Frank Gordon / Harper Whitehouse - the LEC -collected papers

    Quote from can

    When I made several low-effort/low-tech tests a while back, liquid(+electrolyte) or even just moisture in the gap was what made the voltage appear in my case. Thin transparent plastic wrap would make the effect entirely disappear. I concluded that I wasn't seeing a LEC effect in my case.

    This is almost everyone's initial knee-jerk reactions. Please look further into there protocols as they now completely eliminate that through heating.
    There is an ionizing effect of some sort that can't really be explained easily.
    That's what makes it such a interesting experiment is it's like a puzzle game of where does the energy come from?

    For everyone else regarding the LEC.
    To sort out what improves or diminishes the current density of the cells is a challenging curiosity as there are so many variables.

    In manufacturing to optimize utility, safety, and efficiency with many sets of variables, we use an Orthogonal Array with a voting system the team uses.
    In this case we would need to establish a control that all experimenters use and create a point scoring system.

    It is so serendipitous because this video Factory Optimization just came out today and it made me think immediately of the LEC.
    I had assumed that most scientists know about this way of collecting data, but the video from a great YouTuber made me reconsider my assumptions,
    which happens probably more than care to admit.... 😅

    Quote from Diadon Acs

    I had assumed that most scientists know about this way of collecting data, but the video from a great YouTuber made me reconsider my assumptions

    Nice video. This is partially what I was alluding to in this comment.


    And yes, lots of people will have been taught about DOE and Taguchi methods - but most promptly forget about them afterwards. I studied them 40 years ago - and have sometimes used them in my job - but I generally found that as soon as you start talking about orthogonal arrays, people's eyes glaze over... ;)


    However. while we should be thinking about Taguchi - we also have to get around psychological factors, such as the Einstellung Effect. DOE techniques can be great, as long as you are aware of all the variables. But that is never as simple as it sounds. Some variables remain well hidden, or simply get ignored as being irrelevant.

    "The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making" - Douglas Adams

    Like 2

    And there are economic variables which can be equally - if not more- important. For this reason I am not happy that so much time is spent researching Pd/D systems. If it's too expensive for Walmart, it is just too expensive.


    Within the science team (5 labs) working on the LEC we have currently a disagreement on strategy. Not a huge threat to the effort, but never the less it slows things down. Some members want to design a basic and reliable Pd/H LEC and then send systems (or build details) out for other labs to test. This is not an immediately desirable course of action IMHO because: -


    1. It is too early in the research cycle to freeze or even pause prototype development, we can do much better.

    2. As currently conceived it stands a very good chance of being dismissed as a curiosity by roo many voices - for all the usual reasons.

    3. It will attract very little media interest - and the chances are they will pick up on negative views from labs with a developed PR strategy and an axe to grind.

    4. We will only get one shot at this, so we must do it right.


    I also think that a LEC based entirely on Pd co-dep could (or should) never be a mass-market device simply because of the expense, limited Pd supply and the dirty nature of the current refining process. The only hope fir using Pd would be that sales of electric cars lead to a decline in the use of Pd in catalysers and thus frees up the supply and lowers the price. This article from Reuters describes how decreasing demand for Pd together with increased supply of Pd recovered from scrapped exhaust catalysers. However, Russia, who produce around 40% of all Pd are already saying they will cur production to hold up the market price. So Pd is still a strategic raw material subject to embargo and market rigging. And building 1Bn LECs would break the world Pd market, even at 10mg per LEC we need 50% of global annual Pd production..


    Electric vehicles throw palladium's mega-rally into reverse
    An era of breathtaking palladium rallies is likely to be ending, analysts said, as rising supply and stagnant demand erode prices of the metal used to…
    www.reuters.com


    What I am doing is materials research with the intention of building a workable LEC with the most readily available, greenest and lowest-cost materials that will light a LED. 'The eternal zero-emissions lamp' would potentially attract more media interest.


    I have sourced so-called nano-LEDs for initial tests as shown in the pictures below, the very dim picture below shows just how small they are, the pencil the relative size. The other picture shows how bright that looks at full power. I can get them to run on 600mV and less than 1mA using a special circuit - so running more than 1 is possible.Frank and I both understood that the current/voltage characteristics our prototype LECs have make them an ideal power source for LEDS. And right now, BTW, size does not matter. Light is the sizzle and the LEC is the steak.

    With this in mind I am wading through the literature about valve/diode technology and related electron/emission/adsorption tech right back to JJ Thompson and before and developments up to the 40's. I am happy to share what I'm doing and what I discover to the best of my ability.


