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Follow-up Q05: can the Ternion method create an energy asymmetry in splitting water?

Date: 2026-10-07. Follow-up investigator (STEP F). Web time: about 2 minutes by the timer (date +%s 1791382692 to 1791382803), Chrome, Google, one new tab of my own, closed at the end; no file downloaded. Stopped early: the question is mostly a matter of thermodynamics and the project's own texts, which were read in full beforehand (not counted); the web searches were to find published field effects on water's free energy or on the energy of electrolysis, and to check the numbers the reasoning depends on.

The question

"Can the Ternion method create an energy asymmetry in splitting water? Hypothesis: 237 kJ/mol is the work needed to split water under ordinary conditions, but water exposed to the Ternion method and pumped at its resonant frequency, by a lightly loaded tank circuit costing very little energy, might have that figure temporarily lowered. The gases are then burned under normal atmospheric conditions, returning more energy than the operator put in. Nothing is created from nothing: the difference is paid by the environment, somewhat like air conditioning (though not exactly)." The owner asks for the supporting details, the issues, and what remains untested, with experimental design kept brief. [Context given by the owner: Ternion's method applies energy by displacement current through the substance as the dielectric of a resonator, Kassner's "standing field" (US 2,089,966; disc theory in GB 483,062); the "radiating field" is the second method. Extends A03; bears on claims 1 and 11.]

What the project's own texts say

Two methods, in Kassner's words. "In one method conductors bounding the space in which the substance is contained are set into natural oscillations in virtue of their distributed capacity and inductance, so that standing waves are set up within the space. Suitable conductors ... are a pair of concentric tubes or a plate-resonator ... A field produced by this method will be termed hereafter a 'standing field'. In another method radiation ... is concentrated into the space containing the substance by means of reflectors ... a 'radiating field'." [read: US2089966 p.3, _text lines 176-192]. In the standing field the water is the dielectric of the resonator (Q05's "tank circuit"), and energy enters it as displacement current; it is part of the resonator's own capacitance and loss.
Resonance means maximum absorption, in Kassner's own description. The dipolar particles "absorb energy from the applied alternating field. The excitation is especially strong and the absorption of energy therefore especially great in the case of resonance" [read: US2089966 p.3]. His Figure 1 plots "the corresponding strengths of the absorption of energy (dotted)" against frequency with the dielectric constant [read: same page]. So at the natural frequency Kassner expected the sample to draw the most power from the field, not the least.
Energy goes into the substance. The patent's object is a substance made "richer in energy" (claim 2 in claims.md) and "not to produce a rise of temperature" (GB417501 p.6, quoted in A03) [read]. Kassner's frame is energy supplied by the field to the substance, which is the same direction of flow as the hypothesis needs (field work replacing electrical work), not a saving.
Water's band. GB417501 gives water's "friction" (Debye) band at "about 1.5 centimetres" and "1.28 centimetre" for pure water [read: GB417501 pp.2, 4, 10; see A03].
Kassner never wrote about electrolysis or an energy gain (A03; full-text search of _text/) [read]. An essay in the project folder states the cycle: "if covalent binding energy can be momentarily reduced in water during electrolysis, it may be recombined (e.g., burned) in another part of the machine economically generating electric power" [read: _text/high-freq-effects-on-materials-17-da3e1d.txt p.1], and a draft adds that the machine would cool its surroundings, that the resonant field acts as a catalyst consuming little power, and that viability requires the field generator to use less power than electrolysis itself [read: _text/old-unexplored-technology-14-70cae1.txt p.1; old-unexplored-technology-8-5b88f0.txt p.1]. Note: the draft explicitly predicts that the environment cools, which is the "air conditioning" part of Q05.
The arbiter's current verdicts for claim 11: closed cycle with total work below dG "Refuted by calculation"; COP up to 1.2 by drawing T dS from surroundings "Established" and not novel; RF-assisted electrolysis as a rate effect "Plausible, untested", RF counted as input [read: arbiter.md claim 11].

