DISQUS

VentureBeat: BlackLight Power signs sixth utility deal to produce power from water

  • MarkGoldes · 4 months ago
    BlackLight Power is to be congratulated. The late Dr. Robert Carroll suggested Inverse Quantum States would one day be important back in 1976.

    Chava Energy, our firm, is also developing energy systems based on fractional hydrogen. Hydrogen is the simplest atom: one electron revolving around one proton. Imagine an atom of Hydrogen enlarged so much that the proton is as big as a golf ball and you’d find the circling electron three hundred yards away!

    Hydrogen’s electron orbit can be made to collapse, becoming a much smaller sphere. A tremendous amount of energy is thus released. The new atoms, which BlackLight labels hydrinos, do not need to burn with an oxidizer to liberate energy. Mills claims to have “made independently validated energy cells that produce 1,000 times the energy of burning Hydrogen.”

    A huge amount of Hydrogen is stored in water. The oceans contain 8 million trillion barrels of water. Think about the implications: Even without deuterium or nuclear options, one barrel of water can yield as much energy as hundreds of barrels of oil - just by making clever use of fractional Hydrogen.

    This can safely be accomplished without releasing radiation or pollution. The cost will be far lower than solar, wind or nuclear energy. Fractional Hydrogen (f/H) systems can help accelerate independence from fossil fuels.

    Chava’s engineers have now discovered a much better approach to both theoretical and practical paths that lead towards remarkable energy conversion systems that utilize f/H.

    For example, fractional Hydrogen is expected to make possible Self Powered Internal Combustion Engines (SPICE™). A SPICE in a hybrid car will require no fuel. When parked, the vehicle will be able to wirelessly sell power to the grid, or supply electricity to a suitably equipped home or small business.

    Imagine the positive impact on the economy and the environment of future cars, trucks, and buses, that need no fuel or recharge, and can pay for themselves over time. This is a near-term alternative and far less expensive than building new coal burning or nuclear power plants.
  • lhotse · 4 months ago
    yea, and we all by then will be sucking energy right out of air .. why not. what bs.
  • eric · 2 months ago
    I bet you made fun of the Wright Brothers too.
  • jabailo · 4 months ago
    This technology seems similar to what a Pittsburgh inventor announced in 2007, using RF waves to weaken the hydrogen bonds on water:

    http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07252/815920-85.stm
  • Miramon · 4 months ago
    I can't comprehend how anyone could hand a company money for bullshit science without first getting a working prototype analyzed by outside scientists. There's not a physicist in the world not on BlackLight's payroll that will vouch for this.

    But you know what's more pathetic than BlackLight or its suckers? VentureBeat, for reporting this to begin with.

    Oh by the way, Akridge is not a utility. It's a real estate firm. Just visit their site: http://www.akridge.com/about/corp_overview.asp
  • Miramon · 4 months ago
    I see that BlackLight claims to have a contract with Akridge Energy LLC, not with the Akridge real estate firm linked by the article. However, both are owned and operated by John Akridge III, so I suppose it's not too far off.

    However, considering that "Akridge Energy LLC" does not even have a website, it's hardly likely to be a utility company as mentioned in the article. Utility companies have customers and staff and capital and outside plant and things like that.
  • modernsteam · 4 months ago
    So who cares that Akridge is not a utility? If they sell electricity from the Blacklight process, and don't have to use fuel to do it - except water, that confirm's Blacklight's claim.
  • modernsteam · 4 months ago
    By the way, Miramon, what makes you think the Blacklight process is "bullshit science"? Is it because Blacklight alleges that the hydrogen electron orbit goes to a lower energy level, so-called "impossible" according to conventional - mostly theoretical - science? Actually, their spectrographic evidence does show the possibility of a hydrino - shrunken hydrogen atom - but one conventional physicist said it indicated excess helium instead. That conventional physicist, however, inadvertently supported Mills' claim of several times the output value of hydrogen due to combustion or ordinary chemical reaction. Mills may, in fact, not have a hydrino, but since the evidence shows it would have to be a helium "ash" instead, then could we not then conclude a fusion reaction, which some of us think it might be?

