The Trillion Dollar Concept: Negative Differential Resistance

First, I'd like to provide a short summary of what I'm trying to convey. I believe the key to producing ultra high rate enhancement in plasma based cold fusion and LENR systems is to operate in the zone of Negative Differential Resistance with an optimum fuel mixture. To achieve an even more efficient state of operation, the circuit should be tuned so the discharge can remain in the negative resistance zone and resonant oscillations can travel through the plasma. In this case, the system becomes nearly self sustaining and the input power can be reduced to almost nothing.

Now, I'd like to share some posts I've found online from individuals who were members of Brilliant Light Power's former Yahoo group that was recently removed.

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http://www.internationalskepti…p=12544916&postcount=3282

The reason why Mills has taken so long to find a commercially viable design comes down to how electrodynamics of plasma can be designed to support the hydrino reaction. It was only in late 2013 that Mills discovered that a characteristic of arc plasmas called Negative Differential Resistance was an important pre-condition for sustaining the reaction. The hydrino reaction is ionizing, meaning that the HOH catalyst will ordinarily lose its outer electrons. This generates additional current in the plasma. If the plasma has a positive resistance, then increasing the current raises the voltage potential and therefore is unfavorable to the formation of subsequent hydrino reactions. However, if you create a NDR in the plasma (by supplying high current, in the neighborhood of 10k amps), then consider what happens to the voltage as the ionization-generated current is applied. Per Ohm's law, the increased current causes the voltage to drop! Instead of a negative feedback loop, there is now a positive feedback loop supporting the formation of hydrinos. Under an NDR-containing arc plasma, the hydrino reaction becomes explosive. Before 2013/2014, none of Mills' designs could be commercialized because they were inherently rate limiting.

Since 2014, Mills' engineering efforts have been focused on containing and moderating arc plasma-based reactions involving low-voltage, high-current mixed with H2 gas fuel and trace amounts of HOH catalyst.

Here is another.

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http://www.internationalskepti…p=12545414&postcount=3312

Please see this recent post. The reaction kinetics are unfavorable (i.e. rate limited) unless there is a Negative Differential Resistance. When you supply high current, you get NDR and the feedback changes from negative to positive. The hydrino reaction can exist without it, but the reaction rate isn't commercially viable.

Here is another.

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http://www.internationalskepti…p=12545556&postcount=3316

"So, where has Mills written about this phenomenon you seem to have just made up on the spot?"

This comes from personal communication with Dr. Mills on the now defunct SoCP. The archives have been removed as well so I'm afraid all we have to go on is my memory. My apologies if you find that insufficient.

And from a different user on the same forum.

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http://www.internationalskepti…p=12546087&postcount=3328

I remember the same as Optiongeek. Dr. Mills had communicated on several occasions at the SoCP Yahoo Group the theme of negative resistance and its key role in the high reaction kinetics of the Suncell.

Another important detail.

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http://www.internationalskepti…p=12546099&postcount=3330

Furthermore, and probably most importantly, the high current pulse serves to flush out the charge buildup (from ionized catalyst) that would otherwise inhibit the reaction kinetics.

So these posts describe very well how the negative resistance of the Suncell maximizes the rate of hydrino formation. I am confident this is the same mechanism at work in the E-Cat SK.

However, Randell Mills currently dismisses any connection between his technology and cold fusion or LENR. However, in his original patents, he gave a theory as to how hydrinos could more easily undergo nuclear reactions with other atoms. I'd like to state that I am NOT convinced that a hydrino is simply a shrunken hydrogen atom. Instead, I think it is likely a process takes place that modifies the hydrogen atom in some way that we don't understand. But regardless how this happens, the modified hydrogen atom is more likely to undergo nuclear reactions with other atoms. I expect that if you then apply appropriate stimulation, nuclear reactions can then take place. It's my guess that this stimulation can be the relatively high frequency ion acoustic oscillations produced by the space charge construct with a double layer on the surface that's constantly absorbing and emitting ions. These oscillations are visible on Andrea Rossi's oscilloscope. This means if you can tune your circuit well enough a portion of the heat produced by the LENR reactions will be absorbed by the plasmoid, converted into electrical current, and fed back into the circuit. When this happens, the device is in a virtual self sustain mode with extremely high COP.

