BLACKLIGHT POWER IS BACK IN THE NEWS, SAYS IT CAN GENERATE ELECTRICITY FOR $25 A KILOWATT, A PUBLIC DEMO IS SLATED FOR 2011

Controversial firm BlackLight Power says it will show off how it can generate power with water and the equivalent of pocket change next year.

The company claims -- amid harsh criticism that its assertions are the kookiest thing to come along since cold fusion -- to have discovered a way to produce energy from converting a hydrogen atom into a hydrino, a purported low-energy form of hydrogen that researchers at the company claimed to have discovered.  When ordinary hydrogen is mixed with a chemical catalyst at a relatively cool 50 degrees Celsius, hydrogen molecules turn into hydrinos, according to Blacklight.  The hydrogen-to-hydrino reaction releases 200 times more energy than the amount of energy that gets released when hydrogen is burned. BlackLight has largely concentrated on harvesting heat from the reaction.

In a recent experiment, BlackLight says researchers have generated electricity directly from the reaction. According to BlackLight's calculations, a liter of water a second could generate up to a gigawatt of power. The capital cost of a power plant built on the technology would come to $25 a kilowatt. By contrast, nuclear plants cost $6,000 or more a kilowatt, while a natural gas plant runs $850 a kilowatt. The company now hopes to develop fuel cell-like devices to generate distributed power.

 

"It works phenomenally better than the heat system," said CEO Randell Mills. "This is going to be big time. This has tremendous characteristics."

Skeptics abound. Quantum mechanics rules out the existence of hydrinos, according to, among others, Andreas Rathke of the European Space Agency. Researchers at Rowan University have examined BlackLight's technology and co-authored papers with the company, but other scientists have not been invited inside to examine the process.

 

So when do we get to see it? A public demonstration will come in 2011, Mills said.

COMMENTARY:   I can remember when we thought the world was flat and that Earth was the center of the universe.  They also said that the speed of sound could not be broken and that the atom could never be split.  

Blacklight Power still needs to convince a very skeptical scientific community that refutes even the existence of hydrino's, or that Blacklight Power's their proprietary electrochemical reactants or solid fuels can indeed produce hydrogen energy from water, a process they call hydrogen-to-hydrino power.  Researchers at Rowan University have examined BlackLight's technology and co-authored papers with the company, but other scientists have not been invited inside to examine the process.

Blacklight Power is jumping way ahead of itself making promises to produce very cheap and clean electrical energy from free-standing CIHT (Catalyst Induced Hydrino Transition) fuel cell power generators,  yet Blacklight Power scientists are still unable to explain the spike in energy produced during experiments using water to produce hydrogen-to-hydrino energy utilizing their proprietary electrochemical reactants or solid fuels, which they refer to as the Blacklight Process.    

Bloom Energy remained in stealth mode for nearly ten years and spent $400 million to produce clean electrical energy from their patented solid oxide fuel cell technology.  Many fuel cell experts were skeptical that Bloom would ever succeed.   Bloom delivered on their promise to produce clean electrical energy from fuel cells, and we finally saw their Energy Servers producing electricity for company's like Google, Wal-Mart and Federal express, and the individual fuel cell plates that produce that electricity.

I can hardly wait until 2011 to see a live demonstration of Blacklight Power's hydrogen-to-hydrino power generator fuel cells in action.  

Courtesy of an article dated November 29, 2010 appearing in GreenTechMedia

Comments

[Lynn Kurtz]

Has anyone noticed that it is now May 2013 and srill no CIHT demo?

[tommytoy.typepad.com]

Blacklight power is back in the news says it can generate electricity for 25 a kilowatt a public dem.. Very nice :)

[tommytoy.typepad.com]

Blacklight power is back in the news says it can generate electricity for 25 a kilowatt a public dem.. I like it :)

[Tommy]

Mr. Leno Birch Hansen, thank you so much for providing the information regarding Denmark Technical University's (DTU) hydrogen research. I was not aware that Denmark was one of the leaders in hydrogen research and development. I am eager to read DTU's research papers, which are available online, as soon as I have more time. Hydrogen gas storage and transportation issues need to be overcome in order for hydrogen to become practical for use as a fuel for automobiles. I found DTU's tablets for storing hydrogen gas very interesting. Thank you for providing the information. Tommy

[Leno Birch Hansen]

See my comment above. If you use the same setup as Rowan University but instead of their Raney Nickel powder use the electrodes from DTU which are coated with Raney Nickel I belive you will either pouve disprove the reaktion. With the elecktrodes coated it will be very eaasy to scale the reaction to any seize. Remember DTU already has a plant running for several months produding hydrogen and akkording to professor Per Moller the electrodes are better than ever.