    As for ".. not a physicist in the world not on BlackLight's payroll that will vouch for this", they would if they were honest enough as scientists to examine the physical evidence as scientist should do before screaming to the world that this or that is "impossible", according to the "laws" of "science". If you're true to science, Miramon, you should know that supportive physical evidence always trumps "laws", which are nothing but glorified theory, no matter how esteemed by guys like you.

    "without first getting analyzed by

    And which "outside scientists" and their labs are willing to analyse "a working prototype" from Blacklight without getting paid for their efforts by Blacklight - which - ta-da-h-h- - puts them on "BlackLight's payroll"? There's no way out of it, Miramon; the testers want to be paid - gosh!

    Lastly, VentureBeat is news media, and is thus mandated to report stories, even ones which stuck-in-a-rut guys like you don't want to see, because ya can't stand the outside-the-box work of some of the fellas they write about. Be honest, and ask yourself this: If you were living in 1903 just after the Wright Brothers flew their airplane for the first time, how would you have felt about it if the only "evidence" you had of the matter were the oral reports of the Wright Brothers and those closely associated with them, when the world's most revered scientists said manned flight was impossible?
  • MarkGoldes · 4 months ago
    Blacklight Power's cheap, clean energy source validated
    By Hank Green
    Posted Tue Oct 21, 2008

    More from EcoGeek blog

    Journalists have to be very careful when talking about physics, especially stories that promise the possibility of abundant, cheap, clean energy but don'tt offer any explanation to those of us without PhDs. These things are holy grails: extremely exciting, but they generally turn out to be hooey.

    So I don't write about these energy grails, or at least I didn't until now. I guess there comes a point when we've got to break down and start talking about these things, even if we still aren't really sure whether or not their going to pan out. In terms of physics-defying energy generation, Blacklight power is the first company I've ever written about, and I do it very carefully.

    Blacklight Power says that they can knock the electron of a hydrogen atom into a lower energy state than the 1s orbital. Coming from a chemistry background this sounds to me like saying you can throw a noodle at the sky and have it bore through a concrete wall on the surface of Mars. It's not just that it's impossible, it simply doesn't fit into my view of the world. The resulting atom would be a smaller particle which Blacklight calls a hydrino. They claim that the resulting release in energy creates more than enough energy to create more hydrogen, which can then be forced into lower energy states to release more energy.

    If true, it would be a cheap, clean way to create electricity from water. The problem is, the entire scientific establishment has rebelled against the idea and believes that Blacklight is run by con men.

    But the story is a heck of a lot more interesting than that. Though scientists have almost universally denied Blacklight's claims, veteran investors have taken the bait. Michael Jordan, the former CEO of Westinghouse sits on the board as does the CFO of Credit Suisse and Blacklight has taken over $60 M in investment from mutual funds, utility companies and private investors.

    While Blacklight has claimed for over a year to have a working prototype of it's 50 kW reactor operational, they've just cleared another hurdle. Scientists at Rowan University just recreated the 50 kW reactor in their laboratories, and found that it indeed produces more energy than could be explained by any currently understood or studied physical process. Enough energy, in fact, to provide clean power for several dozen homes without putting anything except water in.

    So if this is for real...what does this mean? Well, for physicists, I'm not sure. It's possible that the "hydrino" idea is bunk...but if that's true, it looks as if everyone might have some serious explaining to do. As for what it means for the rest of us, it could very well mean cheap, clean, abundant energy for less than half of what we're paying today.

    Of course, I'm not willing to make any judgments today. I am obviously neither a theoretical physicist or a CEO of a major energy company. All I can tell you is that I've decided to write about it because it's the first time one of these holy grail ideas has ever seemed to have the possibility of truth in it. Which is pretty exciting, even with a grain of salt.

