News about Woodford and Industrial Heat

Quote from Shane D.

In this case...a product being readied for commercialization. I know already we have enough evidence to qualify as being there (finish line), but it does seem the only thing that will catch the worlds attention, will be putting something in the marketplace.

Shane:

IH, you will remember, had a strategy with Rossi that they get in next round investors for >> $100M. All they needed for that was demonstrable, replicable COP something real (say even X2) devices.

Now, X2 is commercial if cheap, as better electric heaters. They do not need to iron out all the "make it reliable" knots as long as they have something that can be replicated cheaply, and that when tested delivers real "Wow we have got it" LENR performance.

Also remember that any engineer would say COP=2 ==> COP = infinity when the input power does nothing except heat stuff up, as is normally the case.

COP is only relevant as a partial indicator that given rough calorimetry there still is some extraordinary phenomenon. That parts of LENR community remain obsessed with COP is a sign of insecurity about whether there is any excess or not.

My suggestion is that that is what they would be hoping to obtain.

THH

Ahlfors Your image is of a scholarship in George Miley's name. It does not verify that UIUC and NPRE claim success with LENR or officially support that research.

...

Ahlfors I don't know what your graphic is or what it means, if anything. Here is the actual syllabus for UIUC NPRE-470 for 2019:

https://courses.engr.illinois.…0/sp2019/web/NPRE-470.htm

It is about fuel cells. I see no mention of LENR. Searching for LENR shows no returns. Searching for "nuclear" shows that the term is used but entirely in different contexts.

Please correct me if I missed it because, of course, I never read anything, in fact I can't read at all so be sure to include more pictures.

ETA: source found, your cover image for NPRE-470 is from 2014. It is obsolete. https://www.coursehero.com/file/9715836/2014-04-22/ Apparently, the Patterson cell claims figured prominently in this class at that time but not currently. It is safe to assume that the claimed results were not reliably replicated.

In your second graphic:

Quote

CTEE (Controlled Thermal Energy Engineering) is deveklping novel thermal energy converskln technoklgies which increase a

system's energy-efrlCiency by capturing and recyc ling heat low-level or otherwise underulil ized heat sources are empklyed via

metal-<llkly and hydrogen interacbon characteristics The technoklgy alklws a heat-<lriven system to autonomousty operate in

three types 01 thermodynamic cycles cooling, heat-pump and heat uPijrade modes

(sorry, it doesn't copy / paste well into this editor even as "plain text")

-No mention of nuclear anything, no LENR.

So I don't get the point of those images, Cryptic Ahlfors. I have no idea if it's relevant but Fred Z. has been in contact with NPRE about casual and loose references to nuclear processes and especially Rossi so possibly, they have cleaned up references to those until they are able to get decent evidence, if they can. I don't know that Frez's efforts are the cause. It's a guess. BTW, I have no problem with students being exposed to information and claims about LENR and even the claims of Andrea Rossi, as long as both sides of the issue are equally well presented and an entirely free discussion is allowed. I think that this sort of exposure would be very beneficial to advanced students of nuclear physics and engineering. It's OK for undergraduates as well but it could be more confusing for them.

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It's a patent app with not one word about nuclear or LENR. So what?

I don't doubt that Miley is associated with IH. I think however, that IH's association with UIUC is probably limited or "essentially" limited to Miley. Not everyone has a generous view of Dr. Miley's claims and recent work on LENR. And that is being polite.

