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Fleischmann Joins D2Fusion to Develop Cold Fusion Heaters for Market
Cold Fusion instigator is still hard at it after all these years.
Company expects a production prototype within a little more than a year.
by Sterling
D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News
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Dr. Martin Fleischmann presents his
paper: "Case Studies of Experiments Carried out with the
ICARUS Systems" at the Eighth International Conference on
Cold Fusion (ICCF8); May 21-26, 2000, Lerici, Italy
Source: Infinite-Energy.com |
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA -- 17 years ago, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann
captured the imagination of the world with their announcement of fusion at room
temperature. When duplicating the effect turned out to be difficult, the
whirlwind of positive publicity quickly turned with a vengeance into a firestorm
of negative publicity and ridicule, which continues to this day.
Despite the ridicule, there has remained a dedicated and growing core of
scientists who have not only replicated room-temperature fusion, but also have
improved on its performance and have broadened the number of methods for
achieving it. In the midst of this academic pariah movement, Dr. Martin
Fleischmann has continued his research, and regularly presents at conferences.
A couple of years back in Britain, he tried to retire, but could not stay away
from his experimentation.
After its recent formation in California, the company D2Fusion has extended an
invitation to Dr, Fleischmann to work with them as a senior research advisor,
with the objective of bringing a commercial application of the technology to
market. A California-based solid state fusion energy firm with engineering
centers in Silicon Valley and Los Alamos, New Mexico, D2Fusion is a subsidiary
of Solar Energy Limited (OTCBB:SLRE).
On Thursday (March 23rd), the seventeenth anniversary of the original
announcement of cold fusion, the company announced that they will tap Dr.
Fleischmann's experience and expertise to produce prototypes of solid-state
fusion-heating modules for homes and industry.
David Kubiak, Communications Director for D2Fusion, expects that in a little
more than a year the company will have a production prototype ready. Although
the number and scale of potential applications is wide and diverse, they would
like first to target the home-heating market.
Another market sector
they are looking at is independent heaters for cars. As more hybrid
technologies and fuel cells are introduced, engines will no longer be reliable
sources of passenger compartment heat in cold climes. Kubiak said winter
automotive heating makes serious BTU demands on these sophisticated engines that
they cannot efficiently respond to, especially in idle mode. Their
technology could address that shortfall and cover this ever widening market
niche.
Also, they have been eyeing the WhisperGen device, presently on its maiden
voyage in the London area with about 400 test installations. That system has
their attention because it can use a wide variety of sources for input heat to
generate electricity output. The WhisperGen is a Stirling engine technology,
also called an "external combustion engine", inasmuch as the heat
source operates from outside of the engine to effect the turning of components
within it.
Kubiak says that the strategy for going to a home application at first is to
garner grass-root support, which should help to unravel some of the entrenched
political and scientific opposition to the technology. It's kind of hard to
argue against the feasibility of a technology if it is already at work heating
and powering homes.
The company website anticipates that eventually the commercialization of
D2Fusion technology will have almost unimaginable economic, social and political
impact on the world. (Ref.)
Fleischmann will actually be leading one of three labs at D2Fusion, each
approaching the phenomenon from a slightly different angle. Fleischmann's lab
will be pursuing an electrochemical approach. Another will be using the
palladium-carbon catalytic process, and a third lab will be researching the glow
discharge process, which uses a gas environment, rather than a liquid medium.
The three will be in friendly competition with one another, Kubiak said.
The principal player at D2Fusion is Russ George, who has actually rubbed
shoulders occasionally with Fleischmann down through the years, as both of them
have been pursuing the cold fusion technology with a variety of techniques. More
recently, George worked with Dr. Yoshiaki Arata at Osaka University utilizing
nanoscale palladium particles to quantum vault the Coulomb barrier -- the
classical electromagnetic plus-plus charge repulsion that allegedly precludes
the type of fusion that is being observed.
Kubiak said that the sporadic reproducibility of most cold fusion techniques
still plagues many researchers in the field, as the metal materials seem to be
particularly temperamental. One batch will work, while the next will not. While
that might frustrate impatient scientists who want to see instant impeccable
reproducibility from new discoveries, it does not deter the cold fusion
community. "Once you see it work, you realize a new frontier is opening and
you're hooked," he said.
A company press release explains that, in brief, "cold fusion involves
the fusion of two nuclei of deuterium or heavy hydrogen into a single helium
atom, accompanied only by a burst of heat. Unlike "thermonuclear hot
fusion" that requires the plasma-inducing inferno temperatures of the sun
or a hydrogen bomb, solid-state fusion reactions can be produced at normal
temperatures in certain hydrogen-loving metals without unleashing hot fusion's
dangerous radiation.
Many experimental reports suggest the importance of nano-scale reaction sites
and the occurrence of coherent quantum electrodynamic (QED) states that
circumvent the strong mutual repulsion of positively charged deuterium nuclei.
The QED features are markedly similar to processes now familiar in solid-state
physics, such as superconductivity, and have led the company to conclude that
"solid-state fusion" is a more accurate and fruitful characterization
of the field than the term cold fusion
Before his historic work at Utah University with his associate Dr. Stanley Pons,
Professor Fleischmann taught electrochemistry at the University of Southampton,
Britain's equivalent to MIT. There he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society,
and served as Council president of the International Society of
Electrochemistry.
Initially inspired by Alfred Coehn's groundbreaking work on proton conduction in
the late 1920s, Dr. Fleischmann labored privately and tirelessly in the early
eighties to deepen his understanding of quantum electrodynamics, which, he
believed, should allow low-temperature coherent fusion phenomena. After his
demonstration of this effect in Utah and the March '89 announcement, he
continued his QED work in obscurity as far as the media was concerned, but
with excellent backing. First, Toyota's research and development institute
funded his efforts in France, and subsequently he worked in Italy with the
support of several prestigious Italian energy labs.
At D2Fusion, Prof. Fleischmann will work in conjunction with Dr. Thomas Passell,
the firm's CTO and a former manager in the Electric Power Research Institute's
Nuclear Power Division, who directed the North American power industry's
investigations of "cold fusion" phenomena for five years. Fleischmann
will also aid and consult with top Los Alamos physicists at D2Fusion's New
Mexico R&D laboratory.
D2Fusion CEO Russ George notes, "Dr. Fleischmann's genius inspired a
generation of audacious researchers, and there are now thousands of scientific
reports confirming the reality, safety and stunning promise of solid-state
fusion energy. Aided by his insight and most recent discoveries, we believe it
is time to start delivering that potential to the world.
"True, our theoretical grasp of all the processes in play remains
imperfect, but neither can we fully explain the workings of aspirin, acupuncture
or high-temperature superconductivity. Unresolved questions about their
mechanisms have not stopped us from enjoying their respective benefits, which
are pale indeed compared to what solid-state fusion offers. We are now certain
that heat generation from this process is copious, safe, inexpensive and
reproducible, and in terms of commercialization that seems like a perfect place
to start."
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Sources
- Phone interview with David Kubaik, D2Fusion Communications Director, March
24, 2006.
- D2Fusion press
release (BusinessWire; March 23, 2006)
Contact
D2Fusion, Inc.
W. David Kubiak, Communications Director
650-638-1976
<david {at} d2fusion.com >
Feedback
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/25/1411250
Fleischmann to Work on Commercial Fusion Heater
Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday
March 25, @08:21AM
from the household-fusion dept.
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See also
Page created by Sterling
D. Allan March 22, 2006
Last updated March 27, 2006
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