BlackLight Power, Inc. announces the achievement of the intermittent generation of millions of watts of power from the conversion of water fuel to a new form of hydrogen and the conversion of optical power output to electricity using photovoltaic conversion.
April 03, 2014 04:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time
http://www.blacklightpower.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Press_Release_040214.pdf
Harnessing the Ultimate Source of Power
Electrical Power from Water Fuel
BLP estimates that the device of less than one cubic foot in size can generate enough electricity to power 10,000 homes at less than 1% the cost of conventional power sources.
BlackLight Power, Inc. Announces Sustained Production of Electricity Using Photovoltaic Conversion of the Millions of Watts of Brilliant Plasma Formed by the Reaction of Water to a More Stable Form of Hydrogen
Contacts
BlackLight Power, Inc.
Beata Stepien, Assistant to Dr. Randell L. Mills
609-490-1090 Ex 146
bstepien@blacklightpower.com
==============
PS1 Is it a Fraud?
BlackLight Power, Inc. (BLP) of Cranbury, New Jersey is a company founded by Randell L. Mills, who claims to have discovered a new energy source. The purported energy source is based on Mills’ assertion that the electron in a hydrogen atom can drop below the lowest energy state known as the ground state. Mills calls the theoretical hydrogen atoms that are in an energy state below ground level, “hydrinos”. Mills self-published a closely related book, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics.
The proposed theory is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. Critics say it lacks corroborating scientific evidence, and is a relic of cold fusion. Philip Warren Anderson said he is sure it’s a “fraud”, and Stephen Chu called it “extremely unlikely”. In 2009 IEEE Spectrum magazine characterized it as a “loser” technology because “Most experts don’t believe such lower states exist, and they say the experiments don’t present convincing evidence”. BlackLight has announced several times that it was about to deliver commercial products based on Mill’s theories but has not delivered a working product.
Mills claims that under controlled experiments certain chemicals may react catalytically with atomic hydrogen to generate a plasma which emits ultraviolet light. The company claims that the special plasma byproducts called “hydrinos” have been experimentally observed to have an energy state below the ground state of hydrogen.
Mills first announced his hydrino state hypothesis on April 25, 1991, in a press conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as an explanation for the cold fusion phenomena that had been reported in 1989. According to Mills, no fusion was actually happening in the cells, and all the effects would be caused by shrinkage of hydrogen atoms as they fell to a state below the ground state. Mills added that the increased proximity between the atoms would cause them to fuse sporadically, and some of those atoms would be deuterium atoms (a hydrogen atom with one extra neutron), which would explain why there were occasional readings of neutrons. No experimental evidence was offered by Mills at the time to support his claims which violate accepted nuclear physics.
Model of the free and bound electron
Mills claims that Maxwell’s equations of classical physics can be applied to the electron by mathematically representing the electron as a flat disk of spinning charge. Mills’ model for the bound electron or “orbitsphere” treats the mathematical representation of the electron orbit as a “dynamic spherical shell” of zero thickness surrounding the nucleus, whereas quantum mechanics usually represents the electron orbit as an electron shell or probability wave. Mills’ model claims to provide an explanation for measured phenomena including quantization of angular momentum and magnetic moment. Unlike the accepted atomic model where electrons can only occupy whole number orbits (e.g. 1, 2, 3 where orbital 1 is the ground state), Mills’ model allows for fractional quantum orbitals between these (e.g. orbits below 1, such as 1/2, 1/3, 1/4…). Mills claims to derive “classical” orbitals from the classical nonradiation condition defined by Hermann A. Haus in 1986.
BlackLight process
According to Mills, a specific chemical process he calls “The BlackLight Process” allows a bound electron to fall to energy states below what quantum theory predicts to be possible. In the hydrogen atom, these states are postulated to have an effective radius of 1/p of the ground state radius, with p being limited by the speed of light to a positive integer less than or equal to 137. He terms these below-ground hydrogen atoms ‘hydrinos’. Mills’ mechanism consists of a non-radiative energy transfer between a hydrogen atom and a catalyst that is capable of absorbing a certain amount of energy. The total energy Mills says is released for hydrino transitions is large compared with the chemical burning of hydrogen, but less than nuclear reactions. Mills claims that limitations on confinement and terrestrial conditions have prevented the achievement of hydrino states below 1/30, which would correspond to an energy release of approximately 15 keV per hydrogen atom.
PS2 Navy creates ship fuel from seawater
Researchers working for the United States Navy say they are around a decade away from mastering a procedure that will make high-powered fuel for the military’s fleet of ships out of run-of-the-mill seawater. (Would there be any reason not to use this technology to produce fuel for civilian applications as well? E.g. power plants?)
The US Naval Research Laboratory’s Materials Science and Technology Division have alreadydemonstrated that a new, state-of-the-art conversion method can turn ordinary seawater into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel potent enough to power a small model aircraft. Soon, though, they say the same process will provide the Navy with a way of refueling any of its hundreds of ships at sea without relying on the comparably meager fleet of 15 military oil tankers currently tasked with delivering nearly 600 million gallons of fuel to those vessels on an annual basis.
