THE 1 = 0 RULE, GENERALIZED.

School for Phoenix Birds

Today I burn a feather,

Tomorrow a tip of my claw,

And so I learn how to not forget

To reborn from my ashes

I wrote this short poem of optimist desperation (we will succeed to resurrect as those birds!) in 1988 when we hoped that the communist dictatorship will end somehow, but we had no idea how it will happen. A year later I knew it, an untitled

poem but actually “Ceausescu” said:

On my island made of wax,

 In the midst of a hot Ocean,

 I stay and wait…”

He has not waited much, the island disappeared and Ceausescu has learned fast about the risks of the profession of dictator. We resurrected, more or less.

However I will speak now about the brave Phoenix Birds, a wonderful symbol of continuity, even with the high price of an obviously painful but well organized series of resurrections.

In my previous editorial “The Best Recipe for Disaster” I have described how Cold Fusion has abandoned – forced by the hostile outer and inner circumstances, in the frame of its original sin- bad reproducibility-its essential aim: Energy. But I knew this idea has to be continued. And now it will be about continuity, because the long history of cold fusion-LENR was continuously uglified by discontinuities in the experimental work , by sad cases of projectus interruptus. A success is not a success still it does not follow the normal cycle of growing up, developing, improving, slowly and peacefully, get old and eventually being replaced y something even better and so on. The successes in LENR were

very short-lived

As it usually happen, the Spirit of Internet offered his generous help. First it has sent me the newsletter of Psychotactics with a paper entitled: “The 6 Most Important Lessons In Marketing”

What is true for marketing and these six lessons are as follows:          1) Follow up; 2) Follow up; 3) Follow up; 4) Follow up;            5) Follow up; 6) Follow up.- is true for many positive human activities- for example science and technology-too. If you don’t follow up, you have achieved nothing. Your work will remain a footnote in the history of the field.

Then at the LENR forums two very long threads have reminded us how variable but unpredictable and unmanageable the experimental results were and how difficult it is to obtain passable results in the PdD systems despite the accumulated huge

experimental data. How many hopes raising high and then falling!

In a bit euphemistic, hardened form “jumping like a lion, falling like a stone.” The standard culprit is lack of funding, but nobody takes the risk to answer to an utopian question like: “suppose we have endless funding; is there a guarantee that somebody will solve the problems of reproducibility and scale up? Or, do you think that is possible?” If somebody happens to be interested in my opinion that is: without removal of gas molecules that compete with deuterium, decent levels (>99.9%) of reproducibility will be never attained; and the original wet

system is unable to attain usable energy densities. Do not say me please:”it is easy to make wise negativist predictions when you know you will go and will get rid of any responsibility for your statements!”

But my special experience in mythical aviculture has taught me a lot from the Phoenix birds, I will come back and continue my activity. Just continue to watch this blog.

I repeat for the n-th time, lack of reproducibility MUST have an explanation and even more, MUST have solutions- finding these is the raison d’etre of research. And certainly, outsiders will never accept a process that is not highly, safely, knowingly reproducible! Please allow me here to ask two naïve rhetorical questions:

Is it a serious problem that serious problems are not taken seriously?

Why loving inside constructive critics is ignored and hateful attacks are answered in the minutest details, with quasi-infinite repetition of old data?

The 1 = 0 Rule, explained

The OLTCHIM research lab was a  fine place, we had to deliver  results and fast have worked under stress and pressure- coming in great part from people who had no idea about research and chemistry but having great power- it was a dictatorship, autocracy then. The possibilities of information were limited but I succeeded to convince some people that it is necessary; anyway we had a lot of Russian books and journals. In critical cases as in `1974-5 when it was discovered that vinyl-chloride is a dangerous carcinogen and the technology of PVC was revolutionized- we have received everything we needed because it seemed to be a case of “solve it or perish1” for this major polymer.

