BlackLight Power lands first license agreement for electricity from … water?

I've been slogging through the math and physics documented in the Mills' ~1700 page physics book "The Grand Unified Theory Of Classical Physics". I'm far from finished. It will take me at least four more months to get to a point to independently calculate the "hydrino" math he uses for his "water energy" justification. One thing is clear. Few physicists have gone through the work involved to just evaluate the physics and math, much less the engineering needed to take the math to working equipment. I'm nowhere close.

The math and physics is not gibberish or nonsense. Writing this book took a lot of hard work and thinking. It very definitely is rational and is based on some different axioms than Quantum Mechanics. This does not mean it is right, but so far it has been well worth the effort. Also note that the Blacklight process only involves a fraction of his physics documented in the book. The large majority is spend showing how his approach gives the same or better results than existing Quantum Mechanical calculations.

 

I'm skeptical. I hope there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but my physics background tells me not. It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised, much like discovering that cold fusion actually works.

Tom

 

I too am a bit skeptical.

It sounds a bit like the dilithium crystal generator,,,

Icarus

 

Re: BlackLight Power lands first license agreement for electricity from … water?

Two comments

1) This process, if it works as describes, dumps the Hydrino waste product directly into the environment. (Whose responsibility is it to ensure that this is not a serious problem?)

2) Most utility contracts are to buy power as the way of paying for the capital expenses of a new plant. If this is the case, then this agreement is not "proof" that the process works, but that Blacklight is ready to take a very expensive risk.

 

It's been a long time since I took physics in college, but I think this is baloney.

1) He claims to make a permanent reduction in the energy embodied in the ground state of the hydrogen atom, and to extract that energy to make electrical power. (Not only does he extract the power, but then claims that chemical compounds made with the reduced-energy "hydronium" form of hydrogen behave differently from their counterparts made with regular old hydrogen.

2) Based on the website description, the process for producing hydronium is purely chemical, involving hydrogen and sodium.

3) But the "hydronium" ion has never been observed in nature.

So, he should not be modest. Not only is he able to extract energy through the manufacture of the hydronium state of hydrogen, he's is creating a form of hydrogen that, as far as the (scant) research shows, has never been created by any natural process anywhere in the universe. And doing it solely through chemistry. Never before have hydrogen, sodium, and heat come together in just the right way so as to generate hydronium.

At least with cold fusion, the claim was that the energy came from a known process. It was just that the fusion occurred under unusual circumstances.

4) The first thing I thought of was Vonnegut's ice-9. If what this guy says is true, we ought to worry about dumping some never-before-observed non-reactive form of hydrogen into the environment.

So much for the physicist in me.

The economist in me says, huh? This guy is promising free unlimited power from water, and the only place that will license it is some rinkydink utility? How about, the only place that couldn't hire the talent to say definitively that this was a scam was some rinkydink utility.

Then dig a little deeper. Hey, their website says the reactor has been tested and definitely gives off way more heat than is input into it. Wow, that's all you need, right. Compare the testing claims there, with this description from a business website:

"Last time we covered BLP, it had just received outside verification from a team of engineers at Rowan University. Well, make that tenuous verification. Reportedly, the process only gave off a quick burst of heat. At the time, founder Randell Mills said the mechanism for looping the reaction is still being kept secret within the company. Suspicious, but not a deal breaker. Mills says independent approval of its full 50-kW reactor will come within a year."

co:Estacado-Energy-Services VentureBeat

Hahahah. So, it hasn't been shown to produce heat continuously.

And a little deeper yet. What the heck is Estacado Energy Services? It's a subsidiary of the rural Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative. Except that the RCEC doesn't even mention them on its website. Googling the name excluding Blacklight gives no results. So apparently this is an organization that, as far as web presence is concerned, only exists in the context of this contract with Blacklight.

Sorry, the detailed physics aside, this has all the earmarks of baloney. New form of hydrogen, contrary to mainstream physics models, never before observed in nature, but able to be produced by a chemical reaction between sodium and hydrogen. Reactor "test" is widely touted, but in fact shows only a short-term burst of heat as the reactor is turned on. The process for making that heat continuously is still secret, ie, no demonstration to date as to how to keep the heat flowing out of the reactor. First licensing to a heretofore-unknown subsidiary of some rural county electric cooperative. That's three strikes.

 

So if we put this in the context of recent banking philosophy, this is a must-do investment. I think it sounds at least as promising as credit default swaps.

Tom

 

Oh, man, there's more truth to that statement that you'd think. Miracle-energy schemes are of a piece with the debt swaps, the liars' loans for houses, the $50B Ponzi scheme that just got unearthed, those $100 gizmos that'll double your gas mileage, and on and on. This stuff comes in waves, the speculative wave peaked in 2007, and as the water recedes, in Warren Buffet's terms, we now get to see who was swimming naked. Give us five years of post-bubble tight credit and all that stuff will recede into the background again.

 

I love that expression about seeing who's swimming naked. Warren also said it seems that Wall Street is a bit of a nudist beach.

Tom

 

How does one show that this is either worth pursuing or a scam? I started out thinking that it would be a cakewalk to identify the "magic" step that creates free energy and then show it is nonsense. This is far harder than virtually every other "power from water claim" for a couple of reasons:
1) Mill's not only claims to have discovered mistakes in previous quantum formulations of the electron, he also backs this up with quite a detailed exposition of his formulation. It's trival to dismiss this by finding some physicist claiming it is nonsense, but one should verify it directly. That takes time, especially since the initial assumptions are very strange, but not unreasonable (or no more unreasonable than Heisenburg's initial matrix formulation of electron energy levels).
2) If present quantum mechanics has a faulty formulation for the electron, then it is necessary to make sure that this new formulation matches all the experimental results of history and then find an experiment that only the new formulation can explain. This takes time also.
3) He claims to have the spectrum results backing up his physics. I have not gotten to these and it will be some time before I do (if at all).
4) For the final BLP system to work, not only must the physics and chemistry be correct, but the engineering must be perfect. This must then be followed by a business plan that works. I would not be putting my money into this, but I cannot point out the explicit reason yet.

 

Um, don't knock it till you try it

MALE HEALTH WARNING: never, *ever* go skinny dipping in a small leech infested lake. The end result is positively horrifying

 

well its obvious that we are not using the best power sources, but are we that close to finding one significantly better??

so "less than a year?" we shall see

 

It's a decent amount. It's actually quite large for what's basically a pilot project. Most pilot projects are typically in the 10-50MW range from what I've seen over the past 3 years of following this sort of thing.

 

The necessary catalyst is called "unobtainium."

 

250MW would be pretty small for a new coal or natural gas fired plant but it would be enormous for a landfill gas plant. 250MW is pretty typical for wind farm size (though it might be built in 2 or more phases, then again, maybe not). You'd definitely have to consider 250 MW to be more than just "messin' round". It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

 

Crap, crap, crap. Self-delusion crap is the purest crap. I'll bet a dollar that their customers discover that all they have to do to generate heat and "hydronium" is to pour sodium metal into the reactor.