Cavitation (sonofusion) reactor from B-J. Huang et al.

In a combine cycle power plant (gas turbines, heat recovery steam generator and high steam pressure and low steam pressure turbines) there are two methane gas turbines. Each is about two stories high. The gas turbines are designed to take advantage of the inflow air to keep the turbine blades well below the flame temperature.

In 2016, GE manufactured a combined cycle power plant with an efficiency of 62.22%. This went straight into the Guinness World Records as the most efficient at that time. What makes combined cycle power plants so efficient? (araner.com)

When considering the future of LENR one would be wise to consider this benchmark.

Quote from bjhuang

this kind of so-called "radiation shield" has ever been considered by us when we feel something strange in energy balance during LENR and some strange results of SEM/EDX on the ruptured copper pipe. just wait and see with more test results.

Have you found any correlation between the velocity of fluid receiving the heat and the amount of Neon/CO2 produced?

Regarding Lenr fuel,you can't take in account the maximum power available which will melt every thing very quickly.

The total power will be the same as chemistry for an equivalent equipment but consumption will be 10exp 6 lower.

5 liters for 100kms for a current car engine vs less than 1mm3 about Lenr.

Quote from JedRothwell

The same thing that made triple-expansion marine steam engines so efficient. The same heat is tapped multiple times, first as high grade heat, then medium, then low grade heat.

I disagree. There is no need to make cold fusion reactors highly efficient. On the contrary, it would best to trade off efficiency for low cost. The fuel costs nothing, so you do not save any money by making them more efficient. There is no point to making them more than ~30% efficient, which is about the efficiency of fission reactors, which also have very cheap fuel. Fission reactors cannot be more efficient. The zirconium cladding would melt. But the low temperatures and low efficiency also prolong the life of the generating equipment. They will also prolong the life of cold fusion generators and space heaters.

If they were 10% efficient, that would produce a lot of waste heat which would be tricky to get rid of. The machines would run hot and require large cooling fans. They would be bulky. 25% would make them roughly the size of an automobile engine and radiator, per kilowatt of capacity.

See:

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJmoreaboutw.pdf

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Quote from JedRothwell

See:

https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJmoreaboutw.pdf

B J Huang's work is important because it addresses your assumptions which are debatable. Namely LENR can provide a power density for a heat engine with reasonable Carnot efficiency. A combined cycle plant is more efficient because is converts more heat to energy in multiple heat cycles not because it uses the same heat more. The process is still limited by entropy. Heat recovery and vapor recompression are essential to that process.

Another failing of LENR is heat from electricity without accounting for the efficiency of heat to electricity. Look at HHO gas, these processes are accused of not being over unity. Santilli build a multi-million-dollar profitable business on basis they are over unity, but when the business was taken over by people who ignored that the energy originated by nuclear reaction, they designed equipment ignoring a truth they could not understand, or measure and they drove the business to bankruptcy.

LENR in B J Huang's work does not have to have this second failing because the heat that drives the LENR does not have to originate with electricity. So, the COP from table one below might be used via vapor recompression to get a high Carnot efficient to achieve the expectation you set.

The average COP for experiment with nuclear reactions was 1.36. You say it doesn't need to be more than ~30%. Therefore, these results are very exciting. One expects to recovery the excess heat, use part of it for power production and recycle enough to keep the LENR going.

If vapor recompression can be used to prove via closed cycle the excess heat due to LENR, then that result should provide a reliable proof of concept. Of course, it needs to be reproducible, and the life of the equipment needs to be cost effective.

Quote from JedRothwell

The steam is first high grade (high pressure, with lots of enthalpy), then medium, then low. The last cylinder is very large.

And after that comes the condenser...and vacuum.

Quote from JedRothwell

Everyone accounts for this. It is Carnot efficiency. At a given temperature it is the same with all heat engines. It makes no difference whether the heat comes from combustion, fission, or cold fusion.

To make a true complete cycle comparison, if the heat (electrical power) to drive LENR comes from electrical power, then the true heat input needs to consider the efficiency of production of electrical power from heat. Hence, there is need for a correction of at least the efficiency of heat to power of combined cycle power plant. So, if COP is 1.3 based on electrical heat to heat output, then the true efficiency would be 1.3 x .62 =0.81 which is not enough to be sustainable. In contrast when burning AquaFuel the heat/torque compared to heat predicted from chemical composition is 3.03 which is just barely sustainable with combined cycle power design. For AquaFuel, there is still the question of how much of the heat is produced to produce Aquafuel and how cost effective is the carbon fuel used to produce it. In the case of a cost to dispose of the organic material, then the cost of fuel is a not issue, so heat produced in AquaFuel production is the bonus that make a profit.