Also, maybe someone can explain what that abstract actually says and/or means. It looks like word salad to me. But then, I never read anything, remember?

arguably

Miley's patent quotes under 'experimental observations';

Studies have been performed in which hydrogen isotopes
('H, deuterium (D or H), and/or tritium (Tor H)) have been
loaded into thin-film electrodes comprised of selected metals
such as palladium (Pd), titanium (Ti), and nickel (Ni). These
studies indicate creation of dislocation cores in the metallic
lattice that are capable of fostering hydrogen cluster forma
tion of the type indicated in FIG. 2. Evidence of such forma
tion includes: localized low energy nuclear reaction products
observed in electrodes after thin film electrolysis, localized
energetic charged particle tracks in CR-39 track detectors
located on Surface of electrodes during thin-film electrolysis,
X-ray “beam-let” formation from localized sites during pulsed plasma bombardment of thin film electrode targets, high binding energy between hydrogen and host materials
Verified by temperature programmed desorption experiment,
and electromagnetic SQUID and three point conductivity
measurements indicating type II superconductivity below 70°
K in dislocation sites. Because the density of hydrogen or
hydrogen isotopes in these sites approaches that of metallic
hydrogen, they are termed “clusters' and can be viewed con
ceptually as in FIG. 2. Consequently, because the atom spac
ing in these clusters is so Small, very little added energy or
momentum is required to cause them to overcome the Colum
bic repulsion barrier and react. As discussed here, one method
to induce reactions is through momentum transfer to the
cluster by diffusing ions (i.e., an ion flux into the cluster).
Increased thermal vibration as the temperature is increased can also initiate reactions.

Which is interestingly close to Holmlid's ideas on ultra dense deuterium (D(0)) where the atomic spacing he measured was 2.5 pm. Depends whether Miley's referring to solid or liquid metallic hydrogen, presumably the range is 2.5 - 150 pm for the Rydberg states. And now Holmlid has detected mesons too, exciting stuff!

Dr Richard

Check out the authors of this 2009 paper.

Sure, fusion research is a small world. Thanks.

Quote from Dr Richard

Which is interestingly close to Holmlid's ideas on ultra dense deuterium (D(0)) where the atomic spacing he measured was 2.5 pm. Depends whether Miley's referring to solid or liquid metallic hydrogen, presumably the range is 2.5 - 150 pm for the Rydberg states. And now Holmlid has detected mesons too, exciting stuff!

I just want to correct any possible apophenia here.

liquid (and solid) H has atom spacing in the 100s of pm. Holmlid's hypothesised 1.5pm spacing has very little experimental support - it is a highly speculative idea that might give rise to the (also highly speculative) unusual particles Holmlid believes he has indirectly observed.

These vacancies might have high density of H in them (in fact there is good direct evidence for that) but it is still in the 100s of pm range, some 1000000X less dense than what Holmlid suggests.

That factor of 1000000 is a big deal.

One reason not to think this is about UDD (or UDH) is the difference in dimensions. These dislocations are of size the intra-atomic spacing in metal lattices - 300pm or so. UDD or UDH would take up a tiny fraction of the available volume I'd you'd not expect any effects on the much larger volume to interact much with the incredibly tightly packed UDD.

No-one can say this is not happening - since UDD or UDH and its properties (or even existence) is totally speculative, where it occurs is unknown. Equally it would be wrong to say that this is evidence coherent with UDH.

Quote from can

Dr Richard

Check out the authors of this 2009 paper.

Holmlid's claims for UDD are fascinating. this paper refers to 2006 and 2009 references for the existence of UDD clusters. Some issues:

(1) The idea is that deuterium forms a Bose Einstein condensate allowing these high cluster densities. And H could not do this. Contradicting some of Holmlid's own subsequent results showing the same thing with H.

Rydberg matter was predicted and measured in gases where a
static clustering of protons or deuterons to comparably high
densities is generated with densities up to 1023 cm23
(Badiei & Holmlid, 2006). In contrast to gases, the appearance of ultrahigh density clusters of crystal defects in
solids were observed in several experiments, where such configurations of very high density hydrogen states could be
detected from SQUID measurements of magnetic response
and conductivity (Lipson et al., 2005), indicating a special
state with superconducting properties. These high density
clusters have a long life and with the bosonic nature of
deuterons—in contrast to protons—should be in a state of
Bose-Einstein-Condensation at room temperature (Miley
et al., 2009).

