Guest post by Ric Werme
Six months ago I posted, with Anthony’s consent and misgivings, Cold Fusion Going Commercial!?. It’s time to take a look at how Dr Rossi and his Energy Catalyzer are doing. In a word, Wow. There’s a huge amount of information and blogish speculation on the web now despite there being still very little in the mainstream press. There’s a new blog that looks pretty good, other new blogs I haven’t checked out yet, existing blogs have a lot of information, and it may be quite a while before I get back to teasing information out of Rossi’s blog.
First, a quick summary. Andrea Rossi, associated with the University of Bologna, took research from Sergio Focardi and scaled it up with a nanostructured nickel substrate and an undisclosed (but supposedly inexpensive) catalyst that fuses hydrogen with nickel releasing heat and some gamma rays. A demonstration unit in January took 400 watts in and put 12 kilowatts out, boiling some 8.8 liters of water in 30 minutes. He says units have run for months heating his laboratory, designs that don’t need a continuous source of input heat can be built but are unstable and difficult to stop. The reactor produces copper, but it’s still unclear just how hydrogen is overcoming Coulomb repulsion without needing particle accelerators or pressures akin to the center of a star.
In January Rossi announced that a 1 MW reactor was going to be the first commercial development. That is proceeding. Manufacturing rights have been split between Defkalion Green Technologies S.A. in Greece and AmpEnergo Inc. in the USA The former gets Europe, Asia, and Africa; the latter gets the Americas and Caribbean.
Defkalion is building the 1 MW reactor based on an array of small modules similar to those used in the January demonstration. Ampenergo may use a similar approach, but may not be producing modules yet.
Let me do the rest of this in a question and answer format:
Umm, what is this good for? What am I supposed to be excited about?
Ah, a very good question. I’m going to take a very conservative approach to the answer, i.e. squash the hype. First and foremost, all the usable energy this produces is heat. The major limitation of this is the maximum temperature the reactor can run at, Rossi says they keep it at no more than 500°C. Modern power plants can produce steam at 600°C and a pressure of 250 bar. While this is unobtainable from from the Rossi device, it could be used in a two stage boiler – an E-cat stage to get the temperature up to several hundred degrees and a conventional plant to finish it.
So the E-cat device by itself would have to run at a lower temperature and the laws of thermodynamics mean that the E-cats alone will have to run at a lower efficiency than conventional plants. Let’s assume for now that the E-cat device can’t heat water to a point where it can be used efficiently in a steam power plant. Let’s ignore that lower efficiency may not preclude it from being cost effective. Let’s also ignore combined heat and power systems.
So then all we have is something that produces a lot of something that the existing power plant operators would call waste heat. Portable heat at that – the 1 MW pilot reactor will fit in a 20′ x 40′ container (6 x 12 m). What’s that good for? Industrial-sized space heating for one. A long time ago I read that genetic engineering would have a greater impact on the agricultural business than on human medicine. Ever since then, I’ve looked at the Ag business as really big business. One big consumer of propane is drying grain post harvest for shipping, storage, etc. A little corner of the AG world in New England is maple sugaring. Typically 40 units of maple sap is boiled down to 1 unit of syrup. Some processors do it the old fashioned way with wood fires (usually scrap maple!) or the not so romantic oil burners. There are reverse osmosis systems for removing the bulk of the water, but it has to be finished (and cooked!) in a boiler. Why not have nuclear powered maple syrup?
Patios, sidewalks, driveways are sometimes heated to keep them snow free. Some airports and cities have big melters that pay loaders dump snow into and propane heaters turn it into water to dump down the storm sewers.
There are a whole lot of things you could code that would fry the arch-conservationists, like heating entire roads or keeping open air swimming pools open through the winter.
My favorite idea is small scale, but incredibly practical – Antarctic research stations need to stock up on enough fuel oil during the summer to keep warm during the winter. A heat source that is refueled once a year would thrill the physical plant personnel.
Energy production needs energy, and the E-Cat could fit in to some current applications (assuming the applications are still viable). Distilling ethanol from the biological fermenters used to convert corn to ethanol is one. Another providing the hot water used in oil sand and oil shale extraction. Currently that’s provided by burning natural gas, and there may be plenty of that associated with the source that it’s remains the sensible heat source.
So, the answer is that simply heat is well worth getting excited about.
Yeah, but what about me?
Rossi is concerned about keeping some of the intellectual property a trade secret. That, and concerns about shutting down the reaction made me assume that the home heating market would be the last to develop, but Defkalion is planning a small box that can hold 1-6 5 kW modules for a combined heat and power application, including residential use. If I recall correctly, a typical residential oil burning furnace burns oil at the rate of one gallon per hour. That’s 40 kW, so yeah, If the fears for some brutal winters come true, Defkalion may be very busy!