Some smart people in the great libraries of Romania have started to translate the basic Western management literature and this has stimulated our thinking and gave us an unlimited appetite to learn

And to discover such rules and principles and truths and we have also tried to discover some good practices in research.

We had successes but some cases that first seemed to go well, turned out to be complete failures, when taking everything in account and developing a broader vision/understanding. We have introduced a precautionary rule: one result is no result, one analysis is still no valid analysis, one single test (good or bad) has to be temporarily ignored and repeated. You got it this became the axiomatic 1 = 0 Rule. It was extended to some childishly simple but useful ideas as: continuation is more important than start, it is more important to re-think an idea than to discover it, first remove the weak points and later developed the strong points, always take care first of the risks, we have concocted a primitive form of SWOT. The opuses of Deming, Juran and Crosby and our practice have taught us that constancy of quality is more important than peak performances. We have embraced critical thinking and had series of illuminations regarding scientific and technological

experts… but enough of vain nostalgia, let’s better to continue to learn. Complementary to the 1 -0 rule is the high art to know when a project has to be abandoned and the resources spent for better ones. It is about the essential difference between effectiveness and efficiency- ask Peter Drucker!

If we apply the 1 = 0 Rule to the long history of CF/LENR we will suffer heavy losses. If a study, method idea gives good excellent or/and promising results but it is discontinued, there are great chances that it has no development potential or it has hidden inner weaknesses.

We can conclude against our wish that LENR despite being more than certainly very real, has no bright future, it will be almost impossible to improve the experimental situation so LENR is in crisis as long as we remain in the frame of LENR (classic LENR)

It happens that my hyper-informed colleague, Axil, leader of the New Wave thinking in our field has just found an elegant up-the-target formulation of the perspective (extracted from his Vortex message):                                                                                        LENR reaction is weak, transient, random, and intermittent. This ethereal nature of the LENR reaction makes it useless.  The LENR advocate must come up with a plan to make the LENR reaction strong, permanent, consistent, and controllable LENR+

This working strategy is clearly modeled after the Phoenix birds- you have to destroy your old nature and resurrect with a new viable, superior nature. Not an easy job, but the alternative is worse and it does not exist. Perhaps you can imagine other

solutions but it is very possible that the following quotation

is true in that case:

“Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.”
(Jules de Gaultier)

Peter

Supplement: a few inspiring quotes only for LENR+ apprentices and students

Actually these are more than quotations- they are partners for your dialogues about the LENR/LENR+ problems: Real imaginary dialogues- it will go well

Phoenix birds

There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been the first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we're got on damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we'll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember every generation.” (Ray Bradbury)

Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes.”  (J.K. Rowling)
 

Rising in Triumph, just like the phoenix (Loretta Livingstone)

Only after disaster can we be resurrected. (Chuck Palahniuk)

It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection. (Voltaire)
― Voltaire

Succeed quotes

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. (Bill Cosby)

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. (Thomas A. Edison) 

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success. (John D. Rockefeller)

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can. (Nikos Kazantzakis) 

Don't let the opinions of the average man sway you. Dream, and he thinks you're crazy. Succeed, and he thinks you're lucky. Acquire wealth, and he thinks you're greedy. Pay no attention. He simply doesn't understand. (Robert G. Allen)

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people. (Abdul Kalam)

In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time. (Anthony J. D'Angelo) 

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. (Winston Churchill) 

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
(Theodore Roosevelt) 

 I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed. (Booker T. Washington)

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal. (Abdul Kalam) 

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed. (Napoleon Hill) 

The will to succeed is important, but what's more important is the will to prepare. (Bobby Knight) 

They succeed, because they think they can. (Virgil) 

Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud. (Sophocles) 

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure. (Lao Tzu) 

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. (R. Buckminster Fuller) 

The way to succeed is to double your error rate. (Thomas J. Watson) 

