Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Xogen Power

IrC - 17-1-2011 at 13:58

I have been studying this and have heard many varying opinions. Many claim the patent is bogus because the company appears to have vanished. However as a student of the history of technology it would not be the first time an idea was bought up to protect the interests of another technology. In this case a cheap way to make hydrogen to power a car from water could include oil companies in the list of "usual suspects" of all the conspiracy theory lore. What I understand is the application of energies, "ultrasonics and the like", at some molecular resonant frequency acts as a "fire chain" to reduce the amount of electrical power needed to break the bonds between the oxygen and hydrogen. I am not very good at working out the energies involved but a thought which I had was what is the total energy both electrical and vibrational and does the sum in total equal the value known to chemistry, meaning does this patent really use a similar amount of total energy as would be seen with simple electrolysis. Below is the patent PDF and a list of patent references contained within said patent.

United States Patent 6126794 Apparatus for producing orthohydrogen and/or parahydrogen
06/26/1998 Xogen Power Inc. (Calgary, CA)
Ref.
5435894 Process and apparatus for improving quality of water July, 1995 Hayakawa
5399251 System for generating hydrogen and oxygen March, 1995 Nakamats
5376242 Method of cleaning water and apparatus therefor December, 1994 Hayakawa
5324398 Capacitive discharge control circuit for use with electrolytic fluid treatment systems June, 1994 Erickson et al.
5304289 Method and apparatus for treating water April, 1994 Hayakawa
5205994 Electrolytic ozone generator April, 1993 Sawamoto et al.
4798661 Gas generator voltage control circuit January, 1989 Meyer 204/278
4755305 Continuous dewatering method July, 1988 Fremont et al.
4599158 Circular coil electrolysis apparatus July, 1986 Ofenloch 204/229.5
4470894 Nickel electrodes for water electrolyzers September, 1984 Dyer
4394230 Method and apparatus for splitting water molecules July, 1983 Puharich
4384943 Fluid treatment May, 1983 Stoner et al.
4316787 High voltage electrolytic cell February, 1982 Themy 204/278
4184931 Method of electrolytically generating hydrogen and oxygen for use in a torch or the like January, 1980 Inoue 204/129
4107008 Electrolysis method for producing hydrogen and oxygen August, 1978 Horvath
3980053 Fuel supply apparatus for internal combustion engines September, 1976 Horvath
3311097 Hydrogen-oxygen device in combustion engines March, 1967 Mittelstaedt 204/278


Attachment: US6126794.pdf (167kB)
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I should edit to add:

I am ignoring the entire 'free energy' subject which others have taken this patent to imply. The only free energy I know of is bypassing your electric meter, until you get caught that is. What I am looking into is merely the science of vibrational energy applied to an electrolysis cell to reduce the energy needed for separation, and whether or not the total energy used is lowered. So please, no free energy debate.



[Edited on 1-18-2011 by IrC]

watson.fawkes - 17-1-2011 at 16:24

Quote: Originally posted by IrC  
Many claim the patent is bogus because the company appears to have vanished.
No, it's bogus because the physics is crap. The difference between ortho- and para- hydrogen matters at cryogenic temperatures, where it can cause spontaneous boiling. At liquid water temperatures, though, the relaxation time between the two is quite short, with a "half-life" measured in milliseconds. (It's not a proper half-life because it's actually a relaxation process, not a decay one.) So even if the mechanism works to create a predominance of one over an other (and I'm not convinced of that either, but it matters little), the mixture so obtained won't last.

IrC - 17-1-2011 at 17:18

This I can believe, especially since I have not tried the experiment. Yet online you do not read much about the physics of it. I do not have high dollar memberships to springerlink or ScienceDirect, etc., where I imagine the real studies are to be found. One question though. How the hell do you know when a patent is crap? There are so many to go through and one would assume at least since the 1990's patents for crapology would not be so readily issued. Does this also mean the science is also crap in all the referenced patents?

I forgot to ask: setting aside the ortho/para concept and associated problems/claims. What about the use of vibrational energy to aid in dissociation of H2O to lower the electrical energy needed? Long before Japanese scientists were famous for making microwave diamond dust from carbon, the thought was it took much greater energy in the form of heat-pressure to make diamonds. I have no doubt in 1959 most would have called diamond making from low power microwaves to be crap also.

Not complaining though, this patent bothered me but I lacked the theory-math skills to prove it.




[Edited on 1-18-2011 by IrC]

watson.fawkes - 18-1-2011 at 06:53

Quote: Originally posted by IrC  
One question though. How the hell do you know when a patent is crap? There are so many to go through and one would assume at least since the 1990's patents for crapology would not be so readily issued. Does this also mean the science is also crap in all the referenced patents?
(1) Independent analysis and (2) Quite possibly. If there were an easier way to evaluate scientific claims, you would have rather fewer bogus patents issued. Scientific validity isn't the purpose of patents. The actual, operational purpose of patent is as a lawsuit permit. If you have a patent, you are allowed to sue for infringement. Practically speaking, scientifically bogus patents do not break the patent system because if a process doesn't work, there's no economic value to argue over. This is a different manifestation of the principle that inventions that no one wants to buy because they're useless, these inventions don't break the system either.

As for the references, scientific cranks are notorious for larding their work with respected papers that share vocabulary. Then they posit these glorious misinterpretations. If this goes on long enough, you can get a whole secondary literature of bogosity.
Quote:
What about the use of vibrational energy to aid in dissociation of H2O to lower the electrical energy needed?
If there were enough energy there, it would be useful. Ask yourself the question: What are the vibrational frequencies? How much energy is in those photons? How does that relate to dissociation energies?