Dude, what about the US, you keep talking about Greeks!
Well, living in New Hampshire, I’m pleased to report that Ampenergo is located in NH. The principals are Karl Norwood, Richard Noceti, Robert Gentile, and Craig Cassarino.
Robert Gentile was the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Fossil Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) during the early 1990’s. That’s okay. He is/was President of Leonardo Technologies Inc., an Ohio company that may have been set up by Rossi and is related to the Leonardo Corp in Bedford, NH. The links are weird, I haven’t figured them all out.
Richard Noceti co-wrote a paper titled Synthesis of Hydrocarbon Fuels using Renewable and Nuclear Energy and is listed as National Energy Technology Laboratory and LTI Associates. That’s good.
Karl Norwood is the President of The Norwood Group, a large real estate company based in Bedford NH. Hmm. His Linked-in entry says “Karl Norwood’ss [sic] real estate experience is multi-faceted, from multi-family to office and industrial properties. In business for over 40 years, he has been actively involved in all forms of commercial brokerage, negotiating on behalf of both landlords and tenants.” Whoa, shouldn’t we have a few manufacturing folks here?
In January, I went looking for the Leonardo Corp and was surprised to find it shared the same phone number as Norwood Realty. So I stopped there one day in January and the receptionist gave me Craig Cassarino’s phone number and said he was in Brazil that week. I eventually called him a month or so later. He knew little of cold fusion history or other research that went on in New Hampshire, he’s more of an international business consultant. Exportnh.org says “Craig Cassarino has spent decades focused on sustainability of resources in both New Hampshire and Brazil, so it’s very fitting that now, as New Hampshire’s Commercial Consul for Brazil, he is serving as a resource for Granite State businesses interested in doing business in Brazil.” Oh my.
So it sounds to me as though Ampenergo will be a middleman between sub licensees and Rossi. I’m sure they have lots of contacts to work with. Frankly, I expected to find something like a General Electric throwing hundreds of engineers at designs of all scales and dozens of scientists to build higher temperature devices, better heat flow management, figure out the nuclear physics, etc. Perhaps GE is, but are doing so quietly. At any rate, look to Defkalion for early results, perhaps Ampenergo can get factories set up throughout the Americas (or just in Brazil) later. I think the modules for the 1 MW reactor are being made in Florida.
How about producing electricity with thermocouples?
A “classic” thermocouple relies on the relative ease of moving an electron from one metal to another in a heated junction. They’re used in gas fired boilers, temperature sensors, etc. To get a decent amount of power requires a lot of wires. Something I wasn’t very familiar with until I started researching this is semiconductor thermocouple that uses lead telluride. Recent research has improved its output by adding some dopants that produce points where it’s easier for heat to knock off an electron. Rossi is very interested, but I suspect that there may not be enough tellurium to go around. I have a small thermoelectrically powered fan that you put on a wood stove. It also serves as a good guess about the smoke stack temperature, as the hotter the stove gets, the faster the fan spins.
Cute device, pretty pricy. I’m sure there will be good applications, but overall I don’t think it’s thermocouples are efficient enough, inexpensive enough, and raw material plentiful enough.
I hear it’s a scam.
Well, suppose it is, we’ll find out soon enough. I think it’s likely for real, but there are several other opinions and red flags worth keeping in mind. If it is a scam, it’s a heck of a complex one.
The obvious opinion is it’s all been faked or that Rossi, et al, are seeing what they want to see and it’s all a fantasy. Early LENR devices had so little excess heat that it took painstaking measurements to find it. The device Rossi demonstrated produced so much heat that there’s simply no question it was producing heat. Even the input power, supplied by a piece of lamp cord, is nowhere near the 12 kW that was being produced. (On a 230 VAC source, that lamp cord would have to carry 50 amps to bring 12 kW into the test device. 50 amps generally requires AWG 10-11 gauge wire.) Other parties, including Swedish nuclear experts have concluded the device is real and is too small to provide the demonstrated energy chemically.
There are detractors, primarily science journalist Steve Krivit. He’s a longtime follower of the cold fusion/LENR scene and is quick to point out it’s not “real” fusion. He visited Rossi et al in Italy, burning bridges along the way. There’s a personality conflict, I think Krivit was looking for a science discussion about how it works and if it works, while Rossi was taking time out of another busy day building a 1 MW reactor expecting it will work much like his smaller modules, because they’re using many of them.
Krivit’s trip to Italy left both sides annoyed with each other. From that page, follow the subsequent posts to the actual interviews and observations of the system.
Krivit states “Thus far, the scientific details provided by the E-Cat trio have been highly deficient and have not enabled the public to make an objective evaluation.”