Professionalism is not sportsmanship. If you don't succeed, you won't be in your profession for long. In our society, it's not about good or bad. It's about who's on top. (Chili Davis) 

If at first you don't succeed... so much for skydiving. (Henny Youngman) 

People with goals succeed because they know where they're going.
(Earl Nightingale) 

Most people who succeed in the face of seemingly impossible conditions are people who simply don't know how to quit.
(Robert H. Schuller) 

I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed; and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.
(Tom Hopkins) 

It is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail. (Peter Marshall) 

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.
(Michael Korda) 

The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success. (Michael Korda) 

To succeed in business it is necessary to make others see things as you see them. (Aristotle Onassis) 

To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again. (David Viscott) 

A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm. (Charles Schwab) 

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
(Quentin Crisp) 

It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.
(Harvey S. Firestone) 

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance. (Wynton Marsalis) 

To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business. (J. Paul Getty) 

A continuation quote

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. (Winston Churchill)

And a last one, what I think about CF/LENR too:

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” (Thomas Edison)

THE BEST RECIPE FOR DISASTER

MOTTOs

A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem. (Albert Einstein)_

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

(Eric Hoffer)

Both Mottos can be interpreted as “fallible as we are, we still are much better with means than with aims.”

You know that my blog is dedicated to problem solving (BTW I am planning to set up a special new blog only for my 20 Problem Solving Rules) therefore I am deeply interested in the sources of man-made problems. Step by step, I have discovered an inexhaustible source of such problems, a very effective recipe for failure. My satori has happened when I wrote an editorial about bureaucracy.

“Somewhere a problem, a task, a purpose, an aim or a problem appears. A solution is sought. An institution, a committee, political party, group, team is created for working out and implementing the solution and for creating new improved up-to-dated solutions. Then something strange and evil happens- the institution etc. has a kind of amnesic shock and “forgets” its own mission, does care less and less about the general interest and focuses on its own group’s interest and on the people who support it. Bureaucracy appears wit its corrupt and egotistical nasty ugliness.
However this process of degradation, alienation is more general than the damned bureaucracy, in many places the aims are cannibalizing the aims and take over their status and function.
I had an other illumination moment when I read years ago that pharmaceutical industry spends more money for advertising than for research I have read a lot about Big Pharma- the art of making billions from milligrams and I have understood how it has lost its original aim- to cure illnesses and make people healthy and has replaced it with maximum profit obtainable from chronically ill people addicted to some, if possible) expensive drugs. The aim of Big Pharma is many customers not healthy people. If you are over 50 you will understand immediately what I want to say.

The most spectacular case of means-replacing-aims is that of money- not more a means of buying and selling but a kind of sacred aim, Moneytheism is the dominant religion, consumerism is a social obligation that moves society, ads are ubiquitous. To be poor is the most unpardonable sin.

It is now black humor or outright idiocy to tell that the government has the aims to serve the people. In practice, everywhere those who have won the power, democratically or not, try to get rich by all means.

A few short (ened) remarks:

a)  The aims must be in consonance with the means; good aims using evil means become evil.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.  (Christopher Dawson) 

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means. (Georges Bernanos) 

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”   (Leon Trotsky)

b) The aims are always less clear, less stable, less up-to-dated and well defined and described, less “real” than the means. Means are now, aims are in the future. In a sense, the means tend to be more powerful than the aims and this is one of the reasons why aims are easy prey for means so many times.

What really matters in life are not the goals we set, but the roads we take to achieve them. (Peter Bamm)

The Way is always more than the Purpose. (Heimito von Doderer)

c) During my career in research I have learned that if I want to create something more important and lasting, it is better to focus on methods, principles, modes of thinking, more on the processes than on products. Means – here too are more fertile than aims.

d) Collective aims are much more vulnerable to the “means eat aims” syndrome than individual, independent, original aims. The following quotation is, in part half- in part 1.5 relevant:

Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization. (Jon Bentley)

If you belong to a group having an aim identical with yours, consider it as your personal aim, it’s safer and smarter...  

