Test of Rossi's 1 MW E-Cat fusion system apparently successful

He’s been news on an Italian business radio. I’ll post a link later on for those familiar with the Beautiful Language.

Interesting. I’ll follow this story closely.

Thanks for the update. I have been following these kinds of developments for 5 years. Nothing ever comes of them. Happy to be proved wrong. In fact I will buy the pizza for the party to celebrate it. But I don’t have my hopes up.

Bedini’s system seems much more simple. I suppose I’m biased since I’ve seen one working though.

I am extremely skeptical about this device. Mainly about the way their patent applications are written. As far as I can tell they aren’t enabling and Rossi has even commented that there isn’t enough information in the applications to replicate the device, i.e. they knowingly submitted a unenforceable patent…why would you do that? Either keep it a trade secret or submit an enabling patent. It’s just suspicious.
In any event I hope it turns out to be a working device.

I recommend an open mind at this time. We will know soon enough if this is a real energy solution or just a dream. pg

What i find intriguing is not Rossi but the attitude of Rossi’s critics.
Here we have one man who may have or maybe not have invented a significant new means of generating useable energy.
As the inventor he refuses to give open access to all and sundry, which hardly qualifies as a crime, and to all those hanger ons and would be experts who are demanding immediate access to his invention. For this he is pilloried and roundly criticised.
If the Rossi’s reactor works then the world will know sooner or later of his success. If it doesn’t then the world will just go on it’s way with barely a thought on what might have been.
Yet those same protesting and denigrating commenters who are demanding immediate and unrestricted access to Rossi’s personal property, his invention, are nowhere to be seen when public moneys are being spent by the US Navy on the Bussard invented Polywell reactor.
The US Navy is a bit big to take on and hang some ***** onto over non access by the public to another potential civilisation changing energy generator concept.
And the latest very brief report on the Polywell reactor;
“As of 2Q/2011, the WB-8 device has demonstrated excellent plasma confinement properties. EMC2 is conducting high power pulsed experiments on WB-8 to test the Wiffle-Ball plasma scaling law on plasma energy and confinement.”
Nor were those demands to see the inner workings of an experimental concept at all visible when the very large financial scamming outfit, Enron was spraying press releases around in bulk on how all it’s new financial instruments that nobody had ever used before were going to change the world.
Nope! There was far to much money to be made if you got aboard with Enron to question their motives or their untried products.
I just see gross hypocrisy in the comments from many observers of Rossi to give credence to their selfish demands for immediate access to his claimed invention..
Rossi may be onto something very significant or he could be a scammer but is it anybody else’s business or right to criticise him for his desire to keep his invention to himself, except for those who might invest in him and his invention?
Big companies retain research results as internal company secrets as a matter of course so why is Rossi expected to operate to different standards to those big companies?

….”a step along the path to the first sale.”….
Ah, all bound to be tip top and above board in that case. And there was I feeling suspicious!
http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/10/28/energy-catalzyer-extraordinary-scams-require-extraordinary-claims/

Looks like the jury is still out.
If the customer buys and sets up a commercial model then we will know for sure.

Very interesting, what’s being described is akin to a Muon catalyst nuclear reaction. What concerns me is the atomic mass of nickel and hydrogen (even heavy hydrogen) combined do not exceed the atomic mass of copper. The product copper could be an isotope with less atomic mass than the inputs, a requirement for the reaction to be an actual exothermic nuclear reaction. E=(delta)mC^2. If not, it’s just an exothermic chemical reaction, a trick.

@P.G. Sharrow
I have three patents, two of the three were licensed to start-up companies. I wrote the vast majority of the specifications on all three and wrote 90% of one.
Apparently according to Rossi there is a catalyst that is needed for the device to operate. The specifics of this catalyst aren’t included in the patent applications. Patents have to be enabling i.e. contain all the information needed to build a working device. So I don’t think the patent is enforceable.
This is extremely suspicious. But as I said I hope I’m wrong.

Alas, the INPUT POWER MEASURING is NOT well documented.
And the concept that the “Generators were on during the tests…”
Bad move. Fail. I’m very hopeful that this is correct. But Rossi must have a hole in his head if he thinks that this will prove anything, except (if it is true they had complete access) to the “customer”.

Ho Hum.
Yet another perpetual motion machine.
Alan

Alan Millar says:
October 28, 2011 at 6:43 pm

Ho Hum.
Yet another perpetual motion machine.
Alan

It is comments like this that stack unwarranted derision on Rossi and others working on LENR. Please avail yourself of the opportunity to investigate what’s on the Web regarding the aforementioned acronym before using disparaging descriptions that the inventors and other investigators in this field of science have never used and have never claimed.
Did you know MIT (yes, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) held a colloquium regarding the subject just this past June and that they do so on an annual basis? Check here for the latest results:
http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/LANR2011Colloq.pdf
And that’s just the proverbial “tip of the iceberg”.

Tsk Tsk says:
October 28, 2011 at 6:54 pm

We’ve been down this path before with Pons and Fleischmann. The community is justifiably skeptical as that makes good scientific as well as economic sense.

Did you know Pons and Fleischmann were never refuted with science–they were the object of political refutation. Their breakthrough reaction (among those willing to do an unbiased investigation, such as the following investigation by CBS News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNn_Z6wCIk) has been replicated thousands of times by researchers in multiple countries (and P & F weren’t the first, by the way).
But I hope we aren’t going down the same path the powers that be used to discredit Pons and Fleishchmann–primarily those concerned their $billions in government grants for hot fusion research would be tossed aside if energy could be generated with a simple apparatus on a desktop (or more to the liking of the critics: fusion in a bottle).
Cold fusion is a reality.
Don’t trust me, however-find out for yourself.

Scam until proven otherwise. If it’s not, it will find me when they are willing to demonstrate publicly.

If it works, I’ll be more than happy to help make him the wealthest man on earth. If not, it really does not matter. Wait and see.

I’m pretty skeptical about this too. That seems to be the general consensus around here. Perhaps a post should have waited a day or two until AFTER confirmation? It all seems a bit odd.
Also.. Poking around a bit, its not too hard to find out the customer appears to be one Manutencoop Facility Management. Here is info on them:
Manutencoop Facility Management S.p.A. provides management services for real estate, building, and equipment. Its services include management and maintenance of heat conditioning, air conditioning and refrigerating systems, antifire systems, electric and lighting systems, buildings, real estate, and technological equipments. The company also provides cleaning and pest control, hospital laundry and sterilization, office support, accessorial, catering and canteen, security, and night watch services; and real estate property services.
It was in properties of the Test_28_10_11.xls spreadsheet. Meh.

p.g. sharrow: As a person trained in the “arts” I feel that I can duplicate a working device if nesessary from that information.
Can you get more than 2 watts output without knowing his still secret “catalyst”?
rocky road: Did you know Pons and Fleischmann were never refuted with science–they were the object of political refutation.
You’re kidding, right? No one was ever able to make one of those devices put out either heat or gamma rays reliably.
Cold fusion is a reality.
True, but it consumes more power than it generates, and other people who have devices like those Rossi is claiming to have (he claims extra output because of his secret catalyst) only get about 2 watts of output.
rpercefield: Every time there is an opportunity for Rossi to clearly show the effectiveness of his device, it become an event of obfuscation and secrecy.
That’s my take on his behavior so far.
Mark says:
October 28, 2011 at 8:19 pm
That’s a good brief summary of the last half year or so.
Rocky Road: It is comments like this that stack unwarranted derision on Rossi and others working on LENR.
Some LENR researchers are legitimate, and lab bench scale fusion has been demonstrated in numerous devices. What’s derided is the claim that any of them generate vast amounts of energy.
ROM: Nor were those demands to see the inner workings of an experimental concept at all visible when the very large financial scamming outfit, Enron was spraying press releases around in bulk on how all it’s new financial instruments that nobody had ever used before were going to change the world.
One scam does not justify another. The examples do show that, cunning devious people can outsmart honest, educated, smart people. Pons and Fleischman made substantial money off the State of Utah. Enough to retire to the Riviera. And still people believe that their device worked. Caveat emptor.