Rossi retorted later, “Mr. Krivit has understood nothing of what he saw, from what I have read in his ridiculous report.”
Krivit’s focus is on the boiling water test, and thinks that the output steam flow was “wet” – that water droplets cam out with the steam. Rossi set up another demonstration with much higher water flow to stay with liquid water, and measuring the flow and temperature gain. The results showed more heat release than before.
What sort of “red flags” should I be aware of?
Here’s a list, some are holdovers from cold fusion history:
- It sounds too good to be true.
And therefore requires extraordinary results.
- Scientists have come away impressed, but scientists are lousy at spotting fraud.
It would be nice if James Randi would take a look, there are a number of doubters on his discussion board. However, so much energy comes out of the device that it can’t be powered from the wall outlet, can’t be battery power, can’t be burning hydrocarbons (that second test released the equivalent of burning 7.9 gallons of gasoline). There’s not much else it could be, e.g IR lasers or microwaves.
- What’s with Rossi’s legal problems in the past?
I haven’t read too closely, but Rossi was involved in a trash to oil project that didn’t get very far, but some accounts point to corrupt Italian officials shaking down a company that was beginning to make money. (I’m shocked!) Those issues may be one reason why Rossi is working with Defkalion, a Greek company.
- And how about Ampenergo in the Americas?
I’ll contact them in a while. They’re going to have to move and move quickly. At least they didn’t spend much time on a name. 🙂
- If Rossi were a real scientist, he’d describe the catalyst.
Yeah, but he’s an inventor/entrepeneur. He’s focused on getting a product out, one that he wants to protect until things are more established. He may talk about it more in November after the 1 MW reactor is shipped.
- And how expensive is the catalyst.
Rossi says it’s cheap. There’s some other work that used palladium on carbon, I wouldn’t be surprised if the nano structure is from nickel on carbon fibers or even just charcoal. It may be his biggest advance is increasing the surface area of the nickel.
- This converts nickel to copper, which isotopes?
Uh, can I get back to you on that? Sergio Focardi says that what is produced does not match natural copper. Physicists from Sweden say “the used powder is different in that several elements are present, mainly 10 percent copper and 11 percent iron. The isotopic analysis through ICP-MS doesn’t show any deviation from the natural isotopic composition of nickel and copper.” If the copper produced has the natural percentages of 69.17% 63Cu and 30.83% 65Cu, that’s a big red flag and and means either the result is contamination with natural copper or that the processes that make copper in the E-cat are similar to the natural processes, which should involve exploding supernovae.
On the other hand, if the ratio is different, then that’s very strong evidence that copper is being produced through nuclear chemistry.
No one seems to be talking about the iron. Iron is a couple steps before nickel, and that suggests alpha particle emission, but that’s more common with very heavy elements.
I’m still reading, I want to know more!
A remarkably amateurish but informative video was created by Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson at the University of Cambridge. I think it exists because there just wasn’t a decent video introduction. Is it an appeal to authority if the authority is yourself?
A blog dedicated to Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer has appeared as http://www.e-catworld.com/. It’s run by Frank (admin). I think I know who Frank is, but he never replied to my query. I think it will be a good source of information.
In a July post from Pure Energy Systems, there’s a list of Web sites focused on the E-Cat device. I’ve only had a chance to look at a few. (The last is one I found elsewhere.)
An interview with Sergio Focardi gives a really good background on developing the E-Cat. Focardi doesn’t know what the catalyst is, but suspects it’s involved in splitting molecular hydrogen into atomic hydrogen (ordinary hydrogen is a molecule with two atoms).
Wired had a good summary of LENR research in 2006. One person referenced, Les Case, was a solo researcher in New Hampshire and longtime acquaintance of mine. He died of natural causes a year or so ago.
What’s next?
The next big step is the completion, testing, and delivery of the 1 MW reactor. After that, Rossi might have time (or might be surrounded by reporters) and be willing to talk more about what’s inside.
I’m just amazed that the mainstream media haven’t picked this up. I don’t know how much of it is bad memories from the science by press conference days of Pons and Fleischman, and how much is pursuing more important stories, like which celebrity is entering or leaving rehab. When they do pick it up, they may overhype it, but it’s easy to show that maintaining a high standard of living requires access to cheap energy.
While the E-Cat device will not supplant many current uses for petroleum products, it doesn’t have to. It wouldn’t take much of a demand reduction to chase the speculators out of oil, and it could help reduce the cost of producing products from crude oil to refined fuels.
Whatever happens, our “interesting times,” as the Chinese curse goes, are about to become more interesting.
this has to be a red flag!