The ‘aims replaced by means’ problem is present in my all favorite activity- research too.  The publications of the scientists and researchers have the aim to inform peers, colleagues and the world about their achievements, discoveries, their own contributions to the advancement of science and technology. However, because there are exclusively quantitative criteria used for the evaluation of the activity of the scientists, publications – their number- becomes an aim per se. You have to write and publish as many as possible books and papers. So you tend to divide your work in “least publishable units” see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_publishable_unit  This problem is more serious than believed by the outsiders, quality and newness are very difficult to define and the very necessary

Scientometrics is under-used.                         

NOTE During spring-cleaning my blog, I have seen that I have already published 95 papers re New Energy. Please do not accuse me of salami publication; there are other reasons for being so over-productive, to not say, boring. I have written about many events, new ideas and concepts, I am a slow thinker, my own ideas are not easy to understand for me and are rarely formulated in a convincing mode; Please also take in consideration that I was swimming  counter-stream.  I have made a long journey in complexity, from thinking that deep degassing and VERY smart nanotechnology and perfect adjustment of a few critical parameters will solve the problem of commercial heat energy generation to the New Wave LENR+ a techno-conspiracy of organized matter multi-sequential and hyper dynamic systems to unite Metal and Hydrogen in the proper way... More important is that the best people in the field are generously helping me.

But let’s go back to aims and means, Read this please:

To forget your aim is the most common form of stupidity.

 (Friedrich Nietzsche)

This is an exaggeration and in the same time, a euphemism. Losing your aims, replaced by some means, or in other way, is the best recipe for disaster. If this happens to you, there is no other solution than to regain your initial aims and to aim to more. Otherwise your cause is lost.

The lost aims of LENR.

Cold Fusion has appeared unexpectedly as a promise of infinite energy clean energy, as a creative solution to the huge delays and great troubles of Hot Fusion. Based on the natural simplicity in thinking everybody has expected to get a hot fusion reaction that takes place at cold, due probably to the enormous electro-chemical pressure on the surface of the palladium cathode. Soon the initial naiveties have disappeared and instead of a golden rush for more and more energy, the field had to fight desperately enough for its very survival. The starting aim, Energy became fight for survival; Enhancement was replaced fast with proving Existence. Prove that you really exist!  The field was under siege for long years. Pragmatic focus became scientific focus. When it become obvious that the intensity of the desired heat release cannot be increased the aim was changed to very sensitive heat measurement and a glorious new chapter was added to the fine art of calorimetry. Disproportionate efforts but heroic ones. Milliwatts are less that watts, our bodies are sources of approximately 100Watts heat and we need much powerful sources than ourselves. Minute quantities of energy generate no enthusiasm, no enthusiasm means no funds, no funds signifies no creative ideas. Lack of creative ideas is the most destructive situation possible for research.

Cold Fusion has aimed to be a commercial heat source but was sentenced to remain a lab curiosity.                                                 I don’t know who was the first to call CF anomalous, but he/she has made a fatal error, the effect is new, unexpected even surprising (smart researchers are surprised only by the absence of surprises. Anomalous is pejorative, offensive. Do you want an anomalous oven or an anomalous car?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

However many good people have discovered and are convinced that the effect, LENR exists and continued to try to solve the problem of improved processes. These people organizes meetings, the great ones have arrived this year to No 19. However the main aim of these meetings seems to be to create opportunities to many people, some of them young, to present new variants of weak and sick and unreliable LENRs or is helping theorists to apply their one-step, simple explanation to a process for which the prefix “multi” can be applied in multi-mode. Very rarely was it organized a serious, even desperate discussion re why the XXXX is this strange category of phenomena so weak and difficultly reproducible, concluding that this situation is INTOLERABLE and MUST BE CHANGED. By any means!

