Live Open Science Project Dog Bone tests E-cat model online

The World Wide Web now traffics a new model of scientific collaboration as a group of young researchers tested a revolutionary energy technology live online today.

The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project at quantumheat.org formed in 2012 at ICCF-17 in Daejon, Korea, to find a reproducible cold fusion experiment, a task that no leading science institution had the sense or courage to try. The collective has tested replications of energy cells designed by Francesco Celani, Tadahiko Mizuno, as well as designs of their own.

Mathieu Valat (L) of MFMP and Francesco Piantelli (R) of Nichenergy discuss partnership.
Mathieu Valat (L) of MFMP and Francesco Piantelli (R) of Nichenergy discuss partnership.
They are now focused on working with Francesco Piantelli, one of the first to explore excess energy from nickel-light-hydrogen systems, and, the “dog bone” model E-Cat, so named for the reactor’s appearance in the test report Observation of abundant heat production from a reactor device and of isotopic changes in the fuel [.pdf]

Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat was repeatedly demonstrated producing excess heat. Now owned by Industrial Heat, the technology appears to have been reproduced by well-respected Russian scientist Alexander Parkhomov [.pdf]. MFMP began to organize Project Dog Bone in October, and the group is now working with Parkhomov to reproduce his set-up. Today, a calibration test took place live on Youtube and Google hangouts, the online venues all the participation Silicon Valley can muster for this field.

Where are visioneers?

Bill Gates (far left) listens to Dr. Vittorio Violante at ENEA.
Bill Gates (far right) listens to Dr. Vittorio Violante at ENEA.
Bill Gates‘ visit to ENEA labs, one of the leading institutions in the world on LENR materials science, was investigatory. How much he was told, we do not know. No further information was forthcoming from ENEA.

Nevertheless, the creators of this reality are keeping tabs on the field, but have not made funding available. Why would Bill Gates, who seeks solutions to energy problems, not see the solution cold fusion offers?

Why haven’t the daring entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley jumped on what Gerald Celente calls “the greatest investment opportunity of the 21st century”: an ultra-clean energy source that could power their technological fantasies for millenia?

David Niebauer, a lawyer who represents technology firms in California says Silicon Valley is not ignoring the field, but taking a “wait and see” attitude.

“VCs do not invest in research; they are looking for commercialization and sound go-to market strategies,” he says. “Until LENR has a viable commercial product, they will remain on the sidelines. I know a number of VCs and Silicon Valley tech companies that are watching the field with interest. Some small investments are also trickling in in the form of angel investments from individuals inside these institutions.”

brillouinppttechnical3-27-12-120815120338-phpapp0216Robert Godes, President and Chief Technology Officer of Brillouin Energy Corporation (BEC), a commercially-minded company based in Berkeley, California developing their own Brillouin Hot Tube reactor has met with difficulty convincing Silicon Valley capital to migrate across the bay. When asked if the Digerati were stepping up to fund new work, the answer was a flat, “No! – but we’re doing OK.”

Brillouin captured around $2 million in funding over the last couple years, money spent on hiring engineers and lab staff, and funding a collaboration with SRI International in Menlo Park, California to test their technology. They’re getting a lot of science on the way to a product.

“We have gotten results back on 3 of 5 electrolyte samples we sent out for analysis”, says Godes, “and I am hoping to get the last two soon. We can reliably produce Tritium which is a step in the process. At the same time we are also using T so that it does not build up in the system to the point where it becomes a concern for users of the technology.”

Says Godes, “We need to sell less of the company to obtain the capital required. We are close to completion of a new manufacturing process that will allow us replicate the demonstration we ran for Mike McKubre [the director of the Energy Research Lab at SRI]. That will provide another big boost to the valuation of BEC.”

A little support could make a big impact

Companies like Industrial Heat and Brillouin Energy Corporation (and there are more) represent the small independent start-ups in the new energy field, and a handful of staff is all most of these companies have. Even ENEA, the institute Bill Gates visited in Italy, is a company with perhaps less than 500 employees. How would an investment from the Gates Foundation effect their research?

Terra Power wants next generation nuclear technology.
Gates and Khosla both support Terra Power for next-generation nuclear technology.
“We do know that Gates often invests along side his friend Vinod Khosla, one of the wealthiest and most successful VCs in the world”, says Niebauer. “Khosla is famous for his “Black Swan” theory of investing and if ever there was a “Black Swan” it is LENR.”

“If Gates and Khosla took an interest and investment position in the field, it would be huge. What we need is more investment to speed up and expand the research being conducted on a shoestring by a handful of private companies. Also, not to be underestimated is the simple acceptance [of LENR] as a valid field of research. More physics and engineering students need to be encouraged to study the field – a Gates/Khosla bet would spur research and development on many levels.”