    I think if we can get the science up to the lit LED level we will not have to beg people to test them, they will come to us and beg for the chance. And Anthropocene (who we meet with tonight my time) will love it. I give it 6-9 months to get something really useful. If lucky, then less, but the parameter space is very large, and I have so far only scratched the surface.so failure is entirely possible. But not for want of trying. Harper and Frank's research has shown that kerosene lighting consumes as much fossil oil as the entire US civil aviation fleet.The potential for improving public health, reducing emissions and getting carbon credits is enormous.


    Quote from Alan Smith

    4. We will only get one shot at this, so we must do it right.

    I do not understand why you say we get only one shot. I have developed and sold various high tech products. In some cases I failed again and again. I got as many shots as there are potential customers. If you make a gadget, send it to a lab, and it does not work, you may have failed at that shot. They may not want to try again. But there are thousands of other labs, so you get thousands more shots.


    "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Edison


    The economics and practicalities of the LEC show some interesting possibilities, and a potential problem or three.


    If we assume that individual LEC cells are 'battery like' then 10 cells in series each producing 300 mV (not unreasonable) and 1 mA will output 3V @ 1 mA. The volts add up, but the amps do not. If the plates (there is no other practical way to scale up) are each the size of a microscope slide. then you could fit 30 cells (3 stacks) with spacers into a box made for 100 microscope slides which has a volume of approx 90cc. So the energy density is 3mA @ 3V in 90 cc = 3mW, or 30cc/mW at 3V. If you then start connecting these cell packs in parallel to boost the current you would need 1000 x 30cc. to give you 3 Watts. That's 30 litres. obviously not very impressive. If each cell contained just 1 mg of Pd it would require 3 grams Pd in total which costs $120. If it were a more feasible 10 mg per cell the Pd cost alone would be $1200.


    But I suspect that we can go better than that. (as does Frank G) and improve the current output by 2 orders of magnitude. so 30 litres shrinks to 300 cc. Then you have 3 Watts in the size of a coke can.(actually 330 cc in the EU/UK) Enough to charge a phone or provide light to a room. And even at 10 mg Pd per cell the Pd cost goes down to $120 and an estimated mass-production cost for the whole thing of $300 at the factory gate.


    If by careful materials and methods research we can go 3 orders of magnitude then the volume comes down even more and if we can avoid using Pd altogether I think the total mass production cost drops to below $50. - but those are the very very hard yards and a job for a major player with a monster budget. I don't think we could do this-even at lab scale - a job for a chip fabbing plant perhaps?.


    BUT- looking at the examples above if the $300 Coke-can cell lasts for 10 years it costs US 60c/week which for lighting your home and charging a phone or tablet is peanuts.A litre of Kerosene in Nigeria is currently around $2.50. So if you were to buy such a LEC over 2 years at $2.50 a week you get a healthier and better lit home, your phone charged and the seller gets $500 back - over 3 years $750.. But- someone who knows tells me that 2 litres is typical usage, so these figures are conservative.


    Nigeria: weekly kerosene prices 2023 | Statista
    As of May 29, 2023, the price of kerosene in Nigeria stood at 1142.5 Nigerian Naira (NGN) per liter, corresponding to roughly 2.46 U.S.
    www.statista.com



    The biggest unknowns.


    1. The biggest and most obvious is 'can we increase output by 2 orders of magnitude from the current level by the required level to claim the possibility of creating a 300CC 3W 10 year battery?.


    2. What happens when you couple LECs in series? This AFAIK has never been done.


    Considering (1) above - this is my own view a totally imponderable question that can only be answered by experimentation. On the down side,Fabrice David and the Biosearch team also tried something similar without solid outcome.


    (2) Is an interesting one. When cells are in series, a bias voltage is applied by one cell the the next, all the way through the stack. Will this act to accelerate the ions in the space between electrodes thus raiding the voltage? Will it increase the current by changing the ration of positive to negative ions emitted? We don't know.The downside is that we discover that the bias voltage has a detrimental effect. This seems less likely but is possible.


    Conclusions.


    Based on my own results, an improvement in output of 2 orders of magnitude is necessary and possibly achievable. At current output levels the LEC is too unwieldy to be useful. At the hopefull achievable 10W/litre ouput, constant for 10 years (and re-gassing with H2 every 2 years)it is practical and very useful. And 10 years life is only a guess- maybe it would last even longer. We hope to find out.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    I do not understand why you say we get only one shot. I have developed and sold various high tech products. In some cases I failed again and again. I got as many shots as there are potential customers. If you make a gadget, send it to a lab, and it does not work, you may have failed at that shot. They may not want to try again. But there are thousands of other labs, so you get thousands more shots.


