Here’s something that just came to my attention, and I haven’t really had time to investigate it thoroughly, so I thought I’d put it up here for information and comment. It’s a patent filed by Seldon Technologies, a Vermont company which works mainly in the field of water purification, and use carbon nanotubes in their filtration systems to make a product they call Nanomesh.

Seldon seems to be branching out in their research and development endeavors, however, and have filed a patent which deals with energy production titled “Methods of generating energetic particles using nanotubes and articles thereof”. The patent was published on October 10 2013.

The abstract reads:

There is disclosed a method of generating energetic particles, which comprises contacting nanotubes with a source of hydrogen isotopes, such as D2O, and applying activation energy to the nanotubes. In one embodiment, the hydrogen isotopes comprises protium, deuterium, tritium, and combinations thereof. There is also disclosed a method of transmuting matter that is based on the increased likelihood of nuclei interaction for atoms confined in the limited dimensions of a nanotube structure, which generates energetic particles sufficient to transmute matter and exposing matter to be transmuted to these particles.

I can’t find any reference to any product under development out there, but the application mentions some experiments done with carbon nanotubes in which neutron production ‘above background levels’ was measured. For example, in one experiment, a carbon nanotube electrode was submerged in a bath of deuterium, and after a voltage was passed through it, neutron bursts were recorded.