    For more information check out this article at CNN Small Business, this exceptionally good one at Venture Beat and, of course, the Wikipedia page for the hydrino.
  • Bob Swezey · 4 months ago
    Dear Hank,
    You mention that part of Black light funding is via mutual funds. Can you point toward that fund? Thanks
  • Exnihiloest · 4 months ago
    A problem is remaining: after the BLP process, what becomes the hydrogen at level below ground state?
    It will probably be released in the environment. Is such hydrogen compatible with live?
  • eirezion · 4 months ago
    ...see their website - hydrinos can form the basis of an entirely new branch of material science, from semiconductors to lasers and the applications are only limited to our imagination. The new state of hydrogen (hydrinos) like hydrogen are lighter than air and would eventually float into outer atmosphere. Radio spectrometry measurements have found the same wave signature corresponding to the lower energy state of hydorgen in some of the plasma clouds in the cosmos.
  • domojo · 4 months ago
    I, for one, and mighty glad that pseudo-skeptics exist in such abundance. It will make it very easy to get in on the ground floor of these new technologies. While they're busy screaming, "But that's IMPOSSIBLE!", the rest of us--who have actually been paying attention to the observational, experimental science, rather than theory--will be making a killing.

    There have been many busts in the new energy field since "cold fusion" was re-born in 1989. BLP is not one of them. Anyone following this story knows that BLP is legitimate. Their technology is robust. It's been tested and is both reproducible and repeatable. The theory BLP proffers is controversial, and it may not even be correct. But the experimental results are what matter, not theory.

    Superconductivity was known to be a real phenomenon for half a century. Theories of its mechanisms are still not completely clear, but nobody argues it doesn't exist. The same was true for meteorites (skeptics said, "But rocks don't fall from the sky!"), the circulation of the blood, and a host of other discoveries that didn't immediately make sense in established models.

    Ignore BLP at your own peril. But appreciate it when its technology comes to fruition.
  • Robinson · 4 months ago
    The June 2009 LENR seminar at University of Missouri presenters kept an open mind towards the methods employed to produce anomalous heat. The numerous reports of excess heat manifestations across bubble fusion, LENR and Casimir cavities are well documented and often replicated but the physics remains controversial. I propose that all these manifestations are based on Casimir cavities. The Rayney nickel used by Black Light Power has pore sizes forming cavities of Casimir geometry (2 nm as listed in Wikipedia). The recipe for Rayney Nickel leaches Al voids out of the parent Ni - Al alloy which results in a skeleton structure that could not form in a single step because conductive structures fabricated on this scale will aggregate due to the Casimir effect we know as stiction. This also suggests that Casimir force may be the engine behind all catalytic action.

    Casimir force requires parallel conductive plates which can take the form of crevices in skeletal catalysts, the meniscus of bubbles in a conductive electrolyte or the geometry of a conductive lattice structures such as Nickel. To produce heat instead of catalytic action however is a rare anomaly recorded most often in combination with rigid catalysts and Pd membranes. Palladium is both a catalyst and due to the size of its' lattice geometry is also a gas membrane allowing monatomic hydrogen to be forced through the lattice while remaining sealed to larger gases. This is why low temperature manifestations of excess heat like SPAWAR and Arrata-Zhang most often include Pd while high temperature occurrences like Black Lights' Rayney Nickel require heat and pressure to disassociate the gas.

    I believe I have a solution to the controversy based on the vacuum fluctuations inside a Casimir cavity.the energy is released chemically when H1 becomes H2 but the molecule is disassociated by vacuum flux in a rigid catalyst. I am proposing that Lorentz contraction which occurs as matter approaches C or equivalently an event horizon and produces the known time dialation associated with the twin paradox can also occur in a de-accelerating mode creating an opposite time dilation where the gas diffused in a Casimir cavity appears to be accelerated in time while the orbital diameter contracts in fractional quantum steps below the ground state because it is displaced on the temporal axis. This only explains catalytic action but I suspect a Rigid catalyst can also restrict access to the temporal axis such that only atoms can translate between hydrino and hydrogen states. Therefore monatomic gas diffusing deep into a temporal corridor( casimir cavity where flux are temporally displaced) which then forms a compound or molecule becomes trapped on the time axis but is still moving in accordance with gas law relative to the spatial geometry inside the cavity. This relative motion will vary Casimir force and therefore the dimensions of the temporal corridor in which the compound or molecule is trapped. I believe the Lorentz contraction also allows a relativistic interpretation of what QED calls "up conversion" of vacuum fluctuations in a Casimir cavity. The longer wavelength vacuum flux are not actually replaced with smaller flux but are displaced on the time axis to appear shorter from our perspective.
    the atomic matter that is painted on the canvas of these vacuum flux inside a Casimir cavity are also displaced on the time axis and physically contract smaller on the spatial axis. this contraction varies with relative spacing between the sides of the cavity as the gas diffuses according to gas law. These normally chaotic vacuum fluctuations are "organized" by the physical containment of a rigid cavity and the changing size of the temporal corridor to create boundaries against the bonding orbitals of the gas atoms. As the corridor collapses these boundary conditions break the bonds and restore monatomic energy levels while allowing the trapped atoms to squeeze out of the narrowing channel individually.

