Cold Fusion Rears Ugly Head With Claims of Deuterium-Powered Homes

szczys writes: Ah, who can forget the cold-fusion fiasco of the early 1990s? Promises of room-temperature fusion machines in every home providing nearly-free energy for all. Relive those glory days of hype with this report of Deuterium-Based Home Reactors. Elliot Williams does a good job of deflating the sensationalism by pointing out all of the "breakthroughs," their lack of having any other labs successfully verify the experiments, and the fact that many of the same players from the news stories in the '90s are once again wrapped up in this one. I'm still waiting for the neighborhood E-Cat to arrive ...

Comments

Just

[fyngyrz]

Just get solar inexpensive enough and I'll be perfectly happy. It sure isn't there yet.

Re:Just

[tripleevenfall]

Warning: People denying the existence of robots may be robots themselves.

Re:Just

[Applehu Akbar]

Get yourself a Tesla Powerwall, and the utility doesn't even have to know you have solar. Instead of using the grid as your battery, you use you own battery as the battery.

Re:Just

[Solandri]

I forgot to add:

Of course, the ability to pull CO2 from the air and synthesize a fuel using solar wouldn't be bad either, especially if it were ethanol or a synthetic diesel. This would provide for long term storage in an energy-dense manner.

These already exist, and their manufacturing cost is zero, or sometimes even negative (we pay money to get rid of them). They're called plants. They take sunlight and CO2 from the atmosphere, and convert it into sugar molecules which can be short (nectar, syrup, sugar), medium (starch), or long (cellulose). All of these can be utilized as fuel. The dream would be a way to easily convert waste cellulose into an alcohol fuel. Using manufactured solar panels in their stead to convert atmospheric CO2 into hydrocarbon fuel seems like a rather roundabout way to do it in comparison.

Forget about the neighbourhood e-cat

[oobayly]

I'm still waiting for an independently verified e-cat which measures the energy input/output properly rather than "look - steam - it's obviously working"

Re:Hmmm ....

[Anonymous Coward]

As a scientist, I actually have one more possibility - not overly likely, but still possible: He sucks at documentation.

Part of the repeatability of an experiment lies in the proper documentation of the processes and procedures. It is possible (though not likely) that he left out something really important.

Personally, I think he's mistaken or lying. I just wanted to make sure that we considered the reasonable alternatives.

Re:why not try clean stuff that really works alrea

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Why is it that Free Energy True Believers can barely produce a coherent sentence?

Re: Conflict of Interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting the respected and accredited professors at CalTech lose all credibility simply because an entire courseware video is posted to YouTube?

You're very smert.