The Lattice Energy Converter — the garage rung
Bench. · 2 min read
What it proposes
The simplest device in this programme. One electrode of palladium or iron loaded with hydrogen, a second of ordinary copper or brass, gas in the gap, sealed in standard pipe fittings. Nothing plugged in, nothing radioactive inside. It produces a voltage and a current by itself, and a hand meter reads it. As a power source it is six to nine orders of magnitude short of useful; as a teaching instrument and a replication target it is unmatched, because the whole apparatus costs less than a bicycle.
Who it is forSchool and university students · Makers · Bench experimentalists
Why the library suggests it
This is the cheapest device in the whole programme, and the one a reader could actually build. Walk the five steps, then warm the cell and read the published curve.
The Lattice Energy Converter, built
Two electrodes of different metals, gas in the gap, standard pipe fittings, nothing plugged in — and a hand meter that reads a voltage rising steeply with temperature. Walk the five build steps, then set the temperature and read the published curve. It is the only device on this site whose first rung costs less than a bicycle.
Start with an iron pipe nipple — black iron, from a hardware shelf. Iron is the version that matters, because hydrogen moves through it about a hundred times faster than through palladium at room temperature, and because it costs almost nothing and is available everywhere.
- Open-circuit voltage
- 1E-5 V
- The rise between the two measurements
- 52,500 : 1
- Measured across an effective load of
- 9.36E5 Ω
- Optimum cell voltage at room temperature
- 0.25 V
- Measured: about ten microvolts at 28 degrees
- Measured: more than 525 millivolts at 185 degrees
The climb, one year apart
- 2,022 — Reported output: 3E-7 W, Current per square centimetre: 4 µA/cm²
- 2,023 — Reported output: 3E-5 W, Current per square centimetre: 138 µA/cm²
- What is still missing: 5 → 3 W · 8 → 3,000 W
- Independent reproductions reported: 5
Five further orders of magnitude would give three watts and eight would give three kilowatts. The authors name the five levers that would close it: cleaner metallurgy, gas chemistry, cell geometry, running warmer, and simply more electrode area.
The accounting is the authors' own and it is strict: the cell converts lattice energy, and no excess energy is claimed. That is what makes this a teaching instrument rather than a dispute — the claim is small, precise, cheap to test, and it has been reproduced.
The control that makes a result out of a reading: a dead cell built identically from unloaded iron, measured in the same session. Build both, and the difference between them is your result.
Scope: the published voltage curve and the two reported output rungs. As a power source the device is six to nine orders of magnitude short of useful, and the instrument says so rather than letting the curve imply otherwise.
- Geometry computed from
- An exploded assembly of nine named parts: the plated working electrode on a standard iron pipe nipple, the gas gap, the coaxial counter electrode, and the fittings that close it
- Numbers from
- The device description in the Gordon and Whitehouse sheets, which name a black iron pipe nipple and standard pipe fittings; a half-inch nipple's dimensions then follow from the pipe standard, and the model computes the plated area the published power density multiplies
- Schematic parts
- Choosing the half-inch size is this model's decision — the papers name standard fittings without a size. The nipple length, the gap, the counter electrode, the caps and the leads are not published and are drawn plainly. Threads are left off rather than approximated.
Frank Gordon and Harper Whitehouse report open-circuit voltage rising from about ten microvolts at 28 degrees Celsius to more than 525 millivolts at 185, and calculate that several curies of ordinary ionising radiation would be needed to explain the reading (Lattice Energy Converter, 2022). Swapping palladium for an iron pipe nipple plated out of iron chloride gives the same result, which moves the experiment out of the precious-metals cabinet (Lattice Energy Converter II: Iron Hydrogen Host Material, 2022). Five independent groups have reproduced it, and the authors name the five levers that would close the gap to usefulness — cleaner metallurgy, gas chemistry, cell geometry, running warmer, and more electrode area (Scaling up the Lattice Energy Converter, 2024). Output rose about a hundredfold between the 2022 and 2023 conferences, from roughly 300 nanowatts to 30 microwatts, and the effect survives replacing the gas with epoxies, gels or de-ionised water (Progress in Understanding and Scaling Up the Lattice Energy Converter, 2025). The authors keep the accounting strict: the cell converts lattice energy, and no excess energy is claimed.
The experiment or build
Build the iron version. Then do the thing the field needs more than another cell: run a proper parametric series. Vary one lever at a time — electrode area, temperature, gas species, plating chemistry — and publish power per square centimetre against each. The settling measurement is output power per unit electrode area as a function of temperature, with a dead control cell built identically from unloaded iron and measured in the same session. A hundredfold climb between two conferences is the sort of curve that either continues or flattens, and which of those it does is a fact somebody should establish.
Research context
The record describes a working device with five independent reproductions, a published scale-up plan and an honest statement of how far it is from useful.
Take it up
- The measurement that settles it
- The settling measurement is output power per unit electrode area as a function of temperature, with a dead control cell built identically from unloaded iron and measured in the same session.
- What it costs to start
- Bench.
- The engineer it grows
- Anyone who wants their first real result in this field. It is the only card here whose first rung costs under a hundred dollars.
What it rests on
Where it sits in the curriculum