If there was anything to this, Leonardo da Vinci would have drawn up instructions and we’d be using it today.

Report of test:
http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

1 MW E-Cat Cold Fusion Device Test Successful
On October 28, 2011, Andrea Rossi demonstrated his 1 megawatt E-Cat system to his first customer, who had engineers/scientists on hand to test/validate its performance. Due to a glitch, it provided 470 kW of continuous power for 5.5 hours during the self-sustained mode.
By Sterling D. Allan (who was present), with Hank Mills
Pure Energy Systems News
…
There were some issues, so it couldn’t be run at full power in self-looped mode, but what it did do was plenty impressive.
It ran for 5.5 hours producing 470 kW, while in self-looped mode. That means no substantial external energy was required to make it run, because it kept itself running, even while producing an excess of nearly half a megawatt. Rossi explained the reasons for this in the presentation he gave, which I videotaped and will be posting later.
That’s half the rated capacity, but it is still a major accomplishment for the device that was completed earlier this week — the first of its kind on the planet.
Early in the day with a glitch showing up, Rossi said that they had to make a decision about whether to go for 1 MW output, not in self-sustain mode, or with self-sustain mode at a lower power level. The customer opted to go for the self-sustain mode. Nothing was said about the prospects of a follow-up test, though I would imagine that the customer will be running many tests to understand this gadget they have purchased, and that information will be conveyed to Rossi.
…
Radiation measurements were taken by Dr. Bianchini David, from the University of Bologna. He said no extraneous radiation was detected at any time emanating from the reaction chambers, or from the piping, or from the water tanks, or in the vicinity of the apparatus. Apparently, gamma radiation is produced during the reaction, which is shielded by water, iron, lead, and a final coating on the apparatus. David said that he has not measured gamma radiation from the device, because he has not had access to the reaction chamber while it has been unshielded.
None of the units were taken apart following this test, as was the one back on the October 6 test. I asked Rossi whether any radio frequencies were used in the test, and he said “no”.
…
Probably the biggest opening for skeptics will be the continually running genset that is probably rated for 500 kW (my guess), and appears to have been connected by cables to the E-Cat. “Where’s the mystery?” So knock yourselves out, skeptics. It’s the customer who has to be happy, and apparently this one was satisfied that those cables were not contributing to the 470 kW output during self-sustaining mode.
…

Has pics.
I find this part interesting:

Attendance at this test was limited for several reasons. (…) Second, the device is a nuclear device, and the regulations for a public demonstration are extremely stringent; so by making the event private, and only bringing one or two at a time to see it was a way to get around the safety requirements.

It’s a nuclear device. By the reasoning shown, if I was testing a small nuclear reactor, I could “get around” safety requirements by showing off the reactor to only a few people at a time. Does that make sense to you? How many safety regulations for nuclear devices are one allowed to “duck” by only having a small reactor with limited visitor access?
See the pics. How many people are wearing dosimeter badges?
The device is supposed to generate gamma rays, aka x-rays (the distinction is origin in the nucleus or by an electron outside of a nucleus). Radiation was not detected. Does it look like there was enough shielding?
The identity of the customer is still not known. One of the oldest pitches of hucksters is “I do have other customers,” add in the “I’m not allowed to reveal their names” qualifier to prevent checking of references.
I’m staying extra skeptical of this “discovery.”

Hard for me to understand why a skeptical site has so many people, including Anthony(?) reacting strongly to people expressing skepticism about the E-CAT. Seems like the only reasonable reaction given the lack of actual data and the extravagance of the claim. Even the headline seems inappropriate. “Allegedly” would be a better word than “apparently” as the claim really is anything but apparent at this point.

It doesn’t have to be efficient in order to be a convincing demonstration; what it has to do is unambiguously put out more energy than it consumes.

But is someone going to spend a million dollars on something that creates only a thousand dollars worth of energy? I mean, technically you are correct in the energy equation but there is also an economic equation that must be satisfied. We have already been stepping over dollars to pick up dimes with the whole “green” energy fiasco.
Look, conventional modern nuclear has the capability to meet ALL of America’s electrical needs if we want to. Reprocessing of the spent fuel means we have no spent fuel problem, either.
People in the future are going to wonder why we were so stupid.

What people don’t see is his personal investment i.e he sold his house to finance some of the construction. Would you sell your own house if it was a scam?

I’ve read most of the LENR papers and I’d make the following observations.
1. LENR is definitely a real energy producing phenomena, although its not clear its fusion.
2. Without a theoretical basis, researchers are to a large extent stabbing in the dark in attempts to refine it and make it more reliable and produce more energy.
3. The composition of the catalyst seems to be the key to getting LENR working.
4. If this is a scam, its in the sense that they have don’t have a commercially viable energy source (yet?). Not that LENR setups can’t produce excess energy, that has been independently demonstrated dozens of times.
IMHO one important reason Pons and Fleischman were ridiculed and frankly persecuted was that LENR as a viable energy source would have derailed the trillion dollar CAGW gravy train early on.

PT Barnum would be proud that someone is following in his footsteps…

People think its a scam because they dont understand the science behind it… Cold fusion is not really “cold”. It is hot fusion on a small scale. Some how the the Columb barrier is overcome either on a local scale by acceleration of the ion(electron) in nanometers to thousands of eV or the barrier is dropped by some sort of resonance between the atoms.. The events take place one at a time in the lattice unlike a H bomb or a Tokamak which is what everyone thinks of when they think of fusion…. Palladium and Deuterium at a 1:1 ratio works but its hard to make this happen consistently(Check out SPAWAR Labs). Nickle catalysts have been known for awhile. It was just a matter of time before some figured out how to make it work… Now here is the only thing, you might have to account for the energy by adding a parameter called “aether”, which by the way has not been disproved. You almost have to..
At Lenr you can check out some of the papers that people have published… These are not stupid people, they are actually some of the smartest….
Lenr-canr Library.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html

I remain sceptical until the process is independently reproduced.
I view the comments of those who vehemently dismiss it as a scam the same way as I view those who propound anthropogenic CO2-induced global warming.
Genuine scams are designed to bring some benefit to the perpetrator. Rossi seems to be investing a lot of cash and energy into this for what? Any fame or reward will quickly evaporate if the scam cannot be sustained, or are the detractors suggesting that he is at the start of some Ponzi scheme that will suck in more and more investors’ money as he builds bigger and bigger reactors ad infinitum?
At worst, I suspect the man is deluding himself, at best he will satisfy the AGW fanatics’ search for a CO2 free energy source that will allow politicians off the hook over the ludicrous windmill/photovoltaic/big stick/industrial decline (sorry, I should say green) solutions that they now favour.

“Hey guys, this is a sales test, not a public event.”
You must be reading your own article very different from anybody else. Because, you know, it was meant to be a public event. Everytime an event is intended to be streamed across teh intertubes, and hourly updates are planned, that makes it pretty much public. We are offered here the reason for not showing it after all is employee privacy concerns, not project concerns; and on the updates we hear, there’s simply not enough time for them. Other than that, they are public… yeah.
How do you know they output 6x the energy if you don’t even knowhow it works?
In a year’s time, we just need to check that customer’s balance sheet to see how much money they’ve spent on ‘fuel’ – then we will know how it works 😉
I have rarely seem people getting so excited about nothing – that is, you don’t know anything about it, but somwehow vouch for it without any good reason at all.

