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Continuation Part II - Cold Fusion Claims

From pteridine's 2nd link:

“Several companies Announced progress on gas loaded nickel nano-particle units designed for MW size plants. Others, including Lenuco LLC in collaboration with the NPRE (Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering) department at the U of Illinois, are working on development of small 10’s of kW units.
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"In collaboration with the NPRE department" should not be meant to imply any sort of institutional support or University endorsement. George Miley is an emeritus ("retired but still has an office" in universityspeak) member of that department.

Physically These power units are very simple. Special Ni alloy nano-particles are Placed in a pressure vessel Which is then pressurized to 60-100 psi with hydrogen to initiate the reaction. With pressure control, These units are expected to run for several years, before replacement of the nano-particles is required two [due] to buildup of transmutation products.
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Buildup the hypothetical transmutation products that no one has ever detected? Jumping the gun a little bit there. It's like a wannabe movie star hopping on the bus to Hollywood:

  • KID: Bye bye Mom!
  • MOM: Where are you going to live?
  • KID: I dunno. Whatever, it'll be fine until Oscar statuettes overfill the place. Then I will need a storage unit, so I picked one out already.
  • MOM: How will you eat?
  • KID: When I need to make the transition from romantic to dramatic lead, I may have to yo-yo in weight like Christian Bale. I've thought it through.

The main obstacle to development of a practical unit is Preventing the hot nanoparticles from overheating and sintering together, limiting unit run time. Thus present work is focused on Overcoming That problem.”
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"Our perpetual motion generator would surely run forever if it weren't for this pesky stopping. We interpret the stopping as due to, uh, friction, and not as evidence that the device doesn't work."
 
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The main obstacle to development of a practical unit is Preventing the hot nanoparticles from overheating and sintering together, limiting unit run time. Thus present work is focused on Overcoming That problem.”
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Aren't they already running water through the system? How hard is it to turn the tap all the way on? And haven't we pretty much already solved keeping things from melting with traditional nuclear power plants? How is it that this one thing is what's holding them back? The one part of the problem that isn't bleeding-edge physics that will overturn everything we think we know about physics? :rolleyes:
 
Airbus Defence and Space GmbH LENR patent: DE 102013110249A1

Disclosure date 3/19/2015
Registration date 9/17/2013

Maybe there is more to this phenomenon than you thought there was.....
 
pteridine said:
Airbus Defence and Space GmbH LENR patent: DE 102013110249A1

Disclosure date 3/19/2015
Registration date 9/17/2013

Maybe there is more to this phenomenon than you thought there was.....
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Or maybe you should read the patent in original german.

Hint : it is pretty short and show nothing about really generating energy. It just describe a reactor. A very simple one at that.

A patent does not and never means that something is working. it only means somebody is protecting something. Scammer for example often make patent and pretend there is something.

I repeat , UNTIL there is a testable stuff, patent, article, and forum psot are hot air. *when* there is something to test and really generate energy we can talk again.
 
Dancing David said:
Maybe when they have the working model you can get back to us...
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Funnily enough the patent application is ...... (roll drum).

September 2013.

"22) Anmeldetag: 17.09.2013"

We are 18 month later.

I note petrydine also quote that. And in 18 month nothing of notes happened. And in the last 11 days neither where anybody could have made an announcement.
 
Aepervius said:
Funnily enough the patent application is ...... (roll drum).

September 2013.

"22) Anmeldetag: 17.09.2013"

We are 18 month later.

I note petrydine also quote that. And in 18 month nothing of notes happened. And in the last 11 days neither where anybody could have made an announcement.
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The 18 months is the standard delay between filing and publication of the application. Examination doesn't usually start until after publication these days, so this delay itself doesn't tell us much.

What's really interesting it that I can't find any "Family Members" for this application, that is, equivalent documents filed in other jurisdictions. They might not yet be published, but if this were real, I'd expect at least an international application to have been filed. More might show up soon, though.

I also can't find any other patents or applications from the first named inventor. It's a fairly unique name, so if he had more, they'd probably be found easily. There's two others listed, but all the patents they have worked on seem to be related to normal engineering for planes, things like seats, toilets, and electrical systems. I suspect they were hired to work on the mechanical parts of the system, and were added as inventors as a precaution.


For those who are interested, you can see details and get translations of the application here.


You can alse get a link to its patent classification, G21B-3-/002.