What was searched (Chrome, Google unless noted)

"second Wien effect" water dissociation electric field enhanced - positive (snippets).
Bui 2021 "On the Nature of Field-Enhanced Water Dissociation in Bipolar Membranes" abstract - partial; weberlab.lbl.gov abstract page: "Permission denied for reading page content on this domain" (blocked in the extension).
thermally regenerative fuel cell hydrogen water electrolysis high temperature recombination low temperature Carnot efficiency limit - positive (snippets; the NASA NTRS link did not open from the results page).
water dielectric relaxation time 8.3 ps 25 C relaxation frequency 19 GHz Kaatze loss factor - positive (snippets).
"electric field" effect on "Gibbs free energy" of water splitting reaction thermodynamic equilibrium voltage shift experiment - negative for the purpose: results are catalyst-surface (built-in field) studies and textbook pages; no measurement of a bulk field lowering the free energy of splitting water was found.
Saitta 2012 Physical Review Letters "Ab initio study of water molecular dissociation under an electric field" V/A; then arxiv.org/abs/1204.1120 - positive (abstract read).
Niether 2018 "magnetic heating" electrolysis FeC-Ni energy balance "power" of alternating magnetic field included overall efficiency - partial; the ResearchGate record showed a "DataDome Device Check" (blocked, treated as CAPTCHA).
"aggravate this negative energy balance even further" - partial (snippets); the ACS Applied Energy Materials review page gave the abstract only (paywalled).
ambient RF energy harvesting typical power density μW/cm2 urban measurement survey - positive (snippets).

What was found

A. Energy books for splitting and burning water (calculation; the frame)

Standard values at 25 C, 1 bar, liquid water [memory, high; already in arbiter.md claim 11]: Gibbs free energy of splitting dG = 237.1 kJ/mol (1.229 V for 2 electrons), enthalpy dH = 285.8 kJ/mol (1.481 V), so T dS = 48.7 kJ/mol. Ratio dH/dG = 1.205 [calc].

The established part of the hypothesis. A reversible cell at 1.229 V takes 237.1 kJ of electrical work per mole and 48.7 kJ of heat from its surroundings, and so cools them. Burning the gases releases 285.8 kJ of heat. Heat out over work in is up to 1.205: this is a heat pump, carrying 48.7 kJ/mol from the room into the flame, and Q05's "somewhat like air conditioning" is exactly right for this part [calc]. The asymmetry it gives is in heat, not in work.
Where the "more energy than the operator put in" fails. To return more than 237.1 kJ of work, the 285.8 kJ of heat from the flame must be turned back into work. At one surrounding temperature the most any process can return as work is the free energy, 237.1 kJ (a reversible fuel cell gives exactly that, and any heat engine running from the flame to room temperature gives less). This is the second-law statement behind the arbiter's "Refuted by calculation" [calc; memory, high].
Why 237 kJ/mol is a floor and not a property of the bonds that a field can lower. dG is a state function: it depends only on the start state (liquid water at room temperature and pressure) and end state (hydrogen and oxygen gas at the same). Any path, including one where a field first loosens or polarizes the water, must supply at least 237.1 kJ/mol of work in total, counting the field's work. A field can move work from the DC supply to the resonator; it cannot remove it (A03; arbiter claim 11).
What "temporarily lowered" could mean physically. If the field puts the water in a different state (polarized, oriented, warmer), the work still needed from that state is lower by exactly the free energy the field put in, and the state relaxes back if the field is removed before splitting. Energy stored in a dielectric by a field, per mole of water, is about (1/2) eps0 (eps_r - 1) E^2 times the molar volume (18.07 cm3/mol), with eps0 the permittivity of free space, eps_r the relative permittivity (about 78) and E the field strength: 0.006 J/mol at 10 kV/cm, 0.6 J/mol at 100 kV/cm, 62 J/mol at 1 MV/cm [calc, linear approximation]. To lower the electrical work by a tenth (24 kJ/mol) the stored field energy per mole must be of that order, which needs fields near 0.2 V per angstrom (2 x 10^9 V/m) [calc]. That is the scale at which simulations find water starts to dissociate on its own: Saitta, Saija and Giaquinta (Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 207801, 2012), ab initio molecular dynamics: "Fields beyond a threshold of about 0.35 V/Å are able to dissociate molecules and sustain an ionic current" [web: https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.1120]. So a field can split water, but only by itself supplying energy at the scale of the bond, and the resonator would have to deliver it.

