Cold Fusion Gets a U.S. Patent

[GliderGuider]

Some major rethinking may be in order here. And this time I'm not being derogatory, snarky, sardonic or cynical. This would be revolutionary in utterly unfathomable ways.

Cold Fusion Gets a U.S. Patent

Circa two years ago the Italian cold fusion effort, led by entrepreneur Andrea Rossi, was moved to North Carolina, linked up with a venture capital firm, and well-financed developmental work began on building commercially viable cold fusion reactors. Last February the first prototype, a one-megawatt reactor system producing steam 24 hours a day, was installed for a one-year test in an undisclosed factory somewhere in the US. This device has now been successfully operating for over six months. If all goes well for the remainder of the trial period, a report is scheduled to be issued and heat producing devices will go on sale to the public.

This time around Rossi, and his patent attorneys, took a new approach to gaining the first of what will likely be many patents relating to a technology which could easily turn out to be the most important of the century. Rather than claiming that the device was based on controversial nuclear reactions, the new patent is for a simple “Fluid Heater” that raises the temperature of water by subjecting a mixture of nickel, lithium, and lithium-aluminum-hydride powders to heat. The mixture warms to hundreds of degrees centigrade and begins to produce much more heat energy than is initially applied to the powder by the built-in electric heater. There is a no mention anywhere in the patent of “cold fusion,” nor any kind of nuclear reaction. The patent is silent as to what is causing the excess heat, only saying that it occurs, leaving it to the reader to conclude that so much heat is bring produced that there must be some kind of nuclear reaction taking place – known chemical reactions will not suffice.

In the past year, numerous replicators have attempted to produce excess heat from devices similar to Rossi’s. One the of these replicators, Alexander Parkhomov at the University of Moscow, has been successful in at least a dozen tests. Other replicators have been able to produce excess heat, but were unable to control their reactors which quickly melted down due to the massive amount of heat being generated. With this new information from the patent, we should soon be seeing many successful replications and put to rest assertions that the technology is a fraud.

For those of us who have been following this technology for over a quarter of a century, the granting of a U.S. patent marks a major milestone in the history of science for it offers the opportunity to get mankind beyond the age of carbon and nuclear fission fuels and all that they have wrought – rogue petro state governments, pollution, global warming, and dangerous radioactive wastes. For now, the major question is whether this or similar technologies can come into widespread use fast enough to slow and then halt the many adverse societal, economic and climatological trends with which we are currently beset.

[Statistical]

1. Junk science is junk science even with a patent. n/t

[GliderGuider]

4. We'll see. nt

[PoliticAverse]

2. Let me be derogatory, snarky, sardonic or cynical for you then.

Cold fusion didn't get a U.S. patent.

[GliderGuider]

3. What exactly happened then? nt

[PoliticAverse]

5. He got a patent for some claims for which he didn't have to prove

(and for which he didn't have to provide a working model) and for which the word "fusion" doesn't appear anywhere.

Here's the apparent patent: https://animpossibleinvention.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/us9115913b1.pdf

[GliderGuider]

7. There is a test ongoing, and apparently multiple replications.

This isn't Pons and Fleischmann.

[PoliticAverse]

12. "I want to believe". "Trust but verify". n/t

[Fred Sanders]

8. It is not thermonuclear cold fusion, that is another Holy Grail altogether, this appears to be a chemical cold fusion.

This could be a breakthrough in chemical cold fusion, if scaleable, but the terms used shouldn't be confused.

[FBaggins]

15. Sorry... that's self-contradictory

By definition, chemical reactions do not involve the nucleus. The elements remain the same.

[FBaggins]

14. If he actually achieved cold fusion... this patent wouldn't protect it

It's nothing but yet another round of flim flam for the suckers.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. oh boy I can't wait for free energy!

what a pile of shit.

again?

this will go far.

derogatory, snarky, sardonic or cynical

[GliderGuider]

9. All the arguments against infinite energy in the hands of monkeys still apply

But I fucking love scientific and cultural revolutions of the magnitude this could turn out to be. I'm prepared to smile while I wait for more news.

[PoliticAverse]

10. Even if Rossi has produced a device that claims to do what he says it does

the energy wouldn't be "free" as it utilizes things that do get used up and which would likely
get bid up in price significantly.

[GliderGuider]

11. Nickel, lithium and aluminum?

Nothing is "free", but barring unforeseen side effects this has at least the potential of being about as cheap as it gets. That's the main thing that scares the shit out of me.

[Jerry442]

13. Seems to be a put up or shut up moment.

If an apparatus that masses X kilograms is observed to produce Y joules of energy and there's no known chemical reaction of mass X that will produce Y amount of energy, then we've arrived.

Wake me up when this happens.

[GliderGuider]

16. Shining a light on our beliefs

This topic is proving to be exceptional at illuminating peoples' beliefs and disbeliefs. Very few commentators on the various forums discussing it are reserving judgement, either about the purported technology itself or the implications it might have. Everyone seems to be able to find a home for it in their worldview, no matter what that view is. Lots of preconceptions are on display. Especially my own, which makes this an interesting self-awareness exercise.

So far the most common belief is that it's a scam, although Ugo Bardi views it as a meme.

[StoneCarver]

20. Don't doubt GiderGlider!!!

This man is someone special. I listened to him (and others) in 2008 and he saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars when I pulled out in 2008. Then I got back in at DOW 10K. Now I pulled out two months before this current crash 2015. I have followed Rossi and I'm disappointed. I actually I am losing my a'rse on VALE right now (one of the worlds largest Brazilian nickel mining companies). But I hope it will come to fruition. I've put the maximum solar panels on my roof (30+) as it can stand. What more can I do? I hope it works out, -for my kids!
Stonecarver -Don't doubt GUIDERGLIDER he's a frink'n oracle.

[hunter]

17. Heh, it would be amusing if it was a one megawatt fission reactor in disguise...

... but the odds are much greater there are some power lines or steam pipes hidden in the foundation, connected to a nearby laundry or some other cover business.

Beyond that, I think we'd be better off without giant fusion powered container ships, mining machines, and desalinization plants. And the odds are almost zero we will use such power to suck carbon dioxide out of the ocean and atmosphere, returning the carbon to earth as coal. Hell, we'll probably use it to extract even more fossil fuels for our automobiles and airliners. VROOM!

But maybe we could turn it into plastic... Nah, that's not likely.

Instead we'll use all that energy to turn even more of the earth's biosphere into factory farms and humans.

[PoliticAverse]

18. "some power lines or steam pipes hidden"...

Back in 2011 Rossi did a big demonstration of his alledged 1 Megawatt E-Cat. It apparently produced a 470 kilowatt
output for several hours. Here's a report on the event:
http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

Note the following from the report:

Power for start-up (resistive coils that provided heat to the reaction chambers) was provided by the large and loud genset (was making all the noise) you see that is nearly as large as the small shipping container in which the 1 MW E-Cat plant was arranged. Once the reaction chambers got up to temperature, they were maintained by the heat produced by the reaction. I'm not sure why they kept the generator running after that, but I would guess it was for back-up or safety. I'm sure the engineers testing the system made sure what the power levels were at all times.

So during the entire demonstration of the device a large electrical generator on the site was running (note that most
news reports of the event left out that information). Those of us who are more cynical might have suspicions of the real
purpose of the generator that was running the entire time the E-Cat was supposedly producing excess heat.

[Jerry442]

19. A Question to Historians of Technology

Has there ever been a demo of a miracle black box like this one that wasn't a scam?