How and where did the technology arise ?
Chris Key
“I first saw this in 2019 but I had known about it for some years. When it was first seen it was explained to me as energy coming from a parallel Universe or even cold fusion. I didn’t believe a word of it, but when our team assembled a test rig we could see something was going on. Quite simply the energy needed to boil a kettle was boiling a huge vat of water. We seemed to be getting much more heat from the water itself. We did some simple checks such as; spectroscopy and emission checking, and we knew therefore that we had a clean energy source – to be honest I had no idea what it was. We did make sure that what came out of the cell was just water and we also saw that if we didn’t refresh the water then the process stopped, so something appeared to be using something in the water – that’s all I could conclude.
We showed the initial prototype energy cell to some seed investors including a ex senior engineer from Rolls-Royce he was very enthusiastic and the investors helped us get going.
We then took some hard decisions and decided to set up a new facility in Sussex where our team was based. Our scientist, engineering and project team, started up a new rig themselves. There wasn’t much in the way of prior information, and we had to rebuild based on European / UK standards and our own understanding. We knew that if we were to get any funding or independent trialling, we would need full visibility on the cell and some understanding of the process and clearly the results.
The team involved was led by Professor Andrew Atkins who had long experience with both thermodynamics and heat engines. He also happens to be brilliant! With the help of an extended science network, a local university, we started testing and also started understanding.
The good news for my reassurance was that the cell was producing the same results even though it had been built and assembled by a completely different set of people. There was no sleight of hand here – but there was yet to be a fully understood process.
We tested and tested – the kit we had was at best under-engineered and fragile. The fragility was not the cell but the power and water system feeding it. However we gradually improved reliability and sustained quite incredible results.
By November 2020 we were ready to run trials and we ran a series of trials culminating in an independent run with a visiting Professor Robert Morgan on December 4th 2020.
Prof Atkins ? Why and how did you get involved ?
I first saw this in 2019 and at that stage like everyone else was told it was some sort of cold fusion or even a quantum movement of energy from one Universe to another. Anyway I did some basic engineering to disprove the nonsense and looked at the data and we went from there.
After we had the technology built by ourselves in West Sussex then we could start to properly observe, calculate and understand something of what was going on.
I am assuming that everyone has seen the video which shows how the mechanics of the Cell works – but just to recap .. we take water and high voltage electricity in and we create a series of conditions whereby the water turns to gas and then plasma.
During this process we see cavitation and in this cavitation stage energy is produced and emitted as light - we call this photoluminescence.
Our Energy Cell uses about 3-4 kW’s of energy and produces about 15 to 18 kW’s of high temperature steam. We know this by measuring the inputs – we use sensors and gauges to measure water flow and the physical watts and amps. The temperature of the output and the volume of water tells us the thermal energy created.
We are currently seeing 350% more thermal heat than the thermal value of the electricity used.
How can you create more energy out than in ? Does that not break the law of thermodynamics?
So this is not a perpetual engine – the energy is coming from somewhere. When I first saw this I was told it was some sort of cold fusion – its not – there are no emissions – but the energy is produced from something happening in the water as it moves to a plasmatic state. Think of it as a heat pump taking energy from the water and changing it to steam. We will go further into this question in the answers below.
Is this just a Heat Pump ?
We have some similarities with a Heat Pump we contend we are transferring solar power to useful energy. A Heat Pump fundamentally is an efficient way of moving energy around. Our process is moving Photonic Energy to heat. Unlike a currently available Heat Pump the energy created is at high temperatures so it could be retrofitted directly into an existing system.
So where is the energy coming from?
"Water found in normal conditions is a mixture of two, naturally occurring, chemically identical, isomers. These are referred to as ‘Ortho’ and ‘Para’ water. Only main difference between the two is the energy stored in the molecule. ‘Flipping’ from one physical state to another absorbs or releases energy depending on the direction of the ‘flip’. This ‘latent’ energy is analogous to and greater than the considerable amount of heat required to be added or removed to morph between water and steam. Fortunately, the majority of water found in normal conditions is of the higher energy state so there is a lot of potential energy for us to unlock.
Our contention is that we are, through the light emitted during the bubble formation and collapse, creating the conditions by which we are able to ‘flip’ a considerable proportion of the water molecules to the lower energy state; thereby releasing the stored energy by which we get the impressive CoP.
