change the design of Alan's Meshsugganon generator to enclose the particle generating core with a magnetic bottle which will direct the sub atomic particles which will radiate in a spherical distribution into your muon energy capture mechanism. If you surround the Meshsugganon generator core with lots of lead over a foot thick, you should get 200 fusion events per each muon created. The lead should shield the gammas that the fusion reaction generates.


    For the diagram of the Meshsugganon generator see post as follows:


    The Scientific Discussion of New Ideas


  • As I have pointed out, the numbers here do not add up to give the needed Q for any resonance phenomenon. And "open" magnetic field lines drop of as inverse cube of distance. It is sort of unfortunate for the reputation of LENR that plainly incorrect ideas like this get threads devoted to them on this site without much in the way of critique (two posts from me).

  • You could use Alan's muon generator for your muon source. You will get about 1 GeV per particle. I would change the design of Alan's Meshsugganon generator to enclose the particle generating core with a magnetic bottle which will direct the sub atomic particles which will radiate in a spherical distribution into your muon energy capture mechanism. If you surround the Meshsugganon generator core with lots of lead over a foot thick, you should get 200 fusion events per each muon created. The lead should shield the gammas that the fusion reaction generates.


    For the diagram of the Meshsugganon generator see post as follows:


    The Scientific Discussion of New Ideas



    I will try to use it with Holmlid's/Kotzias set up. Not sure what to expect but I will give this a go.

  • I agree with THHnew, you'd probably derive more power from a hamster wheel linked to a dynamo. Sorry to add my critique if it dampens your enthusiasm. It looks like a fraudulent patent put out to catch unwary investors by the rather sinister company INTEQ. I'll expect their hitmen round in the morning for saying that but quite honestly I really don't give a monkeys!

Subscribe to our newsletter

It's sent once a month, you can unsubscribe at anytime!

View archive of previous newsletters

* indicates required

Your email address will be used to send you email newsletters only. See our Privacy Policy for more information.

Our Partners

Supporting researchers for over 20 years
Want to Advertise or Sponsor LENR Forum?
CLICK HERE to contact us.