B. What a second reservoir would have to be

Q05 says the difference is paid by the environment. With one surrounding temperature, the environment can pay only heat, and the 48.7 kJ/mol of T dS is all it pays (part A). A real gain of work needs a second reservoir, something out of equilibrium with the surroundings:

A temperature difference. Split water hot, where its free energy is lower, and recombine it cold (or the reverse with other chemistries). This is a known class of heat engine, the thermally regenerative electrochemical system or thermally regenerative fuel cell. A 1986 NASA study describes a cycle that "dissociates the water using an electrolyzer operating at high temperature (1300 K)" and compares it with Carnot [web: https://ntrs.nasa.gov, Morehouse 1986, Google snippet]; an older review is titled "Review of Thermally Regenerative Electrochemical Systems" (Chum, cited 83 times) [web: Google Scholar listing; https://www.nlr.gov PDF snippet]. Its net work is bounded by the Carnot efficiency 1 - Tc/Th between the two temperatures (for example 0.20 between 373 K and 298 K) [calc; memory, high on the bound]. Heat supplied is the energy source, so it is a heat engine, not a gain from the field.
Electromagnetic energy from outside. Thermal radiation at room temperature is the same reservoir as the room and gives nothing beyond T dS. A non-equilibrium source does work: sunlight (a hot reservoir at about 5,800 K) drives photoelectrolysis, which is established [memory, high]. Man-made radio energy in the environment is small: harvesting studies treat urban levels of roughly 0.1 to 10 microwatts per square centimetre [web: Patsnap Eureka report snippet, an AI-written aggregator; the primary survey is Piñuela et al. 2013, "Ambient RF Energy Harvesting in Urban and Semi-Urban Environments", not read]. At 1 microwatt per cm2, supplying 24 kJ/mol (one tenth of dG) at 1 mol of hydrogen per hour (6.6 W) needs about 660 m2 of perfect collector [calc]. A resonator at water's band would also have to collect it, which a tank tuned to 19-23 GHz does not do from broadcast bands.
The resonator itself. If the tank is the source, its energy comes from the operator, so it counts as input. If the tank's oscillation were sustained by something else, that something is the second reservoir and is what would have to be named and measured. No source for one is given in Kassner's patents or the essay [read].

C. Water's loss at its own band against a lightly loaded tank

Water's Debye relaxation: relaxation frequency "approximately equal to 19 GHz (Kaatze, 2005)" [web: ResearchGate snippet of "Dielectric spectroscopy in agrophysics"]; relaxation time about 8.3 ps at 25 C [web: ACS snippet "relaxation times of 8.3, 22, and 250 ps" and "up to 20 GHz, which is the relaxation frequency of water"; memory, high]. Kaatze's 2017 paper on the Debye-type relaxation of water and alcohols is listed [web: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, J. Chem. Phys. 2017 listing].
With a single Debye term (static permittivity 78.4, high-frequency permittivity 5.2, tau 8.27 ps) [memory, high on the values]: at 19.2 GHz (1.56 cm) the complex permittivity is 41.8 - 36.6j, loss tangent 0.88; at 23.4 GHz (1.28 cm) about 34.7 - 35.9j, loss tangent 1.03; at 2.45 GHz 0.12; at 1 GHz 0.05 [calc]. A capacitor or resonator whose gap is filled with water at its band therefore has a Q of about 1.1 from the water alone (Q = eps'/eps''): the stored energy is dissipated in about one cycle [calc]. "Lightly loaded" and "water at its own Debye band filling the gap" cannot both hold; the band is where water is one of the lossiest common dielectrics.
The heat this means. Power absorbed per volume is omega eps0 eps'' E^2 (E rms). At 19.2 GHz: about 39 W/cm3 at 10 V/cm, 3.9 kW/cm3 at 100 V/cm, a heating rate of roughly 9 K/s and 940 K/s [calc]. So any field strong enough to matter in part A boils the water at once, and the energy appears as heat, which is the conventional reading of "absorption especially great in the case of resonance".
A tank can be lightly loaded only if the water is a small part of the field (a thin layer, low filling factor) or the field is weak; then it delivers little energy per mole of water, which is consistent with a small effect, not with a large saving.
Kassner's own description agrees on the direction: absorption is "especially great" at resonance [read: US2089966 p.3]. Where Q05's frame and Kassner's differ is whether the absorbed energy all goes to heat (mainstream) or partly to a "richer in energy" state (Kassner; claim 2, Never properly tested in the arbiter).

