CEI Technical Strategy

Papp Engine Research

The next page of this document is a summary of the history of this research taken from this link, which was compiled by Ken Rauen of Clean Energy Inc, Palo Alto. I downloaded the research file, corrected some errors and highlighted in red some of the very suggestive ideas that have been brought forth from all of the researchers. One of which was the apparent myth that inert gases can’t explode in special circumstances. I remember that the same was thought about Ammonium Nitrate before the Texas City disaster in 1947.

I have been aware and peripherally involved in this research over decades, and I was more impressed with this content than any I have yet seen. I was at TRW Systems in the Power Systems division which had intended to buy this technology from Papp in 1968. And I knew this division’s staff lawyer, who was tasked to make the buy at the ill-fated meeting, in which Richard Feynman interrupted the demonstration by withholding the plug on the electronic controller which in his fatal arrogance (without thinking how impossible that notion was, explained here) thought was the power source. As these documents testify, the engine then running at about 3000 rpm did not even slow down but did start running rough, apparently due to instability that would naturally develop without an active control system. When the inventor retrieved the plug from Feynman, and plugged in the controller, the engine exploded, killing a Mattel engineer, and injuring my attorney friend, Harold Childers (with a broken leg), among others. Tony Baumgartner was an engineer in our Propulsion Analysis Department, who may have been related to Cecil Baumgartner, who was the TRW engineer directly involved in this project.

I have always considered that TRW design team the best the world has seen in this modern era, and I am proud to have been a member of that team. Previously I was a project engineer at NASA who was instrumental in the choice to have their LEM Descent engine be the one to fly on Apollo, instead of Rocketdyne’s helium-injected throttling engine. There had been technical vs. political opposition in that choice (Houston vs. Washington), and we won out by demonstrating the TRW engine’s superior stability and performance under throttling conditions. Not only was there never a flight problem with that engine, it saved the astronauts after the Apollo 13 disaster.

Feynman’s subsequent attitude was indicative his arrogant ego. He blamed Papp instead of accepting any responsibility for what happened. Whether he might be considered complicit in some overall agenda, or merely the arrogant fool he turned out to be in retrospect, this act certainly ranks as a negative fork to the cause of free energy, as the whole initiative was not only halted in its tracks, it was very easy to cover up.

Under an honest alternative scenario, TRW would be the GM/GE of the world today, and all of the oil companies would vague memories, like Control Data, DEC, and North American Aviation.

Joseph Thames, MetaCalculus, LLC, 2012

FE Inventor Joseph Papp:Pulsed Plasma Energy Conversion

Fastest Submarines, Endless Carburetors & Other Claims

Overview

Synopsis: Joseph Papp invented and demonstrated a pulsed plasma discharge automotive style piston engine that ran on sealed charges of noble gas mixtures in the cylinders. Electric arc ignition triggers far greater output than input.
Brief History: In 1967, Joseph Papp built a modified Volvo engine to run on a sealed charge of noble gases in the cylinders. It was publicly demonstrated in Los Angeles in '68. The engine controls were run on 110 VAC wall current through an extension cord. Richard Feynman attended and pulled the plug; the engine continued to run for several minutes, but began running rough. Papp took away the plug from Feynman and plugged it back in. The engine exploded. One person was killed. Feynman accused Papp of using explosives to deliberately destroy the engine to keep the supposed hoax alive. Papp sued Feynman and Caltech, and Caltech settled out of court in Papp's favor. If explosives were used, Caltech would never have settled out of court.
Papp went on to improve the engine design until 1989 when he died. He did not fully disclose his invention, despite 3 patents and many business associates who helped him build several working engines. The USPTO required a certified dynamometer test in '83 that was done, and the third patent was issued in '84. The dyno results were in the neighborhood of 500 ft lbs of torque at 500 rpm and 100 hp.
TRW was involved with Papp until the engine explosion that killed someone. Just prior to that public demonstration, a private demo was done for TRW in the California desert. A nobel gas-charged cannon was detonated. Instead of launching the 10 lb. projectile, the projectile lodged in the barrel and the 1/4" thick stainless steel barrel exploded like a peeled banana. Clean Energy, Inc., which is resurrecting the Papp engine, has 8 mm camera footage from that event. Contact CEI at . Cecil Baumgartner, a consultant to CEI, was present that day as a TRW employee; he lives in Glendale, CA.
Courtesy of Ken Rauen, Chief Technology Officer, CEI, Palo Alto, CA
March 4, 2004

CEI Technical Strategy

Based Upon Factual Evidence

(Facts are full paragraphs and conclusions or strategies are indented.)