Andrea Rossi Terminate Relation With Defkalion
http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3310
rpercifield says:August 6, 2011 at 4:40 pm
One thing that really gets me is the reference to the power cord. I am an EE working in the appliance industry, and can tell you it would be really simple to determine power input to the system. Why not do it? Why is there a reference to the power cord size? The only thing you see is a clamp on current meter. Another thing is a lack of data. There are inexpensive and easily attainable recording power meters that would readily interface with the computer…..
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Because it’s harder to rig a clamp-on Amprobe to give false readings. With a computer based data acquisition system, you can just set the zero and span calibrations to read anything you want. Rossi’s meter may look simple, but it’s also more credible.
This is busted.
What is being measured on the OUTPUT side is NOT the steam…. It is BOTH steam and water!
The pump on this simplistic experiment is overflowing the water around the “reactor”core and pushing the water out the outlet….. So the measurement which is supposed to be wholly relying upon the steam to be the sum of the work of the ” reactor”, is not of the sum of the work of the so called “reactor”….Its measuring the work of the pump and the “reactor”.
Fail….. Bad experiment design.
An engineer, Mitch Randall, at New Energy Times explains it very clearly in his write up.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/NET370.shtml
That link is for the whole article.
As for what is heating up Rossi’s “reactor” core… Well who knows, but it isn’t very powerful and nowhere near as powerful as he claimed once you realize he was measuring the effort of the pump and the “reactor”…
Just to clarify my above post… Rossi was measuring the weight of the recondensed steam to assertain the energy output of his “reactor”….. But he wasn’t measuring that…. His pump was pumping water into the outflow pipe and both condensate AND water were being weighed and measured…. He doesn’t look like a practical engineering type that’s handy with his hands… So he probably didn’t do it deliberately. Just got excited and jumped the gun.
Pity… I thought th’ worlds energy problems were solved there for a while….. ah well.
If it works, it will be on the market. If it doesn’t it won’t.
So far it doesn’t, does it?
dogwatcher says:
August 7, 2011 at 11:21 pm (Edit)
It certainly is. My guess is that something has been building up to that for some time, and it may explain why the modules for the 1 MW reactor are being built in the US.
Rossi has several things to say about it (but few hard details, lawyers are involved). Most interesting:
Also, from various comments, I figured he must be spending a lot of time in the US even though all tests and contact with reporters and bloggers were in Italy in his sparse lab. He confirms that with:
Of course, people chasing the Miami FL address find it’s a residential condo. Sigh. They haven’t found the manufacturing site (or perhaps it’s just the living room since he doesn’t have a basement or garage).
My starting point for all this is http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=501&cpage=9#comment-59867 . Rossi’s journal-of-nuclear-physics.com is a blog, not a “real” journal. The real meat of the site is in comments of whatever post has the initial thread, this one is about a paper from Perdue.
Reading the blog is an exercise in teasing out tidbits from Rossi’s comments, some of the other blogs I list in the main post are useful in that they do the distillation for us. However, fore breaking news you still have to go to the right post in Rossi’s blog. Continue on from page 9 to page 10 to get the latest news.
One thing I didn’t mention in the main post is that Rossi, Defkalion, and Ampenergo, met with a couple of officials from NASA in mid-July. Details of the meeting haven’t been released, but if NASA is supporting this, that could be a big help in all the regulatory hurdles that are in place here.
Curiouser and curiouser.
J.Hansford says:
August 8, 2011 at 12:21 am (Edit)
That’s not news, that’s been Krivit’s claim (obsession) since the outset. He may be right, but note he wasn’t at the formal demonstrations, all he saw was some reactor that was running at the time.
One thing that wasn’t available when I started writing this post is http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/3705report3.shtml#decliningmagnitude where Krivit builds a stronger case than he had when started writing, well worth reading.
He hasn’t focused on the second formal demonstration that merely heated water and didn’t boil it. I’m sure there are many things to criticize in that, but at least none of them involve steam.
Is it busted? I don’t know. Rossi says he heated his lab with his reactor for months. Lie? Maybe. Deluded? Maybe. Busted? Maybe, but I’m not on that bandwagon yet.
October is coming.
John Brookes says:
August 8, 2011 at 2:41 am
Have you ever been involved with bringing something to market? At some point, on topic engineering work gives way to packaging, safety concerns, reliability issues, etc.
For example, even bringing out a new commodity PC means starting with a development setup with power supply, mother board, and disk drives all scattered around a bench. And probably a portable cooling system aimed at the motherboard.
Eventually you need to figure out the case for it, where to put the logo (and what to make it out of), whether the fans should have decorative LEDs, and if so what the decorative cutouts are. Custom PCs, a la Apple have a orders of magnitude more work for that.
Rossi’s 1 MW setup is simpler in many ways, but the plumbing, wiring, control system, ventilation, vibration testing, and servicablility are all major issues that I’m sure won’t be polished by October.