D. Must a lowered cost per split molecule appear as load on the tank?

Yes, by energy conservation and the state-function argument together [calc; memory, high]. If the electrical work per mole falls by an amount W_f below 237.1 kJ/mol, and the temperature, pressure and products are the same, the missing W_f of free energy must enter from somewhere other than ordinary room heat. In the standing-field method the only other input is the displacement current, so the resonator must deliver at least W_f per mole of water split, on top of its own losses and the heating in part C. At 1 mol of hydrogen per hour, W_f = 24 kJ/mol is 6.6 W of extra real power drawn from the tank, seen as a fall in its Q or a rise in the drive power needed to hold the same field [calc]. A "lowered cost per molecule" with no matching load on the tank is the energy asymmetry; it is what would contradict the second law if found, and it is exactly what the measurement in part F looks for.

A competing reading Q05 may intend: the field acts as a catalyst, lowering the activation barrier (rate) and so the overpotential, at little power. That is allowed and is where the real waste of electrolysis lies (practical cells run near 1.8-2.0 V against 1.23 V; A03). It lowers losses above 237.1 kJ/mol, not the 237.1 floor, and burning the gases still returns at most 237.1 kJ/mol as work.

E. Published field effects on water's free energy or on electrolysis energy

Second Wien effect (field-enhanced dissociation of weak electrolytes, including water into H+ and OH-; Onsager's 1934 theory [memory, high]). It is used in bipolar membranes, where water dissociates in the strong field (about 10^8 V/m [memory, medium]) between two oppositely charged ion-exchange layers: "electric field effects, specifically the second Wien effect, have been demonstrated to enhance the rate of WD [water dissociation] reaction" (Yamamoto et al. 2025, PubMed snippet) [web: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]; Mafé et al. 1998 "Electric field-assisted proton transfer and water dissociation" (cited 196); Bui et al., J. Phys. Chem. C 125 (2021), "On the Nature of Field-Enhanced Water Dissociation in Bipolar Membranes", snippet: in the second Wien effect water molecules "can orient in a large electric field. This reorientation reduces ..." (cut off) [web: https://escholarship.org, Google snippet]; Stovall et al. 2026 (EES Catalysis) say "the field enhancements were ..." and question the second-Wien model (snippet cut off) [web: https://pubs.rsc.org]. Bearing: this is a measured static-field effect that orients water and speeds its dissociation. In the literature it is a rate (kinetic) effect, and the bipolar membrane still needs the thermodynamic voltage for the pH difference it creates [memory, medium]. It is the nearest published relative of "orientation by a field changes how water splits", and it is a DC effect, not a resonance at 19-23 GHz.
Ab initio simulation of water dissociating in a field of 0.35 V/Å and more (Saitta et al. 2012; part A) [web: arxiv.org/abs/1204.1120].
Field-assisted electrolysis (rate effects, with field power an input): RF magnetic heating of catalyst nanoparticles cut overpotential by 100-200 mV (Niether et al. 2018); microwaves reduce a ceria redox material that then splits water (Serra et al. 2020) (both in A03). A 2026 review of magnetic electrocatalysis (ACS Applied Energy Materials 9(16):10362, "A Systematic Guide to Experimental Designs in Magnetic Electrocatalysis") says in its abstract that "Practical considerations, including scalability and energy consumption associated with magnetic field integration, are also discussed" [web: https://pubs.acs.org/aaemcq/article/9/16/10362/5251854]; a Google snippet of its text (context not visible, paywalled) reads "power-supply losses of AC coils aggravate this negative energy balance even further. In a laboratory-scale assessment of the energetics, a net energy saving of 215.6 kWh was calculated" [web: Google snippet of the same review]. Read as given: at least one field-assisted method has been assessed as a net energy loss once coil power is counted, and at least one (unnamed in the snippet) as a net saving. Both concern overpotential, not the 237.1 kJ/mol floor.
Not found: any measurement showing that a field (static, RF or resonant at water's band) lowers the total work (field plus electrical) per mole of water split below 237.1 kJ/mol at room temperature. Absence of evidence in this short search, not a contradiction; but this is the one result mainstream thermodynamics says cannot occur, so its absence is expected.

