Posts by Longview

Perhaps Current Science will offer extra issues for sale outside of normal circulation. Enough interest might lead to an annual or other periodic volume, or even a new journal title.

Infringement in that case is likely moot legally, since there are surely few if any economic damages and since both sets of intellectual property are now well beyond expiration.

In those days (1990) the rules for priority in the USA were quite different than today. Now the US is more in line with the patent rules of WIPO and the EU, as I understand it.

But perhaps such an infringement on SRI explains why Boeing "withdrew" it in 1997?

Do we have SRI patent references that might show protium, zeolites and boron or lithium? In my mind these are distinct from what we generally see and hear from SRI's McKubre. But I'm just a "Beginner" .....

Interesting that it is "withdrawn". This might be because Boeing did not want to pay the maintenance fees-- in the USA at least, these become quite costly for a large entity in the last years before expiration-- possibly combined with some concern or conclusion that it was "impossible" . In any case, if the patent represented any useful claims, then "expiration" now places the invention and its claims in the public domain.

I think the Boeing patent and perhaps other old patents provide an excellent free resource and starting point for inventors and replicators interested in pushing forward the basic sciences and technologies underlying CF / LENR.

Is it time for an online database summarizing the claims, inventors and general technology of such patents worldwide?

So, who knows if anyone has replicated this Boeing invention? And how close is it to any of Piantellii's CF / LENR work? In this patent it is claimed that ¹¹B and ⁶_Li are operative. Curiously there is no mention of other light elements-- an interesting absence in view of the usual "range" claims for chemical patents that often extend the claims to elements or molecules with generic similarity. Letting lithium and boron be range delimiters, gives at least some isotope of beryllium. Moving over and/or down a bit in the periodic table, one might expect that carbon, silicon, sodium, aluminum and magnesium to be at least easy candidates worthy of examination. The beauty of light elements is that many of their isotopes are extremely short lived (or in some cases extremely long lived-- also good) or at least their decay series is inherently short in aggregate. Some of them are already coincidentally present in the Boeing / Momenthy system as described, but no mention at all is made of their radiological participation.

By the way: The process described is truly "fusion", just not the DD or HD or HH we often see. Here it involves protium and the specific isotopes of boron or lithium mentioned. The "absorption" of protons is to the nucleus, at least as far as I understand it.

Once again thanks AlainCo!

Thanks Frankwtu for the interesting and informative link. Still I want to err on the side of caution before completely dismissing any LENR technology that shows promise or at least still has some credible participants, collaborators and supporters.... it is clear that competition can drive back-stabbing. The situation is made more difficult since we still do not have enough neutral and competent observers to act in the traditional role of peer review and as arbiters with respect to LENR claims.

OK, fair enough. Thanks Alain

Does Luca Gamberale have such unimpeachable good character that merely his word can derail the whole Defkalion reputation?
Might there be some underlying dispute that we don't see or hear that is leading to a rancorous questioning of motives or character?

[Just asking, without any particular familiarity with either party.]

Hopefully this is the case, but there is no guarantee. While LENR is another, and perhaps most important, aspect of saving the Planet and its biosphere that we're likely to see in at least my lifetime. We all know there are huge financial interests in fossil carbon energy, its marketing, distribution and consumption... That "power corrupts" still must be kept in mind.

And, I should mention: the very act of online searching for those other applications can easily trigger unwarranted regulatory interest. Remember the VP with bad firearms skills, his "Total Information Awareness" program, [not his other frequent TIA, transient ischemic attack]... it is surely more "total" today, if only by bureaucratic and technological evolution.

Just a word to the wise about LiAlH4 ordering. Many years ago, an acquaintance related to me that he was investigated by some State or Federal enforcement agency for ordering said hydride, or perhaps it was sodium borohydride. Anyway, for some reason at that time around 1970 [and perhaps to this day] orders of such reductants were considered suspect enough to look into. If I recall correctly, the ultimate accusation was that he had not licensed his research facility as a bona fide "laboratory". Typically any application for "Doing Business As" or other bureaucratic business registration will pass by other regulators within and above that particular jurisdiction. Wage and Hour, health and safety, taxation, zoning, local business registration and other ordinances can all be issues to trip up the garage entrepreneur scientist. Any online source of suspect materials may very well be an investigative front operation itself. Be aware of what other things and processes beside LENR any particular reagent might be used for. This may require some diligent searching, of course.

I am not a materials scientist by any means, but I have paid some attention to the field over the years. Here are some thoughts in random order regarding some of your choices above, and a couple of others that come to my mind. Please see my advice at the end. Minimize explosion risks, please. Very small is particularly beautiful when it comes to unexpectedly energetic exothermic reactions!