G21B3/00
Low temperature nuclear fusion reactors, e.g. alleged cold fusion reactors

G21B3/002 •
Fusion by absorption in a matrix
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Key word highlighted. :D


Looking at its main claim:


1.

Energy generating device (10) for generating heat energy by an exothermic reaction in the form of a LENR by using a metal grid-assisted hydrogen process comprising:
a reaction vessel (14) with a reactive LENR material (45) containing for carrying out the exothermic reaction, the reaction chamber (16),
a field generating means (18) for generating a field in the reaction chamber (16) for activating and / or maintaining the exothermic reaction, a heat transfer means (20) for transferring heat into and / or out of the reaction chamber (16),
one operating parameter detecting means (28) for detecting at least one operating parameter in the reaction chamber (16), and
to control a controller (26) which is adapted to the field generating means (18) and / or the heat transfer means (20) in response to said detected operating parameters to stabilize or regulate the exothermic reaction.
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This is so generalized that, even if they had a working device, it would read on pretty much every other cold fusion/LENR device out there.

The only claims I see that go beyond trivially repeating known LENR subject matter might be claims 5 and 6:

5.

A power generating apparatus (10) according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the field generating means (18) is adapted to generate an electromagnetic field to excite and maintain the LENR in the reaction chamber (16).
6.

A power generating apparatus (10) according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the controller (26) is formed such that the field generating means (18) does not generate the reaction generating or sustaining field, when the temperature in the reaction chamber (16) is not above a predetermined critical temperature or is not within a predetermined operating temperature range.
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But even those are vague enough that it's not clear what it is they think they've done that is new.
 
I will provide some TOTALLY FREE engineering consultation to the cold-fusion experimenter whose problem is "my nanopowder overheats and melts".

Here is your solution:

Do a smaller *&@#@# experiment. What are you doing, putting a teaspoon of nickel into a nice ceramic insulating container? Screw that. Take one grain of your powder. Clamp it tightly between two thick bars or plates of a solid material---ceramic, if you insist, but of course steel or copper would be easier. Pump in your hydrogen, turn on some heaters, and crank it up through what you think its ideal operating-temperature-history ought to look like. "Heat to 800C then hold at 300C for three months", or whatever. You decide.

Why do this? That one grain of material will generate only a tiny amount of heat, not enough to affect the temperature of the bars. If you can control the temperature of the bar, you can control the temperature of the grain. That grain isn't going to melt unless you crank up the heater and tell it to melt.

It's not going to melt, but nor is it going to power the reactor in any measurable way. Why bother? Here's why: because you can finally run your reaction to completion. If LENR was occurring, you'll be able to pull that grain out and see the reaction products. If LENR wasn't occurring, you'll find that little isotopically-natural-nickel particle right where you left it. No more of those "It would have run longer but it melted and destroyed the sample" excuses.

"Oh no", you say, "the only way to prove cold fusion is to let it ignite and self-heat". My dear cold-fusioneer, that would have been a great way to do it if you had been competent to do so. Telling a cold-fusioneer that he ought to "go do competent calorimetry" is like telling a toddler that they can't go to bed until they eat every crumb of food and brush their own teeth and translate four lines of Livy and meditate silently for five minutes. It's not going to happen, so let's not pretend. Baby steps.
 
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Horatius said:
The 18 months is the standard delay between filing and publication of the application. Examination doesn't usually start until after publication these days, so this delay itself doesn't tell us much.
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Yes, I understand that, and i am probably biased because all that I know was ever filled was software patent (another can of worm), but generally by the time it is filled the protection is already going on, and i did not hear anybody waiting for the publication to start their production lines.

And yet in the last 18 month or even today we have a great silence.
 
Horatius said:
What's really interesting it that I can't find any "Family Members" for this application, that is, equivalent documents filed in other jurisdictions. They might not yet be published, but if this were real, I'd expect at least an international application to have been filed. More might show up soon, though.
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Doing some more searching, this company is, as it looks from the name, part of the Airbus group:

http://www.airbusgroup.com/int/en/group-vision.html


A search for patents and applications with "Airbus" as the assignee (essentially, the owner) came up with 30,371 hits. I can't swear they're all the same company, but it's clear that patents are a huge deal for Airbus. Just the first page of 100 hits shows documents from Germany, France, the UK, the US, Canada, the European Patent Office (which is distinct from the national offices many European countries still maintain), and several International applications.

