Lots of people have been emailing me to say that there’s a new article out about Blacklight, the company started by Randall Mills to promote his Hydrino stuff, which claims to have an independent validation of his stuff, and announcing the any-day-now unveiling of the latest version of his hydrino-based generator.
First of all, folks, this isn’t an article, it’s a press release from Blacklight. The Financial Post just printed it in their online press-release section. It’s an un-edited release written by Blacklight.
There’s nothing new here. I continue to think that this is a scam. But what kind of scam?
To find out, let’s look at a couple of select quotes from this press release.
Using a proprietary water-based solid fuel confined by two electrodes of a SF-CIHT cell, and applying a current of 12,000 amps through the fuel, water ignites into an extraordinary flash of power. The fuel can be continuously fed into the electrodes to continuously output power. BlackLight has produced millions of watts of power in a volume that is one ten thousandths of a liter corresponding to a power density of over an astonishing 10 billion watts per liter. As a comparison, a liter of BlackLight power source can output as much power as a central power generation plant exceeding the entire power of the four former reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.
One ten-thousandth of a liter of water produces millions of watts of power.
Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Oh, but wait… how do we measure energy density of a substance? Joules per liter, or something equivalent – that is, energy per volume. But Blacklight is quoting energy density as watts per liter.
The joule is a unit of energy. A joule is a shorthand for $$frac{text{kilogram}*text{meter}^2}{text{second}^2}$$. Watts are a different unit, a measure of power, which is a shorthand for $$frac{text{kilogram}*text{meter}^2}{text{second}^3}$$. A watt is, therefore, one joule/second.
They’re quoting a rather peculiar unit there. I wonder why?
Our safe, non-polluting power-producing system catalytically converts the hydrogen of the H2O-based solid fuel into a non-polluting product, lower-energy state hydrogen called “Hydrino”, by allowing the electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus. The energy release of H2O fuel, freely available in the humidity in the air, is one hundred times that of an equivalent amount of high-octane gasoline. The power is in the form of plasma, a supersonic expanding gaseous ionized physical state of the fuel comprising essentially positive ions and free electrons that can be converted directly to electricity using highly efficient magnetohydrodynamic converters. Simply replacing the consumed H2O regenerates the fuel. Using readily-available components, BlackLight has developed a system engineering design of an electric generator that is closed except for the addition of H2O fuel and generates ten million watts of electricity, enough to power ten thousand homes. Remarkably, the device is less than a cubic foot in volume. To protect its innovations and inventions, multiple worldwide patent applications have been filed on BlackLight’s proprietary technology.
Water, in the alleged hydrino reaction, produces 100 times the energy of high-octane gasoline.
Gasoline contains, on average, about 11.8 kWh/kg. A milliliter of gasoline weighs about 7/10ths of a gram, compared to the 1 gram weight of a milliter of water; therefore, a kilogram of gasoline should contain around 1400 milliliters. So, let’s take 11.8kWh/kg, and convert that to an equivalent measure of energy per milliter: about 8 1/2 kWh/milliliter. How does that compare to hydrinos? Oh, wait… we can’t convert those, now can we? Because they’re using power density. And the power density of a substance depends not just on how much power you can extract, but how long it takes to extract it. Explosives have fantastic power density! Gasoline – particularly high octane gasoline – is formulated to try to burn as slowly as possible, because internal combustion engines are more efficient on a slower burn.
To bring just a bit of numbers into it, TNT has a much higher power density than gasoline. You can easily knock down buildings with TNT, because of the way that it emits all of its energy in one super short burst. But it’s energy density is just 1/4th the energy density of gasoline.
Hmm. I wonder why Mills is using the power density?
Here’s my guess. Mills has some bullshit process where he spikes his generator with 12000 amps, and gets a microsecond burst of energy out. If you can produce 100 joules from one milliliter in 1/1000th of a second, that’s a power density of 100,000 joules per milliliter.
Suddenly, the amount of power that’s being generated isn’t so huge – and there, I would guess, is the key to Mills latest scam. If you’re hitting your generating apparatus with 12,000 amperes of electric current, and you’re producing microsecond burst of energy, it’s going to be very easy to produce that energy by consuming something in the apparatus, without that consumption being obvious to an observer who isn’t allowed to independently examine the apparatus in detail.
Now, what about the “independent verification”? Again, let’s look at the press release.
