New hydrogen energy source

New hydrogen energy source

Claims have been made about the discovery of a new CO2-free source of energy which its backers claims is more powerful than oil and gas.

In the run up to the Copenhagen climate change conference next month when world leaders will seek a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, an energy consultancy in Norway is backing a new environmentally friendly energy source called the Blacklight Process which, it is claimed, could replace oil and gas to provide the world's power needs.

Engineer Jørn Erik Ommang who runs a Bergen-based energy consultancy company operating in Norway and Spain, Enerley.com, which is a continuation of the Institute for Energy Technology Assessment (IETA), is promoting the technology through newsletters, after the process was first developed in the US by a Harvard graduate, Randell Mills, 19 years ago.

This 'new' energy technology is based on rearranging electrons in a hydrogen molecule – going against conventional scientific thinking says Ommang. It involves getting the electron in a hydrogen atom to go in to a lower orbit than the (ground) state and from that releases large amounts of heat. It is achieved using hydrogen from water and adding a catalyst to release the energy in a previously undiscovered form called “hydrino,” according to US company BlackLight Power which was formed by Mills and has developed the process.

BlackLight Power on its own website explains the process thus: “Since certain proprietary catalysts cause the hydrogen atoms to transition to lower-energy states by allowing their electrons to fall to smaller radii around the nucleus with a release of energy that is intermediate between chemical and nuclear energies, the primary application is as a new primary energy source.”

And the US company's website continues: “Specifically, energy is released as the electrons of hydrogen atoms are induced by a catalyst to transition to lower-energy levels (i.e. drop to lower base orbits around each atom's nucleus).”

Specifically, BlackLight makes substantial claims for the potency of this power source: It says the net energy released through its process could be “..two hundred times that of combustion of hydrogen fuel with power densities comparable to those of fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants.”

But understandably, there are likely to be many out there who would be reluctant to accept this.

“This is the greatest thing that has happened in energy since the start-up of nuclear power in 1954 and this is the beginning of the end for the old renewable energy sources wind, solar, biofuels, and wave-power,” Ommang said recently, interviewed on Offshore247's sister site Offshore.no.

Verification studies have been carried out in the US by Rowan University, in New Jersey, says Ommang. In fact in 2006, Rowan university listed one of its research contracts with Blacklight Power worth US $75,000, involving “calorimetric replication of Blacklight Power plasma experiments.” Rowan has since published academic papers which claims to have prove the technology, offshore247.com has learned.

Accepting that the claims for this energy source might seem be too good to be true, Ommang points out that a working prototype has already been developed to test the energy theory behind the concept, which is now producing 50,000 watts.

Furthermore Blacklight has non-exclusive licensing agreements in place with five US utility companies plus one newly formed independent power producer, to produce up to 8,000 Megawatts of electrical power.

Blacklight is to receive a fixed royalty payment per kilowatt hour of thermal or electrical energy produced. Energy cost savings resulting from these agreements are put at US $2 Bn, according to BlackLight.

“Although most physicists say that this is not theoretically possible, more than 80 scientific papers are supporting the results,” adds Ommang.

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