From: Orionworks - Steven Vincent Johnson
Mills recently had more uncomplimentary things to say about recent LENR research. See SCP thread: "a mixture of nickel and lithium aluminum hydride" See thread: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SocietyforClassicalPhysics/conversations /topics/4274 **************************************************************************** * Mills is probably correct about his large contribution to the field - but sadly misinformed about the limits of his patent coverage. He apparently still believes that he can patent a theory. His patents do not anticipate the high temperature ceramic reactor, nor do they anticipate SPP, nor the key feature of near-phase-change in Li-Al alloy. Yes - he deserve more credit for his insight than he gets, but he should acknowledge that his actual devices have been one failure after another going back 20 years. This inability to take a useful theory from Lab to market is hard to fathom but the reality of having nothing to demonstrate, which can be independently verified - is one reason why Mills is routinely ignored by peers well he is arrogant enough to think he has no peers, but that is part of the problem, isnt it? The interest in lithium as either reactant or catalyst has been jolted by the Parkhomov report, which if anything appears to be much more convincing than the Levi report on which it was based. Not to mention far more convincing than the madly sparking seam welder, LOL. Yet the Russian results do look closer to the f/H (fractional hydrogen) reaction than anything nuclear. OTOH, this reaction is not what BLP wishes that they had covered in IP. Close, but mention of one catalyst is not close enough when half the periodic table qualitied under your theory. The probative question is - how does aluminum facilitate access to the deep Rydberg ionization potential of lithium, in a way which has been missed by everyone including Mills? First, we can note that after the hydrogen is released from LiAlH4, the lithium remains alloyed to aluminum, since there is no intrinsic mechanism to separate the metals below the Li boiling point of 1342 °C which is closely approached, and this is notably where maximum COP occurs for Parkhomov. In an alloy, lithium atoms near the boiling point would react differently than as an element. Near-phase-change could be the key to the exotherm and to promoting double ionization of Li. To back up a bit as far back as the early nineties, lithium was claimed to be responsible for most of the energy gain in electrolytic reactions, since as an doubly positive ion, Li has the characteristic energy hole define by Mills for promoting ground state redundancy. The first IP is 5.4 eV and the second is 75.64 eV and together, they present a deficit which is very close to the value of (3 x 27.2 = 81.6 eV). Nickel provides two more holes so the net reaction being demonstrated both here and for 25 years does fit into Mills model superficially. Yet achieving the ~76 eV to create the hole is almost out of the question for electrolysis in terms of probability and even at 1300 degrees it would be rare. Yet this can happen readily during energetic phase change (as Parkhomov has apparently demonstrated). Going beyond Mills - the interatomic spacing for Al-Li alloy is unique at 3.2 Angstrom which is far closer than the crystal spacing in either pure lithium or aluminum or any other alloy of the two, indicating a high order of structure but only in the 1:1 alloy. Therefore the phase change for boil-off of lithium would be expected to be extraordinarily energetic in the sense of recalescence and promoting double ionization. Recalescence is a temporary increase in power, sometimes extreme, which occurs when molten metal goes through phase-change on cooling. The near boil-off of the double positive ion would expose Li++ to hydrogen gas, even without complete boil-off. Plus, the phase change can be strongly exothermic even without ground state redundancy; but not net gainful, since it should be reversible without an intrinsic power source which Mills theory describes. Three cheers for the redundant ground state part of the theory - which he got right! So yes, Mills theory can explain the major part of the Parkhomov experiment, but not all of it. And no, this device is not protected by any BLP patent which I have seen. The theory of operation is not patentable in itself, only a device - so even though Mills could (and possibly should) win a big prize one day - for the basic theory - he may miss the economic bounty of a working device. Unless that wildly sparking seam-welder does work for more than a few hours at a time J