“So far it doesn’t, does it?” Doesn’t what? Work, is manufactureable, or manufactured? We know it’s not manufactured, Rossi has been saying that for months. He keeps saying October, which is pretty impressive given the schedule slips in my computer field.
I don’t think it’s manufactureable, at least not in quantities beyond about a dozen.
Does it work? Read the rest of the comments here and on the web, then let us know.
All these complaints to the effect that Anthony has “sullied” the site by admitting an article on “cold fusion” reminded me of a time when I was program chairman for an electrical engineering society. The society was dominated by academics and I’d dozed through enough academically rigorous presentations to get it in my head these folks needed a healthy dose of a practical idea. I rounded up a fellow who was making a fine living off his discovery that the human eye could see quite well in light levels too low to be measured (a moonlit night is a good example), so long as there were no contrasting light sources in the vicinity. He’d lit up an entire Six Flags complex sufficiently for emergency egress during a blackout with a single, 300-watt florescent fixture and parabolic reflectors mounted on a 300-foot pole.
There was lots of grumbling when I put him on the agenda and his dearth of academic credentials became known. However, his planned, hands-on demonstrations which I’d previously witnessed were extensive and striking, so I was sure that even the college professors and world class researchers in attendance would eventually warm up to him and actually learn something in the process. Everything went fine until he began his slide presentation which I had not bothered to review in advance. Then, out of nowhere, he announced he had developed a cure for cancer. All one had to do was open up the patient and shine a florescent light with a red filter on the offending growth and voila! Patient cured! He then proceeded to show a few gory but unrelated operating room scenes for effect.
Ever wish you could just disappear? Ever see red-faced college professors coming for you with pitchforks and torches?
Not a question of academic credentials,
but one of basic physics: conservation of energy-momentum.
As pointed out in the Reference Frame site:
“Well, the first reaction that should occur is
Ni58 + p → Cu59
By comparing the E=mc^2 energies stored in the rest masses, you will may see that this produces about 4MeV of energy. Nice and innocent. The lifetime of copper 59 is 118 seconds and then your healthy reactor is supposed to β+ – decay:
Cu59 → Ni59 + ν + e+
The positron annihilates with an electron to two gamma rays.”
So unambiguous evidence for this fusion would be the observation of two gamma photons with energies of about 1.02MeV. This is a relatively easy measurement to set up and make in a physics lab today. Why has this obvious step not been done?
Btw, heavy metal fusion, such as Ni58 + p → Cu59, only occurs in nature during the last few moments of the life of a star before it goes supernova.
@ur momisugly Dan in California says:
Because it’s harder to rig a clamp-on Amprobe to give false readings. With a computer based data acquisition system, you can just set the zero and span calibrations to read anything you want. Rossi’s meter may look simple, but it’s also more credible.
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Dan, I can tell you from direct experience that it is exactly the opposite. An amp meter gives you only one side of the equation, Current. They make the assumption that the voltage is 240Vac, and I would make no assumption especially since wall outlet voltage can vary +/- 10%. Many of these current meters have an ability to set an offset zero. That is why a recording power meter would provide you the data from pre-start power off state, data during the test, to the test shutdown power off state. Having been involved in agency and governmental testing, it is very simple to detect fraud when readings are measured over time and all data is recorded. A power meter would record Voltage In, Current In, Voltage and Current phase angle, and Power Factor, all simultaneously. To not even do this simple relationship shows either incompetence or fraud.
I’m quite shocked to see it posted here. I think it will undermine the credibility of the site. I love to follow this stuff on the appropriate sites sprinkled with conspiracy theories. A few years after the initial cold fusion announcement I came across a reference to research at SRI sponsored by EPRI. I actually called and they confirmed it works, but not reliably. They had to rename the science to deuterated metals due to the bad publicity. The basic theory is to saturate a metal with hydrogen and in the confines it fuses. Hopefully, it won’t end up being another Steorn Orbo.
http://peswiki.com/energy/News
http://jnaudin.free.fr/
http://www.steorn.com/orbo/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion_pr.html
rpercifield says:August 8, 2011 at 9:51 am
Dan, I can tell you from direct experience that it is exactly the opposite. An amp meter gives you only one side of the equation, Current. They make the assumption that the voltage is 240Vac, and I would make no assumption especially since wall outlet voltage can vary +/- 10%.
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We seem to be in violent agreement. 🙂 I also have used these different tools, and I am familiar with them. Yes, grid voltage can vary by 10%, and power factor may be off. But if the output of the device is 20 times the input, no combination of meter accuracy and power factor will add up to that number.