Still, some researchers in the field say too much is still unknown to engineer a product and money is better spent on an all-out science lab where experiments would reveal nature of the reaction. Former Los Alamos National Lab nuclear chemist and author of The Explanation of LENR Edmund Storms would like to see funding for lab that would have tens of experiments going at once to “breakdown each parameter space.”

“Theory guides the optimal engineering of LENR,” says Storms.

Figure emerges from ground

Cold Fusion is the Mystery Landscape that Bob Dobbs described in his model of cultural evolution. A usable technology is not yet publicly available, but the ground is forming to support it, and MFMP Live Open Science is a vital component.

While the bulk of Silicon Valley intelligence, creativity, and capital is focused on developing the next phone app, the new pioneers of technology are utilizing the network for a collaboration of global scale, and doing it on fly specks. The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project is making our clean energy future a reality, and inviting you to participate.

Follow the action:

First calibration test presented live on Youtube is available for viewing.

Data was available in near-real-time here: http://data.hugnetlab.com/

Donate to Live Open Source Science with MFMP

Says Michael McKubre, “It would not take much to turn the LENR/CMNS field from resource-limited to talent-limited. I am looking forward to a very exciting 2015.”

 

 

 
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Related Links

Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project

Russian scientist replicates Hot Cat test: “produces more energy than it consumes”

Andrea Rossi on 3rd-Party Report, Industrial Heat, & 1MW Plant — New Interview with John Maguire

David Niebauer

Brillouin Energy Corporation

The Explanation of LENR

David J. Nagel on CASHFLOW describes a reasoned approach to funding

David J. Nagel Scientific and Commercial Overview of LENR [.pdf] published in Infinite Energy #112 (2013)

Publication of a further, 3rd, International Patent Application by Francisco Piantelli – Part II

The following is a further posting in a series of articles by David French, a patent attorney with 35 years experience, which will review patents of interest touching on the field of Cold Fusion.

This is the second of a two-part outline of a recently published patent application originating from Francesco Piantelli. The first part addressed the content of the disclosure of the application. The second part addresses the scope of patent coverage apparently being sought.

Key patent coverage of the third PCT application claims

Every patent has to end with one or more “Claims” which stipulate the scope of control that the patent applicant aspires to achieve. These claims, appearing at the end of every patent document take the form of numbered sentences. Actually, each numbered passage is a phrase which completes a preamble such as: “I claim” or simply “Claims”. The first of the numbered claims always stands alone. Other claims may refer-back to an earlier claim and adopt the features and limitations included in the earlier claim. Accordingly, such dependent claims are “narrower” in scope than the earlier claims to which they refer. This makes the first claim more important.

An initial impression of the scope of coverage of a patent can be obtained by examining simply Claim 1 . In this case, Claim 1 reads as follows:

1. A method to obtain energy by nuclear reactions between hydrogen (31) and a transition metal (19 18 that go), said method including the steps of:

prearranging (1 10) a primary material (19) comprising a predetermined amount of cluster nanostructures (21) having a number of atoms (38) of said transition metal (19) lower than a predetermined number of atoms;

keeping said hydrogen (31) in contact with said clusters (21);

heating (130) said primary material (19) at an initial process temperature (T-i) higher than a predetermined critical temperature;

dissociation of H2 molecules of said hydrogen (31) and formation of H- ions (35) as a consequence of said step of heating;

impulsively acting (140) on said primary material (19);

orbital capture (150) of said H- ions (35) by said cluster nanostructures (21) as a consequence of said step (140) of impulsively acting;

capture (151) of said H- ions (35) by said atoms (38) of said clusters (21 ), generating a thermal power as a primary reaction heat (Qi);

removing (160) said thermal power, maintaining the temperature of the primary material (19) above said critical temperature,

characterised in that

it provides a step (1 15) of prearranging an amount of a secondary material (28) that faces said primary material (19) and within a predetermined maximum distance (L) from said primary material (19),

said secondary material (28) arranged to interact with protons (35″‘) emitted from said primary material (19) by energy-releasing proton-dependent nuclear reactions that occur with a release of further thermal power in the form of a secondary reaction heat (Q2),

such that said step of removing (160) comprises said generated thermal power as said primary reaction heat (Qi) and said secondary reaction heat (Q2).

[End of claim 1

The numbers shown in parentheses in the above claim are those used in the written description to explain the parts shown in the drawings. Further details of the invention are specified in the subsequent claims, most of which are in dependent form. These are all worth reading.