Joe Papp started his work in Quebec, making a submarine. Photos indicate an elaborate, turbine or jet-like engine was built for the boat. Though possibly a hoax, it is unlikely a hoax because of the unfavorable circumstances for deriving publicity from the way he handled the situation. He preferred a large measure of anonymity and the press he received was very negative. The elaborate construction of the machine under financial hardship is hardly indicative of a hoax when he easily could have worked as a mechanic to obtain a normally prosperous life. Photos from a chase boat show the submarine in apparent operation on the St. Lawrence River. Recent evidence on the Internet of stories of the “Squall,” a Russian torpedo that uses super-cavitation at unheard-of speeds vindicates the Papp submarine hull design. The sinking of the Russian submarine in the Arctic Ocean by just such a torpedo misfiring is also supportive evidence.

Cecil Baumgartner witnessed the Roser engine run many times in 1968, running indoors and on a conference room table. He says it was as silent as a sewing machine. He observed no hoax mechanisms, though he did not examine the engine by disassembly.

Cecil describes in detail (Infinite Energy Issue #51 telephone interview with Gene Mallove, witnessed by Ken who was present in Gene’s office) the TRW-Navy cannon shot, desired to measure the energy produced by the Papp process. The destruction of the cannon exhibited far more energy release than anticipated by the testers. The cannon detonation was witnessed by many through TRW plus a Navy munitions group that inspected the cannon before and after transport to the Mohave Desert site. An 8 mm home movie was made into a DVD, showing the site preparation, explosion, and aftermath. The movie is overexposed in many places, but key views are clearly present. Infinite Energy Magazine sells this DVD through their website,

Several people have come forth with first-hand testimony of the operation of the Papp engine, beyond those enumerated here. Heinz has records of these people and Ken has some records in his CEI notebooks, currently not available for this writing. The stories are consistent; there are no contradictions that have been identified.

The public display in Torrance in 1968, when Feynman interfered, was witnessed by many. The engine ran on a test stand in a parking lot, unloaded, but at an estimated speed of 3000 rpm according to Cecil, indicated by the radiator fan that Papp left on to give visual indication of operation. This first engine ran faster than the later engines. Cecil says the rheostat or variac in the controls was the speed controlling instrument; a variac is seen in the photograph of the Roser engine in Infinite Energy Issue #51.

Cecil recalls TRW officials present at the Torrence demonstration had a contract in hand, intended to be signed by Papp that day, for at least $1 million. As a result of the explosion, the signing did not happen. Cecil says a review meeting of middle management at TRW a few days later is when TRW stopped their involvement. Those managers had no prior involvement and thus knew nothing of Papp. They chose to discontinue the TRW involvement because of the explosion and death, suspecting a hoax plus not wanting to get involved in any liability.

Feynman’s interference gives key historical evidence. Feynman pulled the wall plug that energized the control circuitry of the engine. The engine continued to run at high speed, though started running rough like it was running on only 3 of its 4 cylinders. Feynman expected the engine to stop, but it did not even slow down for about two minutes or more when Papp reinserted the plug and the engine exploded. Papp sued Feynman and his employer, CalTech; Feynman and Caltech settled with Papp out of court. Cecil says the Roser engine was controlled from 120 VAC because it drew enough power that a 12 VDC automotive alternator did not have enough power; they are typically 1 hp or less. Roser and Papp ordered a 24 VDC truck alternator, but it did not arrive in time for the demonstration, so 120 VAC wall current was used instead.

Based upon the operating conditions, Ken estimates the controls of the Roser engine and possibly the Rohner engines draw about 1 kW of power to operate the engine at high speed.

Feynman’s failed attempt to expose a hoax is prime evidence that it was not a hoax. The engine did not slow down when the power cord was pulled. The engine was built from a 4 cylinder Volvo engine, where the engine block was unmodified; only the cylinder heads were modified. There was no room inside the engine to insert a motor or a battery to run the motor for more than a few seconds. The speed of the engine, even idling, required several hp to operate; there is no way the 100 foot extension cord with 120 VAC could provide the power to spin the engine at that speed, and there was no electric motor of sufficient size to accept that power even if the extension cord could provide it. The starter of a typical automotive engine is rated for nearly 1 hp, short term use and can only crank an engine to less than 100 rpm, certainly not 3000 rpm! If there wasn’t even a truck alternator on the engine, there certainly wasn’t an electric motor capable of high speed rotation of the engine.