I wasn’t there for the demonstrations, and I can only apply my own judgment as to whom to trust of the people who were there and reported. Therefore I don’t know if it’s real or not; I can only wait and see. What I do know is that enough credible organizations have seen transmutation of heavy elements for there to be something to “cold fusion.” Like the rest of the posters here, I am waiting for this story to unfold. Unlike several posters here, I do not agree that current physics explains all that is possible in the universe. Or rephrased, “If I don’t understand it, it can’t exist”
On their plus side, Brian Josephson is a very credible solid state tunneling expert. On their minus side, the announcement of the disconnect between Rossi and Defkalion certainly looks bad.
Typhoon :
August 8, 2011 at 8:41 am
I agree that it is unacceptable that experiments are not carried out on the elementary constituents of this work. A few crystals of Ni +catalyst +hydrogen atmosphere and measure what happens. Note that crystals have collective behaviours not seen in free atoms, so it could be that the annihilation energy might be shared with the whole crystal or …. Simple experiments though would allow to see what is really happening, even if unexpected.
Nevertheless, I am waiting for the outcome of the commercial availability of their product, and the reaction of the buyers. Since they choose the market forces over scientific inquiry, market forces will float or sink the thing.
Typhoon says:
August 8, 2011 at 8:41 am (Edit)
I tried to find answers on Rossi’s blog and elsewhere, but there seems to be little there. Rossi is keeping mum on a lot of the gamma ray information, e.g. From http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/18/rossi-and-focardi-lenr-device-celani-report/ By Francesco Celani :
Focardi was confident that they were going to get large amounts of such signal, as in previous experiments. This time, the counts were close to background for coincidences, and only some uncorrelated signal was over background.
I brought my own gamma detector, a battery-operated 1.25$(B!m(B NaI(Tl) with an energy range=25keV-2000keV. I measured some increase of counts near the reactor (about 50-100%) during operation, in an erratic (unstable) way, with respect to background.
I decided to change the gamma detector from “counts” to “spectra” mode. After a few minutes, Rossi realized that I was trying to identify something secret inside the reactor. I was forced to stop the measurements.
Apparently Rossi has said that a gamma spectrum would identify the catalyst. He doesn’t say very much about gammas in his posts. Hopefully he’ll have more to say after October.
BTW, I thought that in a star about to go supernovae very little hydrogen is left as the star goes through heavier elements up to iron before gravitational collapse triggers a final explosion.
Is there enough around so that the final product is a wide distribution of isotopes instead of just the power of 2 elements (1, 2, 4, 8…).
According to the Wikipedia article, one of two contracts–the one with Defkalion–was canceled in early August. This does not look good.
Can’t believe that this site got fraud baited into posting this.
Obviously written by someone who likes to believe in tooth fairies…..Rossi has gone to prison twice and pulled the exact scam on the US Army with Thermocouples….the exact same scam!
I am a retired plasma physicist. My roommate in college is a professor emeritus at a university in Milan, where the patent was filed, and presumably where Rossi’s work is going on. Since he has been involved in fusion in Milan for the past 40 years, I asked for his opinion. His response (copy and paste) was: “if I remember well, there is a way to describe this new: bull shit! “ His English may suffer from lack of practice, but his conclusion is crystal clear!
Why are so many people prepared to give this the benefit of the doubt, when all the usual scam signals are there and many posts point out that this guy is a fraudster with a wrap-sheet as long as your arm? The reason is that some people just want to believe.
Rossi and others like him succeed precisely because these ‘want to believers’ can’t take off their rose coloured glasses and face the obvious truth. To all you dreamers out there living in I-wish-it-were-true-ville, please know that you are the well-meaning folk that give con-men like this oxygen.
I am not meaning to give offence here, particularly because you benefit-of-the-doubters are usually also the most pleasant folk to have around and your preparedness to believe often comes from a generous spirit and kind-heartedness. But honestly, you need to wake up and stop being taken advantage of for everyone’s sake.
If this were true it would all be in the evening news, other research institutions would be jumping over each other to derive the ‘secret’ catalyst, and producing experiments to validate Rossi’s results. In these days of JV public-private partnerships there is big money and prestige at stake. The academic world would not be sitting idly by waiting to see what some guy in Greece produces. The complete disinterest shown by the scientific community to this ought to be enough to show that it is total bollocks, Scientists are very averse to getting involved with obviously fraudulent stuff, even if it is to debunk it, because of the well-founded fear their name gets improperly associated with it, and that his or her words get somehow misused by the scammer. In the arena of Creationism for example, it is often the case that as soon as a legitimate scientist points out the innaccuracy of a creationist claim then this is twisted by creationists into statements like ‘Scientists are currently debating this’ or ‘discussions with professor so-an-so are ongoing’ which then gives the creationist position the appearance of being at the forefront of scientific debate when in actuality they are completely outcast from it due to their unscientific philosophy.
