The Peak Oil Crisis: A Breakthrough?

Two weeks ago I wrote a column about the progress that Randell Mills up in Cranbury N.J. has been making on his 25-year quest to develop a new source of energy to replace fossil fuels. Such a replacement would not only give the world a fighting chance to stop global warming, but it could be highly disruptive for much of the world’s commerce and geopolitics. The concept of replacing fossil fuels in the next few decades sounds too good to be true which is why the mainstream media is having so much trouble accepting such claims. Last week Mills posted a two-hour video of the presentation he gave on the progress he and his associates have made in developing a device that can cheaply produce pollution-free electricity. He apparently has made good progress.

When last heard from in the summer of 2014, Mills had mastered the technology needed to produce bright flashes of light using the hydrogen contained in water as the fuel, but could only produce one flash at a time, while a continuous string of at least 1000 flashes per second was needed to produce a steady flow of electricity. A major problem at the time was how to recover the powdered catalyst used in the reaction so that the only new “fuel” required was water. In the initial demonstrations, the powdered catalyst was blown about by the reactions, leaving the developers with the problem of how to recycle it for continuous operations. An additional problem was the characteristics of the “light” produced by by zapping the hydrogen into hydrinos. Most of the light energy release came at wave lengths too short to be converted into electricity by the existing generation of photoelectric cells.

The solution to these problems took 14 months to find. First the catalyst which held the water/hydrogen and accepted the energy release was changed from a metallic powder to molten silver. The design was changed to squirt the hydrated liquid silver by using an electromagnetic pump between the electrodes which initiated the reaction, thereby eliminating the need for any mechanical transport of the fuel catalyst mix and greatly improving the long-term reliability of the system. In this manner reactions at the rate of circa 2000 per second are now being achieved. As the post-reaction catalyst was in the form of silver vapor or molten metal, it can easily be returned to the heated silver reservoir for reuse.

The problem of the frequency of light to drive the photoelectric converter was solved by placing a cap of either tungsten or carbon over the reaction chamber. This cap will heated by the intense reaction in the chamber below so that it will glow white hot at the proper wave lengths much like the tungsten filament in a light bulb. This cap then emits black body radiation of frequency that photoelectric cells can convert into electricity. The photoelectric converter part of the system has not yet been completed so that the entire device is not yet ready for testing. However, as far as can be determined the critical and innovative section that continuously converts water into flashes of extremely bright light akin to what comes from the sun close now functional.

The next step in bringing this system to market will be to marry the two parts, optimize the cooling, and build a number of “engineering design units” that can be used for field tests. At this point, if all goes well, any remaining room for skepticism should melt away as it did with the Wright brothers first flying airplane.

A retort to the skepticism that many have expressed is the number of outside contractors that now are involved with Mills’ company, Brilliant Light Power. It is difficult to imagine that a major photoelectric cell producer who has contracted to design and build a new and highly specialized photoelectric converter for Mills’ device is doing this without having access to the necessary data and to a working reactor producing the light to be converted into electricity. Likewise, for the company/companies working to produce the engineering design units that will be used to field test the device. To do this without detailed data as to how the device functions would be impossible. The charge that Mills is a fraud is looking more far-fetched all the time. We seem to be about a year away from field tests by outside firms that will settle the argument.

Mills’ business plan for replacing the fossil fuels is ambitious to say the least. After completing development of a laboratory prototype, he plans to turn the project over to outside contractors who will engineer the device into models that can commercially be produced. They will then build, lease, install, and maintain the devices which remain the property of Mills’ company. The first iteration of the power generator is to be about the size of a car engine, weigh less than 250 pounds, and produce about 200,000 watts of electricity that should be sufficient to power a car. Mills’ notes that there are currently some 60 million cars built in the world each year. He believes that his generator, which requires no fuel, has an unlimited range, a long life, and the outstanding performance of an electric car will sell readily. The economics alone should make such a car a winner provided the reliability is satisfactory.

Brilliant Light Power is to become a firm that will own and bill for the power produced by the generators installed in buildings and various forms of transportation equipment – from cars to airplanes all over the world. Whether the plan to replace the multi-trillion-dollar global fossil fuel industry and electricity generation industries by a single company actually comes to fruition remains to be seen. The basis for the plan would be the ability to sell distributed non-polluting electricity produced at a fraction of current rates. Needless to say a lot of disruption would take place if people started using the device to power their cars, homes, offices, and businesses.

FCNP