It absolutely screams SCAM.
“The 2008[4] patent application[5] claims “a method and apparatus for carrying out nickel and hydrogen exothermal reactions,” with production of copper”… at 40 deg C, yeh right
It doesn’t even derse space on this forum.

I thought it best to keep an open mind when this thing first came to light earlier in the year.
October was to be the date where all would be revealed to scientists/clients etc with a 1MW unit, and it was hyped as such.
The day has passed and very little new has really been revealed only we now have many devices creating an alleged and unverifiable 470kw, with a huge diesel generator out the back.
I’m sorry by extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.
Who can’t be sceptial when we have an average looking report and some amateur footage that does not show things with any sort of detail?

crosspatch says:
October 28, 2011 at 9:47 pm
“People in the future are going to wonder why we were so stupid.”
“Look, conventional modern nuclear has the capability to meet ALL of America’s electrical needs if we want to. Reprocessing of the spent fuel means we have no spent fuel problem, either.”
I agree, however with the current mindset of politicians, it’s unlikely that there will be many people around, to question our good sense.

To quote someone else, ‘I guess you *can* fool some of the people all of the time. 😉 Where is the possible clue? Here it is: “Probably the biggest opening for skeptics will be the continually running genset that is probably rated for 500 kW”. Hmmmm. Something produces 470 kW while connected to a 500 kW generator. LOL.. You know, some scammers in the past really hid the mechanism well, but wait one minute and I’ll show you a great example …

Septic Matthew [October 28, 2011 at 5:17 pm] says: “I will say that, if it is a hoax, it is the most elaborate hoax I have ever read of.”
ROM [October 28, 2011 at 5:40 pm] says: “What i find intriguing is not Rossi but the attitude of Rossi’s critics. Here we have one man who may have or maybe not have invented a significant new means of generating useable energy.”
RockyRoad [October 28, 2011 at 7:03 pm] says: “It is comments like this that stack unwarranted derision on Rossi and others working on LENR. Please avail yourself of the opportunity to investigate what’s on the Web …”

All of you must, I mean *MUST* read about this unbelievable scam … THE KEELY MOTOR COMPANY. The benefit of the doubt can never ever be given automatically to someone in these circumstances regardless of the insinuation from those quoted comments. The benefit of the doubt has no place in Science. Nor does trust, or goodwill. Especially not when there is money to be made.
There is much overlap here with the AGW scammers. Suspension of skepticism just because you wish for an easy solution to a problem (no more OPEC!) is exactly what the AGW CO2 scammers prey upon (Carbon tax will save the planet!).
How do some of us fail to make this connection!

Nickel hydride appears to me to be the source of the energy. The E-cats will have been charged up with hydrogen beforehand. Applying heat starts the decomposition reaction, and this continues until the stored hydrogen is exhausted. With only a couple of tonnes of nickel, one could easily get to the sort of energy outputs claimed, but only for a few hours. The easy way to disprove this would simply be to keep it running.

Chemical vs. Nuclear?
Chemical – If it runs only for a few hours
Nuclear – It runs for months
My bet, based on what we have seen so far, is that it is chemical with the ‘catalyst’ being the fuel.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 28, 2011 at 9:32 pm
“It’s a nuclear device. By the reasoning shown, if I was testing a small nuclear reactor, I could “get around” safety requirements by showing off the reactor to only a few people at a time. Does that make sense to you? How many safety regulations for nuclear devices are one allowed to “duck” by only having a small reactor with limited visitor access?”
He says he made it a private event, indicating that each visitor enters the room on his own responsibility. Makes sense. Rules for public demonstrations don’t apply in that case. Probably, if he lets the entire group in at once, it would automatically be classified as a public demo.

A well-concealed experiment, to prevent theft, leaves me very suspicious. Just spent three years chasing double-dutch top secret processes that didn’t work. Hiding the process and results is the best way to cover up poor science and poorer measurements. Part of the time was chasing a novel and heretofore undiscovered property of zeolites. After months of obfustication of experimental technique and results, it turns out that we had been wasting time on measurement error.
This sounds much like my recent experience. Pardon me if I’m very skeptical. However, Rossi might want to talk to the owner of the company I work for, he is a sucker for non-experts who have secret processes and flashy stories. If he made his cold fusion machine out of junkyard parts, so much better.

smells like a scam

Septic Matthew says:
October 28, 2011 at 8:53 pm

rocky road: Did you know Pons and Fleischmann were never refuted with science–they were the object of political refutation.
You’re kidding, right? No one was ever able to make one of those devices put out either heat or gamma rays reliably.

Did you know that at the time, MIT was charged with “finding out” whether there was a reaction and they responded within two (2) weeks. They never called Pons and Fleischmann to find out it takes four (4) weeks to load the palladium with deuterium BEFORE the reaction would even start. But here’s the kicker–They never asked Pons and Fleischmann a single question about how to do the experiment. They just charged ahead and ignored the five years of research Pons and Fleischmann put into the experiment before they got the reactions they did.
Now wouldn’t you agree that’s an example of Epic Fail on the part of these so-called “researchers” at MIT? And did you know MIT had $billions of dollars in hot fusion grant money pending at the time? Would “follow the money trail” be a viable reason for their jumping the gun on CF? Indeed it would. The team of investigators at MIT that were asked to investigate this were part of its lavishly-funded hot fusion laboratory, then called the MIT Plasma Fusion Center. (They knew NOTHING about cold fusion at the time, by the way.)
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEmitspecial.pdf
Or you could read the companion article referenced in the link above written in 1999 by Dr. Eugene Mallove, who was the Chief Science Writer of the MIT News Office from 1987 to 1991 which says in part:

The record is clear: Had MIT researchers behaved responsibly and ethically as scientists in the spring of 1989, it is most probable that a position of open-mindedness by MIT on the difficult subject of verifying the Utah claims would have averted the highly negative U.S. Department of Energy Report drafted in the summer
of 1989. History would have been far different. Most likely, expensive engineering programs aimed at hot fusion reactors would have been cancelled in the early 1990s; plasma physics studies would have continued at MIT, and MIT researchers,
including those at the Plasma Fusion Center, might have become the most eminent cold fusion researchers in the world.
It was not to be. Cool heads could have reserved judgement. They could have followed the experimental facts where they would ultimately lead, but they chose not to. Heads were not
cool, they were hot. MIT could have been in the vanguard of the new scientific field as befits its leadership role in science, but this did not happen. MIT chose—and is continuing to choose—defense of its existing professional support from the Federal government over meticulously documented evidence of a new scientific field and the pathway to revolutionary echnologies.

It should be obvious to anyone so inclined to do the research that government funding of hot fusion, similar to government funding of CAGW, has corrupted the scientific process in that field. And similar to the current paradigm, those like Andrea Rossi who are willing to put their own money on the line in the quest for commercialization of LENR are no different that those of us getting big fat checks from “Big Oil” in the quest for the truth about global warming. (Obviously, my reference to “checks from Big Oil” is a crass ruse–just to spell it out for eveybody.)

Beesaman says:
October 29, 2011 at 3:55 am

I wonder how many jounalists other inventors such as Edison invited to trial runs of their inventions?

Or how many reporters attended the first flight by the Wright brothers? (Note: zero)

In years to come Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep. James M. Cox, publisher at that time of the Dayton Daily News (later governor of Ohio and Democratic presidential nominee in 1920), expressed the attitude of newspapermen—and the public—in those days when he admitted years later, “Frankly, none of us believed it.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_Brothers

Having closely followed the low-energy nuclear reaction/chemically assisted nuclear reactions area for >20 years, I’m concerned that this is an unfortunate bit of promotion using a marginally effective reactor.
Arata in Japan demonstrated a reactor in 2009, publicly, and allowed photographs to be taken. His reactor has been replicated, however, the problem for productization will remain a full understanding of why it works. 95% success rate doesn’t cut it when you’re trying to produce consistent power.
The Rossi demo has too much showmanship for my taste, and continually cuts off prior to a drop dead, “Its got to be nuclear to run this long,” time. I’ve seen the number of 16 hours in the literature as I recall. Like they say, time will tell.