Claim 1 is written in a European style by which it is assumed that, generally, the description preceding the words “characterized in that” covers things or arrangement which were previously known. The claim as a whole must not describe anything that was previously known in order to meet the novelty requirement. This suggests that the very last paragraph following “characterized in that” provides the claim with its required degree of novelty. It would do so by ensuring that the overall wording of the entire claim does not describe anything that was previously available to the public. Effectively, this patent application is directed to the feature of producing energy by the secondary reaction.

Claim 1 is not in the final form that the applicant may choose to present to individual patent offices around the world, once the application exits the PCT system as of October 26, 2013. But it represents the thinking of the patent attorney presently managing this filing. Claim 1 may or may not describe a process that works. However, this claim can be analyzed for certain technical defects that may cause problems for the eventual owner of any patent that may issue.

Challenge of enforcing such a claim

In order for this claim to be infringed, the patent owner must demonstrate that other parties are contravening the wording of the claim. This means demonstrating that an alleged infringer is carrying out each and every step of the method listed in Claim 1. Unfortunately, this claim includes a number of limitations that might be very hard to prove. Examples are:

– the clusters must have a number of atoms of a transition metal e.g. nickel, that is lower than a predetermined number of atoms (This predetermined number, according to the disclosure, is established by the requirement that this is a number “above which the crystals lose the cluster features”. Nothing more is said as to the critical number of atoms per cluster. Accordingly, this stipulation may be inadequately defined in the patent and in the claim.)

– causing dissociation of H2 molecules to form H- ions as a consequence of heating (Note: nickel can cause the spontaneous dissociation of H2 molecules to form H- ions without heating) e.g.:

” Hydrogen molecules are also adsorbed on to the surface of the nickel. When this happens, the hydrogen molecules are broken into atoms. These can move around on the surface of the nickel.

Source.

– orbital capture of H- ions by the cluster nanostructures as a consequence of the step of “impulsively acting” on the clusters (“Impulsively acting” as defined in the disclosure means applying a voltage impulsively but not otherwise defined. This may be another instance of inadequate disclosure);

– capture (presumably nuclear) of the H- ions (presumably those that have already been orbitally captured) by the atoms of said clusters to thereby generate a primary reaction heat (How do you prove that this is occurring?)

– providing an amount of a secondary material, e.g. lithium or boron or a variety of alloys, that faces the primary material and is positioned within a predetermined maximum distance (L) (- defined in the disclosure as corresponding to the average free path that such protons can travel before decaying into atomic hydrogen, e.g between 7 and 8 cm) from said primary material,

– the above steps resulting in the secondary material interacting with protons emitted from said primary material by energy-releasing proton-dependent nuclear reactions that occur with a release of further secondary heat (How do you prove that heat is coming from two different sources?)

It should be apparent that proving that all of these events are occurring in an infringer’s accused energy-generation process may be difficult. This is quite apart from whether or not the above claim describes a process that will work.

This claim is equivalent to defining a recipe for baking cookies in terms of what happens in the oven. This is a very undesirable claim format.

Requirement for invention operability and sufficiency of disclosure

It is an essential requirement of any patent that the invention must work. Furthermore, the description accompanying the patent application must be sufficient to enable knowledgeable workmen to reproduce the invention and produce the promised useful result.

Within the confines of this posting, it is not practical to assess whether the disclosure in this application meets all of these requirements. But as an opening exercise, it will be seen that the premise behind this asserted invention is that proton capture followed by proton emission is at the heart of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction – LENR processes according to Francesco Piantelli.

Future processing of the application

This filing does not have to be presented to an Examiner at a national patent office until after exiting the PCT system. This must occur by month 30 or 31 from the original Italian priority filing date, e.g. by April-May 26, 2013. It is highly likely, and virtually certain before the USPTO, that the applicant will be required to demonstrate that the disclosure in this application delivers what it promises, i.e. heat generated through the process characterized by the above claim.

Apart from Claim 1, Claim 8 represents a separate, independent, characterization of the invention in terms of an apparatus that carries out the process of claim 1. That claim should be reviewed as well. Before national patent offices, the applicant will be entitled to amend these claims further, on the condition that the amended claims are still based upon the original “story” included in the disclosure that became frozen at the time that the PCT filing was made, i.e. April 26, 2011. Accordingly, there will be further interesting developments as this application progresses through the patent system in various countries around the world.

Publication of a further, 3rd, International Patent Application by Francisco Piantelli – Part I

The following is a further posting in a series of articles by David French, a patent attorney with 35 years experience, which will review patents of interest touching on the field of Cold Fusion.

This will be a two-part outline of a recently published patent application originating from Francesco Piantelli. The first part will address the content of the disclosure of the application. The second part to follow shortly will address the scope of patent coverage apparently being sought.