    One very repeatable experiment presented by SPAWARS is shown at http://www.byzipp.com/Pd.png where the Pd is in solution and plated out onto the electrode while Deuterium is being evolved through electrolysis. The incubation time for anomalous heat detection for this method is minutes instead of weeks associated with many of the other experiments. I have suggested using a Pd plated porous tube instead of plating out the Pd from the electrolyte. The H2 or D2 could be fed into the tube which can still be used as the hydrogen evolving electrode in their electrolysis and allow them to concentrate on providing Casimir cavities as intimately to the tube surface as possible. H2 or D2 is always natures' preferred state so the percentage of monatomic gas translating to hydrino state will be small.


    I have a better explanation with animation at http://byzipp.com/energy/ but basically it is just trig. I am saying that our perspective relative to the equivalent speed approaching an event horizon has a corollary in the Casimir cavity where I propose all vacuum fluctuations are "up converted" as QED refers to the inhibition of longer wavelengths between narrowing conductive plates. QED suggests the restricted longer wavelength flux are replaced with shorter wavelengths. I am proposing that they are the same longer flux twisted on the time axis which simply appears shorter from our perspective AND I posit that all the flux regardless of frequency twist as one fabric inside the cavity. I believe that this is a form of Lorentz contraction in that space time inside the cavity is slowed relative to outside the cavity and that atoms diffused in the cavity see outside the cavity in the same way we observe the twin approaching an event horizon only now from our perspective time is accelerated instead of slowed.

    The trig would be our temporal vector at some low angle say about 10 degrees above horizontal representing the spatial axii while the paradox twin approaching an event horizon might be up aroung 85 degrees which causes the accepted Lorentz contraction as time and space trade parameters while the vector length remains constant. I am proposing catalysts all create Casimir cavities which accelerate their reactions from our perspective by actually Widening the time axis while compressing the spatial axis. This is still a relativistic displacement but max acceleration is now on the temporal axis and the spatial vector appear to take on fractional quantum states.

    I have another blog regarding this subject here
    http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/comment/reply/22908
  • Miramon · 4 months ago
    I'm all for supporting alternative science in terms of funding research efforts at universities and even sending government grants to small firms.

    But anyone who actually invests in a company like this is an idiot. They have made wild claims and have not deployed a working generator. If it will generate all those megawatts, let them make a prototype that generates even 10 kilowatts and show it to some real engineers.

    Demonstrating "anomalous heat" is not, by the way, a working prototype. There's lots of ways for a complicated contraption to fraudulently generate a little extra heat.

    A working prototype would generate self-sustaining electricity from a dynamo even after you unplug it. Since they've got all this money supposedly, all they have to do is make a toy system that can power an air conditioner for a few days with no connection to the grid. Then maybe you can talk about revolutionizing all of condensed matter physics.
  • Rob · 4 months ago
    A successful prototype was built (50kw) and the Black Light Process has been verified independently by a university. You must have missed the article that someone posted above. Here's a quote: "While Blacklight has claimed for over a year to have a working prototype of it's 50 kW reactor operational, they've just cleared another hurdle. Scientists at Rowan University just recreated the 50 kW reactor in their laboratories, and found that it indeed produces more energy than could be explained by any currently understood or studied physical process. Enough energy, in fact, to provide clean power for several dozen homes without putting anything except water in."