I would have to research your material choices more deeply to be certain, but for some and off the top we are looking for strength and chemical inertness in addition to the high temperature tolerance. The driven rotors of gas turbine engines are often exotic ceramic and metal composites with internal cooling passages. Deposition of diamond-like coatings, pyrolytic graphite, alundum, borazon onto the inner surface of whatever the strength temperature choice might be, could provide enough of a chemical barrier. I suspect it is wise to consider redox chemistry for at least the inner coating, that is if the environment is reducing (as it may be in some Widom Larson inspired systems) then metals that don't form hydrides might be good. If the environment is instead electron poor, then the natural choices are likely oxides since they are already terminally oxidized. To me, these are what we often think of as ceramics. Recall Corning Corporation's ceramic cookware, if my recollection is correct it is essentially lithium aluminum silicate (spodumene?).... it was first used as missile nose cones... has a name that seems to be censored as a trademark here. In the mid- to late 1950s before being marketed for cooking... very high melting point and thermal ruggedness against fracture with sudden temperature changes. For a bit of background on this Corning material see: http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=7891#1

Ceramic coatings are used on exhaust systems today, and are readily available, perhaps even to do-it-yourself applicators. I believe some may well be rated to orange heat, but perhaps not to 1400 C. They can be extraordinarily well bonded to metallic substrates.
I liked Nickec's spark plug insulator idea. Interestingly, I understand those ceramics are also chosen for dielectric properties that essentially allow the pulse front to pass with a sharp front edge to the tip. That cannot hurt, and might help in "superwave" systems and other approaches where the pulse shape may well be considered important --- that is by sharp charge delivery to the target atoms, nuclei, protons and electrons, such particles might be "shocked" into femtometer distance, and hence fusion proximity. And if you think this is implausible, recall that some models suggest "heavy electrons" may result from relative velocities a substantial fraction of c. I would not let our beloved pioneer Peter Hagelstein's J of CMNS debunking of heavy electrons in Widom-Larson be taken as the complete story-- but even if it is there still at least one good way to create heavy electrons with no reliance on relativity (IMHO).

Titanium is very reactive chemically, but is generally protected by its extremely tough oxide, TiO2 or rutile. Ti metal itself is tough and makes good lightweight exhaust systems. The cost is usually quite prohibitive except in racecars. Titanium is difficult to machine, often requires a inert gas glove box for good welding. But on the other hand tubular preforms are readily cut from stock tubing and with suitable endplates and external compression rods a really good chamber could be fashioned without any welding or Ti thread cutting. Just what to use at the endplate lands for gasketing? Surely something good exists, perhaps in exhaust manifold gasketing materials for the auto industry. The TiO2 must be able to resist moderately strong reducing atmospheres since racing engines are nearly always run "rich" and hence their exhaust is hot and reductive... that is electron rich. Titanium appears to be supplying its own internal ceramic coating of rutile in may applications such as nautical hardware. In spite of the tolerance for hot reducing atmospheres we must remember that titanium has high H2 storage capacity and itself has been the subject of F-P like CF experimentation (If I recall correctly). Look at the Titanium monograph in the Merck Index for an idea of other specific reactivities of Ti... at elevated temperatures they are considerable.

I must assume that "copper tungsten" is a bronze. Sounds like an interesting alloy, but I don't know anything about it at this point. Monel is typically 75% nickel and 25% copper. It is exceedingly tough and corrosion resistant but the thermal tolerance may not be high enough for gas / powder LENR work (?).

Besides Al2O3, I would suggest attention to zirconia. These are extremely strong ceramics, now used for tooth crowns. It is very resistant chemically as well, at least at the ranges of mouth pH and in the presence of food acids. Further it is clearly very non-porous since it does not stain as ordinarily tooth enamel and conventional porcelains. Look at zirconium carbide used for tool bits, its melting point is over 3500 C. Or zirconium nitride at 2980 C mp. Or Zirconium oxide 2715 C mp. Zirconium hydrides do exist, and while not volatile, can well be expected to weaken or alter the structural characteristics of the parent zirconial refractory. I'm not recommending beryllia even be considered. Great properties but even greater toxicity to those breathing berylliated dusts.

It appears, for example at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_metal_hydride, that transition metals generally form hydrides. This might be good for CF / LENR, but not so good for say a runaway and explosive outcome--- "proving" CF while doing a lot of damage. BE CAREFUL. Think widely of the possible outcomes. Pay attention to Mitchell Swartz' tiny experiments in the form of Phusors / Nanors. This makes a runaway self limiting and makes the experiment cheap to build and replicate as well.

