Next Big Future: Blacklight Power has signed a Second Commercial Deal. This deal is with Farmer's Electric
nextbigfuture
· 11 months ago
As he himself has noted, Brock does not write for or control this blog. In terms of banning or erasing comments, they have to be pretty offensive, off-topic, obvious spam, or unproductive trolling to get kicked. This has been rare (other than the obvious spam part, that is not rare)
I think the basic snake oil tests need some work as it would include a lot of nuclear fusion. Other than 1 ,6 and 8 for even ITER.
On various technical forums and blogs there are many who get extremely skeptical about
Koloc and Lerner are considered to be varying foms of fringe. some don't like General Fusion or Bussard fusion. There has been peer reviewed skeptic papers on Bussard fusion.
There are also very knowledgable people who diss space based solar power. Cause they say the economics will never work. Even if launch costs free. Issues around the gravitational gradient and other issues.
If these things were easy or if we did not need to re-design the systems from fresh angles then the old approaches would have succeeded.
For these like ITER and tokomak fusion, I think it is going against the law of successful projects. Huge multi-decade project success is very rare in human history.
enantiomer2000
· 11 months ago
I, for one, am excited at the possibility of this technology. Hope it works. It seems like 2009 might be the year we find out things about stuff.
dodanimal
· 11 months ago
People have been saying that since 1991, when Mills started his wacky company.
GoatGuy
· 11 months ago
Again...
BlackLight "technology" doesn't pass the basic snake-oil test.
1. Are the words, "unknown science", "nano-...", "Tesla", "radical", "beyond standard physics", etc. used? 2. Does the tech promise not only great performance, but virtually superior to all other types? 3. Does it exist in 'the lab', but virtually nowhere else? 4. Are the byproducts of the tech hyped to address all sorts of world-shaking problems? 5. Does the tech come at almost no cost? 6. Are the whole-system thermodynamics numbers ... suspiciously missing? 7. Is the tech summarized as the Way to Save The Earth, and so on? 8. Are there quite a number of peer-skeptics of the peer-reviewed publications? 9. Is the technology ostensibly simple, but wrapped at its core in deeply secret (or obfuscated) ideas? 10. Are there NO commercial or industrial running examples of the tech?
I believe that any technology that doesn't pass #10 ... isn't viable. Period. It is the "missouri / show-me" case, that is most important. Let's be clear here: BlackLight isn't about a much larger windmill ... were the existence of thousands of smaller windmills points to the 'reasonable scaling' concept. Or about an undersea tidemill, that is just a much larger version of a ship's screw attached to a stout generator. It isn't about the novel use of specialized fuel injectors and materials to make a plausibly more efficient engine. It is about a completely 'new' technology that promises at its core to overthrow all of quantum physics, most of thermodynamics and in short ... just fvck standard physical chemistry.
And we're asked to believe it?
SHOW ME THE FIRST CONTINUOUS RUNNING INDUSTRIAL OR COMMERCIAL PLANT. ESTABLISH THAT IT IS REALLY GENERATING POWER IN EXCESS OF INVESTMENT. BOTTLE, AND LET ME (a pro chemist) CHARACTERIZE THE 'hydrino' gas.
All of the above should be utterly trivial, and in fact DONE ALREADY ... if even 10% of the $50,000,000 was spent on making a full-scale plant.
At this point, since BLACKLIGHT's tech officially fails 8 out of the 10 Snakeoil questions ... and especially #10 ... I declare it a fraud, until proven otherwise.
No amount of their Marketing Department eagerly announcing all sorts of technology licensing deals makes me feel any more comforted that they actually have something. The history of science (and fraud) is littered with millions of patented processes ... that in the end ... were and are bogus.
I really don't understand the point of your post, or why you get so excited about this. I'm as curious about this as the next guy, but I don't really care if Mills is wrong (other than mildly disappointed that we're stuck with nuclear for power). Mills isn't trying to convince anyone of anything; he's just working in his lab in Princeton with people who have voluntarily joined him. Why do you need to harsh on his project every time it's mentioned? Did he insult your mom?
The fact is you have no idea whether building commercial plants would have been viable at any point prior to these two announced deals. If Mills did finally get the continuous cycle working in 2008, what could he have built before then that would have been a good investment? Not much that I can think of. His money probably was best spent on getting a continuous model working in the lab before building anything of scale. Now he'll spend that 10% you're looking for; now that it's ready.