From Update, 2nd source:

According to the customer’s controller, Domenico Fioravanti, the plant released 2,635 kWh during five and a half hours of self sustained mode, which is equivalent to an average power of 479 kilowatts – just under half the promised power of one megawatt.

From the “This is how the test was done” section on that page:

According to the controller Fioravanti, power from the genset was switched on to the heating resistors in the modules around 10.30, with an initial power of 120 kW, which was gradually increased to 180 kW.
At 12.30 began self sustained mode, which means that the power to the resistors which are used to “ignite” the process was shut down. The plant then ran without any energy input other than the fans and the pumps for five and a half hours.
The total energy released between 12:30 and 18:00 was calculated from the amount of water heated and evaporated. The water flow was measured with two water meters, and according to the controller’s report the energy amounted to a total of 2635 kWh.
Subtracting the energy for pumps and fans, amounting to 66 kWh, this equals a net energy of 2569 kWh, which corresponds to an average power of 467 kW.
Subtracting the energy supplied during startup, about 320 kWh at an average power of 160 kW, the net energy would still be 2249 kWh. In this case the energy output during startup should also be estimated and added.

So let’s say the total net output was 2500 kWh.
2500 kWh = 8,532,500 BTU (1 kWh = 3413 BTU)
1 gallon fossil diesel -> 130,500 BTU
(source)
Energy produced equivalent to 65.4 gallons of diesel.
A 500 kW diesel generator (the reported guessed-at size) at full load will consume approximately 35.7 gal/hr (source).
35.7 gal/hr diesel -> 1365 kW.
500kW/1365kW = 0.366.
Thus said diesel generator is about 36.6% efficient at full load.
Calculating fuel consumption for diesel generator to make as much energy as electricity as the E-cat rig generated as heat:
65.4 gal equivalent / 0.366 efficiency = 179 gal diesel.
Run time of said generator to generate that energy:
179 gal / 35.7gal/hr = 5.01 hrs
By current US standards (source), the minimum efficiency of a fossil-fueled boiler for heating is 80%. For a high-efficiency condensing unit the minimum is 90%.
Calculating consumption for diesel burned in a plain boiler equal to E-cat rig production:
65.4 gal / 0.8 = 81.8 gal
For condensing boiler:
65.4 gal / 0.9 = 72.7 gal
Conclusions:
1. All of the energy apparently generated by the E-cat rig could have been generated as electricity by said 500MW diesel generator.
2. It is more than twice as efficient to burn diesel directly for heat than to heat water with electricity from a diesel generator.
If they could get these E-cats running indefinitely, then they may well be economically worthwhile. From what has been shown, I can’t see any real advantage over a conventional boiler, especially over, say, a natural gas-fueled condensing boiler.

KD- “From what has been shown, I can’t see any real advantage over a conventional boiler, especially over, say, a natural gas-fueled condensing boiler.”
Entertainment? 🙂
More fun here:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/

phil says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:41 am
“Seriously, I think this kind of article does not belong on WUWT, it just makes this blog look foolish and affects its credibility.”
It starts to get tiring to constantly find people telling Anthony what belongs on his blog and what doesn’t; don’t you people find a more original way of nitpicking. (I know, it’s hard, you don’t.)

Apparently the whole ‘customer’ story was a marketing thing, there is not customer at all. The customer ‘controller’ was Italian, yeah sure 🙂

@kadaka
The efficiency of the eCat is irrelevant at the moment. The most important thing is to prove whether there are new physics we can take advantage from. The diesel engine is also irrelevant, if this technology is proven to be true you can use electricity from an eCat to start up more e-cats self-sustaining each other.
Was the airplane commercially viable when the Wright brothers made their first public tests? What was the point of flying besides a brief few minutes of entertainment?

The Wright brothers didn’t do anything that they (or anybody else with a halfway decent knowledge of physics) couldn’t explain. People have flown before – only not with an engine – and nature has shown long before mankind that flight is not only possible but trivial. And, of course, they didn’t hide their first 20 or so flights behind a large wooden wall on the beach and let only a few, hand picked spectators behind it to measure the skidmarks in the sand afterwards.

Cirby: ” …there was one of those multi-level marketing companies, selling vitamins and such. They had one particular minor product in their line that was unique – they were literally the only company in the world that knew how to extract and package that one particular extract. It turned out that it really WAS a very good supplement…”
This could’ve be an interesting story if it included the name of the company and the product. As is, it’s a myth. Like the claimed efficiency of the E-Cat.

Anthony: “That’s what this blog does – we try out ideas.”
Oh, really, Anthony? But why are you “trying” this pure pseudoscience, without presenting any new scientific or factual content at all, for the fifth time or so? When will the readers be allowed to conclude that your blog has joined those that actively promote “green energy” pseudoscience?
One may say the same thing about the climate alarmists in general. They’re just “trying ideas”, aren’t they? Like the idea that the CO2 is killing the planet. Except that they have also been making living out of these lies for decades so they’re not just “trying”; they are actively cheating the world.
This article shouldn’t have been written because it contains no new evidence and it just repeatedly struggles to advocate the indefensible. It’s just another promotion of another theater of the very same type that’s been described many times: an uncontrollable “demonstration” that is claimed to have created energy but there’s no evidence one could actually verify. Obviously, the “anonymous consumers” have either been duped or they are a part of the game.
To support the idea that something like that could work, in contradiction with known laws of physics, one needs some genuine scientific evidence, under controllable conditions, instead of pseudo-evidence and “demonstrations” meant to bring profit to someone with religious “testimonies” and completely uncontrollable flows of energy.
You don’t have any evidence worth the name so given the knowledge science has, Rossi is a scammer unless proved otherwise. You can’t replace evidence by repeated pseudo-evidence and by implicit threats that those who don’t praise this complete nonsense are politically incorrect.

I suspect that most readers of this blog are skeptical of the test and the “nearly free energy”, and rightly so. The comments make that pretty clear, in spite of the efforts of a few drop-in trolls trying to score points. At the same time, I think most of us are willing to be convinced by clear enough, extensive enough testing (which this last test clearly wasn’t), to give it a tiny fraction of a percent chance of being a break-through. Why not? I’m not going to invest money in it. Hopefully my government isn’t stupid enough to invest in it. So why not keep half an eye on it and quietly hope against all odds that it isn’t a scam or a mistake?
No downside, and if the million or more to one shot comes home we get to watch Mann and all of the others who are living off the Global Warming meme become irrelevant. Fine. We won’t burn any more coal because something else is cheaper. End of discussion. End of IPCC. End of Carbon Trading schemes. End of grants to prove global warming, with their accompanying distortions of science. End of gravy train.
That’s all fun to imagine, though most of us know that the chances of it actually happening are extremely low.

Erik Ramberg says:
October 29, 2011 at 8:06 am

…
You are certainly free to include whatever you want in this blog. But it ain’t science, that’s for sure.

And I’m just as certain you’re clueless as to what LENR stands for and what happens when it works. So your conclusion that “it ain’t science” is a bogus one. Just as the flat-earther’s looked at the horizon, couldn’t see any curvature, and proclaimed the earth to be flat.

For the other skeptics like me who picked him as a scammer:
“Twenty years ago he was arrested for illegal importing of gold from the Swiss.
“In the 1980s he was involved in a scam with industrial waste. It is a complex thing to explain, but the scam cost the Lombardy region € 25 million.

