Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on February 5, 2014
The Peak Oil Crisis: The Search for Cheap, Clean Energy
There are now two new potential sources of energy which seem to be too good to be true. This is why most, upon hearing what they might offer, reject the notion that they can possibly be true. Water for fuel? Nonsense! Electricity for a tenth of the current price? Absurd! An end to carbon emissions and anthropogenic climate change? Only our green technologies – wind, sun and water can do that! Fundamental principles of physics and chemistry could be wrong? More nonsense, we understand these so well that there is little of significance left to be discovered.
There are now four separate companies saying they have developed, had verified by outside parties, and in some cases demonstrated to outside groups, prototypes of devices that could be central to the next age of civilization. The amazing thing in all this activity is that hardly anybody recognizes that it is happening. Most of the skepticism is rooted in recent history when the scientific community and the US Department of Energy denied that there might be other ways to extract energy from atoms or that scientific understanding of physics is not complete.
For those watching all this story unfolding for years the pace seems to be picking up, for in the last two weeks all four of the companies working on commercial products have publicly reported progress – which as usual was mostly ignored by the media.
In New Jersey BlackLight Power held a presentation last week for some 70 invited attendees. The two-hour presentation is available online at http://www.blacklightpower.com/whats-new/. So far as we know only CNN-Money TV attended the affair — perhaps they were the only one invited. The network later ran a short TV story laying out BlackLight’s claims that their technology, which is based on a new theory of physics/chemistry and which is not cold fusion, can produce unlimited amounts of cheap, clean energy from water. To CNN’s credit they even ran a short interview with a scientist who has extensively tested the technology and says it works as claimed.
During the demonstration, the inventor of the process showed a device that fired off what is claimed to be bursts of hydrogen turning into high energy plasma which can be used to produce electricity. There was also discussion of the way BlackLight’s plans to automate these bursts to produce electric power continuously.
The company says it has recently developed a “solid fuel-catalyst that can produce billions of watts per liter from the formation of ‘hydrinos’ using H2O as the only source of fuel.” This statement alone is a claim so far beyond what is known by mainstream science that skeptics are in an aroused state of disbelief – despite the existence of letters of validation from four scientific organizations testifying that they have participated in building and testing the technology and it works. The testers say the devices have produced from 10 to 2000 times the input energy.
BlackLight says that the development of this solid fuel-catalyst is an important step in building commercial devices that can one day replace all current forms of energy ranging from electric power generation to heating to transportation. Most people want to know when? BlackLight has been developing this technology in a relatively open fashion for the last 20 years, with the aid of about $80 million it has raised from private investors. During their visit, CNN was told that it will take about five years to go from where they are now to a commercial product.
Coming on the market sooner could be a device from Vancouver-based Defkalion. On January 16th, Defkalion announced that they will have a “pre-industrial” version of their Hyperion cold fusion device completed and ready for certification by the second quarter of 2014. The Hyperion will be a relatively small source of heat that, if it works as claimed, could find a market for industrial and commercial heating applications, especially in places where fuel is hard to come by. The company is talking about selling the device for $7,000 and says that the annual cost of operation should be less than 1 cent per Kwh.
Two weeks ago a North Carolina company, Industrial Heat, announced that they had indeed purchased the rights to the Italian inventor Rossi’s E-Cat technology and are hard at work verifying the technology, getting patents, and developing a marketable product. This announcement confirms what the blogosphere had discovered several weeks back that Rossi and his device were now in the hands of a billion dollar venture capital firm that likely can afford further development of the technology. Rossi says that he is expecting the report of a second and longer test of his device within the next few months. The company which bought the rights to Rossi’s technology, says they did so only after extensive testing convinced them that cold fusion was real and that Rossi had a technology that could be commercialized.
Our last company, Brillouin Energy of California, which is working with SRI Laboratories on developing a cold fusion powered boiler for power stations, gave extensive televised interviews of their operations and finances a few weeks ago. Brillouin says they have signed an agreement with a medium sized Korean company to license the technology and build the boilers for the Korean market. They hope to have a prototype in operation before the end of the year.