GoatGuy
· 11 months ago
Brock,
I appreciate your defense. I don't remember Mills insulting my Mom, so we can put that aside, yes?
Let's just put it this way: as a practicing (and ageing) scientist, I don't like false science, and vainglorious claims. You can read ENDLESSLY by googling "free energy" and "zero point energy device" and "over unity power". All, to the last one, crackpots.
Mills, in my mind, is just a more sophisticated crackpot. I apologize - well in advance - if I turn out to be wrong. I admit his education is greater than mine, and that it is focused in the area of his research, making his claims pretty compelling ... if it weren't for the fact that they also just don't pass the Snake Oil tests.
If his technology works, and it has the potential to really revolutionize (and for all practical purposes, displace all known present sources of) energy production, then
A) He's going to get a Nobel B) He's going to be the richest person on earth C) He'll be the target of big business elimination D) All physics will need to be rewritten.
But you know, there's just something mildly disingenuous about his lack of obvious 'we got it, now lets leverage it to the max' attitude. I see that he's licensed the technology to two firms. They're going to make a pitch at commercializing the tech. this is wonderful! I ABSOLUTELY HOPE THEY SUCCEED. Indeed, I'd love to work with either of them developing their commercial power generation products.
So, we wait then. You hold your breath. I'm not going to. Each time you bring up Mills and yet another of his fancy announcements ... I'm going to comment just as I've done. Because just like Mills' unending stream of announcements (giving false sense of 'realness' to the tech), I think it needs to be countered by an equally unending stream of skeptical reflections.
Thank you for providing a forum onto which I may be the lone crow. Hopefully you won't ban my responses just 'cuz they're a bit heavy handed. I am trying to be respectful as well as uncompromising.
GoatGuy
Brock
· 11 months ago
I guess my real question is: why single out Mills for your ire? As you note, there are a lot of people out there (throughout history) making some crazy claims. Remember Steorn? So, I understand why you're skeptical. I'm skeptical too. I just don't get why you feel the need to bust on Mills every time Brian posts on him when you don't bust on Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion, the EM Drive, or any of the other speculative technology.
I'd also like to point out that I'm not defending Mills. His tech will either succeed or fail without my help, and neither needs or asks for my defense of it. If those New Mexicans start pumping out continuous 250 MW for a couple months it won't be because of anything I said. I'm just curious why you feel the need to post long diatribes when Mills' name is mentioned in a such a target rich environment.
GoatGuy
· 11 months ago
Brock,
I'm a busy man, yet I find time to write about 10 "long" comments on any one of 30 different blogs per day. So, that's about 1 comment per 3 blogs a day. Combined, the 30 blogs probably have on the order of 500 topics per week upon which I could comment. But, that would take WAY too much time. So, I pick and choose: I choose the most egregious charlatan tech just as often as I choose to hoorah the most cool tech. We just don't participate in the same blogs, is all.
Eric Lerner's focus fusion isn't a bad concept. It doesn't rely on changing the laws of physics, or the empirical findings of plasma electrodynamics. Indeed, there are a lot of ideas in the plasma physics world that deserve research monies: they very well could lead to real-world fusion energy production by sidestepping the mainstream way of thinking about Tokamak principles.
Likewise, I do remember Steorn. I was very tempted to write a scathing skeptic's view when the tech was blogged ... but it seemed obvious that it was just more free energy crap. So, I let it be.
I like very much reading the NextBigFuture blog, and I do so just about every other day (unless, like this, I'm suddenly "involved").
Keep up the good work. Expect more from me re: Mills whenever it is posted here. I'm just keeping up the skeptics prime directive: to be clearly, objectively, and unwaveringly skeptical.
GoatGuy
dodanimal
· 11 months ago
Hey, dont make fun of Steorn! Steorn is an amazing company on the cutting edge of physics and new energy technology. They will change the world, they will!
dodanimal
· 11 months ago
I dont like the 10 rules or whatever, since they would have identified other notable scientific advances as wrong. There really is no easy formula for determining fruadulent science from the real thing.
What bugs me is that the demonstration units are so incredibly small: 50 kw for 20 seconds, yielding 1 mega joule. This is a tiny amount of energy. Its about what you get from burning 20 grams of hydrocarbon fuel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion
GoatGuy
· 11 months ago
[dodanimal]
Yes, the 10 'snakeoil questions' are not perfect. But in the energy-world, they're pretty good.