A last remark- one of the starting aims of Cold Fusion was to be NUCLEAR. I am increasingly thinking this is an equivalent of the cat’s color not of the cat’s mice hunting ability. (I am speaking about Deng Xiaoping’s cat not Andrea Rossi’s). I hope LENR+ is Nuclear in a quite new, harmless way.

Losing aims, due to replacement by means, or in any other way is the best recipe for failure and/or disaster for anyone and for everything.

If a field loses its aims, it loses its original identity and can be resurrected only from outside. LENR+ will regenerate the noble and useful Cold Fusion dream.

ACTIVE SITES AND N.A.E

I like to be right, to be able to understand what happens and even, by climbing high on the DIKW scale (http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2013/02/advises-for-young-lenr-workers-some.html see here please “Arthur C. Clarke”) to predict things that will come. In a few cases, I almost succeeded- but this is, in part, a problem of interpretation.

I have composed this in 1998, in the frame of a small essay written for the Cold Fusion book of my friend Hideo Kozima.

I personally think that the root of troubles and the start point of the final solution for Cold Fusion is its inherent catalytic nature: all the unexpected and highly desirable phenomena take place in very limited active areas, and the research strategy is to breed and multiply and reinforce and enhance these active areas.

http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00210/FTEssay/Essays/Gluck.htm

1998- it was before the names LENR and NAE became popular, the year when the paper of Google’s young founding fathers: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.109.4049 made me enthusiastic, more by instinct because I have not understood it completely and I am especially proud of it (and I hope Info Google will be followed by an even greater Energy Google, now!). 1998- nobody knew then what a blog is. And it was the most dreadful year of my life- my son Robert’s cancer has demonstrated that it cannot be stopped. Hope has died before him.

However we have to discuss especially the last sentence from my prophesy. I think the main difference between lazy LENR classic and productive LENR+ is that in the second case the active sites are effectively and continuously generated, “in situ” during the entire process. LENR classic works with preformed active sites and has scaring problems due to the competition of hydrogen (deuterium) with other gases for occupying those vital places.

A very good analogy is rabbits (fast light) and pigs (slow, heavy)

fighting desperately for burrows (holes) on a meadow. The animals not hiding are hunted by predators as foxes, wolfs, eagles, hawks, humans, whatever The pigs are lurking everywhere in compact groups and have (really, the animals) a much higher IQ that the rabbits. The pigs have more chances to be in the right place at the right time, so they will occupy the newly found holes on a meadow. The rabbits will lose the contest and will be eaten by the hungry carnivores, with few, very lucky exceptions. Does this remind the reproducibility problem to you?

The impurities- any gas molecule different from deuterium, any component of air - as nitrogen and all those S, C and N containing polar gases plus light hydrocarbons all these compete successfully with D. They are ubiquitous- they are pre-adsorbed on the surface of the cathode and dissolved up to saturation in heavy water. Light D cannot displace the heavier gas molecules and does not enter the much desired active sites.

 Piantelli has solved the problem by very deep degassing, see his recent patent EP2368252B1,

LENR+ solves this problem because it is based on a continuous formation of active sites and hydrogen is much faster than all the other gases which could be present; plus it is used in some activated (not molecular) form.

Imagine rabbits and pigs on a meadow where miraculously holes are formed instantly, it is obvious that the much higher mobility of the rabbits will be a decisive advantage, the pigs will arrive there much too late.

When I have concluded that gaseous impurities make CF non-reproducible many years ago, I was inspired inter alia by an extreme example- emulsion polymerization of some acrylates, 20 ppb sulphur compound can destroy a batch completely- you don't get a latex but a sticky mass (mess). Analysis is too difficult for such trace quantities; the problem is solved pragmatically- a little spoonful of copper salt is added to each batch and inactivates the killer S compound completely. Is this method -scientific? What about cutting Gordian knots when other methods do not work? Better good than scientific!