    "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Edison

    I don't want to speak for Alan, but I think he is referring to a large scale press release and launch of a easily reproducible experiment, to which anyone can verify who has a basic understanding of science and engineering.

    Diadon Acs - Yes, but we are in a particular bind due to the repeated attacks on LENR over the years and the repeated failures (for differing reasons) of people like Patterson, Rossi, etc etc.. Just for once, we have to be like the Archbishop's wife, totally beyond reproach.


    As for Jed's point about selling hardware/software 'less than perfect'. People will accept less than perfect hardware and software if it is the best available. V2000 was replaced by Betamax was replaced by VHS, by DVD and Blu-ray. Laser Disc came and went - technically better by physically less convenient.(one of my sons is a laser disc collector).But at the moment we are not selling hardware that can be improved by the 'next great thing to buy' until it is good, we are selling a hypothesis that some less than perfect hardware based on it could just possibly be improved if the hypothesis is correct..

    Quote from Alan Smith

    1. The biggest and most obvious is 'can we increase output by 2 orders of magnitude from the current level by the required level to claim the possibility of creating a 300CC 3W 10 year battery?.


    2. What happens when you couple LECs in series? This AFAIK has never been done.

    Actually, we have even more fundamental questions to answer :D :


    A. Will/can a LEC provide energy for 10 years? Currently we have no idea of the duration of a cell and on the influence of materials and process on duration;


    B. Are there some physical factors that intrinsically prevent scaling? As an example, you can reduce a lot the volume by using films instead of bulk electrodes, but this will work only if the effect takes place on the very surface;


    C. How does the energy flow (that implies a ionic current inside the device) degrades the materials or their properties? Is there a wear of the materials due to the current and/or difference in potential?


    D. Is the current implementation the best way to extract the energy?


    These, and many other questions make me think that the best thing to do is to study and understand the phenomena, before starting building practical applications. Even though, as I said, the LEC powered LED is a good exercise that can be useful to generate awareness on this technology, and can answer some of the pending questions (series cell, duration, and so on). But I don't think will be something commercially viable.

    Quote from Stevenson

    These, and many other questions make me think that the best thing to do is to study and understand the phenomena, before starting building practical applications. Even though, as I said, the LEC powered LED is a good exercise that can be useful to generate awareness on this technology, and can answer some of the pending questions (series cell, duration, and so on). But I don't think will be something commercially viable.

    Absolutely.

    Quote from Diadon Acs

    I don't want to speak for Alan, but I think he is referring to a large scale press release and launch of a easily reproducible experiment, to which anyone can verify who has a basic understanding of science and engineering.

    You can issue as many press releases as you want. If the first 10 are duds, number 11 might have a positive effect. Only a tiny number of people will read a press release. If they are alienated, it does not matter, because there are hundreds of thousands of other people who have not read it and do not know it was a dud. Press releases are like advertisements. In the era of the internet, there are millions of them clamoring for attention.


    I do not think it has to be easily reproducible. Probably, no cold fusion experiment is easily reproducible, not even the LEC. It has to reasonably reproducible for an expert who follows the instructions carefully and is willing to try many times. You have to tell the expert "it may not work" so as not disappoint him.


    Quote from Alan Smith

    Diadon Acs - Yes, but we are in a particular bind due to the repeated attacks on LENR over the years and the repeated failures (for differing reasons) of people like Patterson, Rossi, etc etc.. Just for once, we have to be like the Archbishop's wife, totally beyond reproach.

    The attacks will not stop until we have cold fusion automobiles. We should ignore them. The repeated failures cannot be undone. They are water over the dam. As Edison said, 10,000 failures make no difference, as long as attempt number 10,001 succeeds. No one cares how many incandescent filaments Edison tested. They only care that he finally found one that worked well: Japanese bamboo * (madake, Phyllostachys bambusoides). Eventually, they found something better, because no technology is ever perfected, and development is never finished until the last example is thrown away.


    No one remembers or cares about Patterson.



    * The bamboo grove where they harvested the filaments now has a historic marker. (https://www.hama-midorinokyoka…odomo/plant/take/post_11/)

    Quote from Curbina

    I do!

    As a little aside about the Patterson cell - have a look at the number of citations for this Patterson patent. (scroll down the page)


    It was a very influential device - back in the day.