The two prior Piantelli PCT applications

A third International Patent Application has been published naming Francisco Piantelli as an inventor. The first occurred in 1995 as International Application PCT/IT95/00008 entitled: Energy Generation and Generator by Means of Anharmonic Stimulated Fusion, filed August 3, 1995. This application was assigned to Francesco Piantelli, Sergio Focardi and Roberto Habel. The application addressed the fusion of hydrogen and deuterium absorbed on a metallic core that has been heated to above the Debye temperature for the core. The reaction in this disclosure is initiated by vibration and maintained by “a coherent multimodal system of stationary oscillations.” The 1995 International Application was eventually abandoned without issuing to a patent.

Notwithstanding the abandonment of this filing, these three individuals, or at least Piantelli and Focardi, should probably be credited with having pioneered research into nickel-hydrogen systems as a source of LENR effects.

A second application appeared in the Patent Cooperation Treaty system – PCT in 2010. This second application was addressed in an earlier posting of ColdFusionNow. The corresponding Canadian national entry filing to this PCT filing is available here.

The present, third, Piantelli PCT application

This present ColdFusionNow posting addresses the third International Application PCT/IB2012/052100 naming Piantelli as the sole inventor and published under the PCT on November 1, 2012 PCT. Key data on this filing obtained from the World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO PCT website is as follows:

International Application No.: PCT/IB2012/052100
Inventor: Francesco PIANTELLI
Assignees: Silvia PIANTELLI, Alessandro MEIARINI, Leonardo CIAMPOLI, and Fabio CHELLINI, all of Italy.
Title: Method and apparatus for generating energy by nuclear reactions of hydrogen adsorbed by orbital capture on a nanocrystalline structure of a metal
PCT filing date: April 26, 2012
Original Italian priority filing date: April 26, 2011
International classification : G21B3 – physics, nuclear physics/nuclear engineering, fusion reactors, low-temperature nuclear fusion reactors, e.g. alleged cold fusion reactors

Summary of the disclosure: Power is generated by contacting hydrogen with the surface of cluster-nanostructures, e.g. crystals, of a transition metal, at a determined process temperature, by which the following process occurs. An orbital capture reaction of negative hydrogen ions, H- ions, is effected by the clusters followed by a nuclear capture reaction by the atoms of the cluster which is triggered by impulsively acting on the primary material to generate heat (Q1). A secondary material such as Lithium and/or Boron and/or a transition metal such as 232Th, 236U, 239U, 239Pu is positioned within a predetermined distance from the clusters of the primary material facing the primary material. This secondary material interacts with energetic protons that are emitted by/from the primary material and release secondary reaction heat (Q2). This secondary heat is in addition to the primary reaction heat. The heat produced is regulated by adjusting the separation of secondary material from the primary material. (This summary is a paraphrasing of the Abstract accompanying the application.)

The drawings as published in association with this application may be found at the PCT website . While the text of the words of the patent disclosure are available through a hyperlink on the top of the primary PCT page through the link labeled “Description”, in order to see the drawings it is necessary to first link to “Documents” and then link to “Initial Publication with ISR” in order to view all of the Figures. It may be necessary to choose the “download” version in order to view the PDF document.

The actual process occurring by which heat is generated is described more fully in the disclosure accompanying the application and referenced as “Description”. It involves:

– on average there must be at least 109 clusters/crystals per square centimeter of surface
– hydrogen, interstitially adsorbed at the grain boundaries and microfractures of the clusters, are of no importance for the purposes of orbital capture of negative hydrogen ions
– in the course of hydrogen capture, the negative hydrogen ions are transformed into protons
– nucleus capture of a proton causes transmutation, e.g. nickel transmutes into copper
– protons which fail to be captured are expelled with an energy of 6.7 million electron volts, verified by cloud chamber experiments
– subsequent atomically re-emitted protons can react with the adjacent secondary material, e.g. lithium, to produce nuclear transformations, e.g. converting lithium into beryllium and/or releasing helium as alpha particles having energies on the order of 4 – 17 million electron volts
– re-emitted protons can also react with boron to produce beryllium, carbon and/or helium, releasing energy on the order of 1-16 million electron volts
– alpha particles may react with boron to produce nitrogen and 19 million electron volts of energy
– alpha particles may react with nickel to be transmuted into the zinc, releasing 3-5 million electron volts of energy
– the secondary nuclear reactions arising from re-emitted protons can generally double the amount of heat being produced over that arising from the initial proton capture
– the amount of energy arising from the secondary nuclear reaction can be varied/controlled by adjusting the separation gap between the primary and secondary materials

This Description is well worth reading.

It is to be appreciated that these are assertions that have been made by the applicants in this application and do not necessarily reflect what is actually able to occur in the host material. If the assertions of utility are untrue or the procedures for generating energy are insufficiently described, then no valid patent can issue from this application.