“We at The ENSER Corporation have performed about thirty tests at our premises using BLP’s CIHT electrochemical cells of the type that were tested and reported by BLP in the Spring of 2012, and achieved the three specified goals,” said Dr. Ethirajulu Dayalan, Engineering Fellow, of The ENSER Corporation. “We independently validated BlackLight’s results offsite by an unrelated highly qualified third party. We confirmed that hydrino was the product of any excess electricity observed by three analytical tests on the cell products, and determined that BlackLight Power had achieved fifty times higher power density with stabilization of the electrodes from corrosion.” Dr. Terry Copeland, who managed product development for several electrochemical and energy companies including DuPont Company and Duracell added, “Dr. James Pugh (then Director of Technology at ENSER) and Dr. Ethirajulu Dayalan participated with me in the independent tests of CIHT cells at The ENSER Corporation’s Pinellas Park facility in Florida starting on November 28, 2012. We fabricated and tested CIHT cells capable of continuously producing net electrical output that confirmed the fifty-fold stable power density increase and hydrino as the product.”
Who is the ENSER corporation? They’re an engineering consulting/staffing firm that’s located in the same town as Blacklight’s offices. So, pretty much, what we’re seeing is that Mills hired his next door neighbor to provide a data-free testimonial promising that the hydrino generator really did work.
Real scientists, doing real work, don’t pull nonsense like this. Mills has been promising a commercial product within a year for almost 25 years. In that time, he’s filed multiple patents, some of which have already expired! And yet, he’s never actually allowed an independent team to do a public, open test of his system. He’s never provided any actual data about the system!
He and his team have claimed things like “We can’t let people see it, it’s secret”. But they’re filing patents. You don’t get to keep a patent secret. A patent application, under US law, must contain: “a description of how to make and use the invention that must provide sufficient detail for a person skilled in the art (i.e., the relevant area of technology) to make and use the invention.”. In other words, if the patents that Mills and friends filed are legally valid, they must contain enough information for an interested independent party to build a hydrino generator. But Mills won’t let anyone examine his supposedly working generators. Why? It’s not to keep a secret!
Finally, the question that a couple of people, including one reporter for WiredUK asked: If it’s all a scam, why would Mills and company keep on making claims?
The answer is the oldest in the book: money.
In my email this morning, I got a new version of a 419 scam letter. It’s from a guy who claims to be the nephew of Ariel Sharon. He claims that his uncle owned some farmland, including an extremely valuable grove of olive trees, in the occupied west bank. Now, he claims, the family wants to sell that land – but as Sharon’s, they can’t let their names get in to the news. So, he says, he wants to “sell” the land to me for a pittance, and then I can sell it for what it’s really worth, and we’ll split the profits.
When you read about people who’ve fallen for 419 scams, you find that the scammers don’t ask for all of the money up front. They start off small: “There is a $500 fee for the transfer”. When they get that, they show you some “evidence” in the form of an official-looking transfer-clearance recepit. But then they say that there’s a new problem, and they need money to get around it. “We were preparing to transfer, but the clerk became suspicious; we need to bribe him!”, “There’s a new financial rule that you can’t transfer sums greater that $10000 to someone without a Nigerian bank account containing at least $100,000”. It’s a continual process. They always show some kind of fake document at each step of the way. The fakes aren’t particularly convincing unless you really want to be convinced, but they’re enough to keep the money coming.
Mills appears to be operating in very much the same vein. He’s getting investors to give him money, promising that whatever they invest, they’ll get back manifold when he starts selling hydrino power generators! He promises they’ll be on market within a year or two – five at most!
Then he comes up with either a demonstration, or the testimonial from his neighbor, or the self-publication of his book, or another press release talking about the newest version of his technology. It’s much better than the old one! This time it’s for real – just look at these amazing numbers! It’s 10 billion watts per liter, a machine that fits on your desk can generate as much power as a nuclear power plant!! We just need some more money to fix that pesky problem with corrosion on the electrodes, and then we’ll go to market, and you’ll be rich, rich, rich!
It’s been going on for almost 25 years, this constant cycle of press release/demo/testimonial every couple of years. (Seriously; in this post, I showed links to claims from 2009 claiming commercialization within 12 to 18 months; from 2005 claiming commercialization within months; and claims from 1999 claiming commercialization within a year.) But he always comes up with an excuse why those deadlines needed to be missed. And he always manages to find more investors, willing to hand over millions of dollars. As long as suckers are still willing to give him money, why wouldn’t he keep on making claims?