Just a thought about the interaction of hydrogen with SiC. If the conditions are right in pressure and temperature and the atmosphere is rich in H or H2, then one might expect the formation of silane (SiH4) and methane (CH4). Anyway, easy to test this concern. Take SiC powder, weigh it, place in a reaction vessel of say monel metal, heat it at several relevant temperatures with hydrogen for varying lengths of time. Weigh the residual solid SiC for loss of mass. Gas Chromatography for methane and silane could follow on to confirm yes or no to this question of the suitability of Hexoloy. There are work arounds to passivate the SiC surfaces, or so I imagine, but that might be in another discussion.

Regarding AlainCo's earlier post above:

Quoting AlainCo: "I remember of few point.
first is that surface to volume is not the main parameter, as nano particle don't work well, while nanostrutured surface or microparticles works."

"The good point is how the "protrusions" and nanostructures are kept.
They are probably never kept but regenerated. It seems to be what happened during electrolysis, with observer craters, that may both destroy NAE but also create new NAE."

"The SKINR experiments with nanotubes may give a hint."

AlainCo's point certainly applies to electrolytic LENR work, at least it has been shown several times. But if I have it right, most of the Rossi, Lugano, Parkhomov Ni-H gas and powder schemes show finer dispersion of Ni powder is better. It would also be interesting to compare that with the"Georgy" Egely patent using carbon powder, also quite finely divided, if I recall correctly.

My reason for looking at this is simple: The electrolytic systems have a relatively fixed electrostatic vector orthogonal to the electrode surface, at least in many implementations of F-P type cells. So an orthogonal to surface nanoprotrusion there will see a high electrostatic potential gradient at or near the tips of the protrusion (over and above or augmenting an Nernst pressure that is predicted to be be present--by F-P, Mizuno et al). In a powder and gas cell (Piantelli, Rossi, Parkhomov et al) one does not (necessarily) have any fixed or relatively slow moving electrostatic gradient, activation is largely thermal, the powder may well be flying around and mechanical collisions may be operative... further or consequently there may be some sort of continued renewal of surfaces to provide fresh chemical reactivity, that is exposure of unoccupied / unpaired orbitals or generation of unpaired electrons or momentarily "naked" protons and so on. Perhaps in some gas amd powder systems sufficient mass is required to assure enough momentum to provide collisional damage and hence renewed surface chemisty. In electrolytic cells there can be continuous electorchemical renewal of surfaces, particularly if voltage reversals are allowed...

Take home for me-- inviting corrections of course: nanoprotrusions may enhance electrolytic F-P style cells. Nanopowders may enhance the reaction rates and hence COPs of hot gas and powder cells.

One can always be concerned that a true "nano powder" is so fine that the metal is in gas phase, or that a nanoprotrusion is truly atomic in dimensions.So let's agree that nano structures are confined to nanometer dimensions and maybe somewhat smaller. If we want molecular or atomic suspension in the discussion perhaps pico- may need to enter the suspension vocabulary or lexicon. All atomic radii I'm seeing in online sources are less than a nanometer, generally ranging from about 30 to 300 picometers [31 pm for He, 298 for Cs, http://www.periodictable.com/P…/A/AtomicRadius.v.wt.html]

A great series of ideas Nickec. I would caution that carbon steel above rather modest temperatures becomes quite weak. Just a recollection that steel framed buildings often have far poorer fire time ratings than timber framed buildings. The transition to soft is well below 800 degrees C.

But there are plenty of other materials that retain strength at "orange" heat. Nichrome itself may well be such a material. For inexpensive candidate materials one can look at exhaust system components for performance autos. I recall that some 400 series stainless steels are used in performance headers by Honda for example, although they don't say that is what it is... seeing an exhaust installer completely fail to drill through it with a premium bit was enough to convince me that "work hardening" typical of stainless steels was present.

If one is free of the gravitational confines of the Earth, then size is really not the issue. There mass manifests mainly as inertia, and the high vacuum of space even frees the confines of volume and aerodynamics. Once out of the orbital junk of Earth, the probability of collisions is quite low by my recollection. 1 MW (over 1300 hp) can drive tremendous acceleration, look at Tesla's new two motor S, which weighs well over 2 tonnes... "zero to 60 mph" in 3.2 sec http://www.teslamotors.com/blo…tor-model-s-and-autopilot
all with about half the power of the 1 MW e-cat.

NASA is very properly focused on LENR, IMHO.

Please don't mistake Blackrock as foolish. I watched them snatch up over 400 homes distributed in one US state, at a point that would cause most investors to tremble to buy even one. Somehow they seem to know how to call either the shots or at least to gamble successfully. Their mere participation itself may have turned around the real estate market in parts of the US. This is surely "bootstraps" capitalism. We can only be grateful that they might well be attending to LENR in a similar regard. Thanks David for bringing this possible connection to our attention.

