Patterson power cell: Difference between revisions

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	John Huizenga, professor of nuclear chemistry at the University of Rochester, who was head of a government panel convened in 1989 to investigate the cold fusion claims of Fleischmann and Pons, and who wrote a book about the controversy, said "I would be willing to bet there's nothing to it", when asked about the Patterson Power Cell.<ref name="voodoo science" />		John Huizenga, professor of nuclear chemistry at the University of Rochester, who was head of a government panel convened in 1989 to investigate the cold fusion claims of Fleischmann and Pons, and who wrote a book about the controversy, said "I would be willing to bet there's nothing to it", when asked about the Patterson Power Cell.<ref name="voodoo science" />

	Patterson turned the power cell over to a start-up, Clean Energy Technologies Inc, run by his grandson James W Reding; Reding once touted the cell as a cold fusion system, but has since dropped that claim.<ref name=WSJ>Bishop, Jerry E., ''A bottle rekindles scientific debate about the possibility of cold fusion'', ], January 29, 1996</ref>		Patterson turned the power cell over to a start-up, Clean Energy Technologies Inc, run by his grandson James W Reding; Reding once touted the cell as a cold fusion system, but has since dropped that claim.<ref name=WSJ>Bishop, Jerry E., ''A bottle rekindles scientific debate about the possibility of cold fusion'', ], January 29, 1996</ref> Reding died in 2000, Patterson in 2008, CETI is no longer active nor promoting the device. {{citation needed}}

	==Replications==		==Replications==

Revision as of 10:38, 8 December 2011

The CETI Patterson Power Cell is an electrolysis device invented by retired chemist James A. Patterson, which he said created more energy than it used. Promoted by Clean Energy Technologies, Inc. (CETI) and demonstrated at a conference in 1995, it is one of several cells that some observers classified as cold fusion; cells which have been the subject of media interest.

The CETI Patterson Power Cell is given little credence by scientists. Physicist Robert L. Park describes the device as fringe science in his book Voodoo Science. Park says the device's supporters are "ignored or even ridiculed by other scientists".

Construction

The cell has a non-conductive housing. The cathode is composed of thousands of sub-millimeter microspheres (co-polymer beads), with a flash coat of copper and multiple layers of electrolytically deposited thin film (650 Angstrom) nickel and palladium. The beads are submerged in water with a lithium sulfate (Li₂SO₄) electrolyte solution.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to James A. Patterson.

A patent was issued on February 27, 1996 and is titled System for electrolysis. Patterson claims in the patent that his system for electrolysis produces "excess heat" and the patent includes exhibits "A" and "B", documents written by Dr. Dennis Cravens a professor at Vernon Regional Junior College which claims to verify excess heat.

Claims and observations

Proponents claim that the device uses less than 1 watt and yet is capable of generating thousands of times this amount of power which is released as heat. Patterson variously said it produced a hundred or two hundred times more power than it used. This supposedly happens as hydrogen or deuterium nuclei fuse together to produce heat through a form of low energy nuclear reaction. The byproducts of nuclear fusion, e.g. a tritium nucleus and a proton or an He nucleus and a neutron, have not been detected in a reliable way, leading a vast majority of experts to think that no such fusion is taking place.

It is further claimed that if radioactive isotopes such as uranium are present, the cell enables the hydrogen nuclei to fuse with these isotopes, transforming them into stable elements and thus neutralizing the radioactivity; and this would be achieved without releasing any radiation to the environment and without expending any energy. A televised demonstration on June 11, 1997, on Good Morning America appeared to prove the claim. However, there was no measurement of the radioactivity of the beads after the test, thus it cannot be discarded that the beads had simply absorbed the uranium ions and become radioactive themselves. To date, the neutralization of radioactive isotopes has only been achieved through intense neutron bombardment in a nuclear reactor or large scale high energy particle accelerator, and at a large expense of energy.

When asked about reliability, Gabe Collins, a chemical engineer at CETI, stated: "When they don't work, it's mostly due to contamination. If you get any sodium in the system it kills the reaction – and since sodium is one of the more abundant elements, it's hard to keep it out."

Hideo Kozima, professor emeritus of physics at Shizuoka University, has suggested that the byproducts are consistent with cold fusion.

John Huizenga, professor of nuclear chemistry at the University of Rochester, who was head of a government panel convened in 1989 to investigate the cold fusion claims of Fleischmann and Pons, and who wrote a book about the controversy, said "I would be willing to bet there's nothing to it", when asked about the Patterson Power Cell.

Patterson turned the power cell over to a start-up, Clean Energy Technologies Inc, run by his grandson James W Reding; Reding once touted the cell as a cold fusion system, but has since dropped that claim. Reding died in 2000, Patterson in 2008, CETI is no longer active nor promoting the device.

Replications

George H. Miley is a professor of nuclear engineering and a cold fusion researcher who claims to have replicated the Patterson Power Cell. During the 2011 World Green Energy Symposium, Miley stated that his device continuously produces several hundred watts of energy. Earlier results by Miley have not convinced mainstream researchers, who believe that they can be explained by contamination or by misinterpretation of data.

In the television show Good Morning America, Quintin Bowles, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, also claimed to have successfully replicated the Patterson power cell. In the book Voodoo Science, Bowles is quoted stating: "It works, we just don't know how it works".

References

^ Park, Robert L. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 114–118. Retrieved December 5, 2007.
^ Platt, Charles (November 1998). "What If Cold Fusion Is Real?". Wired. 6 (11).
^ Simon, Bart (2002). Undead science: science studies and the afterlife of cold fusion. Rutgers University Press, page 159. ISBN 0813531543, ISBN 9780813531540
U.S. patent 5,494,559
^ Voss, David. "Whatever happened to cold fusion?", Physics World, March 1, 1999. Retrieved December 5, 2007.
Kozima, Hideo (2006). The Science of the Cold Fusion Phenomenon. Elsevier, p. 148. ISBN 0080451101, ISBN 9780080451107
Bishop, Jerry E., A bottle rekindles scientific debate about the possibility of cold fusion, Wall Street Journal, January 29, 1996
Xiaoling Yang, George H. Miley, Heinz Hora. "Condensed Matter Cluster Reactions in LENR Power Cells for a Radical New Type of Space Power Source". American Institute of Physics Conference Proceedings, March 16, 2009, vol. 1103, pp. 450–458. The conference was "2011 World Green Energy Symposium". October 19–21, 2011
Good Morning America (Television Show). United States: ABC News. 1996-01-07.

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