There's probably a lot more about these systems that we don't understand. However, I think the basic concept is simple, and this is a direct path towards high powered LENR systems. Although electrolytic and powder based systems will all have their niches, I think that these plasma based devices are superior. They offer the ability to be turned on and off, to produce extremely high power density, to be extremely portable, to reach extremely high temperatures, etc.

I would like for a serious discussion of the negative resistance regime to begin in this thread.

https://www.yours.org/content/…o-technology-237de35195f2

So, finding a way to make the reaction without consuming the reactor was the challenge, and Mills made a leap forward in design by using molten silver as electrodes. They are vaporized on contact, but not degraded or consumed. They are injected, like a fountain, toward each other. The voltage difference between them must be very low, a few Volts, but the current is extreme, perhaps 22,000 Amps. A lightning bolt has perhaps 10,000 Amps for a very brief time. The SunCell current is determined by the flow of plasma through the vaporized silver that is extremely ionized, forming extremely conductive plasma, within the negative resistance region of space. As the voltage drops, the current increases. This creates a condition for dense space charge, which is what results when you are ionizing so many atoms.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Brill…ng_of_the_suncell_part_3/

Thanks for your great paper, Ed. Regarding this section, and in particular the bold text, my understanding is slightly different although your intent may be the same. I believe that Mills' key insight wasn't that a multitude of electrons in the area decreases the unfavorable kinectics, but rather having negative resistance inverses the kinetics from negative feedback to positive feedback. That is, as you are ionizing the H2O from the reaction, you are increasing the current as the ionizing electrons join the plasma. Per Ohm's law, as you increase the current in the plasma's negative resistance, you actually decrease the voltage. Reducing the voltage means a lower energy barrier to overcome for the next hydrino reaction, thereby setting up a positive feedback loop. Again, your text may intend to say this. However, to me the idea of flipping the plasma's impact on the reaction from negative feedback to positive feedback through the use of an arc current was really the breakthrough that Mills needed. I've been rooting around looking for material on what it is about an arc plasma that is responsible for the negative current region but this doesn't seem to be well described in the literature. Must be something to do with energy per charge carriers as you touch on.

Does my comment makes sense? Apologies if I simply haven't read your paper carefully enough.

Yes, he is testing a setup using gallium. At first, he did this because the silver based system was having problems because the systems that initially heat the silver were causing overheating in other components. However, now they have resolved the issue and are using silver again, but I think they are going to continue their work with gallium as well.

Interesting idea. I think it really depends on to what percentage of the exothermic reactions are between the nano-particles from the electrodes and hydrogen vs. the elements in the fuel that are vaporized. I suppose both H-Li and H-Pd-Ag reactions could be taking place.

Quote from THHuxleynew

@Director

Re Mills before 2103 designs. They did not use plasma at all. One with an electrolytic cell, the other a solid state cell. neither was gaseous plasma state or anything like it.

There has been a steady move from easier to do calorimetry on systems to more difficult ones where the claims rely on assumptions that may not be true.

• The electrolytic cell has high peak in/out powers with a very small average value relative to the peaks, claimed positive but easy to mis-measure
• The Suncell has input and output power both very unclear, due to the dynamic and spiky nature of both, and the fact that output is not all thermalised and used with conventional calorimetry. Both can be corrected, with some effort, and were both corrected and black-box style testing done by non-believers Mills would get all sorts of things, like masses of money, perhaps Nobel prize, etc etc.

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First, I don't know what you mean by "2103" designs. Do you mean the year 2013? They were indeed using plasma before 2013.

https://iopscience.iop.org/art…088/1367-2630/4/1/370/pdf

The above is from 2002. They have been experimenting with plasma's for a very long time. If you didn't mean 2013, I'll apologize ahead of time, but you need to do more research on BLP before you start making such incorrect statements.

The reason that they are focusing on purely plasma based hydrino systems is that the negative resistance zone allows for a massive rate enhancement - previous systems were self-limiting but when the negative resistance zone is used a positive feedback is provided accelerating the number of hydrino forming reactions. (By the way, I'm only using the term hydrino because I don't feel like writing out "modified hydrogen" over and over again.)