For example, the setup as described does not appear to be critically dependent on the degree of hydrogen loading in the primary transition metal. The closest reference appears to be: “The primary reactions, both internal and external, globally occur generating a primary reaction heat, which is the heat that can be obtained according to the method described in WO2010058288,” This is a reference to the second PCT application published in 2010. The procedures of that application are adopted by reference, which is permitted. That application addresses the hydrogen loading ratio in the following terms: “Advantageously, the concentration of H- ions with respect to the transition metal atoms of said clusters is larger than 0,01 , to improve the efficiency of the energy production process. In particular, this concentration is larger than 0,08.” Accordingly, neither of these two references teach the use of a metal substrate which has a substantial hydrogen loading ratio, e.g. on the order of 0.7:1 or higher, as an essential condition for an LENR event to occur.

Additionally, there is no discussion of the effect of the conduction band within the transition metal which forms the clusters. There are a number of clear questions of physics to consider when reviewing this disclosure.

This concludes Part I. Part II will address the scope of patent coverage that this application aspires to achieve.

Review of Cold Fusion patents – Piantelli PCT #2

The following is the second in a series of articles by David French, a patent attorney with 35 years experience, which will review patents of interest touching on the field of Cold Fusion.

August 21, 2011 –In the previous posting in this series we identified the two patent applications filed by Francesco Piantelli. We provided links to the applications as published under the Patent Corporation Treaty – PCT. Adventurous readers will have visited those links and explored the patent documents as filed.

In this posting, we will review the second, more recent, Piantelli PCT application in greater detail. Here is a link to that document: (here). (For links in this posting to work it may be necessary to switch from the e-mail version to the Cold Fusion Now web site – here.)

The second Piantelli filing

The second filing is very much relevant as it is still in position to result in the granting of patents in some 130+ countries. The date for exiting the PCT by making national entry filings in individual countries was May 24th, 2011. The national entry filing made into Canada is already available over the Internet: (here)

From the records of the Canadian filing there is an indication that some party having over 50 employees has an interest in this application. This is not a certainty and the identity of such a party, if one exists, need not necessarily be disclosed to the patent office.

Claim coverage of the second filing

Focusing on this most recent filing, a key issue is the scope of monopoly being sought. This is best determined by examining only the independent claims and particularly claim 1 which is always independent. Based on the PCT application, claim 1 of this filing reads as follows:

1. A method for producing energy by nuclear reactions between hydrogen and a metal, said method providing the steps of:

– prearranging a determined quantity of crystals of a transition metal, said crystals arranged as micro/nanometric clusters having a predetermined crystalline structure,

– each of said clusters having a number of atoms of said transition metal less than a predetermined number of atoms;

– bringing hydrogen into contact with said clusters;

– heating said determined quantity of clusters up to an adsorption temperature larger than a predetermined critical temperature, and causing an adsorption into said clusters of hydrogen as H- ions, after said heating step said hydrogen as H- ions remaining available for said nuclear reactions within said active core;

– triggering said nuclear reactions between said hydrogen as H- ions and said metal within said clusters by an impulsive action on said active core that causes said H- ions to be captured into respective atoms of said clusters, said succession of reactions causing a production of heat;

– removing heat according to a determined power from said active core and maintaining the temperature of said active core above said critical temperature.

Patent claims are a list of have-to-have-it features that must be present for something to infringe. Therefore every word is important. I have highlighted in bold some words that I considered to be important. Words used in the claim should be defined somewhere in the disclosure. In this case the precise phrase “impulsive action” is not defined per se in the disclosure, although examples are given of several “triggering” actions. If a claim is unresolveably ambiguous, it will be invalid. But generally, the courts will interpret the claims in view of what is said in the disclosure in a manner that is seeking to understand the actual intention of the inventor.

This claim defines the limits of infringement. If someone else were to create a cold fusion effect without falling within the scope of the entire text of the above claim, then they would not be liable to Piantelli and his co-applicants for patent infringement. We are presently examining an application. The above proposed claim is just that: proposed. Claims with other wording may issue in a final patent.

In fact, a claim as general as Claim 1 above will likely be rejected as violating the novelty rule of patent law: a claim must not describe anything that was previously available to the public. The examiner will make an initial assessment for claim validity, but if he makes a favorable ruling, that will not be conclusive. A patent, or a claim of the patent, issued in error can be invalidated after it has been granted.

Another rule recognized in many countries is that every configuration covered by a claim must operate to deliver what is promised. It is said that a claim must be “operative” across the full range of its coverage. This is a very onerous requirement. The above claim is likely going to be rejected on at least one of those two bases. This is particularly true when you read the broad range of meanings given to the various words in the written disclosure. Is it true that every transition metal will work?

