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Independent • Informative • Scientific • Decisive Home About Contact Commendations – LENR REFERENCE SITE LENR NEWS INDEX – ITER Facts Fusion Fuel NIF Search Site Tohoku University Hydrogen-Fueled LENRs Demonstrate Net Energy Production Mar 26 2024 By Steven B. Krivit March 26, 2024 (Left to right) Tohoku University scientists Tomonori Takahashi, Shinobu Yamauchi, Yasuhiro Iwamura, and Takehiko Itoh (Photo: Yuji Tsubori) In an article published in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics this month, four researchers at Tohoku University have reported system-wide net energy production in low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) experiments. The Tohoku researchers identify the underlying mechanism as an anomalous heat generation phenomenon.” They do not attribute their results to a nuclear fusion reaction. Back in 2006, theorists Lewis Larsen and Allan Widom proposed a neutron-based theory to explain LENRs. Thus far, this electroweak-interaction theory has emerged as the most likely explanation for LENRs. The Widom-Larsen theory predicts high reaction rates sufficient to explain the excess heat reported in the field’s 35-year history, beginning with the thermal results published by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons on April 10, 1989. The theory predicts the production of low-mass nuclides such as tritium and helium, heavy-mass nuclides across the periodic table, and shifts in isotopic abundances. It also predicts that the heat production and nuclear products can occur with either normal hydrogen, or heavy hydrogen (deuterium) as the fuel. The Tohoku benchtop experiment is small and visually unimpressive, but it runs on hydrogen — ordinary, cheap hydrogen, abundantly available on Earth in virtually unlimited quantities. Neither deuterium nor tritium are required. Nor are massive shielding and containment facilities, because no harmful levels of radiation are emitted. Tohoku University LENR hydrogen-gas experiment, wrapped in insulation The Tohoku researchers have demonstrated, many times over, thermal output in excess of all electrical heating input. The experiments do not operate in the multi-megawatt range typical of a centralized power plant. Instead, they produce a few Watts of thermal energy that, if developed into electricity producing devices, would be suitable for use in small electronic devices and mobile phones. Despite their potential, these experiments — at the moment — represent the lowest levels on any technology readiness level scale. Nevertheless, keeping two historical precedents in mind is useful. The unexplained effect observed by Pierre and Marie Curie a century ago, later found to be the result of nuclear fission, has become one of the world’s major energy sources. Decades ago, business computing was dominated by mainframe and minicomputers. Along came personal computers, which have now been miniaturized to form multi-thousand-unit clusters in server farms that run some of the largest businesses in the world. Tohoku LENR Experimental Procedure The authors of the Japanese research are Yasuhiro Iwamura, Takehiko Itoh, Shinobu Yamauchi, and Tomonori Takahashi. Iwamura and Itoh have been performing LENR research for more than three decades. They worked at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries before moving to Tohoku University. At Mitsubishi, they designed LENR experiments that used deuterium gas permeation that repeatedly produced evidence of nuclear transmutations, a more definitive sign of nuclear reactions than heat production. Iwamura and Itoh began their current experiment series in 2016. The heart of the experimental design is a multilayer thin-film metal composite, prepared on a nickel substrate, 100,000 nanometers thick, about the thickness of a sheet of paper. The researchers use a sputtering technique to apply, on top of the substrate, consecutive ultra-thin layers of nickel and copper. The scientists place this nano-structured metal multi-layered composite inside a reaction chamber and run cyclic experiments. Each cycle has two phases. In the first phase, the chamber is pressurized with hydrogen gas. During this phase, the sample slowly absorbs hydrogen gas, and, as a result, the pressure in the chamber drops. (See the blue lines in the image below.) The typical absorption time is about 16 hours. In the second phase, when the hydrogen is fully loaded (absorbed) into the sample, air is evacuated from the chamber. At the same time, heaters are switched on. The input power from the heaters remains constant. During this phase, excess heat (shown by the red lines) is produced. For example, in the first cycle, the input power was 19 Watts, and the excess heat, or net power, was 3.2 Watts and lasted for about 11 hours. At the end of the second phase, the heaters are turned off, and the cycle is restarted. The procedure differs slightly from experiment to experiment. In the experiment shown below, in the last cycle, the researchers did not turn the heaters off and allowed the second phase to run longer. The excess heat starts at a peak of 3.8 Watts and gradually descends for about 28 hours. This experiment ran for a total of 166 hours. In other papers, the researchers have reported 9 Watts of peak excess heat. Iwamura told New Energy Times that the integrated value of the input electric power during the entire experiment was 4.8 MJ. The total output of heat generation during the experiment was 5.56 MJ, resulting in a net thermal output of 0.76 MJ. In previous years, hydrogen or deuterium gas experiments by this and other groups of LENR researchers were designed to produce results during the gas absorption phase rather than the desorption phase. But the Tohoku group, and other LENR researchers who have reported similar results in conference presentations, are seeing better results in the desorption cycle. In conversation with Yasuhiro Iwamura, the lead scientist in the Tohoku group, this writer speculated that better results might be occurring with desorption because loading (absorption) takes much longer than deloading (desorption) and thus a higher hydrogen flux rate is achieved during desorption. Energy Density The Tohoku researchers have calculated the energy released in the experiments per gram of hydrogen fuel. In the currently reported experiments, they report a range of 10 to 10,000 megajoules produced per gram of hydrogen. Comparable results were achieved from 2015 to 2017 in a previous collaboration between Kobe University and Technova Inc., a NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) project involving researchers from Tohoku University, Nagoya University, Kyushu University, and Nissan Motor Co. The results were published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in 2018. In those experiments, researchers also used the hydrogen (as well as deuterium) gas desorption method. But instead of a multilayer composite, those experiments used nanoparticles. The results were typically in the 1,000 megajoule-per-gram range. The logarithmic chart below shows that the energy density in these laboratory experiments is currently higher than the most energetic chemical fuel yet below that of nuclear fission and fusion reactions. Reproducible The experiments are not simple or easy. However, Iwamura told New Energy Times that the Tohoku team has repeated the experiment about 200 times. They found that their best configuration is a six-layer composite. With this configuration, Iwamura reports almost 100 percent repeatability. Moreover, when the researchers use a composite that produces significant excess heat, they can repeat the same results with the same composite. In addition to the previous replications by the NEDO group, Iwamura told New Energy Times that a research and development laboratory operated by one of their financial sponsors, Hideki Yoshino’s Clean Planet company, has successfully reproduced the experiment with different equipment, different samples, and different researchers.” Deliberate Trigger The...