A workable Hydrogen Fuel Cell?

Hydrogen fuel cell batteries are already used for commercial video cameras.

 

Sounds like a complete load of shite... but if it worked out...

 

This has all of the trappings of a big bottle of snake oil. I would need more information to conclusively discredit the claims, but it doesn't look good from what has been published.

Tom

 

I'm resurrecting this thread. Anybody care to weigh in on either 1) whether this is shite or not; and 2) what will it mean for the environment, economy, politics, war, famine.... etc. if it isn't.

Here are some articles/blogs I've read lately: Bucking atomic theory - The National Newspaper

BlackLight Power Responds. In the Pipeline:

TP: Breakthrough in Extracting Energy from Hydrogen?

Check them out!

 

The comments below the article in the second link are interesting. I'm not a physicist so I can't really add much. It seems like they're somehow invoking the zero-point field as a source of energy. They claim that their stuff has been replicated by an independent group. We'll see, I suppose. It still reeks of shite, but as some folks in that second link pointed out... they're not out the asking for money with "operators standing by". They're just proposing some radical/contrarian stuff and there's nothing illegal about that. It may not be right, but it doesn't seem nefarious at this point either.

 

Seems to me that if this was a complete hoax, they couldn't be as far along in getting verification, nor would they have such a stellar group on their board. Again time will tell. Assuming it's real, I'll be glad to see it herald in the death of the ICE and all the associated problems it creates and sustains.

I wonder what would happen to the economy if oil was no longer king, and the change happened almost overnight. Would there be blood in the streets?

There would be major disruption, certainly, considering how much investment and jobs there are in fossil fuel production, world wide. Would it hurt "too much" to transition our oil based economy to a hydrino based economy.

OTOH think of the things you could do if energy costs were 75% less. Energy puts a lot of constraints on what we can do and the price of everything transported is affected by it.

Economically a little inflation is better than deflation. If this technology pans out, be prepared for a lot of deflationary pain, at least temporarily.

I think it's a little early to be selling my oil and uranium stocks but I'm watching and wondering if there is only a year left before the status quo get's shaken up big time.

 

This stuff would be huge in the developing world. Electrification is a massive boost to peoples' standard of living and it could really help lift the world's poor out of poverty. Like you say, time will tell...

 

Here's a video about Rowan University verification:

Not really impressed by the production values or the professor.

Also, I wish they would have shown more about the analysis of the mass and chemical composition of the material before and after the reaction although they did mention it.

 

the video is a bit vague and unimpressive...

first experiment "15 to 30 grams???"

the 2nd experiment that was measured..."1 to 1.5 killograms???"

with that volume (give or take i guess) there was an impressive amount of energy released but the duration was extremely short and we dont know what volume of ??water?? was heated. but that is 2-3 lbs of fuel...how does that equate to gasoline?

hydrogen tech is not going to work if the weight of the fuel is significantly heavier than gasoline...

no where near enough info to make any real conclusions here.

 

My understanding is that this wouldn't be used directly "on board" a vehicle, but rather for centralized electricity generation on an industrial scale. The heat is used to boil water to run a steam turbine - as in nuclear power.

 

oic... ok that might be viable since a reaction that moves temps that far and fast would probably be difficult to control on a small scale.

so if talking power plant tech, best case scenario would be what?? 15 years?

let me know

 

I think and hope BL is talking to major utilities right now and hopefully some deals are announced over the next several months. It's either put up or shut up time for this company and this process.

 

This thing from BL seems vague at best

There are legitimate fuel cell programs for the military

Proton Energy Systems' fuel cells to power U.S. Army - Military & Aerospace Electronics

Not sure about the applicability to civillian use

 

Yeah I'm disappointed to see "Hydrogen Fuel Cell" used in the title of this thread. I almost started a new one because of that. This BL thing isn't a standard hydrogen fuel cell. It's something else. Yes it uses hydrogen and yes they use the term "cell" but the mechanism for producing power is completely different.

Regular hydrogen fuel cells aren't mysterious at all and have been manufactured by lots of companies and for decades.

BL is supposedly producing so much energy (as heat), that it must involve the conversion of mass (as in E=mc*c) to energy. So goes the theory, as outrageous as that sounds.

 

It has something to do with the zero-point field. Some of the comments on the other links mentioned hydrinos, which seem to exist in lower energy state than typical hyrdrogen atoms... at least according to BL.

 

I say anything and everything is possible, we are coeisting on a plane of constant miracles. Both manmade and other. The learned associates laughed at Galeleo and other scientist that said the Earth revolved around the Sun. To express this meant jail and even death. We really don't even know what exactly is happening, when we use the term current flow. To label something as shite is ignorance.

 

Unless it really and truly is, in which case it is ignorant not to liable it as such. A turd is not a Baby Ruth bar, even if it looks like one.

I'm not directing this comment at the topic of this thread. I'm just pointing out that sometimes things are a complete and obvious load of crap and it's silly not to say so. We go way overboard in this country trying to be fair and balanced in our opinions, even when it makes no sense. Our efforts to be open minded can be carried to the extreme where it becomes impossible to form intelligent opinions.

As for science, it's a bit easier, since we have real tools and objective methods. Galileo's learned associates were not real scientists, and they lacked any sort of scientific method. In the modern world there is less chance of this happening. Oh sure, it does happen. Scientist are people, and we all get blinded by our own opinions from time to time. This is why we have formal methods and peer reviews.

As for the topic of this post, here is what my scientific mind says: My snake oil meter is twitching a bit, but hasn't started to ring. This one is walking a fine line between incredible and outrageous. The amount of vagueness perfect: it sounds interesting but there isn't enough published information to prove or disprove anything. It's imposable at this point to draw a formal scientific opinion.

Lacking a formal opinion, if you want a gut reaction, I suspect this process won't work out. Once again, let's be clear that I am guessing. I expect this will turn out to be either a fraud, designed to make money, or a well intentioned effort that missed some technical detail, as happened with cold fusion.

I hope my gut is wrong and we soon see some hard evidence that this process really works well.

Tom

 

As they say "Hindsight is 20/20" Galileos scientific peers thought they were scientist, The scientific method was in its infancy at that time. Anyway the scientific method is based on what we know, the problem is: certain accepted theories could be not entirely correct. Bell and Edison did not have the slightest idea what they were doing, but they worked hard and long and produced a useful product. Edison and Tesla were miles apart and actually incapable of working together. Edison did not even know Ohms Law! AND refused to learn it! It turned out that Tesla was right on his theories of Electrical distribution. However we need the prodder and the theoritician. We are both saying the same thing, but my glass is half full. Miracles have come and gone and nobody noticed and more will come.

 

In the blog BlackLight Power Responds. In the Pipeline: there is some discussion over how some scientists make it their mission that no heretics upset the science-as-we-know-it apple cart and why there isn't more published papers (in decent journals).

The thing that I keep coming back to is who is on the board of directors. Without that stellar list of successful business types, the credibility of this thing would be way lower, at least for me. Surely they wouldn't be "onboard" without scrutinizing this thing six ways from Sunday.

Again, if it works as described, and if Eestor's product works as described, it will be the end of fossil fuels. We shall see. As interesting as the times are these days, things might get a lot more interesting in the next year or two.