    However, this also highlights the problems with sending out "kits" to other labs for testing.


    Read this (1996?) report by Scott Little & Harold Puthoff entitled "Search for Evidence of Nuclear Transmutations in the CETI RIFEX Kit"

    rifex.pdf


    Instead of just testing the kit as received from CETI (Patterson’s company) the researchers at the test lab decided to “improve” it, by changing some component materials. They did this despite not knowing how or why the device worked - but assumed that the cell should just somehow work like a “normal” electrolysis cell. Hence, they swapped the titanium anode for something that would not develop an insulating oxide coating - totally changing the electrical characteristics of the whole cell.


    They are later surprised that the “improved” cell simply strips all the coating off the beads, in super-quick time.


    This is the equivalent of a lab being given a petrol (gasoline) engine to test and, without any knowledge of how it works, decide that there is a stupid break in continuity in this odd thing that pokes into the combustion chamber - and so “improve” it by welding up the spark gap. They then blame the makers of the machine, for producing a useless piece of junk, when it won’t start...

    "The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making" - Douglas Adams

    Like 4

    Painfully aware of it. The most solid evidence ever produced of transmutations, discredited by a team of otherwise respected experimentalists. No wonder there have been accusations of ill intention.

    I certainly Hope to see LENR helping humans to blossom, and I'm here to help it happen.

    Sad 1

    Nagel IE163 Direct Electrical Production from LENR (1).pdf


    At the request of the author...also covers work on the LEC, A useful read covering a large number of experiments.

    Direct Electrical Production from LENR

    David J. Nagel*
    Abstract — This paper reviews various approaches to the direct production of electrical power by using excitations from Low
    Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). Some of the methods only provide low voltages, currents and powers. Efforts are underway to
    understand and improve the outputs of those techniques. One recent report by Egely describes a device that magnifies electrical
    energy by as much as a factor of 10. That technology requires both independent testing and commercialization.

    Reading or meet David Nagel, is always a good moment, he is so constant, in a so positive contribution for a while.

    I was close to him at a dinner at Padua, unfortunately my too poor english this time privated me from his good words.

    Hoping in this future about an opportunity to exchange more.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Nagel IE163 Direct Electrical Production from LENR (1).pdf


    At the request of the author...also covers work on the LEC, A useful read covering a large number of experiments.

    Direct Electrical Production from LENR

    David J. Nagel*
    Abstract — This paper reviews various approaches to the direct production of electrical power by using excitations from Low
    Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). Some of the methods only provide low voltages, currents and powers. Efforts are underway to
    understand and improve the outputs of those techniques. One recent report by Egely describes a device that magnifies electrical
    energy by as much as a factor of 10. That technology requires both independent testing and commercialization.

    That's true- but photoemission and thermionic emission are both complex, and do not always apply. I think we can save that for later- I am (slowly) doing a literature review on those aspecst of the field. Currently working on collating papers on Ni-H. in all it's many methods and flavours.

    Again take in account the Brick's experiment in the same way.


    Excess Heat Experimental Observations
    subtleatomics.com


    In the way of LEC.



    Quote from Alan Smith

    That's true- but photoemission and thermionic emission are both complex, and do not always apply. I think we can save that for later- I am (slowly) doing a literature review on those aspecst of the field. Currently working on collating papers on Ni-H. in all it's many methods and flavours.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Nagel IE163 Direct Electrical Production from LENR (1).pdf


    At the request of the author...also covers work on the LEC, A useful read covering a large number of experiments.

    Direct Electrical Production from LENR

    David J. Nagel*
    Abstract — This paper reviews various approaches to the direct production of electrical power by using excitations from Low
    Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR). Some of the methods only provide low voltages, currents and powers. Efforts are underway to
    understand and improve the outputs of those techniques. One recent report by Egely describes a device that magnifies electrical
    energy by as much as a factor of 10. That technology requires both independent testing and commercialization.

    Excellent paper. I highly recommend it for our many laypeople to read. If you want to know the background of direct electricity conversion as applied to LENR, the science behind it, terms, people involved prior to the LEC, there is no better summary around. Thanks go to David Nagel for putting this together.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Nagel IE163 Direct Electrical Production from LENR (1).pdf


    At the request of the author...also covers work on the LEC, A useful read covering a large number of experiments.

    Direct Electrical Production from LENR

    Very interesting and useful review paper!

    David reports a detail that I missed and that could be important to understand the working principle of the LEC: apparently Erickson observed tracks emitted by a WE in a cloud chamber. I saw no publication reporting this detail. Can someone confirm this?

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