Today somebody sent me a pdf issued by the company Blue Carbon. It claims to use background infra-red heat, to stimulate electrons into "pairing", and then permeating into your whole electricity network to reduce your ohmic cable losses throughout your site. How this could possibly work is anyones guess. It talks about "drift velocity" etc but it only claims to work at AC, and at AC the electrons don't drift very far, they just oscillate fractions of a mm back and forth - they do not stream down your cables into your site. You can check it out on their posh web page http://www.bluecarbon.com/how-it-works.html or their "how it works" video on their facebook site: http://www.facebook.com/video/...?v=10150432998410097 Now to me, this is a plain scam. Does ANYONE (physicists especially!) think different? If not, and the concensus is that this is a scam, should IET take any active role in publicising this? Or is it beyond our remit as professional engineers?!

-------------------------
Dr. Andrew Roscoe

http://personal.strath.ac.uk/andrew.j.roscoe

Edited: 26 March 2012 at 03:33 PM by aroscoe

The ASA considered it rubbish a few weeks ago:-
http://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-acti...td/SHP_ADJ_157911.aspx

There is always a market for bullsh*t even when times is hard.

Particularly when times are hard I'd say

Regards

OMS

-------------------------
Failure is always an option

Well spotted Roger, I'll pass this back to my colleagues ...

-------------------------
Dr. Andrew Roscoe

http://personal.strath.ac.uk/andrew.j.roscoe

But was Blue Carbon's device any less effective than the £millions being spent installing solar panels in Scotland(!!)? Are their claims any worse than claims that intermittent wind power can make a useful contribution to our energy supply and that it will help 'save the planet'?

Looks to me like Blue Carbon were just jumping on the green bandwagon like everyone else. So what if their device didn't work? Just reading their eco-blurb made people feel good about themselves - feel good that they were 'doing something for the environment'. The only problem was their device wasn't visible enough:  If it was 100m tall and required a £10M subsidy then no questions would have been asked. The most important thing is letting everyone else know that you're 'green'. What's the point being green in private?

Just to complete this thread, Blue Carbon went into Liquidation in May 2012, and the home page of their website has been wiped (sub pages still hang around).
Incorporated 10 Jun 2010, Appointment of Liquidator 31 May 2012.