That the demonstration unit(s) are small ... is part of the problem. Release of a megajoule is, well ... given $50 million invested ... pathetic. On another post on another site, I proposed that it would take at LEAST 10 more years to get a full-scale continuous (or overlapped multiphase batch) process working. Why? Because when moving from lab to concrete pad, it takes several 'confidence steps':
Year Progress 1 ramp up to continuous low kilowatt (thermal) output. 2 re-engineer for 100 kW (thermal) output. ... Attach to generators, demonstrate output-over-input thermodynamics ... Send hydrino gas around world to have labs actively research it 3 begin build of a 1 to 3 MW 'scale demo'. 4 characterize its operation. Rework chemistry for efficiency. 6 begin build of a 20 MW full-scale industrial reactor. 8 demonstrate the power OUT to IN ratio is positive, per claims. 9 begin build of a 100 MW commercial reactor 11 show that it is safe. Show that it is 'per claims'.
Rejoice!
Now, if that can be done in a prudent, conservative fashion, then it should be done. As to some cockamamie announcement from a marketing department that they've signed 250 megawatt deals with power companies, please. Let's not have the wool over our eyes, y'know? Unless the power output is just enormously greater than input, and unless all the reactants can scale without degradation to gigajoule power levels in bulk (quite the achievement), then ...
Oil of Snake.
ak47
· 11 months ago
Just like the last deal, this one is also with a tiny rural electric company - you can see that for yourself at http://www.farmerselectric.org/. If they don't have a continous process yet, why are they signing deals with end users? Per the IEEE article, I'd say all BLP's recent activity is in order to generate more investor funding for his 'development and commercialization'. These two small rural utilities won't see a watt of power from BLP in 2009.
If this technology had indeed passed any sort of third party validation, why aren't the major utilities jumping on it? Mills even had Conectiv Energy Supply and PacifiCorp as investors years ago. The reason is because they still haven't demonstrated the process working.
As I posted before, Mills has been running this game since the 1980's as Hydro Catalysis Inc. And it's not a harmless scam because real investors spend other people's real money (including quite possibly your pension fund) on chasing this rainbow.
nextbigfuture
· 11 months ago
If you are right then 0.1% of a Bernie Madoff ponzi scam. About 1,000,000 times less than credit swap /financial crisis stuff. Half of a Webvan (grocery delivery) internet startup attempt. Plenty of startups crap out. The people in startups think and believe it will work. Plenty do not work out at all. Many that get even less than signing up rural utilities.
Why not go after every 50+ million Venture capital or private investment with a clearly flawed business or technical model ?
100 times as much is going to Chrysler and GM. Car companies with a proven record of losing money and making inferior cars and with bad financial structures.
There are plenty of "really big guaranteed money losers". Hundreds of billions every year in government pork. That will achieve squat.
IF this is a scam then it is a fart in a hurricane of wasted money or money that was lost in an investment.
dodanimal
· 11 months ago
I expect that BLP got these utilities to sign by promising them access if they inked a deal early. And of course it wouldnt cost them anything. What could they lose? OF COURSE they will wign such an agreement-it doesnt cost them anything and they get huge benefits in case there is something to it. BLP gets the big advantage of being able to put out a hyperventilating press release.
All Comments
I think the basic snake oil tests need some work as it would include a lot of nuclear fusion. Other than 1 ,6 and 8 for even ITER.
On various technical forums and blogs there are many who get extremely skeptical about
any form of aneutronic fusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
Koloc and Lerner are considered to be varying foms of fringe.
some don't like General Fusion or Bussard fusion. There has been peer reviewed skeptic papers on
Bussard fusion.
There are also very knowledgable people who diss space based solar power. Cause they say the economics will never work.
Even if launch costs free.
Issues around the gravitational gradient and other issues.
If these things were easy or if we did not need to re-design the systems from fresh angles then the old approaches would have succeeded.
For these like ITER and tokomak fusion, I think it is going against the law of successful projects. Huge multi-decade project success is very rare in human history.
BlackLight "technology" doesn't pass the basic snake-oil test.