Note also that the scammer always finds ways to explain lack of information by needing to keep it a commercial secret, leaving others to speculate. These others then bring credibility, when none is due.
Yes, chemical reactions can release a lot of heat – that’s not exactly news now is it? But this reaction is a fusion reaction and requires a LOT of input energy to get started and technology beyond what we have today to keep it going. This is a matter of fact, and is not open to idle speculation. Open your basic 3rd year university physics textbook on the chapter called fusion you will find an explanation for why Rossi’s claim is Hokem. The dream of cold fusion is like the fountain of youth, its a dream people, and this guy is selling the tickets to it.
Let us all now let this nonsense be, and get on with more important real world things. I have to end this here, as I have an appointment with my Astrologer.
Accepted theory and ‘mathematics’ proved over 100 years ago than while man could float in the air
with a ballon, powered flight without the ballons’ lift was impossible. The real work on aerodynamics FOLLOWED the Wright brothers first flight.
At the Trinity test in 1945, a number of the scientific observers were not sure that the blast reaction would not set the atmosphere on fire in a chain reaction. These were men who had worked on the project for years and still doubted the ‘math’.
Many of man’s inventions have come about due to practical application of idea before any supporting math existed to ‘prove’ that the result was valid.
In the case of the E-CAT, the simplest thing to do is to continue to watch from the sidelines of life and OBSERVE the end result. Either the device will be proved a fake or will be vindicated as the greatest new invention of the century. The point here is that no action is required on our part to prove or disprove the device, the people involved will do that for us. If the October (or November or December) test occurs then any who spouted reams of ‘why nots’ risk great ridicule as well as loss of face within their communities. If it does not then those who spout ‘certain’ belief in the device risk the same.
Question and theorize as much as necessary, but never forget that for all our knowledge, there are many things Man as a race still does not have the answers to. Could this be one? Time will tell. Please reduce the vitrol in both sides of the fence and let us rationally explore what we do and do not know. I think we all eagerly await the end result as the end knowledge only costs us time, certainly not any monetary investment!
Well said, Richard_C. Personally, I had my probability estimate for the thing to be real as high as 80% but with the latest machinations I’d say something less than half. Unfortunately, although there does seem to be a post Pons & Fleischmann trail of some interesting experiments possibly indicating something real is afoot, the mere fact that there is such vitriol assures that anyone investing serious time and money will probably be those who are comfortable flying under the radar and outside the norms. Including charlatans.
All we really know is there is a claim of surplus energy, some tantalizing but somewhat flawed demos in front of knowledgeable people, a sample of what was claimed to be spent nickel fuel that had copper (and iirc iron) rather than just nickel, and a promise of a working 1MW demo in October. It appears to me that Rossi is either on to something big or just another fake. In any case, for me, it is only time. Two months and counting.
Rossi is fooling himself or fooling lots of other people. Make that an inclusive OR. I’m hoping for the best but fully prepared for the worst.
I have degrees in physics and nuclear engineering. While I am extremely skeptical absent some verifiable, independent proof of the e-cat device, I find that the unequivocal statements “this is obviously a scam” to be decidedly non-scientific in nature. Because if- and it is a huge if- this turns out to have some merit, you will look like an idiot. More to the point, no one will likely believe you in the future about anything, even the wetness of water.
Science is easy: observe, test, hypothesize, experiment, repeating and revising as needed. Making categorical statements is NOT science. Frankly, I’ve had my fill of this nonsense from the AGW true believers.
I look forward to October, or possibly a bit later since Greece and Defkalion seem to be experiencing financial difficulties. Either Rossi will become a rich, rich man or the e-cat will join the Piltdown Man among the great scientific hoaxes.
Physics Geek and Greg Goodknight:
First let me apologize for my haste and not proof-reading, the word I meant to use was Balloon, not ballon!
I completely agree with both of you! The ‘learned’ professionals and their posts here leave something to be desired when compared to the scientific method! Perhaps the situation behind this is so simple it has been overlooked! What if the supposed ‘secret catalyst’ is another common element! You have processed nickel powder, hydrogen and the ‘catalyst’ If (again the BIG IF!) the process is verifiable (only the future will tell!) Rossi would be hard pressed to overcome the inherent distrust of ‘cold fusion’ devices as well as the impossibility to convinve a patent office to issue a registered patent! So what is the process wasn’t a ‘process’ at all but an untried combination of natural elements under a specific set of conditions (heat, purity, etc). Can this be given a patent any more that combining 2 molecules of hydrogen and 1 molecule of oxygen to make water?
I realize people get patents for extremely basic concepts (like Google getting a patent to tell you your order has been processed and shipped) but couple this with the distrust of cold fusion and you are faced with an impossible, no-win situation. The only remedy is to build the units, prove they work all the while trying to protect the method you have discovered.