So it's interesting that they'd only file in one country.
 
Another thing to keep in mind is: Not every corporate patent represents an actual corporate research initiative. If your employees have signed a tight-enough intellectual property agreement---well, they could be working on LENR at home in their garages; if they want to patent something themselves, the terms of their contract require that they file it through Airbus with Airbus as owner. (My one patent was filed this way. Independent work; I decided to patent it and paid the fees; I'd contractually earn most of the royalties ... but my employer actually owns it.)

You can also have IP offices with an internal "file everything" attitude. You're standing around the water cooler talking about Mythbusters and saying you'd like to cut down a tree with a railgun, a lawyer overhears you, and next thing you know you're signing a generic and incredibly content-free patent application for railgun-based forestry technology.

Finally you can also have the equivalent of low-rent "Google X"---internal microprojects of various scales. "Boss," you say, "I read this cold fusion blog and it might be a scam but it might be exciting, I need to read up. Can I bill 40 hours to the X-account to figure out if we can get ahead of it?"

"Cold fooding? Some kind of refrigeration tech? You can have 60 hours for anything you want if you can bill them in this quarter."
 
Ben M,
Usually, dilution with an inert ingredient , such as silica, helps with hot spots. This is common in catalytic reactors.
 
pteridine said:
Ben M,
Usually, dilution with an inert ingredient , such as silica, helps with hot spots. This is common in catalytic reactors.
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That might be one's advice to (a) competent engineer trying to get a (b) useful implementation of (c) a known reaction, in a case where (d) the most pressing problem has been accurately diagnosed as "hot spots form in my catalyst and melt it".

In the case of the "cold fusion melted my perpetual motion machine" crowd, we are dealing with:

  • a) nonprofessionals somewhere on the spectrum from between "charlatan" and "incompetent" and (to be charitable) "unfunded", trying to get
  • b) basic evidence that anything whatsoever is happening, despite
  • c) fraud-shrouded ignorance about the temperature-dependence of the purported reaction.

While the melting catalyst may be preventing you from heating your factory with your "reactor", that is not your most pressing problem. Your most pressing problem is that no one thinks your nuclear-reaction is actually happening at all, which ought to be a much easier problem to solve than these purported product-engineering details.
 
ben m said:
Finally you can also have the equivalent of low-rent "Google X"---internal microprojects of various scales. "Boss," you say, "I read this cold fusion blog and it might be a scam but it might be exciting, I need to read up. Can I bill 40 hours to the X-account to figure out if we can get ahead of it?"
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And that's part of why I think it's interesting that so far there's only one German application out there. One application, in one country, establishes their "priority date", which gives them the right to file in other countries up to a year later, under various treaties. So they only have to pay one filing fee, and no translation fees, or additional agent's fees, and then get another full year to figure out if it's worth the money to bother filing elsewhere. As you said, it's got all the hallmarks of hedging a bet - spend a bit of money just in case it's not a scam, but don't spend too much, because it probably is.
 
Also make it so general that it covers anything you might possibly develop as opposed to a application for something specific that you have actually developed.
 
pteridine said:
Proposed reaction mechanism:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1504/1504.01261.pdf
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IANANP (nuclear physicist) but my understanding is that the proposed reaction is not consistent with established physics (for example, 8Be4 will not spontaneously decay into two alphas and release energy because even stationary alphas are a higher energy state than 8Be4). However, I expect people who are NPs will show up soon, and I await their posts to correct me if I got it wrong.

In the meantime, I was browsing by hoping for a post that would tell me where to buy my flying car, and I appear to have stumbled into the wrong thread. Sorry.
 
Giordano said:
IANANP (nuclear physicist) but my understanding is that the proposed reaction is not consistent with established physics (for example, 8Be4 will not spontaneously decay into two alphas and release energy because even stationary alphas are a higher energy state than 8Be4). However, I expect people who are NPs will show up soon, and I await their posts to correct me if I got it wrong.

In the meantime, I was browsing by hoping for a post that would tell me where to buy my flying car, and I appear to have stumbled into the wrong thread. Sorry.
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The typos in the paper have been corrected and the corrected version will post in a few days.
Papers refuting the proposed mechanism are always welcome at arxiv.

8Be4 has a half life on the order of 10^-16 seconds and does decay into 2 alphas with a release of energy.
 
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