Reactions of an observer not versed in the science:
1. If it’s a scam it’s both elaborate and foolish, for it’s hard to see how Rossi cashes out, especially if he’s in hock up to his ears already. If it doesn’t work, he’s broke, washed up, and will have lost all credibility. How does he make any money off of something that doesn’t work, unless he’s going for government funding, a la the Solyndra bunch? Yet there’s no indication that he’s doing so, that I can see so far.
Conclusion: Either Rossi, himself, must think it works, or Rossi is a complete crackpot who doesn’t care about his future, only about getting all the attention possible for a brief stint in his life. In other words, if it’s a scam, it’s not a moneymaking scam, but an attention-getting scam, certainly possible if he’s a big enough flake.
But, if he thinks it works, then he would know that the generator isn’t providing the excess power, and he would know that he hadn’t just created an exothermic chemical reaction. (If he’s just after notoriety, of course, he also knows that the opposite is true.)
As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out.
2. Of course Anthony should cover this on his blog. If it’s a scam, we get another extended discussion on interpreting scams, and isn’t AGW one of the biggest scams of all time? [Aside: quoting Herman Cain on AGW: “It’s a scam.” Almost ensured my vote with that comment alone…]
As far as I’m concerned, one of the main topics of this site is scams…windmills, solar schemes, taxpayer holdups like cash for clunkers, AGW, the hockey stick, tree rings ignored, Climategate emails, heat islands ignored, polar bears disappearing, monitoring stations disappearing, sea level rising, etc.
And if it’s not a scam, great. Who could argue against the decision to discuss it here then?
3. It’s fascinating how the comments lead to further knowledge, or at least better information, in here. The MIT discussion alone made the whole thread worth reading, and makes me wonder whether it was Pons/Fleishmann perpetrating the fraud, or MIT? Given the power of government funding dollars, if I had to bet, my money would be placed on it being MIT.

Look folks, there’s certainly plenty of room for doubt about this e-cat device. It smells like a hoax from every direction.
Yet even though the phenomenon, if real, would be a new and/or unexplainable by current physics this is not in and of itself a valid reason for discounting it. It’s not a perpetual motion machine. No thermodynamic laws are being violated anymore than they are violated by a nuclear power plant. E=MC^2 explains where huge amounts of energy can seemingly come from nothing. It doesn’t actually come from nothing but rather comes from a miniscule amount of matter getting converted to energy. The trick is that most matter is very stable and doesn’t spontaneously turn into energy quickly enough to be useful except under huge extremes of temperature and pressure that are not easily generated or controlled.
Catalysts however are weird and often beyond our capacity to predict so we often find them the old fashioned way by trial and error sometimes with some clues to guide us and sometimes not. While catalysts usually denote something that speeds up chemical reactions there are plenty of weirdnesses at the subatomic level that defy explanations.
When I look at claims of LENR or cold fusion of course I’m skeptical but I also recall the skepticism over high temperature superconductors. To this day there is no theory in physics that explains high temperature superconductors and to this day we discover them mostly through serendipity guided only by playing around with the formulas for weird lattice structures that have known superconducting properties and hoping that we stumble upon something that works at a higher temperature than the antecedants. Occasionally some incrementally better structure is discovered.
Simply and truthfully put our theoretical models of reality break down at the edge of the envelope in the domains of the very small and the very large both in time and in dimension. Contrary to popular belief we don’t have all the answers and are not merely in the process of filling in the details with faster and faster computers to crunch the numbers.
But I don’t tend to put much faith in finding solutions via trial and error. A room temperature superconductor that is cheap and ductile might exist but in the engineering business you can’t predict how long it takes to get lucky when you’re just guessing or how long it takes to discover something that you have no knowledge of. This is why I pin my hopes on solving the long-term energy problem on a technology that is an engineering problem where there is no discovery needed but rather one that can definitely be solved with time and money. That technology is synthetic biology. Extant natural biology already proves that sunlight, water, and air can be turned into solid, liquid, and gaseous hydrocarbon fuels. The problem is merely one of modification of those extant technologies to suit human purposes. Hydrocarbon fuels produced by naturally occuring organisms are not usually a desired end product of said organisms but rather a metabolic waste product where producing more than a small amount, at best, has no survival benefit for the organism so in the harsh world of natural selection and survival of the fittest these biological products WE desire are minimized in nature rather than maximized. Since our synthetic organisms won’t have to compete in the wild and survive on their own we can modify them to maximize production of products that we desire. It’s only a matter of time as we engineer faster and better systems for cutting, pasting, and genetic modifications and inventory all the extant functionality in nature. It’s pretty much just a matter of engineering better, faster, cheaper, automated biology lab equipment -. a problem defined by time and money not basic discovery. The rate of progress in genetic engineering is incredible and reminds me of what happened in the semi-conductor world during the 40 years of my involvment with that. Already the Venter Institute has been able to assemble a working minimal bacterial genome from mail-order DNA snippets. This was a huge milestone. I suggest paying attention to it.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100526/full/465406a.html

Synthetic genome resets biotech goals
The assembly of a genome that can ‘reboot’ cells of a closely related species is one step in a much longer path.

Synthetic biology is the next big technological revolution and it’s going to make those that came before (even the biggies like metallurgy, agriculture, electricity & electronics) look trivial in comparison. We’re talking about being able to harness the energy of the sunlight that falls on the earth pretty for free and building anything we want out of naturally occuring materials pretty much for free. It all simply hinges on being able to customize and control self-reproducing micro-organisms. The range of capabilities and materials they already work with in nature is huge so it’s just a matter of modifying them with control programs like so many little self-reproducing microscopic factory workers that don’t need paychecks or pension programs.

Dr A Burns “Twenty years ago he was arrested for illegal importing of gold from the Swiss. In the 1980s he was involved in a scam with industrial waste. It is a complex thing to explain, but the scam cost the Lombardy region € 25 million.”
Correct. So it could be scam now. Or not. It’s also possible that these earlier accusations were false. Or true. He could be a Robin Hood. An innocent trying to help the planet. Or a showman and gambler. The book Secrets of the Soil tells many stories of suppression of inventions that would truly benefit the planet, because they got in the way of some big business. Heck I’m sure we all know such stories. Climate Science is full of them…
Questions, more questions, not naive acceptance nor naive rejection.

Rossi has been very picky about who he lets in; Enrico Billi, a nuclear physicist and friend of Rossi’s, who is presently living in China and helping to open doors there for this technology; Professor Christos Stremmenos, from the University of Bologna, who told me all about his theory of how the technology works; Pierre Clauzon, nuclear engineering professor from France, who told me about several theoretical physicists trying to understand cold fusion in general and the E-Cat in particular; Uzikova Irina, a nuclear plant designer from Russia; Stefan Heglesson, representing a Swedish interest in the technology; Loris Ferrari, Associate Professor of Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Bologna, who will be one of the five professors to do the two year test of the E-Cat, which hopefully will be funded as a result of today’s test. They will study both the “how” and the “why” of the technology.
You cannot just handwave a team like this away.

Luboš Motl says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:53 am

I forgot to reply to Anthony’s sentence
“If you don’t like it don’t read it. cheers, Anthony”
to a critic of cold fusion (nicknamed Carbon-based life) which I view as an extremely dangerous one. It implicitly says that Anthony only wants the cold fusion articles (and maybe others?) to be read by those who are eager to say that this pseudoscience makes any sense. But you can’t get a balanced and complete evaluation of scientific problems if you impose these pressures, Anthony.

