by Greg Daigle | at MinneBar 14 | 10:20 – 11:05 in Kansas | View Schedule
Link to a version of this presentation: https://www.theunlitpipe.com/lenr-a-primer
With firms like Toyota, Nissan, Boeing and Mitsubishi engaged in research, and patents filed as recently as February by Google, it is worth finding out how this carbon-free sustainable technology is positioned to fill the gap between renewables and traditional nuclear.
LENR is an acronym for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, but is also known as LANR (Lattice Assisted ...), CANR (Chemically Assisted ...) and describes a category of carbon-free generators of heat energy that have been researched for 30 years. This year one company has said they will introduce IoT-controlled LENR products into the marketplace that could dramatically reduce our reliance upon fuels that emit greenhouse gases. So shouldn’t we learn more about it?
One potential manufacturer states, “Think of it as an energy amplifier, that turns one unit of energy into many units without any toxic waste or dangerous radioactivity.”
Controversial? You betcha! Despite over 1,000 peer reviewed papers from research universities and labs showing the generation of heat, financial backing by the Gates Foundation and Google Alphabet and confirmation of heat production by research heavyweights like SRI International, LENR has come a long way since its beginnings when it was called “cold fusion”.
This will be a primer on the topic, including some of the science, how the field has progressed and how it might be poised to be the biggest provider of heat energy in industry, the home and even in vehicles.
The session will provide links to researchers, organizations, commercial ventures and patents filed by those trying to be first to market with a device that may generate thousands of kilowatts of heat from a core the size of a cigarette that can run for six months on a single charge using the same materials you find in today’s laptop batteries.
Since the '80s I have spent a career in human-centered design while looking for the next unexpected innovations in technology, known as “black swans”, and wrote of those experiences. LENR, which I have followed for about 10 years, is one of those technologies and appears poised to introduce worldwide change to our energy economy.
As a former professor of industrial design at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I contributed to the design of a range of physical products — from the creation of Ethospace for the designer of the Aeron and Equa chairs, to the world’s first commercial fused deposition modeler (now commonly known as 3D printing), to the front-end display of a Cray supercomputer and concept hybrid mowers for Toro.
In the '90s as a co-founder of ICONOS I designed internationally awarded STEM software for kids, ranked alongside classic software titles Myst and Carmen SanDiego. More recently I taught interaction and interface design at the University of Minnesota, led digital badge concepts under a MacArthur grant and managed QA testing and customer support for e-learning authoring tool ZebraZapps created by Dr. Michael Allen, one of the co-founders of software giant Macromedia (later folded into Adobe).
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