[Leno Birch Hansen]

“I think you should have a look at the work that Per Moller and his group has done at DTU Denmark. They work with developmen¬¬t of electrodes to be used in manufactur¬¬ing of Hydrogen. What they have managed to do is develop an electrode that is covered with Raney Nickel which is the catalyst for the reaction, something that until now was thought impossible¬¬, because of raney nickels stability.¬¬. They have since august had a small plant running in Denmark producing M3 hydrogen pr hour using water . Now if you compare their process and the one that Blacklight Power claim to have developed then we are getting very close to something that is very similar even though the experimental setup is very different. i do not know if their process is developing a similar amount of heat as is claimed by BlackLight Power, I have a suspicion it does. Should it be the case then it will not be very difficult to repeat the BlackLight Power process with their novel catalyst.”

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Forskere ved DTU er nu i stand til at løfte effektiviteten af brintfremstilling ved hjælp af elektrolyse til et helt nyt niveau, uden at det går ud over omkostningerne. Det skyldes udvikling af en proces til fremstilling af elektroder.

Materialerne og grundideen til de nye elektroder har egentlig været kendt i mange år:

»Men vi har bare fremstillet dem en hel del smartere, end andre har været i stand til,« siger professor Per Møller, der sammen med ph.d.- studerende Cecilia Kristin Kjartansdóttir, har stået i spidsen for udviklingsarbejdet, som er foregået på afdelingen for Materialeteknologi og Udvikling under Institut for Mekanisk Teknologi

Ideen er, at elektroderne er påført et tyndt lag af såkaldt 'Raney-nikkel' - en legering af nikkel og aluminium først beskrevet for over 90 år siden:

»Ved hjælp af elektrokemiske processer er vi i stand til selektivt at fjerne aluminium og dermed opbygge en ekstremt stor overflade, hvor den katalytiske proces kan foregå,« forklarer Per Møller.

Det vil med andre ord sige, at forskerne helt undgår at bruge det kostbare platin, som ellers har været nødvendigt for at holde virkningsgraden oppe:

»Det er derfor, vi kan gøre det stinkende billigt. Vi skal ikke ud at opfinde nye materialer eller metoder. Det hele er principielt kendt. Det eneste, vi har tilført, er viden om elektrokemisk procesteknologi,« siger Per Møller.

Og netop derfor vil Per Møller heller ikke gå mere i detaljer omkring, hvordan forskerne helt præcist har gjort, for det er her hemmeligheden ligger. Resultatet er en elektrode, som koster under en tiendedel af, hvad man ellers skal betale.
Erhvervssamarbejde i Herning
Arbejdet med udvikling af nye metoder til katalytisk fremstilling af brint blev for tre år siden sat i gang af virksomheden GreenHydrogen i Herning. Man valgte at satse på to forskellige metoder: Keramiske elektroder, som Risø DTU i Roskilde har specialiseret sig i, og Raney-nikkel-elektroderne fra Per Møllers forskningsgruppe i Lundtofte. Direktør i GreenHydrogen Jørgen Krogsgaard Jensen siger:

»Vi har med DTU's forskning fået vist, at der kan opnås betydelige kvantespring på virkningsgraden. Vi har hele tiden fokuseret på, at der skal udvikles kommercielle anlæg, og det ser vi ud til at kunne opnå,« siger Jørgen Krogsgaard Jensen.

Lige nu står et anlæg og kører hos H2-College i Herning. Det producerer 4 normalkubikmeter brint i timen ved 30 bar og en procestemperatur på 100 grader celsius. Det eneste, som skal tilføres, er rent vand og el.

Den store udfordring for GreenHydrogen bliver nu at bære resultaterne fra laboratoriet over i anlægget, og Jørgen Krogsgaard Jensen forventer, at de inden længe vil have et anlæg, som kan producerer én normalkubikmeter brint ud fra 4 kWh.

Prisen for den producerede brint, afhænger af et væld af faktorer, men Jørgen Krogsgaard Jensen vurderer, at med de resultater, man allerede i dag kan fremvise, så ligger de samlede produktionsomkostninger pr. kilo brint på cirka 60 procent af eksisterende metoder.
Det kan blive endnu bedre
Test af de nye brintelektroder viser, at virkningsgraden i laboratoriet kommer over 90 procent, uden at der opstår slid på elektroderne. Og Per Møller tror, at den kan blive endnu bedre:

»Indtil nu har vi kun koncentreret os om katodesiden, altså der hvor brinten produceres. Næste skridt bliver at optimere anodesiden af processen, altså der hvor ilten produceres,« siger han og forventer, at virkningsgraden kan få endnu et nøk opad.

Nu er det planen, at 2011 og 2012 skal bruges på yderligere udvikling og test hos udvalgte kunder. Jørgen Krogsgaard Jensen forventer, at de første kommercielle anlæg vil være klar i 2013

[John Casey]

I would say a replication study from the Harvard Smithsonian group, to say the least, requires a response more useful than the usual debunking nonsense.

[DanB]

Blacklight does not have to convince
scientists, they merely have to produce the claims.