Infinite Energy Interviews Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy

Marianne Marcy of Infinite Energy magazine has written and extensive article about Brillouin Energy in which she has an in-depth interview with founder Robert Godes who she talked to at the ICCF19 conference in Padua, Italy earlier this year. Brillouin Energy has been seeking to commercialize LENR for a long while now, and it’s interesting to read about Godes’ early interest cold fusion and his work experience in the field over the years.

Godes’ interest started out in 1992 when he first heard about Pons and Fleischmann’s work. He relates how he says he ‘figured out the phyisics’ of cold fusion early on:

“When I heard about the Pons and Fleischmann news conference, I said, ‘Palladium—there is something about palladium and hydrogen.’ I spoke with fellow electrical engineer Steve Salkow and he said, ‘They use that to filter hydrogen and it was the PEM for the original fuel cells.’ I asked, ‘Helium will not pass through it?’ He said, ‘No, only hydrogen.’ Well, I knew helium was about half the size of hydrogen and to act as a proton permeable membrane,
the hydrogen was entering as just a proton, deuteron or triton. In an instant, I put that knowledge together with
the constructive interference of phonons, the Lennard-Jones effect, the Heisenberg uncertainty/Bose-Einstein effect and said, ‘I know what is going on!’”

Marianne Marcy also interviews Tom Claytor, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who has carried out testing on samples of electrolyt that Robert Godes had sent him, from some of Brillouin’s experimental systems. Claytor was able to detect small levels of tritium in these samples, which are significant because tritium is nuclear in origin. Here’s a table showing a summary of the results:

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Regarding Brillouin’s own commercial prospects, the outlook still seems unsure. Godes says Brillouin’s plan is to manufacture 104 kW boilers which will heat oil to 400 Celsius. The heat will drive a Stirling engines to generate 10 kW of electricity, and also provide cooling through absorption refrigeration. But building these products is going to depend on funding, which is not yet secured. Godes says “We anticipate that, pending a significant development contract/cash infusion, we are within 18 to 24 months from the integration of our technology into actual products. Products that we are confident will create breakthrough, ultra-clean, renewable energy.”

Regarding competition in the field, Godes is quite candid:

“Funny,” said Godes, “I think the reason that we have 500 people at this conference is due to a guy who’s not even here. Rossi. You can say what you want about the guy. You can say he is a showman. People say he’s a fraud. I think he actually has something. Maybe not commercially useful but I think he really does have something”