I’ve not seen any of these so-called “pressures” you accuse Anthony of, Lubos. The pressure I bring to bear is for everybody to get up-to-speed on LENR before shooting their mouths off–that’s the embarrassing part, not the fact that LENR is an interesting subject making headway, or that Anthony gave Ric a chance to update eveybody on a few of the latest happenings (and I think Ric has been pretty even-handed about it, too).
Me? Like my “realist” attitude about CAGW, I’m a “realist” about CF/LENR. I just happen to be a grad of the U of U so naturally the P/F episode strikes close to home, but from my own research over a number of years and involvement in materials science I’m what you’d probably call a “realistic believer”. But, like Anthony or Ric, I’m not forcing my opinions on anybody, especially you–just eagerly revealing what I believe to be logical or infomational shortfalls. And you may call me a “mindless advocate” if you want, but it is you who appears to be disarmed with the facts.

For those certain that it is a scam – we don’t have enough information to draw that conclusion with any certainty.
For those that think there is strong evidence it works – we don’t have enough information to draw that conclusion with any certainty.
Much of my professional life was selling bleeding edge technology to bleeding edge R&D organizations, and I got to meet plenty of seriously smart people. Some of them were more or less normal (whatever that term really means when applied to the human condition) but a fair number of them were complete eccentrics…to put it mildly. Jerry Huff proudly showed me his method for building a touch sensitive switch back when no one had ever heard of such a thing being possible. I asked if he patented it. Nope, he said, but he wrote a letter to Popular Electronics explaining how it worked… John Carlson built an entirely hydraulic pump jack before programmable controllers came along that current technology still has trouble matching for functionality. He had a vision one night in which he insists his deity told him it was evil and that night he cut the prototype to pieces and destroyed the documentation.
I could go on, and on with examples but extreme intelligence frequently comes with eccentric behaviour. Couple that with someone who also has minimal business experience in comparison to their technical experience, and I don’t think you can point at that person’s irrational behaviour and poor business acumen to prove it is a scam.
Leaving the cables from a diesel gen set plugged in during the demo run? Well that certainly raises suspiscions, but on the other hand, anyone perpetrating a scam would probably go out of their way to hide those rather than waving their hands and saying “its ok, they’re shut off”.
As for his patent and the missing information, I learned something about patents a long time ago from having been involved in many research projects that wound up producing patented products or techniques. By filing for a patent, you are putting your intellectual property into the public domain where it is now governed by legal processes. As any IP lawyer will tell you:
“A patent is only as good as your ability to defend it”
If Rossi really has something (and I think he has SOMETHING of interest, just of what value I don’t know) he would do well to keep the “secret sauce” away from the public eye for as long as is practical…that being until he has sufficient financial backing to defend the patent.

I’m amazed at the mindless, hostile skepticism expressed by so many here. I read WUWT because Anthony concentrates on presenting the science behind AGW skepticism. It’s not just mindless negativity like so many of the comments on this article.
I have no reservations about calling AGW a scam, because I have looked at the science on both sides and determined that the scam is obvious.
But on this thread, people are calling e-Cat a scam seemingly without any attempt to investigate the underlying science. At least a minority here have mentioned the long history of successful replications of LENR reactions. That’s a start. There has been enough verification and replication of positive LENR results that for anyone to call this “perpetual motion” as one on this thread, is just willful ignorance.
I have also seen no reference at all here to the work of Frank Znidarsic, which gives a mathematical framework of how LENR reactions work.
There is no longer any question that LENR is a real phenomenon. It has been replicated too many times. And now with Frank Znidarsic’s work, there is a theoretical framework to explain it. The only question is whether Rossi has managed to develop it in a form that is consistent enough and powerful enough to be commercially viable.

But, I want to Believe…..
So the eCat scam continues.
To the commenter Jim, I’ll be happy take your action (any one else too)! I’ll put up $1,000.00 cash right now, do you have any way of showing me you have $1,000,000.00 in liquid assets to pay for your loss?
I have actually look at putting this up on Intrade and create a line of betting.
But first we have too agree on what constitutes the bet.
For eCat to be considered successful, a device has to be well/correctly/sufficiently instrumented to measure all relevant electrical/fluid/gasses input/output for a sufficient period of time to validate some process is generating X more power than it consumes.
I don’t care what the “process” is, cold fusion or angels dancing on the head of a pin, just as long as it is generating energy.
The testing will have to be preformed in some form of “public” test by myself, with other WUWT skeptics and/or a trusted 3rd party (Underwriters Lab, National Institute of Science and Technology, etc). I have sufficient Shop space, net access to provide real-time camera feeds. I’ll need to help in system setup, getting the sensors wired to computer for data collection and publishing the results. What do you say WUWT community?
What do you say Jim, ready to put your money where you mouth is?
But back to reality.
It is really quite simple, Rossi has not now or ever validated his claim(s). Why is this so hard for you all to understand?
Mr Watts (Anthony) in a reply to a commenter says “That’s what this blog does – we try out ideas.” Well this is long past being just trying out ideas. The January or even the August posting one could say here is an idea/invention take a look. The lengthy discussion in August well documented Rossi’s lack of sufficient data required to validate his claims. Continuing to give him a forum simple aides the scam and reduces the “trust” in the WUWT brand (but it is Your brand too do with as you choose).
As rpercifield points out in today’s comment and from his, mine and other’s comments in the lengthy August posting about eCat. Rossi has simply refused to correctly instrument his device to validate his claim of energy production. He does not need to build a megawatt unit or a gigawat unit, he does not have too sacrifice a single bit of his intellectual property. He simple needs to take one of his devices, correctly instrument it and he will have PROOF of his device’s function. His unwillingness to do so should be taken as a scam.
As commenter Mark points out, we all should just ignore Rossi until he does provide real evidence.
Finally to Mr. Watts and WUWT credability, from the thread of comments here and from August, even in this community of Skeptics there is a strong thread of “But I want to Believe…” This is exactly how we get Solyndra’s.
Some true believer behind government doors says, yes but even the naysayers over at WUWT believe this guy Rossi so lets give him the $500 Million he needs to demonstrate his machine. You may laugh at the idea but I have been in the Federal Government and seen this kind of nonsense happen.
Pete

Lucy Skywalker: You cannot just handwave a team like this away.
If it is a hoax, it is the most elaborate hoax I have ever read of.
On the other hand, those team members are none of them close to the hardware when it is running.
A few of the posters do not seem to grasp or admit that what has been replicated that is “like” Rossi’s device (or devices when many are connected) is a device that produces very low power output. Low energy, cold, benchtop (etc.) fusion has been demonstrated. Not Pons and Fleischman (who did perpetrate a profitable hoax) but some others. Reliable stories appear from time to time (I read one in American Scientist about 15 years ago), and reliable devices are used to produce isotopes for medical purposes. They are consumers of power, not producers.
Now, back to the team. No one other than Rossi knows what is in his “catalyst”, so speculation about how the device manages to produce so much power, if it does, are pure speculation. Has anyone other than Rossi himself said what all those team members have contributed? Has anyone publicly claimed to know what is in Rossi’s catalyst?

Rod Everson: If it’s a scam it’s both elaborate and foolish, for it’s hard to see how Rossi cashes out, especially if he’s in hock up to his ears already.
We only have Rossi’s say-so on that one, don’t we? He only has to have one “investor” of some kind give him cash up front, not likely the State Gov’t of Utah, but perhaps a rich idiosyncratic technology junky like Howard Hughes, or a consortium of movie stars, or a credulous fund manager like the guys who cost Sumitomo, Orange County California, and Barings so much money. The list of “marks” goes on and on. Really, have not we all read of scams and thought: How could smart, well-informed people have fallen for such a scam?
Rossi only has to find one rich contrarian willing to lend him $2million up front. After all, if this thing works it’s worth lots more than $2million to start production under patent protection.
Paraphrasing Lincoln, you only have to fool one rich person one time.
If it works I’ll have to eat crow, but again remember the main issue at stake: low energy fusion has been reliably demonstrated; the incredible part of Rossi’s claim is a sustained high power output.