What is remarkable about all this activity is that it is taking place with close to zero funding from a still skeptical government and on a relative shoestring as compared to projects of much lesser importance. There has been close to zero government participation; no major corporate involvement, except by SRI; and little involvement by university scientists most of whom still maintain that cold fusion cannot possibly take place and that there is no such thing as BlackLight Power’s compressed form of hydrogen.
Some of this activity is bound to make its way into the mainstream media one of these days. We should know more before the year is out.
18 Comments on "The Peak Oil Crisis: The Search for Cheap, Clean Energy"
andya on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:05 am
Finally, science has invented magic. I’m having unicorn steak for dinner to celebrate.
Nony on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:20 am
What junk. Blacklight Power is infamous.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:35 am
Falls Church News Press (FNCP) look like it is trying to coral the market on “idiots who will believe anything”, all the better to sell subscriptions and other merchandise to them. Their Wikipedia entry comes with this disclaimer: “This article appears to be written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by rewriting promotional content from a neutral point of view and removing any inappropriate external links. (July 2012)” And they have a bridge to sell you also.
DC on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:36 am
Wow, there isnt just *one* form of new, previously undiscovered principles of physics, but, four?…at least. And by undiscovered, I mean completely sailed under every chemist and physicists nose over the last 100 years. Hydrinos LOL! Unobtanium more like it.
Not that I am trying to suggest, humans have figured out all there is to know about physics, far from it. But still, that blacklight outfit alone has been around for at least 20 years.
Still, I fully expect to see fraudulent hucksters like the ones above become more prevalent, not less, as we stumble along the depletion curve. The lure of cheap, clean plentiful energy in a world that is headed for expensive dirty and constrained energy, will likely find receptive ears no matter how silly and impossible there inventions may be.
A century ago, it was ‘miracle cures’ of all stripes, remember that? In the 21st century, it will be miracle ENERGY that takes centre stage.
DMyers on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 4:16 am
The question is, do we use water to make electricity or water to grow food? This decision clearly should be left to the scholars of the day.
“Dude! We gotta have water to grow food. Food is like,..important shit.”
“Dude! We get our food at McDonald’s.”
“Right! And..uhh..Taco Bell. I can keep my cell phone. Water up the electricity!”
In this particular, real-to-life dramatization, electricity wins out over food. A peculiar outcome but not a complete surprise.
mo on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 5:29 am
The energy from water urban legend has been around for decades
AlainCo (@alain_co) on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 10:32 am
Blacklight is not the most credible LENR company. They theory is really not compatible with existing science , and they failed to deliver since 20 years…
Anyway they have validation of some effects, but my feeling is that they have lab toys like what everybody have already…
Far from the kW proven by E-cat/Levi/Elforsk test.
To see who is working on that domain (dozens on companies, small and big, a hand ful of reactors …) you can read tha executive summary
http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/
or
http://www.lenrftw.net/home/are-low-energy-nuclear-reaction-devices-real
to have the scientific situation (in 2000) and understand the tragedy of cold fusion, the best book is the very well documented book of Charles Beaudette : Excess Heat
http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
we are not immune like for internet Bubble to some desperate startup who have a toy and try to get funded to transform it into a product, but what is sure is that the science is sound (no theory, solid experimental evidence – thanks to extreme skepticism having fueled ).
We are not immune also to good product not to find a market, or be over taken by late innovator (thinks of Altavista/Google).