Re rabbits and pigs: I well know that any analogy, metaphor, techno-parable, story, whatever when examined too carefully is in part false and has a healthy dose of idiocy in it, but this does not impair its creative functionality and illuminating relevancy. This is valid for the historical examples of difficult birth or acceptance used to justify the situation of CF/LENR as the dawn of aviation or the initial fiascos of the semiconductors- because our case is so peculiar, strange and specific. If you find this essay is too sad, please read this:

http://writingenglish.wordpress.com/2006/09/12/the-25-funniest-analogies-collected-by-high-school-english-teachers/ but come back because my formation of LENR+ sirens still has lots of songs for you.

Perhaps it is this is a good opportunity to make order and to re-define the basic concepts: active sites (at plural) and NAE (at singular). Taking in account the publications of DGT and some messages of Yiannis Hadjichristos on our forums;

-        the nano-cavities where the desired energy generating events take place are active sites;

-        the reactor volume where the conditions, the context, the technical environment that stimulates hydrogen to enter the places for reactions and to do what they have to do, this is

    the NAE.

Epilogue.

My favorite CF/LENR discussion partner, Abd tries to convince me that perhaps LENR is actually a mystery, and this idea is inspiring and we have to accept and enjoy it. As many colleagues do. I have joined this movement on March 24, 1989 because I understood that‘s the new clean source of energy that can replace all the other, including atomic (fission) energy that has disappointed our generation. If I wish contacts with the mysterious other great domains of Culture –art, religion, are more adequate.

Awe and admiration of the Cosmos or of Life – are signs of a positive approach, mystery has something passive in it, as when Reason takes a nap. No mystery can satisfy my intellectual curiosity; any and all mysteries that suck the blood of some practical problems will become my enemies. A mysterious

problem is one that cannot be solved. Mysterious LENR will

not give us usable energy, just unanswerable questions and stress.

I guess there are some masochistic traits in an attitude of mysteryphilia. Otherwise we have plenty of mysteries to think about- things too complicated, too dynamic, too paradoxically

auto-contradictory to be understood by our limited brains- let’s tell only about a few: prime numbers, evolution, photosynthesis, bad thinking, political stupidity, the “means cannibalizing aims” tragedy (I started to write about it), hating people with diverging opinions, the financial crisis etc.

Abd is, in the best sense of the word, an idealist. I am (now irreversibly) pragmatic and narrowly realist. Cold Fusion mystery is not for me.  

Conclusion

I will not ask if I have predicted LENR+, and I will not whine about Cassandra Syndrome and "geography is destiny". And history is a prison, sometimes, and I am not focusing on it.

I prefer to contribute as much I can to LENR+’s fast progress.

Peter

New Energy trends paper about Defkalion Green Energies

"Trends Journal" edited by Gerald Celente has published a paper about New Energy that includes a part about Defkalion Green Energies .

This journal is readable only be “members” (subscribers) therefore I will include here only pages 32-3 about DGT.

DGT wants to make a small correction: “ only at NI Week it will be a “physical” public demonstration, at ICCFF-18 there will be a theoretical demo.

Peter

THE SEARCH FOR AN OIL-FREE FUTURE

by Bennett Daviss

The Trends Journal • Spring 2013, pp 30-34

Part about Defkalion pp 33-34)

Nickel+hydrogen=steam

Andrea Rossi, the maverick Italian inventor of the “E-Catalyzer” (Trends Journal, Autumn 2011), was the first to unveil a device that reputedly derives abundant, radiation-free nuclear energy by combining hydrogen gas with powdered nickel. Last fall, Rossi delivered yet another version of his invention to an unnamed “military partner” for testing.

But Rossi’s former partners at Defkalion Green Technologies aren’t waiting for more tests. They’re ready to make products.