(2) No enthalpy is observed during the inversion to D(1) (low density D) to D(-1) ultra high density D. That is unbelievable on Coulomb grounds alone. If the D clusters contain balancing electrons the Coulomb energy released from cluster formation would be very large. if they contain no balancing electrons the condensate would require enormous energy to push those + charges together.

Initially D(1) phase is formed in the pores, and it is then inverted to
the ultradense deuterium D(-1). When probing the porous
surface with the grazing incidence laser beam, fragments of
the D(1) and D(-1) materials are removed from the sample
surface.
The Rydberg matter is a long-lived form of matter, and the
lowest possible excitation level D(1) or H(1) exists more or
less permanently in the experiments (Badiei et al., 2009).
The clusters are not formed transiently. There is no indication
that the phase D(-1) is not formed almost permanently. In the
experiments, both D(1) and D(-1) were observed simultaneously. The experiments indicate that the material
changes rapidly with almost no energy difference states
D(1) and D(-1).

I'd like to believe these wonderful ideas: I was enamoured of them when I first read the 2006 paper. But they don't seem to work out, there is no theoretical model of this stuff that fits experiment, and the evidence is weak.

Quote from Alan Smith

In some of Homlid's papers he refers to 'liquid' Rydberg (?) hydrogen forming on the surface of the laser-irradiated KFe catalyst and pooling beneath the target. Since there is nothing else but hydrogen in the system and the laser makes things too warm for (first and lazy thought) water vapour to condense exactly on the target zone, his claims may be more solid than you think.

How about some compound of K, Fe, and H?

very small

Well it looks like Miley goes along with hydrogen cluster formation in these dislocations but isn't perhaps accepting Holmlid's ultra dense theories (or just leaving it out of the patent because it was considered maybe too speculative). As far as muons are concerned, their release within the metal lattice would greatly accelerate fusion reactions - again all very speculative - but would constitute a neat positive feedback process driving the type of chain reaction underlying thermonuclear explosions. Isn't that what we're trying to do, cold fusion being a slow, controlled release of the same energy? Maybe the research group at NASA have now confirmed meson release from deuterated metal targets exposed to X-rays - the question then arises whether the recent 'glamorous gammas' reported by atom ecology are powerful enough to activate similar mechanisms. Nice one Alan S!

from Miley 2009 referenced above:

The mechanism for forming the cluster and its subsequent reaction is under
study. The deuterons can be viewed as moving as electric neutral particles like a
Maxwellian plasma within the palladium. If their interaction distance is less
than 2 pm, this solid-state plasma is reactive. It is calculated (4) that the 2 pm
distance between the electrically neutral deuterons arrives at gravitational
attraction or Casimir attraction in the range of an energy density of 0.1 eV/cm3
.
This attractive force is competitive against thermal motion. If clusters of about
150 neutral deuterons are produced, their diameter is in the range of 10 pm.
Because the DeBroglie wave length of each deuteron at room temperature is in
the >10 pm range, the cluster can assume a Bose-Einstein quantum state with
non-distinguishable deuterons. (Recently, Yeong Kim (37) also proposed the
formation of Bose-Einstein states in LENR electrons). This state is thought to
correspond to the superconductivity regions measured by SQUID, as previously
noted.

The idea is that in a metal lattice D nuclei and electrons pair up not as normal atoms but as tightly bound entities 2pm or so in size that can then coalesce in a condensate.

This is very highly implausible in many ways, but one specific argument is simple. Consider the formation enthalpy of these tiny deuterons. The Coulomb attraction between opposite charges releases an enormous amount of energy. Yet that energy difference is not observed. Sure, you might suppose some balancing enthalpy - but for an exact balance with this very large value?

I applaud highly speculative way out theoretical ideas. But not when they ignore experimental evidence.

Assignee: IH IP International Holdings