As I’ve said in comments, we try out ideas here.
No quarrel from me. This has been a fun read. Statisticians tolerate a 5% false positive rate on new ideas, higher if there is a possible high payoff.

RockyRoad says:
October 29, 2011 at 10:39 am
John B says:
October 29, 2011 at 10:23 am
…
How can a group of self-professed “skeptics” be so gullible?
They can be up-to-speed on LENR. That’s what informed skeptics do. And you? Can I call you “gullible” for not being up to speed on LENR? No, there is a better term–(I’ll let you fill in the blank).
—————–
Up to speed on LENR? OK, did that. If LENR is verified it would be the biggest thing since… Well, the biggest thing ever. We could stop burning coal for one thing, and start using virtually limitless, virtually free energy. It would be unbelievably huge!!! But, it goes against everything known to mainstream physics. That does not, in itself, mean it is wrong. After all, fission and (hot) fusion went against everything that was known at the time they were discovered. So Pons, Fleischman, Focardi, Rossi, just show the world a working, verifiable, replicable experiment. It doesn’t need to generate a Megawatt. A single Watt would do nicely, as long as it comes from a mechanism that can be exploited. Just like the Wright brothers’ flight only needed to last 30 seconds to be momentous.

I’m sorry, I just can’t see how Andrea Rossi can benefit from this, if it is in fact a scam. He would have to flee somewhere, with the money, to benefit. What country would shield him from such fraud recovery and/or prosecution (and who would want to live there, for the rest of his life).
That only leaves, self delusion, as a possible explanation for the scheme (other than it works). This would apply to Rossi, but certainly not the customer. The customer specifies what proof of utility, is required to satisfy his commercial viability. This is a financial requirement NOT a scientific requirement. Scientific principles are important, but function and results trump scientific principles – every time. Not understanding how color was encoded into color television broadcast signals, hardly made a difference, to widespread usage. Our visual cortex, just didn’t care. Until recent, new analysis data, bumble bees could not fly.
Does this mean that we should all start celebrating and jump on the bandwagon?
Of course not!
We should remain skeptical, until such time, utility has been demonstrated to US. At that time, many people will be scrambling to provide scientific explanations and we can then argue them to our heart’s content. We can not expect more from Rossi, unless we are willing to become customers.
This invention, IF as stated will upset many apple carts and will directly affect the livelihood, of many who blog here. Nervous… You betcha.
Btw, I would gladly bet $1000 at 1000:1 odds, that there is something here, just as soon as someone, provides proof that they are capable of paying the $1,000,000, in the unlikely event that the demonstration proves legit. Any wealthy fools out there? John West…? anybody?
In the meantime, I will continue to follow this project with proper skepticism and an open mind, until resolution. If that is being reckless… then color me reckless. GK

I find it quite odd that Anthony is being pilloried by some for allowing this article to be posted.
The purpose, as stated by Anthony, of the posting is to allow resident skeptics an opportunity to deconstruct the premise that this Rossi LENR device works. That is pretty much what is occurring here.
The bulk of comments do not support the premise for the same or similar reasons most here reject the CAGW thesis. Too much reliance on “magic” processes that are either hidden by the proponent or are contrary to a basic understanding of physical processes.
While I admit that I harbor some hope that Rossi’s process might work, I do not find his most recent demonstration convincing – AT ALL. If Rossi wants to convince anyone he needs to be fully transparent from the get go – from set up to final results.

Peter Brown says:
October 29, 2011 at 10:31 am

…
This is exactly how we get Solyndra’s.

No, Solyndra was political payback for a campaign contribution. That’s a huge difference. (Looks like we’ll have a string of these coming up–next will be Sun Solar, followed by a bunch of others, to the tune of about $20 Billion!) So much for Hope and Change! (Now THERE’S a SCAM for ya!)

Luboš Motl says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:03 am

RockyRoad: “The pressure I bring to bear is for everybody to get up-to-speed on LENR before shooting their mouths off.”
Thanks for your advice. I assure you that I know about this business more than all the world’s champions of LENR combined.

Thanks, Lubos, for the best laugh I’ve had in quite a while.

For John B, here is one account: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/1999/7/fusion-from-television
The device makes a neutron beam for making medical isotopes. It is a net energy consumer, not a net energy generator. I have read of other designs, all small devices, all net energy consumers.

“…the human race is home free and the climate doomsters are going to have to find another bogey man to use in their quest for riches and world domination. ”
Funny – but Rossi IS the new bogey man. The climate clan are leading the denial campaign against LENR – cause they cannot administer it through a UN or global guv’mnt. Rocky Road has this right, there are a minimum of 1200 peer reviewed papers documenting the LENR effect, readily available through science libraries e.g. LANL library. The 2009 CBS 60 Minutes Report “Cold Fusion is Hot Again” covers the last 20 years of research into LENR, the ABC-TV report on the Patterson Power Cell (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jze7KtdHfh8) covers tangential inventions (issued a US patent), we have confirmation of DOD R&D via FOI documents from Wright Patterson AFB, Randall Mills’ Blacklight Power has a remarkable record of peer reviewed confirmation of excess heat from Ni+H, and there are a dozen “inventors” of variations on Rossi Focardi, Mills, Patterson, et al LENR generators.
i.e. The EVIDENCE of a real, confirmed LENR effect is indisputable. So, why all the doubt? Getting the LENR process to “loop” or self-sustain, has been the stumbling block. Both Foccardi/Rossi and Randall Mills claim they’ve got a way to control this – which means the process and excess heat can be delivered for commercial use. But should we not have bonafide “scientists” involved? The CBS story addresses that issue and the recent statement by NASA Langley Research Chief Scientist Dennis Bushnell regarding LENR provides further clues:
“So I think were almost over the “We don’t understand it” problem. I think we’re almost over the “This doesn’t produce anything useful” problem. And so I think this [LENR] will go forward fairly rapidly now. And if it does, this is capable of, by itself, completely changing geo-economics, geopolitics of solving quite a bit of [the] energy [problem.]”
Energy Chair of the Swedish Academy of Science Sven Kullander and fellow physicist Hanno Essen have seen Rossi’s process and written a report:
“Any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production.”
The skepticism we have is that LENR will make it to commercial production without intervention.
“After a few more flashes in the pan, we shall hear very little more of Edison and his electric lamp. Every claim he makes has been tested and proved impracticable.” New York Times, January16th, 1880

Rocky Road: http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/some-of-rossi%e2%80%99s-cold-fusion-results-reportedly-replicated
If you read the power point presentation, you will note that the inventor calls it a “battery”, and makes no claims that the net energy output exceeds the net energy input.

Rocky Road: Yet you apparently don’t require that of the $billions that have been and will be spent on the Tokamak and other hot fusion approaches.
Really? Have I claimed that those are net energy producers, or has anyone, as Rossi claims for his device?

I was surprised that Ric was writing in the “Isn’t this a great thing” vein. Just based on the surface I was somewhat skeptical.\
Then looking into it, the convincing bit for me. The guy that walks around with the video camera, spends more time looking at junction boxes and traffic cones than at the actual reactor.
Spend 10X more time looking at the bog standard generator.
From the non technical side it just screams scam. Blair Witch project was more realistic. And “Un named customer” give me a break.

Septic Matthew says:
October 29, 2011 at 12:18 pm

Rocky Road: http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/some-of-rossi%e2%80%99s-cold-fusion-results-reportedly-replicated
If you read the power point presentation, you will note that the inventor calls it a “battery”, and makes no claims that the net energy output exceeds the net energy input.