I suspect that one restraint on LENR / CF mechanisms is that if it is too easy, then cosmology can be invoked to say that natural CF and LENR mechanisms would prevail enough to significantly alter the way our Universe has run and runs down, so to speak. There are very strong magnetic gradients in the observable Universe (magnetars, neutron stars as I understand them). There are likely strong voltage gradients as well. Even the segregation of elements by gravitational and decay gradients may be sufficient to trigger natural CF / LENR within planets or stars, at least sporadically. It all cannot be too easy, or else our Sun would produce a much higher specific energy flux per cubic meter.

But, if LENR persistently requires very specific conditions, structures and quite defined reagents then, I would think, there is hope that natural occurrence is either not commonplace or at least has run itself out by this stage of local cosmological development.

I believe such cosmological LENR thinking is important because it can guide us toward possible LENR evidence, toward or away from specific mechanistic explanations.

But perhaps the "heavy hand" of cosmological evolution only follows the gross statistical paths our cosmologists have already deduced.

Or is there perhaps evidence in the ashes of longterm LENR? That is in the incidence or percentages of natural Beryllium, Helium and nickel isotopes, and other observably unusual isotopic compositions in nature.... and so on. Long ago Gamow had a lot to do with unifying cosmology and nuclear theory. Those pioneers were brilliant, no doubt, but we in the LENR community know or at least suspect that there may be a lot more possible than dreamed of in the philosophies of 20th century "collisional physics" as I like to call it. Remember that Teller and his brilliant H-bomb developers failed to see that Lithium 6 would also participate in the reaction... it cost a number of fishermen their health if not lives that Teller's team failed to see that lithium deuteride was not simply a lightweight way of avoiding cryogenic storage of the fusion fuels. The first H bomb was several times more powerful than predicted because of the unexpected participation of lithium. What else have the "big boys" missed with their chalkboard theorizing?

My apologies to all here who are distracted from such questions / speculation. In the "rush to replicate" I hope that, at least in some threads, we can keep the speculation open enough to allow development of useful generalities.

I voted "yes" in your scenario.

I would appreciate links or some explanation of the basic ideas behind your IP. Maybe this is not possible. Is there literature in English from Ikegami and Petersson that would give us some idea of your direction?

Might I suggest seeking collaboration or even simple discussion under Non Disclosure Agreements, at least that would give you an enforceable "chain of custody" for your novel ideas.

There are many CF and LENR patents out there, but few if any are under that name.... yet. I suspect that many good ideas have been touched on in published literature and in the World patent literature. Reduction to practice is an important key once one has a verifiable useful outcome. A large and strong patent portfolio will be a vital and valuable asset when it all comes down to "monetizing". It is ominous to see the size of such portfolios in the case of Samsung and Apple for example. But a single UNGRANTED 1957 patent application for a Laser, years before Bell Labs Maimon, Schalow and Townes were so granted, retrospectively gave Gordon Gould and PatLex hundreds of millions of dollars in delayed royalties at a very high premium. So application and fair disclosure can be a huge issue.

Thanks AlainCo.

Change of output with change of H field orientation is a clear sign of mechanistic significance for magnetism.

In the second instance you cite, it invites comparison with theta pinch and so on. But in this case it is in condensed matter or in relatively low temperature systems. Huge magnetic pulses are generated by EM railgun mechanisms and other technologies. By facing them off one can get v^2 enhancements, or so i imagine. Personally, I would hope that the LENR research field can get to much more complete understanding of LENR mechanisms without introducing much collisional or even very high temperature physics. Operationally it is desirable to have a hot reaction, but for thorough mechanistic understanding--- if possible--- it would be beneficial to have simple and pure systems driven to LENR over unity COPs by simple and pure forces acting on relatively simple mechanisms operating at temperatures allowing long survival of the working components.

Yes, certainly in an electrolytic or other relatively fixed vector system, simply small is not necessarily beautiful. But, in the current generation of Ni / H systems the structures I have seen do not invite thinking of obvious fixed vectors (exception maybe magnetic fields)-- or at least not as we see in electrolysis. Heating transition metal powder, protium and catalyst in a tube would seem to me to take away vectorial information from the analyst even though it is surely there in a chaotic context.

Speaking of magnetic fields, whether accompanying AC or DC heating, it would be interesting to counter-wind the heating coils in Ni-H experiments, to determine if cancelled magnetic fields would change the reaction significantly. I imagine this has been done, but I am not aware of it... yet.