One thought provoking question, since the Cravens concept may be moving towards commercialization as a space heater, faster than anyone suspects - and he is using “half-and-half” - what is the realistic cost of 50/50 HD water?
Heavy water is expensive (and controlled) but going to “reactor grade” is
most of the cost. What about the “goldilocks” version – not too heavy and
not too light?
I’ve never seen a price mentioned for water which is approximately half
deuterium, but based on other kinds of isotope enrichment - I suspect that
50/50 could be a factor of 50-100 times less expensive than reactor grade
heavy water.
This is an important point if we are talking about a device for space
heating.
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From: Jed Rothwell
Your assessment may vary, but the pluses of
[the Cravens experiment] are: that it is simple, understated, essentially
unpowered, solid state, robust, long-running, well-constructed, and the
error possibilities are greatly reduced.
IOW it is "elegant" to the extreme. The
highest compliment that can be
leveled at any breakthrough experiment in
LENR is "elegance."
….The one thing it lacks is a way to
estimate the anomalous power output. This can be fixed. You could put a
resistance heater in the dummy sphere. Or in another sphere. You power up
the dummy sphere until the temperature reaches the level of the active
sphere. I would like to see Dennis try this. (Hint, hint!)
Even that is overly complicated. “Rumor has it” that the
next version, and this makes perfect sense, will have only one
well-insulated reactor with the excess heat passing through a TEG and
powering a LED.
TEG are inefficient, as we know – 5% at best and probably 2%
at this temperature, but if the LED is lit only by the anomalous heat of the
system - who cares?
The total anomalous heat can be estimated based on the LED
power. If true - this would qualify as the first stand-alone LENR system
which is proved to produce excess power while having no need for outside
power input… (assuming that it is insulated well-enough).
Rossi may claim that distinction in a much higher output
regime, but he has never proved it, in the sense of showing a completely
autonomous system, unconnected to the grid, to an independent observer.
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