    The reason this is not front page news everywhere is because people have the same paradigm as yourself--it sounds too good to be true and the fact there is no "knowledge bridge" between known physics and the physics the Black Light Process works upon. I also think many people are taking a wait-and-see attitude due to being defrauded in the past--which is smart. However, one fact remains--a handful of very smart people have given millions to Black Light Power to develop/perfect this technology. People don't just give that kind of money on something that does not produce results.
  • Kahuna2K · 4 months ago
    Lets see Miranon, among the "idots" are Michael Jordan, former CEO of both Westinghouse and Electronic Data Systems (Fortune 500); Neil Moskowitz, CFO of Credit Suisse First Boston; and Shelby Brewer, former CEO of ABB Combustion Engineering Nuclear Power.
  • Miramon · 4 months ago
    That's right. They're idiots if they don't have a prototype available tested by their own independent engineers. And if they have that, the company should have announced it, as it would be an enormous selling point.

    You think it's an evil petrochemical industry conspiracy, why these guys aren't a #1 news story every day? Free power would transform every aspect of society, would turn the world economy upside down, would be the single greatest invention of all time. It would be worth *many* trillions of dollars. But the mere fact that they can't demonstrate a working prototype shows the truth of what is really going on.
  • kmarinas86 · 4 months ago
    A prototype requires money to build. Who then should pay for it then? If anyone who helps BLP pay for the construction of a prototype is an idiot, then let the idiots pay for it then. A working satisfactory prototype is the only way BLP will ever have anything to show for themselves. What do you really want to do with these idiots? If you don't want to protect them from fraud, that's ok you that call them idiots. If you think that it is morally wrong that idiots are being suckered into this, shouldn't you be sympathetic? Personally, I don't see how I could call someone an idiot if others are financially or morally indebted to them.

    Also, the evidence you are looking for is not experimental evidence, since that may exist without your knowledge. No, you want a credible source to tell you that the phenomenon is real based on their own experimental evidence. Rowan University's results won't do for you, since members of that university borrowed equipment from BLP. Perhaps universities with enough money to afford their own equipment at the sufficient level, such as Harvard, MIT, or Berkeley can do this. However, I do not believe that extremely well endowed universities will be first in line to validate BLP's claims.
  • Kahuna2K · 4 months ago
    Miramon, perhaps you would like to post your resume so we can compare it with these "idiots."

    BTW, you assume I'm a BLP believer. I'm not. I'm just not so quick to call others idiots when I do not (and cannot) know all that they know that motivates their actions. In this case, I'm perfectly happy to wait and see if anything comes of all these power production deals. I have my doubts that anything will, but we should not have to wait too much longer before they either produce engergy from "the BLP Process" or have to explain why they couldn't perform on their licensing agreements.
  • RobertMStahl · 4 months ago
    I believe the science is contemporary, paradigm shifting, and real. I am an engineer and have been studying the text as well as monitoring the additions to it and to the company since August, '06. It is not 'modern,' however, and these are the kind of bridges we have to cross in this time we are living in. Even if it is totally true and if the effects of global warming due to humans is reduced to zero CO2 production too rapidly, or if you read James Lovelock with equally validating credentials, you find that that an immediate response to suddenly reduce the particles in the atmosphere in this way, the aerosols that are produced by coal power plants, et alia, likely will jump start an extinction that is on the somewhat on way anyway, now. There are a myriad of reasons to engage the sciences in an open forum of public debate for the actual ISSUES that mankind faces, but only with true openness and compassion (and maybe a strong 'sense' of ping pong). Structure plus global awareness should be the mantra.
  • Mr G · 4 months ago
    If this is a hoax, it is the most elaborate hoax in history. Have any of you critics visited Blacklight's web site? It has all the math and theories right there to dispute. I am not a physicist, and can not validate any math. But this man is smart and educated. He is also surrounded by many more PHD's. Any of these people could make a VERY good living with their education. I can not believe that if this is fake, that all of those educated people would march right along to end up in prison. If it's real, prison may be the least of their worries.
  • Guest · 3 months ago
    Six press releases from BlackLight Power. Zero from the supposed partners. No corporate filings, because they only have private investors, Estacado Energy Services, Farmers' Electric Cooperative of New Mexico. Why does Mr Ponzi spring to mind?