Of course, the issue goes away if LENR can be run as a sustained reaction at high temperature. Perhaps Brillant Light Power has succeeded. We will see. I would welcome a result that suggests a true complete cycle from anyone, including Egley or LEC.

Quote from Drgenek

To make a true complete cycle comparison, if the heat (electrical power) to drive LENR comes from electrical power, then the true heat input needs to consider the efficiency of production of electrical power from heat. Hence, there is need for a correction of at least the efficiency of heat to power of combined cycle power plant. So, if COP is 1.3 based on electrical heat to heat output, then the true efficiency would be 1.3 x .62 =0.81 which is not enough to be sustainable. In contrast when burning AquaFuel the heat/torque compared to heat predicted from chemical composition is 3.03 which is just barely sustainable with combined cycle power design. For AquaFuel, there is still the question of how much of the heat is produced to produce Aquafuel and how cost effective is the carbon fuel used to produce it. In the case of a cost to dispose of the organic material, then the cost of fuel is a not issue, so heat produced in AquaFuel production is the bonus that make a profit.

Of course, the issue goes away if LENR can be run as a sustained reaction at high temperature. Perhaps Brillant Light Power has succeeded. We will see. I would welcome a result that suggests a true complete cycle from anyone, including Egley or LEC.

I have estimated that the steam power generation cycle will be sustainable (without input from conventional energy) if COP > 5.0. this may require several years development. But, in near future, maybe within 5 years, a significant energy saving of steam power plant (> 20%) is possible when LENR reaches COP > 2.5. the waste heat can also be utilized in seawater desalination.

Quote from bjhuang

...the waste heat can also be utilized in seawater desalination.

Seawater desalination is surprisingly low in energy consumption, about 1-2 kWh/m3. According to Wikipedia "Supplying all US domestic water by desalination would increase domestic energy consumption by around 10%, about the amount of energy used by domestic refrigerators"

Quote from Kursiv

Seawater desalination is surprisingly low in energy consumption, about 1-2 kWh/m3. According to Wikipedia "Supplying all US domestic water by desalination would increase domestic energy consumption by around 10%, about the amount of energy used by domestic refrigerators"

That would be only with membrane technology, and the figure is a bit theoretical, in practice is hard to go lower than 3 kW/m3 for seawater, all subsystems considered, and this is electric energy. Waste heat is “free” so, if you use 90kW of waste heat per cubic meter, is still much cheaper than 3 kW of electricity per cubic meter.

The problem with desalination of sea-water is not the energy consumption so much as the destructuve effects of the concentrated brine released back into the ocean. In the mostly land-locked Arabian Gulf the presence of around 1000 desalination plants has caused the salt content of the sea to increase by 10% with serious effects of fish and shellfish populations. This particular problem is made worse by the fact that fresh water input from both the Euphrates and Shall-al-Arab rivers has been reduced to a trickle by upstream extraction of fresh water.

This behaviour- take the good stuff and chuck the rest away wherever it is most convenient - is typical of all extractive industries. And it should be stopped.

Quote from Alan Smith

The problem with desalination of sea-water is not the energy consumption so much as the destructuve effects of the concentrated brine released back into the ocean. In the mostly land-locked Arabian Gulf the presence of around 1000 desalination plants has caused the salt content of the sea to increase by 10% with serious effects of fish and shellfish populations. This particular problem is made worse by the fact that fresh water input from both the Euphrates and Shall-al-Arab rivers has been reduced to a trickle by upstream extraction of fresh water.

This behaviour- take the good stuff and chuck the rest away wherever it is most convenient - is typical of all extractive industries. And it should be stopped.

That’s totally correct. People that advocate for membrane desalination are trying actively to downplay this problem, but it won’t go away. The concept of Zero Liquid Discharge has been around for a while, but with SWRO, it’s a huge challenge. Waste heat can also help reduce the brine problem, but much more research is needed, or a much cheaper energy source to make the energy cost of total evaporation a concern of the past.

Quote from Curbina

That’s totally correct. People that advocate for membrane desalination are trying actively to downplay this problem, but it won’t go away. The concept of Zero Liquid Discharge has been around for a while, but with SWRO, it’s a huge challenge. Waste heat can also help reduce the brine problem, but much more research is needed, or a much cheaper energy source to make the energy cost of total evaporation a concern of the past.

You may find it surprising but there are natural undisturbed volumes of brine in the deep oceans. It would appear that brine pumped deep enough will not mix with the rest of the ocean.

Quote from JedRothwell

I believe that is correct. However, at 5.0 the machine would generate very little useful electricity. It would use all energy just to keep itself going. To make useful energy I believe ratio would have to be 10 or 20.

I do not know of any reason to think 10 or 20 cannot be achieved.