Since someone was killed in the explosion, there was a forensics investigation according to Cecil. No records of the investigation were found to validate his statement. Cecil recounts the investigation found no evidence of explosives. If there were any evidence of deception in the engine and its demonstration, there is no way Feynman and Caltech would have settled out of court; they were left “without a leg to stand on.” Since Feynman was sharp enough to figure out the Challenger space shuttle disaster, his inability to produce any plausible explanation for the Papp engine and its explosion makes his interference good supporting evidence that the Papp engine is real.

Bob Rohner and his brothers witnessed many of the later engines in operation. Bob came into the picture when a Noble Corporation engine had a twisted crankshaft.

The twisted crankshaft is evidence of engine operation. How else could a stout crankshaft be bent?

Bob repaired (or replaced) the crankshaft and thus secured Joe’s admiration for Bob’s ability. Since that time, the Rohners observed many engines. Bob said to Ken that what convinced him there was no hoax was when one of his engines developed a clunking sound. One hermetically sealed cylinder set was removed from the engine while the repair work was performed. The oil sump was hitting the crank and was bent out of the way. The cylinder assembly was dropped back in and after the bolts were tightened, the engine ran immediately; this was the convincing evidence to Bob.

The involvement of TRW and Convair indicate there was good evidence that the engines ran, otherwise these businesses would never have been involved as extensively as they were.

The Roser engine that exploded in 1968 operated without coils and capacitors in the cylinders.

The coils and capacitors are not essential to the P2T process.

Cecil suggested to Joe Papp that coils and capacitors be added to the cylinders to capture electrical energy because Joe said the reaction created electrons.

The statement of created electrons supports Bill Harrington’s hypothesis that beta decay is occurring.

The coils and capacitors are merely assisting the alternator by capturing electrical energy directly.

Why did Papp install the coils and capacitors inside the cylinders? They are more easily installed away from the engine, just like the major resistors and the rest of the engine controls.

The inclusion inside the engine block is essential to their function. They must be receiving the plasma event energy.

Cecil says the Roser engine pieces were shattered like glass.

This is indicative of a change in the metallurgy, possibly caused by P2T.

Cecil did research on hardening and annealing of metals with electric charge. Samples were placed under high voltage in presumably capacitive conditions for some excess charge to accumulate on the heated metal object. The object was allowed to cool with the applied voltage and annealing or hardening resulted, depending on the polarity of the voltage/charge. Cecil talks about altered physical properties caused by electric charge.

This could explain the glass-like shards of the Roser engine, that an excess or depletion of electrons in the metal, leaving the metal with altered physical properties during the explosion.

More will be stated about alterations in physical properties by electric charge, below.

Bob Rohner says the engines whined at slow speed, sounding like DC servomotors under pulse width modulated partial power. Bill says the cylinder coils and capacitors form a resonance in the kilohertz region. Bill says Bob told him the caps are bifilar-wound foils [coils?]. Joe spoke of the electrical controls reaching 1 kV during operation.

The whining sound is the sound of the LRC circuits ringing, since the caps are not encapsulated. The coils might not be encapsulated either, allowing both to create sound with current flow.

1 kV is possible with the cap and coil resonance during operation, as energized by the P2T event.

Slow engine operation (100 rpm) was smooth. Even at high speeds, the engine sounded like a sewing machine.

Percussive cylinder events from P2T do not happen. This is unlike internal combustion engine events or even steam engine expansion strokes that still have initial pressure spikes. This weighs in against the thermodynamic transduction hypothesis. The automotive ignition that triggers P2T only occurs at certain points in the cycle, not corresponding to any pressure spikes to be seen in or heard in the engine motion.

The plasma discharge is ostensibly located in the space between the 4 electrodes and is not distributed throughout the chamber like an internal combustion engine event. The engine does not reject as much heat as internal combustion engines. The Rohner engine designs have a 3:1 compression ratio.

The plasma hot spot in a tiny volume between the electrodes can be the only place in the captive gases that gets hot, and here is where any thermodynamic expansion takes place, if there is any significant pressure-volume work done in the P2T process. This hot spot can easily expand a thousand times and cool commensurately with high conversion efficiency to mechanical motion, easily done with a 3:1 overall “compression” ratio, leaving the gas relatively cool and not requiring much heat to be rejected to complete the cycle. The hot gases do not touch the cylinder walls, so convective and conductive heat losses are negligible. Radiative losses can be high.

The peripheral noble gas mixture compresses during the piston downstroke by the high temperatures of the discharge that cause the hot gases to expand and push on the non-ionized gases. Some heat from this compression will transfer to the engine block.

Papp called for polished cylinder walls. He even rinsed the parts with Freon-type solvents according to Bob. Some sort of solvent rinse is seen in the engine prep video in the Florida garage.