1. Are the words, "unknown science", "nano-...", "Tesla", "radical", "beyond standard physics", etc. used?
2. Does the tech promise not only great performance, but virtually superior to all other types?
3. Does it exist in 'the lab', but virtually nowhere else?
4. Are the byproducts of the tech hyped to address all sorts of world-shaking problems?
5. Does the tech come at almost no cost?
6. Are the whole-system thermodynamics numbers ... suspiciously missing?
7. Is the tech summarized as the Way to Save The Earth, and so on?
8. Are there quite a number of peer-skeptics of the peer-reviewed publications?
9. Is the technology ostensibly simple, but wrapped at its core in deeply secret (or obfuscated) ideas?
10. Are there NO commercial or industrial running examples of the tech?
I believe that any technology that doesn't pass #10 ... isn't viable. Period. It is the "missouri / show-me" case, that is most important. Let's be clear here: BlackLight isn't about a much larger windmill ... were the existence of thousands of smaller windmills points to the 'reasonable scaling' concept. Or about an undersea tidemill, that is just a much larger version of a ship's screw attached to a stout generator. It isn't about the novel use of specialized fuel injectors and materials to make a plausibly more efficient engine. It is about a completely 'new' technology that promises at its core to overthrow all of quantum physics, most of thermodynamics and in short ... just fvck standard physical chemistry.
And we're asked to believe it?
SHOW ME THE FIRST CONTINUOUS RUNNING INDUSTRIAL OR COMMERCIAL PLANT.
ESTABLISH THAT IT IS REALLY GENERATING POWER IN EXCESS OF INVESTMENT.
BOTTLE, AND LET ME (a pro chemist) CHARACTERIZE THE 'hydrino' gas.
All of the above should be utterly trivial, and in fact DONE ALREADY ... if even 10% of the $50,000,000 was spent on making a full-scale plant.
At this point, since BLACKLIGHT's tech officially fails 8 out of the 10 Snakeoil questions ... and especially #10 ... I declare it a fraud, until proven otherwise.
No amount of their Marketing Department eagerly announcing all sorts of technology licensing deals makes me feel any more comforted that they actually have something. The history of science (and fraud) is littered with millions of patented processes ... that in the end ... were and are bogus.
Beware, investors. Beware.
(UPDATE)... check out this link: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan09/7127
The fact is you have no idea whether building commercial plants would have been viable at any point prior to these two announced deals. If Mills did finally get the continuous cycle working in 2008, what could he have built before then that would have been a good investment? Not much that I can think of. His money probably was best spent on getting a continuous model working in the lab before building anything of scale. Now he'll spend that 10% you're looking for; now that it's ready.
I appreciate your defense. I don't remember Mills insulting my Mom, so we
can put that aside, yes?
Let's just put it this way: as a practicing (and ageing) scientist, I don't
like false science, and vainglorious claims. You can read ENDLESSLY by
googling "free energy" and "zero point energy device" and "over unity
power". All, to the last one, crackpots.
Mills, in my mind, is just a more sophisticated crackpot. I apologize - well
in advance - if I turn out to be wrong. I admit his education is greater
than mine, and that it is focused in the area of his research, making his
claims pretty compelling ... if it weren't for the fact that they also just
don't pass the Snake Oil tests.
If his technology works, and it has the potential to really revolutionize
(and for all practical purposes, displace all known present sources of)
energy production, then
A) He's going to get a Nobel
B) He's going to be the richest person on earth
C) He'll be the target of big business elimination
D) All physics will need to be rewritten.
But you know, there's just something mildly disingenuous about his lack of
obvious 'we got it, now lets leverage it to the max' attitude. I see that
he's licensed the technology to two firms. They're going to make a pitch at
commercializing the tech. this is wonderful! I ABSOLUTELY HOPE THEY
SUCCEED. Indeed, I'd love to work with either of them developing their
commercial power generation products.
So, we wait then. You hold your breath. I'm not going to. Each time you
bring up Mills and yet another of his fancy announcements ... I'm going to
comment just as I've done. Because just like Mills' unending stream of
announcements (giving false sense of 'realness' to the tech), I think it
needs to be countered by an equally unending stream of skeptical
reflections.
Thank you for providing a forum onto which I may be the lone crow. Hopefully
you won't ban my responses just 'cuz they're a bit heavy handed. I am
trying to be respectful as well as uncompromising.