Defkalion was formed in Greece in 2009 to commercialize this as-yet-mysterious reaction: a combination of powdered nickel, hydrogen gas and a few proprietary catalysts under precise combinations of pressures and temperatures that produce heat to make steam. Rossi’s calculations indicate that as much as 20 times as much energy,

as heat, comes out of the device than is used to run it – far

more than a chemical reaction could generate.

Also, the reaction among the materials doesn’t produce

radiation but leaves behind copper isotopes and bits of

iron in quantities not present before the reactor was turned

on. This indicates that the process transmutes some elements in the reaction chamber into others, a signature of

a nuclear event. Many observers believed Rossi’s device

was poised to become the first commercial device able to

capitalize on clean or “low energy” nuclear reactions to

deliver cheap, abundant, pollution-free energy.

REVENGE OF THE QUIRKS

But Defkalion and the notoriously quirky Rossi disagreed

over both scientific and business ideas and divorced early

in 2011. In the interim, several of Rossi’s early supporters

have wearied of his string of unmet promises of public

demonstrations and commercial products. Now Defkalion’s technology may overtake Rossi’s as the first venture

to market nickel-hydrogen devices, as it unveils two inventions of its own.

Alex Xanthoulis, Defkalion’s CEO, is quick to emphasize that the company’s products differ sharply from Rossi’s. An unnamed “major US organization,” he says, has

compared Rossi’s and Defkalion’s devices on 14 points.

“It found only two the same – the use of hydrogen and the

use of nickel,” he says. “Otherwise, the two are completely

different.”

There are other points of departure. Rossi’s early devices, like the inventor himself, also were quirky. The temperatures they would reach weren’t predictable;

they produced only a few watts of excess energy; and,

when shut off, took varying lengths of time to stop producing heat.

In contrast, Defkalion’s machines reportedly produce

heat at precise temperatures that customers require and can be shut off within a few seconds. The devices also produce energy up to 10 kilowatt-hours, not single watts as

others have. The nickel-hydrogen fuel modules can easily be pulled out and replaced when depleted, a task that should need to happen only every few months.

Defkalion’s first product is called “Hyperion” and will

enter the market early next year. A cube about 20 inches on a side, it will be marketed as a heater or boiler for

homes and light industry needing up to five megawatts of

power.

The second product is a larger-scale reactor that canbe used to drive turbines or even cars, trains, ships, space

satellites, and planes. Defkalion reports fielding inquiries

from hundreds of companies around the world and has

chosen to partner with at least 10 large ones – including

three vehicle manufacturers, a utility company, telecommunications firms, and a maker of aircraft – to continue research and development. Some of the companies already are testing commercial devices using the reactor as

a power source.

If Defkalion’s figures are right, the economic case is

compelling. The cheapest electricity is generated from

nuclear fuel at a cost of about US$.045 per kilowatt-hour.

In contrast, Defkalion calculates that it can make electricity for US$0.0035 cents, less than a tenth as much.

Xanthoulis notes that setting up a five-megawatt photovoltaic array in Greece, with 120,000 square meters of

solar panels delivering full power for about seven hours a

day, would cost US$10 million.

Defkalion, however, maintains that its reactor, capable

of providing the same amount of energy, would be only

20 feet long, cost $1.5 million, and deliver full power 24

hours a day.

In practical terms, an ocean freighter, for example,

spends around $27,000 a day on diesel at current prices,

needs to make port for refueling, spews sooty exhaust, and

risks polluting the seas in case of a fuel spill. Swapping

the contents of a ship’s engine room for a Defkalion reactor would call for four 20-foot containers and fuel costs of

about $400 a day. Refueling could be done at sea every

six months and the risk of air and ocean pollution falls

to zero.

Defkalion will conduct a public demonstration of its

reactor at the International Cold Fusion Conference during the third week of July 2013 at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and another at NIWeek, the National

Instruments Conference in Austin, Texas, to be held August 5 – 8 this year.