There's another way of looking at this. Consider the following: How much does observed dissociation energy change with temperature? Heating something up is the easiest way to increase vibrational energy. If, for example, you ran an electrolysis cell in an autoclave, perhaps you'd see a voltage energy difference. It still wouldn't be energetically free, though, as you'd still be paying the cost of heating and high pressure pumps. Having said that, such a process might be more economically efficient, because you could use, say, a solar concentrator as a heat source and avoid the inefficiencies of conversion to electricity.

IrC - 18-1-2011 at 11:12

I think I pretty much knew all this Watson, sometimes it helps to get a fresh outlook. Not really looking to change the world, enough to run my car while divorced from $5 gas would be adequate.

Edit to add -

I suppose the final and most important question is:

is 'bogosity' really a word? Would the king approve I wonder.


[Edited on 1-18-2011 by IrC]

peach - 20-1-2011 at 07:04

Quote: Originally posted by watson.fawkes  

As for the references, scientific cranks are notorious for larding their work with respected papers that share vocabulary. Then they posit these glorious misinterpretations. If this goes on long enough, you can get a whole secondary literature of bogosity.


I love that because it's so true. :D

Even if the patent isn't entirely false, there are countless examples I alone have read that aren't really innovative developments, but simply variations with hyped claims of efficiency in the design and manufacture, qualitative aspects that can't be easily demonstrated in court or cost reductions that'd take at least five global bank crashes to work out.

I have run a piece of chemistry word for word from a patent and found it to be entirely incorrect, as has someone else in tetrahedron I later discovered.

They will also do this as 'ring fencing'.

Say your run something in the lab and find a mechanism and specific make up of it will function against something that's not in a journal, and then want to scale it up to make a product, you will likely make an attempt at patenting your special recipe.

In the process, you don't want somebody to suddenly appear two minutes later saying, it also works for this, this, this and this, and then dominate all the other possible products.

Technically, that's not always possible as you can demonstrate in court that it should be obvious you can do that. But... if you're filing something that's fairly obvious to others in the first place, you don't have a lot to stand on.

So you attempt to give as many different iterations and possibilities as the patent people are willing to read through.

In theory, you test all of those.

In practice, it's very easy to simply list everything you think it could work against that may be of commercial interest, say it works, and claim the rights to it in case someone else manages it.

The patent office are not going to actually check those things do work.

If they do work, great... you get to sue someone if they try using it (scoring more gold for your account), and proving they didn't actually check it will be next to impossible.

If it doesn't, the best you can do is file a report with the patent office to void the patent. That won't be of much use to you if the idea you're interested in doesn't work, but it may be if something else in it does and they actually void it. But then there is a very good chance they will simply remove that specific claim.

One good way to fight back would be a highly risky strategy. Invest lots of money in producing the product the company claims will work, then sue them for damages when it doesn't. As patents are legal declarations stating that a specific idea does work.

Pharmaceutical companies are strongly active in the ring fencing and reissuing domain.

Once they're selling billions of pills, they don't want the patent running out and the formulation going generic. So they'll repatent some isomer or slightly modified version and claim it is superior to the original.

[Edited on 20-1-2011 by peach]

hissingnoise - 20-1-2011 at 08:32

Quote; "Moreover, a chemical catalyst such as sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide must be added to the water to separate hydrogen or oxygen bubbles from the electrodes".

The patentee is plainly clueless . . .

IrC - 20-1-2011 at 09:47

Quote: Originally posted by hissingnoise  
Quote; "Moreover, a chemical catalyst such as sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide must be added to the water to separate hydrogen or oxygen bubbles from the electrodes".

The patentee is plainly clueless . . .



Actually the Patent examiner scares me more. What does everyone think, if I were to patent a pet rock from the 70's as a novel form of silicon based life does anyone think I have a chance?

bbartlog - 20-1-2011 at 17:56

Quote:
In theory, you test all of those.


It's quite obvious when you read some modern patents that there is no way they have tested all the claimed compounds. The patents (thinking here of some that I've seen for catalysts) end up specifying some rather large space of possible compounds by using formulas. e.g. XaYbOc where X is one of some list of metals, Y is some list of other metals, and a and b can vary through some range of concentrations. Of course it's conceivable that with the right sort of automated test rig one could actually get real results for 10000 different catalysts, but odds are 99 to 1 against the typical filer actually having done that kind of work... and in some cases the combinatorial explosion from the claims is extreme enough that it really is impossible.

watson.fawkes - 21-1-2011 at 06:51

Quote: Originally posted by peach  
If it doesn't, the best you can do is file a report with the patent office to void the patent. That won't be of much use to you if the idea you're interested in doesn't work, but it may be if something else in it does and they actually void it. But then there is a very good chance they will simply remove that specific claim.

One good way to fight back would be a highly risky strategy. Invest lots of money in producing the product the company claims will work, then sue them for damages when it doesn't. As patents are legal declarations stating that a specific idea does work.
There's the notion of "fraud on the patent office" in U.S. law, by which if there are irregularities that are bad enough, the patent is void. Not listing all the inventors, for example, a bad enough reason. I don't know if "doesn't work" is considered bad enough. I'd guess it's unlikely to work, simply because the burden of proof is so high. You'd first have to make the claim that you have sufficient skill in the art, that you've expended enough resources, etc. It's a pretty high bar, because the defense is simply "you're doing it wrong".

On the other hand, U.S. patent law also affords for ex parte re-examination. What this means is that you can pay your filing fee ($2500 last I looked) and the PTO put the patent under scrutiny again, whether or not the original filer wants it to be re-examined (that would be "not"). While a patent is under examination (including re-examination), anyone at all can file documents about an application, including prior art, evidence of fraud against the patent office, non-function etc. I don't know if anybody's gone after some of the more egregious patents out there, but it's a perfectly good activity for public interest advocacy groups.