GoatGuy
I'd also like to point out that I'm not defending Mills. His tech will either succeed or fail without my help, and neither needs or asks for my defense of it. If those New Mexicans start pumping out continuous 250 MW for a couple months it won't be because of anything I said. I'm just curious why you feel the need to post long diatribes when Mills' name is mentioned in a such a target rich environment.
I'm a busy man, yet I find time to write about 10 "long" comments on any one
of 30 different blogs per day. So, that's about 1 comment per 3 blogs a
day. Combined, the 30 blogs probably have on the order of 500 topics per
week upon which I could comment. But, that would take WAY too much time.
So, I pick and choose: I choose the most egregious charlatan tech just as
often as I choose to hoorah the most cool tech. We just don't participate
in the same blogs, is all.
Eric Lerner's focus fusion isn't a bad concept. It doesn't rely on changing
the laws of physics, or the empirical findings of plasma electrodynamics.
Indeed, there are a lot of ideas in the plasma physics world that deserve
research monies: they very well could lead to real-world fusion energy
production by sidestepping the mainstream way of thinking about Tokamak
principles.
Likewise, I do remember Steorn. I was very tempted to write a scathing
skeptic's view when the tech was blogged ... but it seemed obvious that it
was just more free energy crap. So, I let it be.
I like very much reading the NextBigFuture blog, and I do so just about
every other day (unless, like this, I'm suddenly "involved").
Keep up the good work. Expect more from me re: Mills whenever it is posted
here. I'm just keeping up the skeptics prime directive: to be clearly,
objectively, and unwaveringly skeptical.
GoatGuy
What bugs me is that the demonstration units are so incredibly small: 50 kw for 20 seconds, yielding 1 mega joule. This is a tiny amount of energy. Its about what you get from burning 20 grams of hydrocarbon fuel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion
Yes, the 10 'snakeoil questions' are not perfect. But in the energy-world,
they're pretty good.
That the demonstration unit(s) are small ... is part of the problem. Release
of a megajoule is, well ... given $50 million invested ... pathetic. On
another post on another site, I proposed that it would take at LEAST 10 more
years to get a full-scale continuous (or overlapped multiphase batch)
process working. Why? Because when moving from lab to concrete pad, it
takes several 'confidence steps':
Year Progress
1 ramp up to continuous low kilowatt (thermal) output.
2 re-engineer for 100 kW (thermal) output.
... Attach to generators, demonstrate output-over-input thermodynamics
... Send hydrino gas around world to have labs actively research it
3 begin build of a 1 to 3 MW 'scale demo'.
4 characterize its operation. Rework chemistry for efficiency.
6 begin build of a 20 MW full-scale industrial reactor.
8 demonstrate the power OUT to IN ratio is positive, per claims.
9 begin build of a 100 MW commercial reactor
11 show that it is safe. Show that it is 'per claims'.
Rejoice!
Now, if that can be done in a prudent, conservative fashion, then it should
be done. As to some cockamamie announcement from a marketing department
that they've signed 250 megawatt deals with power companies, please. Let's
not have the wool over our eyes, y'know? Unless the power output is just
enormously greater than input, and unless all the reactants can scale
without degradation to gigajoule power levels in bulk (quite the
achievement), then ...
Oil of Snake.
If this technology had indeed passed any sort of third party validation, why aren't the major utilities jumping on it? Mills even had Conectiv Energy Supply and PacifiCorp as investors years ago. The reason is because they still haven't demonstrated the process working.
As I posted before, Mills has been running this game since the 1980's as Hydro Catalysis Inc. And it's not a harmless scam because real investors spend other people's real money (including quite possibly your pension fund) on chasing this rainbow.
About 1,000,000 times less than credit swap /financial crisis stuff.
Half of a Webvan (grocery delivery) internet startup attempt.
Plenty of startups crap out. The people in startups think and believe it will work. Plenty do not work out at all. Many that get even less than signing up rural utilities.
Why not go after every 50+ million Venture capital or private investment with a clearly flawed business or technical model ?
100 times as much is going to Chrysler and GM. Car companies with a proven record of losing money and making inferior cars and with bad financial structures.
There are plenty of "really big guaranteed money losers". Hundreds of billions every year in government pork. That will achieve squat.
IF this is a scam then it is a fart in a hurricane of wasted money or money that was lost in an investment.