What the company won’t do is attempt to explain how

its devices work. Defkalion is purely a business entity,

Xanthoulis points out. While other ventures in low-energy nuclear reactions have been led by scientists intent

on making new physics, Defkalion’s purpose is to make

products. “We don’t operate on the principle of chemical

reactions or nuclear reactions,” he says. “We operate on

the principle of Mrs. Maria.”

Mrs. Maria was a family friend who lived in the same

apartment building in Greece as Xanthoulis. When

Greece’s economic calamity struck, Mrs. Maria’s pension

was cut by 40 percent and she couldn’t pay for heat. The

building’s manager confided in Xanthoulis, who agreed

to pay the old woman’s heating bill and swore the manager to silence. In the spring, Mrs. Maria told Xanthoulis

how clever she’d been: the apartments all around her

were heated, so she stayed warm even though she didn’t

pay for heat.

“Mrs. Maria didn’t know why she had heat and we can’t

explain why our products create heat,” Xanthoulis says.

“Our priority is not to explain what atoms are doing. Our

priority is to make sure that Mrs. Maria stays warm. Of

course we want a scientific explanation, but publishing

scientific papers is not our first priority.”

So far, Defkalion has survived on capital supplied by a

small group of partners. Now that the company is ready to

grow, it’s also ready to talk with investors. It shuns venture

capitalists and banks, but has entered discussions with a

few corporations and individuals and is ready to hear from

others.

Editor’s Note

For more information, contact:

Defkalion Green Technologies

1140 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 2X6

phone: 604 683 5555

email: info@defkalion-energy.com

www.defkalion-energy.com

AXIL dixit

The enemy of LENR is scientific focus. Development of LENR requires good knowledge levels in a dozen fields of science and engineering to support any progress in the subject.

Science is usually done in a systematic way where one inquiry or measurement is inspired or built on a previous one.
It is a methodology where systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, leads to the support and the formulation, testing, modification and eventual perfection of a hypotheses.
Most science is evolutionary where a concept is continually examined in increasing detail and where one element is based on the next.
This approach to the acquisition of knowledge eventually shapes the thinking process of the people who make their living doing it.
In this view, scientific progress is seen primarily as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories.
The incremental scientist needs a reliable framework of concepts to frame their perception of reality. I call this scientific focus.
This type of mentality does not lend itself toward revolutionary science.
The episodic scientific model persists during periods of conceptual continuity in normal business as usual science.

For example, it is unrealistic to ask a chemist to design a car. The chemist has a focused view of his particular subject constrained by his education, his goals, his interests, and the requirements of his employment.

No one person has the time or the intellectual storage capacity to learn and understand everything that is required to design and build a complex system.
In our example, the chemist knows nothing of aerodynamics, engine development, interior design, transmission shift points, and so on.

Designing a car requires a culture of allied technologies.
Those interested in progression and advancement of LENR should understand that a culture of allied LENR technologies must be envisioned, understood, defined, and organized.

From time to time a revolutionary thinker defies the incremental scientific approach and uses “out of the box” thinking methods to define a new paradigm in knowledge.
During such revolutions in science and allied technology, the discovery of unexplained anomalies leads to a whole new paradigm that changes the rules of the game and the "map" directing new research, asks new questions of old data, and moves beyond the puzzle-solving of normal science.
For example, the revolutionary science of the Copernican Revolution emphasized that, in its beginning, it did not offer more accurate predictions of celestial events, such as planetary positions, than the Ptolemaic system, but instead appealed to some practitioners based on a promise of better, simpler, solutions that might be developed at some point in the future.
The motivation to recognize revolutionary science and technology comes when those who make their living in recognizing that this type of disruptive advancement is occasionally possible.
These systems oriented thinkers will eventually recognize that LENR is possible, useful, and most importantly… profitable.
The Rossi-types do not need to reveal their secrets. They simply have to show that LENR is possible, useful, and profitable.
When LENR gets to this take off point, the current world culture of industrial competition in technology will do the rest.