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Device Taps Energy From Previously Unknown Source

000

00:35 / 20.05.03

A breakthrough! In mainstream media!

Take water and potash, add electricity and get - a mystery

By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
LONDON TELEGRAPH NEWS - www.telegraph.co.uk

(Filed: 18/05/2003)

British researchers believe that they have made a groundbreaking scientific discovery after apparently managing to "create" energy from hydrogen atoms.

In results independently verified at Bristol University, a team from Gardner Watts - an environmental technology company based in Dedham, Essex - show a "thermal energy cell" which appears to produce hundreds of times more energy than that put into it. If the findings are correct and can be reproduced on a commercial scale, the thermal energy cell could become a feature of every home, heating water for a fraction of the cost and cutting fuel bills by at least 90 per cent.

LINK

Linus Dunce

01:50 / 20.05.03

"Thermal energy cells, sir? Electrical goods, sir, aisle three, next to the everlasting lightbulbs and the big calculators for working out your new electricity tariff 'adjustments.'"

It would be cool, though. Or not, if you see what I mean.

Thjatsi

05:37 / 20.05.03

Cool. I guess we'll know for sure in another year or two.

gravitybitch

07:38 / 20.05.03

Looks simple enough - if somebody knows where to get tungsten and platinum for the electrodes,, you could run your own tests using batteries or solar cells...

Salamander

07:58 / 20.05.03

It would have its uses, could get the electricity needed from solar cells, would cause problems with those that make money of our electic bill though, if indeed it actually works.

Jrod

12:03 / 20.05.03

Nice. If this is for real, electric cars will become far more viable. Maybe one day we'll fill up at potash stations rather than gasoline.

Bizunth Again

14:03 / 20.05.03

Mr Davies said: "The technology could be licensed by a company making household boilers for the domestic market. " He added that the plan is to have the first thermal energy cell devices on the market within two years, before disappearing forever.

luminocity

14:51 / 20.05.03

I have a summer internship at CCL, the company the Telegraph link mentions as developing the prototype. It is entirely credible that they would take this kind of job on. I believe there's definitely something worth investigating, as CCL does not treat £200 000 as pocket change and they would definitely want to see a return on that size project.
I'll see what I can find out when I'm there.

luminocity

17:50 / 25.06.03

Right, I've asked around a little. As it turns out there's a slight misreporting by the Telegraph here: the 200k is the contract for developing a prototype. This is not the risk-shared value, there is a significantly smaller amount being risk shared to reperform the experiments first as people here basically believe the results have come from duff experiment design not from any wonderful new effect.
So we'll do it properly, discover there is no free energy, and all go home. Or possibly dicover an effect, start the project to build a protoype and all go home very happy. But I think it's unlikely.

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