The dependent claims in the pending application that refer back to claim 1 are all pre-designed to serve as fallback alternatives if claim 1 were to fail. It is likely that during patent prosecution before various patent offices that some attempt will be made to modify claim 1 by adding the further limitations of some of the dependent claims to claim 1 in order to obtain an approval for its grant. This will shrink the scope of monopoly rights being granted. But the prospect for the claims to be valid will be increased.

Claim 14 is also an independent claim – check the above link to view it. Everything said about claim 1 applies to claim 14. Both of these claims are a check-off list for infringement. Both of these claims remain to be examined and may not represent the final coverage of any future patent. Typically claims as finally granted are different from those as filed or published during the application stage.

PCT preliminary written opinion

In the course of the processing of the PCT application a preliminary, non-binding, written opinion on claim validity was issued by the PCT search and examination authority. In the case of this application, this authority was the European Patent Office. According to that report (issued late, on May 24th 2011 and available at the PCT link above at the end of the printed PDF patent disclosure), claims 1 and 14 were assessed as being novel in the sense that they don’t describe the prior art exactly; but these claims were nevertheless held to be obvious and therefore unpatentable. At the same time, some of the other dependent claims that refer-back to claims 1 or 14 adding further details and limitations were held to be both novel and inventive. For those claims, this preliminary validity report is favorable. But such approved claims may be very narrow. They can be reviewed at the link, above.

Rejection of claims 1 and 14

As might be expected, claims 1 and 14 have been rejected because they come very close to describing material present in the earlier Piantelli PCT application (which had become published 18 months after its filing date). In support of the obviousness rejection, the examiner also cited a German patent application DE 40 24 515 A1: (here or  Google PatentDe translation here – look for DE4024515A1 (low-quality machine translation); or enter that number here to see figures).  Also cited was data posted on two websites: Azonano.com and Nanoword.net.

The German patent application is shown at the German patent office website as having a corresponding Japanese patent application. No other corresponding applications in other countries (which might use English for the full document) are shown. They might exist, but they have not been shown at the German patent office website. Nevertheless, available particulars in English on the German application from the German patent office are as follows:

Title: Cold fusion of neutron-contg. hydrogen nuclei – by contact with micro-clusters of subordinate gp. element atoms.

 Hydrogen nuclear fusion is effected by contacting pairs of neutron-contg. hydrogen nuclei with microclusters of 3-100000 subordinated gp. Element atoms produced from high temp. ultra-finely divided particles by cooling using a carrier medium. Pref. the microclusters pref. contain 5-200, esp. a magic number of atoms and pref. consist of Pd and/or Ti, opt. alloyed with Ag. The ultra-finely divided particles are formed by evapn., pref. by laser beams or by using particle beams contg. the hydrogen nuclei. Microclusters may be applied to a substrate layer contg. Si, Ti, Gd, Sm or other rare earth which is electrically conductive or which is converted to insulating form pref. by oxidising or nitriding. ADVANTAGE – Process provides reproducible supply of energy for peaceful use by cold fusion of deuterons and/or tritons.

Google has provided a machine translation of the full German specification which is not of high quality. From the German patent office reference, 13 figures are present and Figure 5 is of interest as it shows the carbon molecule C60, “Buckminsterfullerene”. I have not reviewed to find out why this molecule may be important.

This German application was originally filed February 8, 1990 by a German inventor and, apparently, has not issued to a patent. Nevertheless, its disclosure is relevant to the second Piantelli PCT application in limiting the scope of potential patent claim coverage. This application is important for what it discloses and not what it claims.

Not cited in respect of the second Pianitelli filing was an even earlier Piantelli patent application IT 1266073  (B1) that was filed in Italy on March 26, 1992 that never left Italy and never issued to a patent. Those who can read Italian might wish to report on it.

A lot more can be learned by reviewing the disclosure portion of the second Piantelli filing. The negative opinion of the PCT Searching Authority on patentability of some of the principal claims is not binding. But it should be given some weight. The scope of coverage that may eventually arise from this application remains to be resolved by various patent offices around the world.

Piantelli’s further initiatives

Meanwhile, what can be said is that Piantelli aspires to deliver the benefits of excess energy through Cold Fusion based on hydrogen in the gas phase in a manner similar to that of Andrea Rossi. He may have partners in view of the other named individuals designated as applicants on his PCT application. As his initial Italian filing was made in November, 2008, this group has had time to develop the concepts further. According to Ivy Matt in an August 16, 2011 posting on Cold Fusion Now, the Italian patent office has reported that two new filings have been made by Piantelli as of April 26 and July 14, 2011. Assuming these filings to be part of a related series, the applications will not be published until 18 months from the filing date of the earliest application of the series.