These spin isomers have been known about since 1920’s. The two variants of water have been measured using MRI techniques. Also, it is known that if we put the water with a higher than normal proportion of the lower energy state water isomer back into the normal environment it receives packets of light energy back from the sun and the normal spin isomer balance, within a few hours, reverts to normal. In effect, therefore, we borrow energy from the water and the sun puts it back in. All of this needs more work; we aim to complete some studies with the help of our local Universities and then hopefully publish later this year."
The tests that were done – what were the results and how did they increase performance ?
"At first we consistently showed a CoP of 200% from wall mains socket to steam. For the Independent trial we stripped out all the insulation so that Professor Morgan could inspect all the sensors and wiring without any possibility of adulteration. Therefore, it was very pleasing to get a positive result . The Professor was very brave to report just what he had observed and calculated that we were producing an efficiency of 177%. No-one else has even reported a CoP of more than a miniscule amounts over 1 in process experiments with technologies such as cold fusion. And we all remember the fiasco of the certified claims of cold fusion in the 1990’s?
Since the trials we have improved performance from 200% to 350% and we will get this independently verified once we have the money. We have had to decommission the rig now as frankly the old system we had hads reached its limit – it was designed for a 2 hour test and we have run it as a trial rig for hundreds of hours. It deserves a decent funeral. We have already purchased the new electrical input system and a new cell. We are now changing the internal system to give better results and longer running time ."
So what is happening? How can the delta of output be greater than the 1 unit of electricity input ?
Well we have a contention as to why we are seeing the exiting of thermal energy at such levels. But the honest answer is we are not sure. We believe that something is happening to the internal isomer structure of the hydrogen and oxygen electrons. We know this changes depending on the physical properties of water and we know that potentially this could release energy. But we haven’t yet proved that this is the case with our Energy Cell. Therefore there could also be some chemistry involved but again its important to stress what we do know. It's better to think of the cycle as releasing energy that has been stored in the isomers as the water changes state. The sun then refreshes the energy when it is back in the environment. The EC is like a photonic heat pump.
· The spectroscopy we have done shows the energy is coming from the hydrogen and the oxygen plus some from carbon impurities in the water.
· Nothing happens to the physical volume of the water – so it’s the same stuff as when it went in.. its drinkable etc.
· The cell itself is getting to a heat much faster than it should be convection – so the heat transfer has to be phonetic
Part of the expenditure in the next 6 months is to dive deeper into the science.
· We have redesigned the cell with two viewing holes so we can aim a very high resolution camera at the plasma. This is a 4million frames a sec camera. We can then see the frequency and the actual elements involved through spectroscopy etc.
· We will test exactly the state of the water – what has happened to the isomer balance – check the chemistry and also run tests on how long it takes to restore the isomer balance back (if it has changed)
How will you increase the efficiency from 3.5 to 5. ?
As was explained in the video – the main inefficiency in our current system is the creation of the High Voltage – we lost between nearly a half to a third of the electricity in generating the power. We know this because we measured the energy exiting the HV Generator against what was being input. We now have a new HV Generator which is rated at 91% efficiency. We also lose heat from the cell wall which needs better insulation and we have designed a new sleeve inside which will reduce the energy needed to create the plasma.
Other efficiency improvements have been designed and will be implemented. We are very confident on the improvements coming through.
We have now demonstrated this in early 2023.
The Independent Verification was done by who ?
Professor Morgan of the University of Brighton came and independently observed and then calculated his own performance based on the data captured. He showed that the tests we ran had a performance of between 1.5 and 1,8. We had run the tests without insulation and under many different pressures to ensure that it was a clean set of data. In my opinion this was a very important step.
We will do a much longer and updated set of validation tests in April 2023.
Hopefully the input energy needed for the process is small compared to the energy produced?
Is this a nuclear energy (such as clean fusion) ?
Why is the normal state circa 70% ortho? In what circumstances does the normal state vary from 70% ortho?
At room temperature the isomers are at thermal equilibrium which is the maximum level of ortho water. The state of ortho varies with temperature. Our contention is that its state switches as it moves from liquid to plasma. We will run experiments to capture and count the isomer state before and after the cell.
So what were the results? And why are they so exciting?