E-cat is proven real, but no evidence yet if it is
– reliable
– long lasting
– safe
It should be answered by next phase of test in process, planned to end in March2014. meanwhile murphy law may apply.
hope this helps.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 12:55 pm
Sounds like modern day Alchemy. We know that generally if it is too good to be true it ain’t. In any case it is too little too late. We are in overshoot as a species nothing will mitigate that. We are in a great extinction of species and destruction of complex ecosystems. We are probably in the end of stable climate. If you study the facts of life in system theories then you realize when the system drops to a lower level of complexity any manufacturing or human organization that is complex or relies on complexity will fail. Laws of thermodynamics are clear. What is not so clear is how they apply to us. We act like we are exceptional and knowledge and technology will save us but it is probably not so. I hope it is not so we crash and burn as a species. I am not looking forward to the death that could become our neighbor in so many ways. All these processes discussed rely on complexity…enough said on them.
Anyway NR, Tom Whipple is a good guy that has tirelessly spoken about peak oil and the oil markets. I read him weekly. He talks about these energy possibilities as part of that discussion. I think he is above exploitation. Maybe you know something I don’t.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:06 pm
Davy — If Tom Whipple is a credible writer, then I wonder why he is pumping this “modern day Alchemy” — a very apt phrase BTW. I hadn’t heard of him before. I wasn’t commenting on the writer, just the content of the article and the nature of FCNP as a credible source for wondrous scientific technologies. Now that you’ve endorsed Mr. Whipple, I’ll remember him and look for his articles. Maybe Tom Whipple was tongue-in-cheek when writing about this “new technology” but I just didn’t get it…?
Davy, Hermann, MO on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:15 pm
NR, he tends to be negative on all these claims. He does try to be optimistic about something saving us. But, really, he is one of us. ASPO gave him a special award with his name on it for his tireless reporting of the oil markets both above and below ground
Northwest Resident on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:30 pm
“He does try to be optimistic about something saving us.”
That’s what I got from the article — bubbling optimism that the wondrous new water-energy technology might be the answer to all our problems. In the context of all the other hopium-based false technology articles that we’re bombarded with, I immediately reverted to “you gotta be kidding me” mode. If Tom Whipple really wants to get with the program, he should drop all his optimism — get downright pessimistic and go full doomer mode in order to more closely align with reality.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 3:41 pm
NR, he is actually pretty pessimistic. I guess these writings have to try to have some optimism. Take Heinberg for example he seems outwardly trying to be optimistic but some of his discussions he is more along the lines of “There Little Hope!”
Roger Bird on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 5:01 pm
andya,
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke
http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/inventors/i/Wrights/library/WrightSiAm1.html
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.3913.pdf
louis wu on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 7:16 pm
Whatever this supposedly is it discredits itself with statements about providing unlimited amounts of energy(cheap, clean, expensive, dirty or otherwise) and putting out more energy than went in.Even fission and fusion reactions don’t put out more energy than the energy going in.They are probably thinking about the system as analogous to an amplifier which doesn’t actually create a larger power output than goes in it is just a small input signal used to control the output of a larger power source.
RICHARD RALPH ROEHL on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 7:44 pm
As a member of the Anarchist $ociety… I recommend ‘safe’ [sic]… ‘clean’ [sic]… and “too cheap to meter” nuclear fission time-bomb plants in Key West, Waikiki Beach, Martha’s Vineyard… and Beverly Hills.
Hooray! Hooray! Problem solved! We’re number one! We’re number one! Amerika is exceptional… and also a nation insane! Hooray!
nemteck on Wed, 5th Feb 2014 8:51 pm
Cold fusion does not occur in nature. All suns are working on hot fusion to overcome the enormously strong binding forces of atoms. Nature uses only processes that needs minimum energy. If a cold fusion process would exist then that would be everywhere in the universe and visible to us.
Makati1 on Thu, 6th Feb 2014 2:12 am
Even on Star Trek, their dilithium crystals were mined by Klingon slaves … lol. Or so I guess. There is no such thing as ‘clean,cheap energy’ except direct sunlight on plants that use photosynthesis to make an energy source for animal consumption, or to warm water, as is happening to the oceans of the world.
cipi604 on Thu, 13th Feb 2014 9:17 pm
Let’s wait and see