Scientists say it will be another 10 years before ships will likely be able to successfully convert seawater into super-powerful fuel, but the technology is already being hailed as a game changer and is expected to substantially cut costs for the Pentagon.
The process at hand involves extracting carbon dioxide molecules from the ocean water outside of a ship’s hull and using it to produce hydrogen gas, “catalytically converting the CO2 and H2 into jet fuel by a gas-to-liquids process,” according to an article published this week on the Naval Research Laboratory’s website.
“The potential payoff is the ability to produce JP-5 fuel stock at sea reducing the logistics tail on fuel delivery with no environmental burden and increasing the Navy’s energy security and independence,” Dr. Heather Willauer, a research chemist who has worked on the procedure for years, explained to the NRL back in 2012. “With such a process, the Navy could avoid the uncertainties inherent in procuring fuel from foreign sources and/or maintaining long supply lines,” she said.
Two years later, Willauer’s research team says they are making substantial progress with regards to their goal of using that process to put a powerful new tool into the hands of the Navy. According to a study in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, the new conversion method is fuel is “game changing.”
“For us in the military, in the Navy, we have some pretty unusual and different kinds of challenges,” AFPquoted Vice Admiral Philip Cullom for an article published on Monday this week. “We don’t necessarily go to a gas station to get our fuel. Our gas station comes to us in terms of an oiler, a replenishment ship. Developing a game-changing technology like this, seawater to fuel, really is something that reinvents a lot of the way we can do business when you think about logistics, readiness.”
“It’s a huge milestone for us,” said Cullom.
When the Navy Times first wrote about the procedure in 2012 earlier on in the development process, staff writer Joshua Stewart reported that not only would the program cut costs by generating the fuel on site instead of importing it from the Pentagon’s reserves or an foreign supplier, but not bothering to stock up on gallons upon gallons of fuel — or being at the mercy of one of the military’s few oil tankers — would all together eliminate a number of the costly factors normally involved in keeping the Navy’s fleet afloat.
An analysis conducted by Willauer’s team, Stewart reported then, estimated that fuel made through the conversion process would cost between $3 and $6 per gallon, including start-up costs.
“The report cited the Navy’s 2011 average cost for JP-5 at $3.51; media reports have put that number closer to $4. These prices don’t include shipping and storage costs, which would be cut drastically or eliminated by making JP-5 at sea,” he wrote.
“Historical data suggest that in nine years, the price of fuel for the Navy could be well over the price of producing a synthetic jet fuel at sea,” agreed the authors of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy study.
Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are developing a process to extract carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce hydrogen gas (H2) from seawater, subsequently catalytically converting the CO2 and H2 into jet fuel by a gas-to-liquids process. “The potential payoff is the ability to produce JP-5 fuel stock at sea reducing the logistics tail on fuel delivery with no environmental burden and increasing the Navy’s energy security and independence,” says research chemist, Dr. Heather Willauer. NRL has successfully developed and demonstrated technologies for the recovery of CO2 and the production of H2 from seawater using an electrochemical acidification cell, and the conversion of CO2 and H2 to hydrocarbons (organic compounds consisting of hydrogen and carbon) that can be used to produce jet fuel. “The reduction and hydrogenation of CO2 to form hydrocarbons is accomplished using a catalyst that is similar to those used for Fischer-Tropsch reduction and hydrogenation of carbon monoxide,” adds Willauer. “By modifying the surface composition of iron catalysts in fixed-bed reactors, NRL has successfully improved CO2 conversion efficiencies up to 60 percent.” – See more at: http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas#sthash.9S0vbUTt.dpuf
A Renewable Resource
CO2 is an abundant carbon (C) resource in the air and in seawater, with the concentration in the ocean about 140 times greater than that in air. Two to three percent of the CO2 in seawater is dissolved CO2 gas in the form of carbonic acid, one percent is carbonate, and the remaining 96 to 97 percent is bound in bicarbonate. If processes are developed to take advantage of the higher weight per volume concentration of CO2 in seawater, coupled with more efficient catalysts for the heterogeneous catalysis of CO2 and H2, a viable sea-based synthetic fuel process can be envisioned. “With such a process, the Navy could avoid the uncertainties inherent in procuring fuel from foreign sources and/or maintaining long supply lines,” Willauer said.NRL has made significant advances developing carbon capture technologies in the laboratory. In the summer of 2009 a standard commercially available chlorine dioxide cell and an electro-deionization cell were modified to function as electrochemical acidification cells. Using the novel cells both dissolved and bound CO2 were recovered from seawater by re-equilibrating carbonate and bicarbonate to CO2 gas at a seawater pH below 6. In addition to CO2, the cells produced H2 at the cathode as a by-product. – See more at: http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas#sthash.9S0vbUTt.dpuf