Professor Andy Atkins Chief Technical Officer
"Well as you know we have carried out a series of tests on an Energy Cell which uses water as an energy carrier. The cell, with development following the witnessed tests, has delivered 3½ times more heat than the electrical energy being applied to it. This ratio of heat out to work in is known as ‘Coefficient of Performance’ or ‘CoP’. A CoP of 3½ for the cell is, when compared to say an electric boiler or kettle, which is considered to be a very efficient heat device, impressive when the kettle has a CoP of less than 1 . A further advantage of the cell when compared to, for example, a heat pump is that the thermal energy is presented in a useful form. The energy is presented as superheated steam at >230oC so it can deployed to regenerate some or all of the the electricity we used, making it possible to claim very low carbon.
When we first saw this we were told it was fusion. Frankly, I found this to be highly improbable given the lack of any radiation. The observed results however, made trying to determine the mechanism through which the energy was being released an imperative. Through undertaking a thorough thermal survey and trying to model the results we identified that the energy was almost certainly being released by light emission or photoluminescence because the cell walls heat up too quickly for heat transfer to have been from the water. This has been reported on by scientists working in many fields: for example cavitation. In the marine sector, scientisits have seen energy being emitted as light from collapsing sea water bubbles generated by prop rotation on ships leading to pitting of those props. Our contention is therefore; that under the very specific conditions we create in the Energy Cell, we cause the water trapped in vapour bubbles to change to a lower isomer energy state through the release of energy as bursts of light. I stress again this is a contention."
How much water does this use and how quickly does it refresh the energy ?
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Our trial cell which produces 15 KW of heat at > 200C uses around 6-7 grams of water a second or around 25.2 litres an hour. If it ran at that rate all day then that's less than a hosepipe running for 30 minutes.
A UK standard house needs say 12,000 kilowatt hours of heat a year.
Currently at an efficiency of 3 times our system would need to run 800 hours of our system which is 20,160 litres or 55 litres a day. Thats less than the standard UK household usage. As the water in our system can be recycled back into the household we can say that it uses no more water than current systems.
The energy refreshment depends on the power of the light received. But in normal conditions we believe it would be 4 hours.
What may be the side-effects of putting super-heated water back out into the environment?
How much damage is done to the water ? Where does the water go ?
We know we get the same mass and volume of water out as went in. The water goes into the environment as either water , water vapour or steam depending on the exit temperature. It exits as clean potable water. We have verified this with an independent water report. the outputs of which show some normal contamination from water pipes. Further work on the water purity both ointo and out of the system will take place in 2023.
Does it matter if the water source is fresh or salt water?
How much water does it use ?
How have you protected the IPR ?
The patent has been granted and also been applied for in Switzerland. We will complete further patent work in the near future.
The patent is publicly available and can be viewed by interested parties. Contact us for details. We have a lot more work to do however on IPR with more patents and trademarks. We are fortunate with the experience level of our CTO and our patent lawyers Mathys and Squire.
Are there other patents owned by other people ?
You have a grandfather patent ? What does this mean ?
Our first patent (the grandfather) protects the technology in terms of engineering and design. A second level of patents will protect specific elements of the technology -such as the electrode design – or materials used and then a third level of patents will be about the applications.
the patent has only just been granted ?
It’s a long process. We first filed in 2021 and then we have to wait for it to go through examination, publication and grant. We were published in September 2022 and were told the examiner had an inclination to grant ! so we should get it published in early 2023. This has now been confirmed with a grant date of 7th March 2023. It will appear in the patent gazette on the 7th April 2023.
Are there any sizeable competitors developing similar technologies i.e. water based?
And how will you commercialise this? – and is there a Business Plan?
Barry Malizia Chief Financial Officer- some quick fire financial questions
"There are many Business Plans! We originally believed that the easiest commercial route was simply to produce electricity – in unlimited amounts wherever it was needed. I am sure this will be a big part of the plan. But we have learnt to be modest and we will start by producing and using heat – probably in agriculture and also in waste management where we can put heat (or cold) to dry waste such as manure and help capture methane and other bio gasses. The system will be demonstrated as a means of heating and cooling commercial and domestic buildings. I believe 33 million houses require a low carbon system. Unlike heat pumps, our system could be used with existing heating infrastructure – it’s a great solution for retrofitting UK Houses. Also we know that by producing a simple generation system, we can power a turbine for transport systems or for simple electricity production.
I could go on but in effect the system can be used whereever you need power and heat or cold… Can we have some money please?!"
How will partnerships work ?
