I have no idea whether the push for “green hydrogen” is a good idea or not – there are excellent-sounding arguments for both yea and nay. But it’s worth looking into, which makes it sort of puzzling why New Hampshire is the only New England state not to be part of a $3.62 billion proposal to the federal government in hopes of becoming a regional hydrogen hub, aside from our lawmakers’ general reluctance to do anything new when it comes to energy.
New Hampshire Bulletin has the story here.
The story mentions in passing Q Hydrogen, which readers will recall from 2020 announcements that it would be using new tech to make hydrogen at a closed mill in Groveton (here’s a story to prod your memory). I have heard nothing from them since, however.
Return to the Concord Monitor
I saw the NH Bulletin article today and was going to pass it on to you, but you found it already.
I went looking for patents but don’t have time to wade through all the patentese today, as I’m going to the By Degrees event this evening. In https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3a/85/7a/a109f4fe86177a/US20210067000A1.pdf I found this refugee paragraph:
[ 0072 ] One cool, moist morning prior to starting a testing session with a system built according to the invention similar to the fluid intake module 100A and the disk – pack module 200A illustrated in FIG. 6A, a system valve 132A in fluid communication with the containment vessel ( or housing ) 900 was pulled open. This resulted in a relatively loud thump / energetic reaction / phoom. On the next day, another individual was asked to pull the valve 132A open for verification. The reactionary phoom occurred again. It was understood that the moisture content in the air, itself, was being dissociated, with the lighter material being contained in the upper, domed part of the sealed vessel and trapped therein by a cushion of air. For verification, all valves were closed and the system was allowed to run at 2700 RPM in this closed condition for 5 minutes. A valve 132A was slowly pulled open and a flame applied to the discharging material, which resulted in the valve erupting in a momentary pale blue flame. Further testing and refinement of the process included the introduction of higher moisture / water concentrations in the form of atomized mist and water injection. Simple vessel valve and tubing arrangements were set up for rudimentary gas product division and capture as illustrated in FIGS. 6A and 6B. Utilizing a small biaxial configuration for the disk – pack turbine, which included just an upper rotor 264A and a lower rotor 266A, was sufficient to establish repeatable, verifiable dissociation achieved through hyperbolic rotary motion alone.
It sounds to me as though this embodiment, sorry, this contraption is breaking up water molecules with mechanical stress. Perhaps only into +H and -OH, but that might be good enough to accumulate hydrogen with the centrifuge and electrostatic/magnetic assistance. If so, pretty neat. It also sounds like they found the effect by accident and have (had?) no clear idea of what’s going on.
This may be the first use of the word “phoom” in a patent. I tried a search, but results are contaminated my matches for inventor Phoom Sagetong of Qualcomm Incorporated. You may not want to google for a definition of “phoom.”
It appears that the references to phoom are in related patents for the invention, OCR failures, and biochemist inventor Phoom Chairatana. Congrats to Whitaker Ben Irvin Sr.!
This was the best search I found: https://patents.google.com/?q=(%22phoom%22+-Sagetong)