If the Ne-22 producing reaction runs to completion and gets to the lowest energy states, the cold fusion reaction to produce Ne-22 would be as follows: 4H₂O = CO₂ + 3H₂ + ²²Ne. There is a water shift reaction due to the carbon production and due to reacting oxygen-17. Chemical variations happen such as hydrogen leaking out, hydrogen reacting to water, and carbon monoxide rather than carbon dioxide being produced from de novo carbon. Further, much of the oxygen-17 might be lost to water and other oxides rather than remaining active enough to fuse then fission to final products above.

Assuming based on the above equation that 5 moles of gas are expected for every 4 moles of water and that water that is lost is not a gas, then one calculates the energy yield assuming no entropy as 3.14 kWh per ml of gas produced at STP. This energy yield does not include the fuel value of the hydrogen produced. But if half of the oxygen-17 doesn’t react to Neon then the energy production from that portion of oxygen-17 is lost. Half of net energy comes from this second nuclear reaction. Further, the coulomb barrier for the oxygen-17 to oxygen-17 fusion is a little over 13.06 MeV. However, if none of the energy from nuclear reaction is released from the charge cluster until final fission then the reaction is possible since the overall energy produced is 13.13 MeV. Hence, the reaction could be catalyzed by the enormous energy trapped by the electro-gravity of the charge cluster. The more oxygen-17 that does not go to completion to produce Neon-22 then the lower the rate of reaction to produce Neon-22.

The greater the amount of entropy produced then the greater percentage of reaction completion. However, the greater the amount of entropy produced then the lower the energy yield (enthalpy).

What we have seen is that the cold fusion reaction of deuterium and oxygen to produce nitrogen is very high entropy (Santilli's intermediate fusion). The heat yield relative to calculated yield based on no entropy is about 4/10,000. It is supposed that the production of strange radiation is the source of the high entropy, since strange radiation is the production of large numbers of new mass states. For example, the pixel by pixel development of an image of Matsumoto’s blackhole.

There is a potential for a high COP for the Neon-22 producing reaction but only because we have no idea what entropy yield is required to cause it to happen. As a note of encouragement, based on the nitrogen producing reaction, one would not expect the yield to be below 0.00125 kWh per ml of gas produced.

Quote from JedRothwell

I assume there are hydrogen fusion reactions going on, and the neon transmutations are only a byproduct of them. In any case, other forms of cold fusion have COPs much higher than 10 or 20. Some are infinite, with no input energy. Assuming this is cold fusion, if this particular form of cold fusion is limited to 5 or 10, others forms will be used instead.

My guess is that the trigger for cold fusion by charge clusters is getting the charge cluster to a size such that the charge cluster can create some small proportion of pseudo-hydrogen at voltages about 2.2 MeV. At this threshold a pair of pseudo-hydrogen can convert to pseudo-deuterium, the pseudo-deuterium can photolysis and the resultant neutron/ pseudo-neutron can be absorbed to various elements. For example, that would give the appearance of hydrogen fusion to oxygen-16 to create oxygen-17. Pseudo-neutron produced from hydrogen are energetic enough to fission thorium while pseudo-neutrons produced from deuterium are not. see [0906.4268] Initiation of nuclear reactions under laser irradiation of Au nanoparticles in the presence of Thorium aqua-ions (arxiv.org). Further, the decay of some pseudo-neutrons as Matsumoto blackholes then produces the entropy (strange radiation) that drives the transmutation (production of real neutrons).

Perhaps you would be so kind as to provide a list or initial classification of cold fusion reactions to expand my view, so that I might understand what form of cold fusion has reliably measured COPs much higher that 10 or 20?

Quote from JedRothwell

Any type with heat after death. Or the LEC.

There is after heat from the application of transient cavitation bubbles. See ENECOtheseventh.pdf (lenr-canr.org) page 361 "Predictable and Reproducible Heat". Particularly interesting is figure 2. Deuterium is embedded by ultrasound in a metal foil. The authors claim various metal foils work, then at the time indicated by the dotted line regular water replaces deuterated water. Further, they indicate that the afterheat is proportional to the watts input from a joule heater (figure 1). However, note the slopes of heat peaks (figure 2). They decline which suggests the reaction which produces the afterheat is not sustained by joule heating.

You could be right about the high COP. The Q(x) at 2880 minutes is truly small compared to the areas of afterheat to 5760 minutes.

If the charge clusters can be immobilized in metal and fed hydrogen via ultrasound in some way to keep them producing excess heat in response to joule heating, then that might provide workable demonstration of cold fusion. It is a complex model of creating energy through nuclear active sites and then washing it out with heat to produce afterheat. Perhaps a similar model could be used for LEC.

Overall, one could suggest an improvement over B J Huang's using cavitation in heat exchange, since ultrasound could be less damaging to equipment and therefore lead to longer equipment life.