We plan to create partnerships for exploiting the Energy Cell in different applications, markets and territories. We have had interest from UK companies across our entry markets. Crucial to progress will be the production of working prototypes. We intend to use these partnerships to develop and protect the IPR
What is your projected timescale for commercialisation?
What's the operational plan ?
This is Rob Wright (Chief Operations Officer) who steered the project development.
"Well we need some more funding. Once we have raised a further trench of investment we will start to finish the scientific experiments and also the engineering redesigns to get more efficiency:-
We have a road map which takes us to achieving greater than 500% of the input energy. A coefficient of performance of 5 times. Once we exceed the level needed to produce the input energy (about 2.8x) we can amplify the result to virtually claim infinity.
We have three main jobs to do:-
1) To put in a new HV DC electrical input system – our current system looks like something from the Nicoli Tesla era and loses at least 30% of the input power. The new setup is rated at only 5% loss. This step takes us from producing 350% energy to 450%.
2) We need to do some observation work with the University of Brighton. They will take shots at 4 million frames per second of the cell in operation. We can then check the chemical and physical process.
3) We have planned improvements to the plasma creation and cell system which should add further efficiency – either through using less energy or capturing more heat."
You are raising £0.5 million. Is that enough ?
ENQ has made enormous progress in developing its technology over the past 2 years and we have managed this on limited seed investment. This funding launch of £0.5 million is enough to get us through the next stage of testing and prototype building. Following that £5 million will take us to the next stage of achieving a CoP of >5 and commercializing a number of applications for the technology in conjunction with key OEMs. During this process we will be looking to raise the next stage of funding in 12 – 18 months."
What are the main upscaling difficulties? Can this be built at a size to run a power plant?
The Energy Cell is modular and could be developed to run turbines to replace fossil fuel power plants. This would involve phased investment in creating the necessary units. It is envisaged that we would use existing turbine technology to create the electricity. Our Business Plan is to create capacity for 14 GW for the UK so it will be an exciting journey. Part of the great strength of the Energy Cell is that because it is modular we can easily duplicate the system to build redundancy in both large systems and small systems. This will eliminate the issues with many renewable solutions.
What progress has been made on funding ?
How is the tech used for cooling?
Cooling systems use heat energy (like a heat pump). By definition, heat is thermal energy transferred from one thing to another. And like other forms of energy, heat can be used to perform work. It can warm things up, cool things down, generate electricity, and be transmitted for use in different locations.
Aside from funding, what is the one thing that you'd like to happen that would propel you ahead in a major way?
Lets hear from some Investors.
Nick Orchard (ex Rolls-Royce)
Why did you Invest ?
"I first saw this in 2019 when I was acting as a technical adviser for another Investor. I was very suspicious of the claims being made to begin with, but following an early demonstration I changed my views, as I felt there was perhaps something very interesting happening in the test cell. I was still suspicious that the development team didn't really understand the underlying physics of the process, but it appeared that it did actually work. I was excited by the idea that there could be a novel way to generate heat, and possibly electricity, that could solve a lot of the world's energy problems without using hydrocarbons, nuclear fuels or variable output renewables. I invested a small sum and wrote to some of my ex colleagues urging them to get involved."
And what do you think now ?
"Well I'm still very excited and pleased to see that they now have a much better understanding of the process physics. I really believe that this technology is a major breakthrough in heat generation for homes, power and perhaps transport."
Rupert Fraser Company secretary and Investor
Why did you get involved ?
"Innovation will solve the climate crisis but we need to move. 30 years in renewables had taught me that none of the existing technologies is going to solve climate change, pollution and fuel poverty. At first, I merely thought “if” this is true it would be fantastic and change everything. The longer I worked with the group, the more I believed that we need this technology. To others, I say “it may be a gamble, but the upside is too vast for it not to be worth throwing the dice"
Can the company apply for government grants?
"Yes ENQ is already benefitting from R&D corporation tax credits and with the progress in the development of the technology and the £0.5 million raise, the company will be well placed to apply for a number of grant opportunities and matched funding."
We have recently received our first Govt Grant and hope to apply soonfor some ECB green funding.
And if I put money in how can I realise my investment?
"If an investor is taking advantage of EIS relief he/she must hold the shares for a minimum of 3 years. However, it is the company’s strong intention to establish an exit route for shareholders in the next 2-3 years and the most likely route is an IPO. Once we have hit our benchmarks we believe that the interest will drive the headline share price aggressively."