Nor did I. I simply referenced that as confirmation of the process being nuclear fusion and not a chemical reaction. Rossi hasn’t divulged what he uses as the catalyst to leverage the reaction to achieve over unity.

Tufty said: The easy way to disprove this would simply be to keep it running.
Rossi said that would be boring!

RockyRoad says:
October 29, 2011 at 5:43 am
Nobody who has tried has been able to get a net energy out of a Pons-Fleischman device. Lots of people have tried. Do you really think that the people who are investing in biofuels, coal-to liquid, solar and wind would not gladly back a company or inventor that could produce working Pons-Fleischman devices? Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Germans, Americans — no one has ever been able to get a net energy return from a Pons-Fleischman device.

Richard G says:
October 29, 2011 at 12:05 pm
“The skepticism we have is that LENR will make it to commercial production without intervention.
“After a few more flashes in the pan, we shall hear very little more of Edison and his electric lamp. Every claim he makes has been tested and proved impracticable.” New York Times, January16th, 1880”
That’s a wonderful quote! And goes straight into my archive! Thanks!

Making quicklime releases lots of heat,no electricity is needed!Place the bucket so it heats some water and HEY PRESTO!!! You’ve just invented a machine thats MORE reliable than ANY of the other so-called FREE ENERGY devices. Call it “THE QL CAT”….Can i get some money,please…p.s when you’ve made your quicklime then you can sell it to the plastering trade. win/win.
Send me £10 and i’ll tell you a secret.

I was so hoping we’d get a follow up post related to Rossi’s effort and the notion of “Cold Fusion”.
I was exposed to the effort based on a Forbes article I read a week or so ago and of course came to WUWT to do a search for E-Cat and found the prior post and fascinating comments.
I got excited and took the time to read over the related material and discovered all the conflicting Science views, claims of fraud, and history of the “Cold Fusion” misnomer and related MIT testing debacle.
“Cold Fusion” is a misnomer because the term was created by the press to describe a poorly understood electro-chemical process that defies the understanding of Physics.
Additional reading implies, the Rossi “reactor” emits gamma rays and alters not only the nickel to copper and iron but the hydrogen atom as well. Yet, the nay-sayers contend the energy in is greater than the energy out and the design and pre-heating of the containment chamber results in the perception of a sustained reaction.
The process doesn’t require radioactive material and doesn’t produce any and even if the containment vessel is broken, it will simple emit a small amount of hydrogen and stop working. Talk about clean and safe energy?
Even if this is only a first step, what an amazing break-thru for Scientists who seek to dispel the old school status-quo in favor of observable fact and a new frontier.

I know of too many crackpot energy schemes to buy this pig in a poke. Wake me up when there’s solid evidence verified by disinterested experts.

Bewitching witchcraft?

Rational Debate – I wondered about that. This paper:
“Nuclear signatures to be expected from Rossi energy amplifier”
Jacques Dufour.
CNAM Laboratoire des sciences nucléaires, 2 rue Conté 75003 Paris France
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Nuclear%20signatures%20-%20Jacques%20Dufour.pdf
concludes:
*****
9. Conclusion
Strong nuclear signatures are expected from the Rossi energy amplifier and it is hoped that this note can help evidence them.
It is of interest to note that in [3] a mechanism is proposed, that strongly suppresses the gamma emission during the run (it is the same mechanism that creates very low energy neutrons, subsequently captured by the nickel. This does not suppress the emission after shut-down, which should be observed, together with the transmutations described above.
*****

From DirkH on October 29, 2011 at 4:30 am:

He says he made it a private event, indicating that each visitor enters the room on his own responsibility. Makes sense. Rules for public demonstrations don’t apply in that case. Probably, if he lets the entire group in at once, it would automatically be classified as a public demo.

You have completely missed the point. It is stated to be a nuclear device. Were it not for the shielding it would be releasing some amount of gamma radiation. In the US that would mean the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be all over it, demanding whole forests be slaughtered to satisfy the paperwork requirements. And that’s before considering all the other federal, state, and local applicable public safety laws and regulations.
Plus I’m certain that somewhere there’s a bureaucrat who’s expecting some amount of fees and/or taxes to build and/or operate such a potentially dangerous nuclear device.
Could GE get away with building and test running a small nuclear reactor in a warehouse, let alone claiming they don’t have to worry about the multitudes of relevant laws and regulations to protect people and the environment because they only show it privately to a few people at a time, it’s not being shown publicly?
Also, note the most dangerous aspect of the E-cat, as demonstrated with this rig. They couldn’t run it at the full 1MW output in self-sustaining mode because they couldn’t control it, it made too much heat. What would have happened if the limiting controls had failed? How hot would the devices have gotten? What would happen when an E-cat device gets so hot that any water entering is instantly flashed into steam? How would a device fare when it looses the greater cooling power of circulating water and only has steam billowing through it?
Yes, there is the control of shutting off the incoming flow of hydrogen. At what temperature (and pressure?) will water dissociate, releasing hydrogen? Can the E-cat reach that condition? It does not matter much that the catalyst and the water are separated by design, as hydrogen is notoriously difficult to contain, and when the temperatures and pressures raise sufficiently then all bets are off. Plus there’s also the not-small potential of an overheated valve simply refusing to close completely if at all…
Now to propose a possible scenario, imagine a modified working E-cat in the trunk of car, just the catalyst part without any provisions for cooling, that has the hydrogen feed turned on, the reaction-initializing heaters turned on… With whomever started the device quickly achieving a safe distance, although it could be started remotely or by a timer…
And they are allowed to duck the regulations because it’s a “private” demonstration? If it works as they say, it is a nuclear device that generates heat and gamma radiation, that is demonstratively difficult to control at high output levels in self-sustaining mode… Not bloody likely.

skeptical…no evidence no transparancy …
why all those experiments of cold fusion or so, or new way to produce energy are so popular???Hope?

If scientists would be really interested about this technology, they would attempted to test it already and published in peer-reviewed journals. Because the original experiments weren’t published with A. Rossi in January 2011, but before twenty years already in quite standard scientific way in official journal of Italian Academy of Science.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/FocardiSlargeexces.pdf
The person of A. Rossi is significant for acceptation of cold fusion in the same way, like the manufacturer of GPS satellites for acceptation of general relativity.

I would put this is pretty much on par with someone trying to sell me a perpetual motion machine.

A very interesting discussion.
IMO, a lot of the scepticism is misdirected, because Rossi isn’t performing a series of scientific experiments, he is trying to sell/commercialize a ground-breaking product. And you have to view his actions in that context.
He has to generate interest and publicity while keeping the ‘secret sauce’ secret as long as possible.
None of us has enough information to say for sure whether this works or not.
And Rossi’s best interest is in maintaining that uncertainty, because once it is clear it does work, dozens of competitors will spring up and he will lose a very significant commercial advantage. Not to mention a large amount of money.

RockyRoad says:
October 29, 2011 at 12:29 pm
John B says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:12 am
Septic Matthew says:
October 29, 2011 at 10:57 am
…
low energy fusion has been reliably demonstrated
…
Where? When? By whom?
In case you missed it, here’s an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNn_Z6wCIk
————————–
Oh, for goodness sake!

Rocky Road: Nor did I. I simply referenced that as confirmation of the process being nuclear fusion and not a chemical reaction. Rossi hasn’t divulged what he uses as the catalyst to leverage the reaction to achieve over unity.
Rossi isn’t selling a process, he is selling a power generator.
My bet is that he will have a 10MW demonstration and another customer in about February. And still nobody will be using one of his devices of any size to produce power for any purpose. That is, if he hasn’t banked a big investment. I doubt that he’d settle for a license and royalties on the sales.
This has been fun. The whole world is watching.