I agree with you that more calorimetry is needed, however, I think that it's obvious they have found anomalies in the past and the Suncell is producing highly anomalous levels of output. What I'd really like to see is their smallest Suncell device connected to some type of massive calorimeter. I expect it would be a very significant build because of the size required and the high temperatures produced on the surface of the dome; yet, these are only standard engineering challenges. If I were BLP, I'd make such an experiment (with a dozen witnesses present) a top priority. But I think when you work day after day on a system that's producing excess heat which is obvious, the desire for such testing diminishes. Instead, the focus becomes a commercial product. In my opinion, though, proving the absolute reality of the Suncell in an undeniable way should be the priority.

Quote from Zephir_AWT

I think you're on the right track. The negative resistance means, the resistor is consuming less voltage with more current, i.e. seeming overunity. The differential resistance would just make this overunity local and temporal - but still exploitable under proper arrangement. I presume, it belongs into negentropic effects, which are closely related to overunity.

The simplest negative resistance device is the relaxation oscillator formed by neon lamp or negatively biased transistor. What actually happens there is the voltage on reversely polarized PN junction increases, until some vacuum fluctuations transfers a bit of energy to it, which leads into its nondestructive breakdown. In this very moment we drained a bit of energy from vacuum against entropic time arrow. Everything what we are supposed to do by now is just to repeat this process fast and to minimize the energetic (ohmic) loses during it.

I'm not saying that I don't think energy from the vacuum is extracted. However, all space charge constructs with double layers (that naturally form during the transition to a pure arc discharge) naturally extract heat energy from their environment and convert it to electrical current to power the "negative resistance." Even not considering zero point energy or vacuum energy, I think it's pretty amazing that in these systems the plasmoid is basically a thermal to electric conversion device that organizes out of chaos.

Quote from fabrice DAVID

I am sorry, but negative resistance is the more common behaviour of arc discharge. (Like old carbon arc lamps for searchlights) It is not "explosive", because even if the resistance of the arc is negative, there is alway the resistance of the generator, and this resitance is alway positive. (So, there is an equilibrium, even in the case of destruction of the generator)

Negative resistance is VERY common. It happens EVERY TIME that an electrical discharge transitions from a glow to a pure arc discharge. It is not always "explosive" in that it produces excess energy for a number of reasons, especially due to the fact that an ideal fuel combination is required. If you don't have hydrogen or at least some water vapor in the plasma, nothing significant is going to happen. And even then, if you don't have an optimum fuel mixture (there are many that are probably good) which adds argon, vaporized/atomized lithium, vaporized/atomized strontium, or other combinations the excess power produced will not always be high. If you do get this right, BLP has proven that you get a massive production of EUV and soft x-ray light (with a minimal portion being in the visible spectrum) which can be thermalized into heat energy.

When it comes to the power supply or generator that powers one of these devices, you are correct that it will have a positive resistance. But sometimes in these devices that utilize arc discharges in the negative resistance zone VERY strange effects can occur - such as powerful back spikes that flow back to the power supply which can be destructive. Paulo Correa also reported these back spikes and devised methods of harnessing them to produce useful power. I think that the overheating in Rossi's power supply could be due to some sort of less than fully understood power traveling out of his reactor.

Zephir,

The biggest question in my mind is if the Suncell when tuned properly or running in self sustain mode truly needs a constant flow of hydrogen. If it doesn't need a flow of hydrogen, either the vacuum or LENR reactions are the source of power. If it does need a flow of hydrogen, I expect that hydrino formation is the source of energy and that it would need additional tuning to actually produce LENR reactions so that a constant flow of hydrogen would not be needed.

I have checked out the Chernetsky generator, the Papp Engine, Paulo Correa's Pulsed Abnormal Glow Discharge device, and several others. I too am very interested in overunity and LENR. If the SK and the BLP device both are tapping ZPE, I think that would be fantastic. I would also recommend you read George Egely's series in Infinite Energy magazine entitled "Lost Inventions of LENR" in which he reviews many of these devices including those of T. Henry Moray, E.V. Gray, and others.