F. The deciding measurement (named only; apparatus not designed)

Total work in per mole of hydrogen out, at constant temperature: the DC electrical energy into the cell plus the real power delivered into the resonator by the displacement current (drive power minus reflected power, or the change in the tank's loss with and without water splitting), divided by the moles of hydrogen collected, with the cell held isothermal so that heat drawn from or given to the surroundings is measured (isothermal calorimetry, as the arbiter's settle-list item 4 names). The hypothesis predicts this total below 237.1 kJ/mol; thermodynamics predicts at least 237.1 kJ/mol. A second, separate measurement decides the useful, allowed form: whether the standing field at water's band lowers the overpotential by more than the field power it costs.

Reasoning: how the evidence answers the question

Supporting details. Water is dipolar, so Kassner's principle covers it, and he names its band (1.28-1.5 cm) [read]. His standing field puts the water in the resonator as its dielectric, so Q05's "tank circuit" is his first method, in his words [read: US2089966 p.3]. The heat-pump part is real: electrolysis at 1.23 V draws 48.7 kJ/mol of room heat, and burning returns 285.8 kJ/mol of heat for 237.1 of work, a ratio up to 1.2, exactly like air conditioning [calc]. Strong static fields are documented to orient water and speed its dissociation (second Wien effect, bipolar membranes) [web], and RF fields have cut electrolysis overpotential at catalysts [web, A03].
Issues. (a) 237.1 kJ/mol is the minimum work with one surrounding temperature for any path; a field that loosens water pays the difference itself. (b) A real gain of work needs a second reservoir: a temperature difference (a thermally regenerative cycle, Carnot-bounded) or non-equilibrium radiation (sunlight; ambient radio is microwatts per cm2). Room heat and room-temperature radiation are the same reservoir and give only the 48.7 kJ/mol already counted. (c) At water's own band its loss tangent is about 0.9-1.0, so a water-filled resonator has Q near 1: it cannot be lightly loaded, and Kassner himself says absorption is greatest at resonance. (d) A lowered cost per split molecule must appear as real power drawn from the tank, at least equal to the saving; a saving with no such load is the asymmetry, and would be a second-law violation.
Competing readings. (i) Strong form (net work from the cycle with one reservoir): Refuted by calculation, as the arbiter has it. (ii) Catalyst form (the field lowers overpotential at small power): allowed, tested at catalysts with induction heating and microwaves, untested at water's Debye band in a standing field. (iii) Kassner's own form (the field leaves water "richer in energy"): if true, the field energy is stored in the water and would count as input; it does not create an asymmetry, but it would mean less of the absorbed power is wasted as heat. Claim 2 remains Never properly tested.
What remains untested: whether the standing field at 1.28-1.56 cm (or any frequency) changes the overpotential of water electrolysis, and whether the total work per mole including the field's real power can ever fall below 237.1 kJ/mol. The first is open; the second is the measurement that would decide the Q05 hypothesis, with mainstream physics predicting the answer no.

Leads for the next review update (tagged follow-up Q05 in sites.md)

Kassner: "absorption of energy therefore especially great in the case of resonance" (US2089966 p.3) (claims 1, 11): his own text puts maximum field load at the natural frequency, which bears on the "lightly loaded tank" premise.
Water's Debye loss at its band: loss tangent about 0.9-1.0 at 19-23 GHz, Q about 1.1 for a water-filled resonator (claims 1, 4, 11) [calc]; useful for the primer's worked example.
Second Wien effect and bipolar membranes (claims 2, 11): a measured, mainstream field-orientation effect on water's dissociation rate (Onsager 1934; Mafé 1998; Bui 2021; Stovall 2026 disputes the model). Read Bui 2021 (eScholarship PDF, open) for whether any thermodynamic shift is claimed.
Thermally regenerative electrochemical cycles (claim 11): the mainstream form of "splitting water cheaply and burning it" with a second reservoir; NASA Morehouse 1986 and Chum's review; Carnot-bounded.
ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 9(16):10362 (2026) review of magnetic electrocatalysis (claim 11): states field-power energy balances (one negative, one a net saving of 215.6 kWh, context unseen); read for which method and whether field power was counted.
Saitta et al. 2012 (claim 10): field needed to dissociate liquid water directly, about 0.35 V/Å, a scale for "field lowering the bond".