I have reviewed many of Rossi’s pages. Is he strange? DEFINITELY! Is it a language issue? I think that is part of it. As part of an English speaking house hold, I spent my formative years in Latin America and spoke Spanish fluently BEFORE English. As a result, I to this day still struggle with sentance structure and syntax. I see the same in Rossi’s writtings. I give him the benefit of the doubt there.
I am intrigued by the ECAT. ‘Just’ hot water as a product is amazing! Please God (Allah or Buddah!) let this be real! The massive benefit to this planet cannot be calculated! I have long held that the inventor of a new power source or ‘everlast’ battery would have his name written alongside Einstein, Hawking, Franklin, Fuller, Bell, etc. It is what we need the most.
Will this power my computer or cell phone? I can’t see that from the ECAT. Will it spin generating turbines, allowing petroleum to be diverted to other uses? Yes. If this is a scam, I don’t see Rossi having a safe place on the planet! If it is not a scam, I still don’t see Rossi having a safe place (at least to be a free human, not under government “protection”). Can you imagine the social dilema of this issue for Rossi? If he gives the technology away, he will receive awards and acolades and probably die a penniless recluse (read the bio of Tesla!). If he keeps it for monetary profit he will never be safe no matter how much money he has!
Interesting dilema to ponder!
I have researched Pons and Fleishmann and have often wondered as to the non-repeatability in their experiment. Enough duplications were performed to not discount LENR. Something is there to be discovered and I get the feeling from reading the above entries that NIH syndrome is a leading factor in many entries.
Let us continue to watch the futute events as they unfold!
By the day it becomes more obvious that Andrea Rossi is way before his time with regards academic understanding in the field of LENR. Obviously, as academics, you critics are annoyed at his high level of understanding especially as he is self taught and not under the constraint force of some higher authority. Too bad so sad, Go for it Andrea.
Alison says:
August 15, 2011 at 5:53 am
> Why are so many people prepared to give this the benefit of the doubt, when all the usual scam signals are there and many posts point out that this guy is a fraudster with a wrap-sheet as long as your arm?
I only looked into that briefly. In the trash to oil business, I didn’t look deeply enough to tell if he was a victim of his partners, lead fraudster, or done in by Italian politics. I did come across some comment that he was absolved of wrongdoing after being left out of prison. Could be, I don’t have much faith in the Italian judicial system. Please look into all that and report back.
> If this were true it would all be in the evening news,
Just like Ron Paul’s 2nd place finish in the Iowa straw poll? I won’t include the YouTube link, but Jon Stewart had fun with how the media talked about the 1st, and 3rd-6th place finishers. The media is useless. They don’t do so well with climate science either.
> other research institutions would be jumping over each other to derive the ‘secret’ catalyst,
How do you know they aren’t? Especially corporate research depts. Like General Electric. I’d be amazed if they don’t have people following this. Call them up and ask why they aren’t talking about their research. (Ever worked on new product development before?)
> The academic world would not be sitting idly by waiting to see what some guy in Greece produces.
Nonsense. Karl Wegener and continental drift. Climate changes and CO2 sensitivity.
> Scientists are very averse to getting involved with obviously fraudulent stuff,
Nonense, see scientists’ posts here & Lubos Motl’s blog entry. Also Brian Josephson and Christos Stremmenos.
> Yes, chemical reactions can release a lot of heat – that’s not exactly news now is it? But this reaction is a fusion reaction and requires a LOT of input energy to get started and technology beyond what we have today to keep it going. This is a matter of fact, and is not open to idle speculation. Open your basic 3rd year university physics textbook on the chapter called fusion you will find an explanation for why Rossi’s claim is Hokem. The dream of cold fusion is like the fountain of youth, its a dream people, and this guy is selling the tickets to it.
So far Rossi has used his own money and I believe money from a few close associates. He is not asking for my money, or your money, or even tax money (which is ours anyway). Tickets are free, you don’t have to use them. There’s enough evidence for LENR effects over the last 20 years that basic college textbooks need updating. Problem is, people don’t know what to put in them yet.
> Let us all now let this nonsense be, and get on with more important real world things.
So, be gone with you! Wait – you have to come up with a good Rossi bio that reports the claims from both sides. I don’t think there’s consensus there.
The main reason I give this the benefit of the doubt is because no one has adequately explained the anomalous heat of this or several other processes. This one puts out so much that self delusion and simple external sources are not good candidates. That leaves deliberate fraud, and while the right people haven’t investigated, there aren’t to many possibilities. Steve Krivits has some interesting angles, but he may be blinded by his own emotions too.
When you get done with the Rossi report, please write up how you think Rossi is tricking us.
Or, wait until October.