The Oil Drum | Monday Open Thread

87 comments on Monday Open Thread

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Neighbor Nick on December 5, 2005 - 11:36am

Hello all. I am wondering what is the thought on a company called Black Light Power. They claim to have found a new primary energy source by chemically reducing the size of a hydrogen atom and releasing latent energy generating up to 1000 times the heat of coal at 10% of the current price. This story made it into the November 6th issue of Energybulletin.net. The company's website is simply blacklightpower.com and it is loaded with technical papers and great animations describing their process. The research is going on at MIT and they claim to be just months away from releasing their findings.

Could this really be the technonogy optimists have been toting this whole time?

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Leanan on December 5, 2005 - 12:02pm

No. They are spamming all over the Internet, trying to get investors. Meanwhile, their patents are being revoked, because they "do not conform to known laws of physics and chemistry."

I put this somewhere between perpetual motion and cold fusion. Maybe there's something there, maybe there isn't. If it does exist, it's probably not what they think it is, and even if it is, it doesn't mean it will ever have any practical value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrino

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step back on December 5, 2005 - 1:27pm

IF it is a fraud, then they do a great disservice to people who are doing legitimate research in the energy business.

A few quacks can give a bad name to a whole barrel full of legitimate energy inventors. It is incredibly difficult to get funding when you claim to have come up with a new way of generating energy because people are prejudiced into believing that ALL such claims are perpetual motion hoaxters.

http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/perpetual%20motion.html

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Leanan on December 5, 2005 - 1:56pm

I wouldn't worry. If there really is something to it, there won't be any need to beg for money from strangers on the Internet. Corporations, universities, and governments will be happy to fund the research.

I do think this hydrino thing has resurfaced again due to high energy costs, though, and I fully expect "free energy" scams to proliferate like bunnies as energy costs rise. Instead of getting spam telling us we've inherited a Nigerian dictator's fortune, we'll be getting spam telling us we can get in on the ground floor of a company that will make OPEC obsolete. :-P

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step back on December 5, 2005 - 3:38pm

Corporations, universities, and governments will be happy to fund the research.

A wishful fantasy.

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Leanan on December 5, 2005 - 4:07pm

What do you mean? We've already spent billions of dollars researching alternate energy. Everything from ethanol to wind power to solar to nuclear fusion to, yes, diesel from algae. The feds were even considering funding cold fusion research (though I think they eventually decided there was no there there).

Don't tell me you're one of those who believe there's a huge conspiracy keeping free energy from the masses for the enrichment of big oil/the auto industry/a secret government cabal?

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step back on December 5, 2005 - 10:09pm

There is no cabal.
There is however,
a limit to how
"happy" they are
to spend money
on R&D:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/databrf/sdb99357.htm

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Leanan on December 6, 2005 - 11:04am

I think the government, especially, will be spending more on R&D. It's what societies facing diminishing returns do (as long as they can afford it). The right wing is already talking about it. Government funding of an Apollo program for energy. A PR effort that would make energy researchers as glamorous as astronauts were in the '60s. That's the "free market" solution.

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step back on December 6, 2005 - 12:23pm

I think the government will be spending more on R&D.

The "government", if there is such a singular creature is a political animal. It does as those at the top dogmatically dictate:

Read here on Bush & benzene fracturing:
http://democrats.reform.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/example_oil_and_gas.htm

More:
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/sciencewars/

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-02-20-bush-science_x.htm

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Leanan on December 6, 2005 - 12:45pm

Bush is a lame duck. He's history.

If his science policies outlast him, however, I will be forced to conclude that we are further along Tainter's curve than I thought.

A society feeling the pinch of diminishing returns begins to engage in "scanning behavior." People feel dissatisfied, and begin looking around for alternatives. Foreign customs may become the vogue, new religions may arise, ideological strife intensifies, governments invest more on R&D.

But once a society reaches the point where investments in further complexity no bring any return, scanning behavior ceases. The government instead enforces strict behavioral controls, in hopes of increasing efficiency. And they can no longer afford R&D.

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wkwillis on December 6, 2005 - 8:51am

Also, a lot of research is pork barrel. Remember that big field of photovoltaic panels that Reagan was so proud of? It was just a bailout of the electronics/silicon companies that were going through a crunch. There was no R+D component at all. Later it was disassembled.

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Leanan on December 6, 2005 - 11:18am

Reagan, the guy who took the solar panels off the White House roof, is not a good example. Many of our efforts to develop nuclear fission and other energy sources have been quite sincere, if so far rather fruitless.

I'm from the Big Island, in Hawaii. Energy is mostly from oil there - all imported, and expensive. Tourism is the biggest industry, so there's a lot of concern about the environment. An oil spill at Waikiki would be devastating.

So there has been a lot of interest in alternative energy. Especially on the Big Island, which is the only island with active volcanos. They were going to build geothermal plants there, and install an undersea cable to Honolulu, where most of the population lives.

They did actually build a geothermal plant, and are still using it today. It does work. However, it proved to be much more expensive to build and maintain than they had hoped, and also more polluting. They are not building any more, and are not planning to export electricity to other islands.

There's also an ocean thermal plant, off the Kona shore. It, too, works. They also have side industries - lobster farms and such - that make use of the cold, nutrient rich water brought up from the ocean depths. But it's still not really profitable, when you consider all the money the government has sunk into it. It might be different once we're well past peak, but clearly, it's not going to provide the kind of energy oil does.

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TJ on December 5, 2005 - 2:58pm

Darn. I was planning on using that to power my stargate so I could get at that Titan methane.

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Rick on December 5, 2005 - 9:30pm

Be careful. Nobody has tried to market abiotic methane before, so we don't have a good handle on what price it would sell for. And you'd need either a really big stargate, or really small tanks.

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Nick Rouse on December 5, 2005 - 12:24pm

This is an old story. To put any credence to it you have to believe that 100 years of quantum mechanics and the hundreds of thousands of experiments that have confirmed it are completely wrong. Dr Mills (who has medical qualifications but no formal physics qualifications ) has been peddling his hydrino theory for decades and it has come to nothing so far.

He also has a number of very unorthodox medical theories.

They seem to have had a media blitz recently and some publications have bitten.

There is a sceptical look at hydrinos here.
I put it well below abiotic oil and cold fusion on the scale of feasibility.

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Everett on December 5, 2005 - 12:27pm

After a very quick perusal of one paper on the site, I would not be optimistic about this concept. If this hydrino has an energy lower than the usual ground state of hydrogen, then why aren't we hip deep in hydrinoes? Also, the paper I looked seemed to imply a method for getting around the uncertainty principle. I believe such statements are invariably an indication of hokum.

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Donal on December 5, 2005 - 1:17pm

I first heard about BlackLightPower on AltEng, which seems to be grasping at straws. They show up on the hoax websites, too.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/blacklight_power_and_hydrinos/

And here:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9951,baard,11218,1.html

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sr on December 5, 2005 - 1:28pm

I am glad you brought this topic up! By an amazing coincidence, I too am in search of investors for a sure-fire energy breakthrough! After careful study of the market, my company has decided to skip over the residential hot-water heater, commercial electricity generation and transport sectors and concentrate on weaponizing our technology. Imagine what will happen to share prices on the day we detonate the very first Vacuum Energy Weapon, aka Zero Point Bomb!

Please remit cash and money orders (no personal checks) to Zero Point Incorporated, POB 666, New Babylon, CT.

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