Multiple patent filings for related inventions are often made in the year following a first filing which establishes a first priority filing date. This year is called the “priority year”. These multiple filings are then consolidated as of 12 months from the original filing date to make a final filing. If this is completed within one year, then priority can be claimed from the original priority date. This final filing would typically, though not necessarily, be made under the Patent Cooperation Treaty – PCT. A PCT filing allows a further 18 months beyond the end of the priority year before national entry filings have to be made in individual countries. No change to the text of the “story” of a PCT application can be made once a PCT filing has been initiated. Conveniently, the PCT system publishes all applications as of 18 months after the earliest filing date of the patent series.

Assuming Ivy Matt got his recent Italian filing data from the Italian patent office, this office appears to publish “tombstone” data directly after an application is filed. Some countries do this. But until 18 months from the original filing date, the full text of applications will not be available to the public.

Piantelli PCT filing of 2008, continued

Returning to the PCT filing of 2008, not enough time has passed for all of the national entry filings that have been made to be recorded either at the PCT office or on the websites of individual countries around the world. At least a national entry filing was made into Canada. We can expect that one was also made in the United States and another before the European patent office. Quite likely national filings were also made in other important countries around the world.

This second application is of interest not just for the exclusive patent rights that may possibly flow from the pending application, an issue yet to be resolved before individual patent offices. A careful reading of the disclosure will give a good impression of what the inventor thinks is required in order to achieve a Cold Fusion reaction. This disclosure is not necessarily complete. If it contains defects, this will cast a shadow over any prospective patent based on that application. This provides some incentive for the original inventor/applicant to tell the true story as best they know it in order to obtain valid patent rights. If they have made mistakes in a filing, they can make further filings, but the claims of any further filings will have to be restricted to new material.

Prospects for a “Master Patent”

Valid patent rights in respect of Cold Fusion cannot be obtained for anything that has been made previously available to the public. It may be that somewhere in the world the secret of reliably effecting Cold Fusion has already been discovered and published. If so, it is not likely that a “Master Patent” (such as that on the telephone) can issue in this field. But if somebody does establish an important trick, a have-to-have-it feature or procedure which is different from the prior art, a difference which makes a difference, then that lucky person will have something which is nearly akin to a Master Patent.

Persons wishing to make comments on this posting are invited to visit the Cold Fusion Now website where this article is posted – here.

New (?) Piantelli group patent

The title of a patent application recently filed by the Piantelli group has been revealed on the Italian Patent and Trademark Office website:

metodo e apparato per generare energia mediante reazioni nucleari di idrogeno adsorbito per cattura orbitale da una nanostruttura cristallina di un metallo

That is, “Method and Apparatus for Generating Energy through Nuclear Reactions of Hydrogen Adsorbed by Orbital Capture to a Metal Crystalline Nanostructure*”. If you’re feeling a sense of déjà vu, it’s because the Piantelli group filed a patent application on April 26 of this year with the exact same title. This newer patent application was filed on July 14. Presumably it covers a different aspect of the Piantelli group’s work than the April patent. Or perhaps it’s an amendment to the April patent. Because the contents of either patent are unknown, it’s difficult to say. The April patent will be published on October 27, 2012. The newer patent will be published on January 15, 2013. In most countries patent applications must be published 18 months after they are filed.

Also, as mentioned in an update to my last post, Peter Gluck is reporting that Francesco Piantelli and Roy Virgilio are collaborating on a book titled Galileo e il metodo scientifico attraverso i secoli, or Galileo and the scientific method during the ages.

*My translation, made for this post. After taking the time to read through the hypothesis proposed in Piantelli’s 2008 patent application, however, I feel that the phrase “hydrogen adsorbed by orbital capture” is incorrect, because the adsorption is a process that happens before the orbital capture. Any corrections by those who speak Italian are welcome.

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Related posts:

Viareggio Cold Fusion conference: science, politics, and an Italian competitor — Ivy Matt July 23, 2011

Roy Virgilio releases more details on Piantelli’s research — Ivy Matt July 25, 2011

Roy Virgilio on Piantelli, plus the 2008 Piantelli hypothesis — Ivy Matt August 16, 2011

Roy Virgilio on Piantelli, plus the 2008 Piantelli hypothesis

After a vacation of several weeks, Roy Virgilio has returned to the EnergeticAmbiente Forum to answer some more questions on the work of Francesco Piantelli’s group. The following is a summary of his answers, translated from Italian with much help from Google Translate and Yahoo! Babel Fish:

  • The old cells were self-sustaining for some time, maybe a few days, and they were eventually made to stop, or the reaction would have gone on.
  • The new joint-stock company will be a subsidiary of Nichenergy.
  • The expected increase in the energy gain factor from 2 or 3 to 200 will be achieved primarily by the exploitation of theoretical insights Piantelli has had recently, leading to the most efficient preparation of the nickel, as well as different and more suitable materials and configurations used in the construction of the cell. The actual amount of excess energy produced by the new cells is not known, but will be determined soon with the new tests.
  • Nearly all the materials used in the older patents have changed. For example, the newer cells use high-tech ceramics.
  • The present stage of development involves prototypes in a variety of configurations undergoing various tests. Those configurations that give the best results will go on to the pre-industrialization stage.
  • Piantelli says the reaction that occurs in his cell is not nuclear fusion, but is exclusively a protonic reaction, so to speak, that involves nuclear transmutation and a series of primary and secondary decays, and which is exothermic.
  • There will be several other patents filed.
  • Piantelli and Focardi share the same basic knowledge of the hydrogen-nickel technology, but at the time Focardi left Piantelli to follow after Rossi, his knowledge was not as extensive or as up-to-date as Piantelli’s.

Unless Andrea Rossi is bluffing, it appears the Piantelli group is still playing catch-up with regard to the industrialization of their device. Whether their professed superior knowledge of the hydrogen-nickel reaction will allow them to surpass Rossi in the energy output and/or reliability of their reactors remains to be seen.

In their favor, however, the Piantelli group has proposed a rather elegant hypothesis in their 2008 patent application that might just explain what is going on in the hydrogen-nickel reaction. The details may not be quite the same as those of the paper that is due to be released by the University of Siena, but the essential idea has probably not changed, going by the title of the group’s patent application of April of this year: “Method and Apparatus for Generating Energy through Nuclear Reactions of Hydrogen Adsorbed by Orbital Capture to a Metal Crystalline Nanostructure”. The Piantelli hypothesis is highly reminiscent of the known nuclear processes of electron capture and muon-catalyzed fusion. Piantelli insists it is not nuclear fusion. If it is to be regarded as a completely new type of nuclear reaction, perhaps it might be called “anion capture”, although a cursory Internet search reveals that the phrase is already in use to refer to extra-nuclear processes.

The process involves molecular hydrogen (H2) being adsorbed onto the surface of a crystalline transition metal that has a partially-filled electron shell. Under the right conditions the H2 molecules dissociate and pick up valence electrons from the metal, becoming hydrogen anions (H), also known as hydrides. The H ion consists of a proton with two electrons. As protons and electrons have equal and opposite charges, the H ion has a net negative charge.

According to Piantelli’s hypothesis, under the right conditions a H ion can replace an electron of a transition metal atom, just as a muon replaces an electron in muon-catalyzed fusion. Due to its relatively large mass, the H ion continually falls to lower electron levels, causing the emission of X-rays and Auger electrons. As it has a net negative charge, there is no Coulomb repulsion to hinder its progress toward the transition metal nucleus. At the lowest level the H ion is close enough to be captured by the nucleus. After capturing the H ion, the unstable nucleus releases energy and eventually expels the anion in the form of a proton.

As expounded in the 2008 patent application, the hypothesis lacks a number of details, hard data, and experimental evidence, although the protons expelled from the nuclei are said to have been experimentally detected in a cloud chamber. It would also be interesting to see if the hypothesis could be extended to explain deuterium-palladium reactions. Still, it is a good overview, which is perhaps the most that can be expected from a patent application. Hopefully the paper to be released by the University of Siena will go into much more detail on this new kind of nuclear reaction.

UPDATES:

Just a note: in calling the above hypothesis the “2008 Piantelli hypothesis”, I only mean that it is the hypothesis included in the patent application filed in Italy in 2008. I am not certain exactly when the idea first came to Piantelli, or when he first mentioned it publicly.

On a related note, I would be remiss if I did not link to Peter Gluck’s recent post detailing Piantelli’s academic papers and patents over the years.

Peter Gluck also reports that Piantelli and Virgilio are collaborating on a book titled Galileo e il metodo scientifico attraverso i secoli, or Galileo and the scientific method during the ages.

As an addendum to my summary of Piantelli’s hypothesis above, perhaps I should also add that the expelled protons apparently have sufficient energy to engage in more conventional proton-metal reactions with nearby metal nuclei, resulting in nuclear transmutations.

Finally, just because it’s too cool not to include, I made a link to a YouTube video of a cloud chamber in my post above. Check it out.

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Related posts:

Viareggio Cold Fusion conference: science, politics, and an Italian competitor — Ivy Matt July 23, 2011

Roy Virgilio releases more details on Piantelli’s research — Ivy Matt July 25, 2011

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