Historical research guide · 0905 · 2022
Lattice Energy Converter
F.E. Gordon · H.J. Whitehouse
In one minute
This is the paper that opened the series. Frank Gordon and Harper Whitehouse describe a device with almost nothing in it: one electrode of palladium or iron loaded with hydrogen or deuterium, a second electrode of ordinary copper or brass, and gas in the gap, sealed inside standard pipe fittings. Once the loaded electrode has been made active by plating it out of solution, the cell produces a voltage and a current by itself — nothing plugged in, no radioactive source inside — and keeps producing them for long periods. The authors measure it two ways: with an external supply driving current through the gas, and with the supply removed and only a voltmeter and a resistance box attached. Output climbs steeply with temperature; on one cell the open-circuit voltage rose from about ten microvolts at 28 degrees Celsius to more than 525 millivolts at 185. Working backwards through the century-old theory of conduction in gases, they calculate that several curies of ordinary ionizing radiation would be needed to explain what the meter reads.
Connection
Chapter 12 argues that a hydrogen-loaded metal lattice does nuclear-scale work at ordinary temperatures, and this is the founding measurement of the simplest claim on that list — an output you can read with a hand meter, from a cell containing no radioactive material. Chapter 6 needs devices that turn a field directly into electricity rather than into heat first, and the LEC is exactly that shape of device.
From the source
Multiple implementations of the Lattice Energy Converter self-initiate and self-sustain the production of a voltage and a current into a load over extended periods, with no external supply and no radioactive material in the cell; the authors credit independent replications by two individuals, Jean-Paul Biberian and Andrew Erickson.Abstract; Section 3.2, opening; Acknowledgments
LEC output rises sharply with temperature: on the cell of Figure 7 the open-circuit voltage measured across an effective 936 kilohm load increased from roughly 10 microvolts at 28 degrees Celsius to more than 525 millivolts at 185 degrees Celsius, an increase of over 50,000 to 1.Section 3.2, the paragraph on Figure 7; Figures 7 and 9
The flux of ionizing radiation needed to account for the measured voltage and current is calculated as the equivalent of several curies, and the open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current of a LEC are comparable to a commercial P100 NanoTritium nuclear battery that carries 225 millicuries of radioactive material — which the LEC does not have.Abstract, final sentences; Section 3.2, the paragraph following Figure 10
Analysed with the classical theory of conduction of electricity through gases, the spontaneous current is essentially constant and is primarily a diffusion current rather than a field-driven drift current, and for a palladium-hydrogen cell at 185 degrees Celsius the average ion density works out at more than ten to the tenth ion-pairs per cubic centimetre.Section 4.2, equation 7; Section 6, conclusions (a) and (c)
The ordinary explanations are tested and set aside: the spontaneous field is too low and the gas pressure too high for corona discharge, thermal ionization would need temperatures above about 2000 kelvin, humidity ions are excluded by running deuterium at about minus 55 degrees Celsius, and a bare working electrode carrying about 6 microcuries of alpha and gamma activity produced no measurable conduction.Section 5, observations (e) to (h)
The origin and nature of the radiation that ionizes the gas is still unknown; the authors offer two candidate mechanisms — thermally driven lattice vibration enhanced by nonlinear wave-wave mixing where hydrogen sits in surface vacancies, and thermally driven interaction between hydrogen atoms sharing one vacancy, particularly with different nuclear spin orientations.Section 5, opening sentence and the closing list of possible physical mechanisms
The way in
https://doi.org/10.70923/001c.72583How to cite it
F.E. Gordon, H.J. Whitehouse (2022) Lattice Energy Converter doi:10.70923/001c.72583