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.
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The pp [proton – proton] reaction of stellar nucleosynthesis is very energetically unfavourable:
http://goo.gl/dY4Ak
as compared to reactions involving deuterium and tritium:
http://goo.gl/BagE4
This would be the dominant reaction in ordinary water H2O: 1H = proton
1H + 1H → 2D + e+ + νe + 0.42 MeV
e+ = positron
νe = electron neutrino
It can be immediately ruled out if no back-to-back photons at an energy of 1.02 MeV are observed due to electron – positron annihilation.
The key evidence for nuclear fusion is the following criteria: http://goo.gl/8AfeK
Be exothermic: This may be obvious, but it limits the reactants to the low Z (number of protons) side of the curve of binding energy. It also makes helium 4He the most common product because of its extraordinarily tight binding, although 3He and 3H also show up.
Involve low Z nuclei: This is because the electrostatic repulsion must be overcome before the nuclei are close enough to fuse.
Have two reactants: At anything less than stellar densities, three body collisions are too improbable. In inertial confinement, both stellar densities and temperatures are exceeded to compensate for the shortcomings of the third parameter of the Lawson criterion, ICF’s very short confinement time.
Have two or more products: This allows simultaneous conservation of energy and momentum without relying on the electromagnetic force.
Conserve both protons and neutrons: The cross sections for the weak interaction are too small.
All nuclear fusion reactions involving deuterium and tritium emit neutrons or proton at specific characteristic energies: if these are not observed, then there is no fusion.
Conclusion: Andrea Rossi’s E-cat fusion device con is rather amateurish even by the low standards typical of such scams.
Surprising and disappointing to see such scams being given prominence on WUWT.
Watt’s up with that?
My initial scepticism aside it really is worth looking at some of the links. A way into all this lovely stuff can be found through:
http://pesn.com/2011/04/07/9501805_Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Validated_by_Swedish_Skeptics_Society/
Note this page contains lots and lots of links about half way down. It seems that we will all be able to buy cold fusion plants from Walmart in a few months time and say goodbye to our fossil fuel providers by Christmas. I’m looking forward to having my gas supply turned off now instead of worrying about Corbyn and Madden’s cold winters, Gazprom and the Russian Mafia. I do feel cheated however that the MSM did not take this up a few years ago because I bought an excellent Bosch Induction Hob and its replacement by my new cold fusion cooker (CFC) will require the investment in new kitchen units. I’m going for the now slightly dated black and chrome CFC look which is in keeping with my existing kitchen appliances and will help to keep costs down.
Its all good news on these links but I am still slightly sceptical about the UFOs and electrogravity stuff however should this prove well founded I’ll take the home delivery option and get the LGMs to hovver the CFC to my house.
The world it seems is changing faster than I once believed was possible.
If it seems too good to be true…..
But Rossi’s eCat has been evaluated by many scientists, including the sceptical Norwegian science society, or whatever it is called. More than that the first 1 MW unit will go on stream. Still, healthy skepticsm is the best way forward.
About the science: Cold fusion has been banded about ever since Fleischmann and Pons proposed it 20+ years ago, then ‘debunked’ by other scientists, who could not replicate the effect, apparently because their palladium was contaminated. Besides, how could one produce cheap fusion energy after we had spent trillions of dollars on hot fusion reactors that never worked?
If Rossi is right, bye bye ITER project. Hence Rossi must be declared wrong.
“…and some gamma rays”
Ignoring for the moment whether this is a scam or not. gamma radiation, depending on the emission intensity and wavelength, could be a very bad by product.
Hmmm……beware of Greeks bearing gifts!
Two things strike me:
a) the first (Magnox) nuclear reactors in the UK could not produce steam hot enough to run the turbines of the day; so they asked Parsons – I think it was – to make them an old-fashioned turbine which ran on cooler steam. This works. And if the power source is cheap enough, they can be commercial. Better than burning your catalyst, anyway.
b) Josephson is the man who described the “tunnelling effect” – the Josephson effect – where an electron appears where it shouldn’t be, using its quantum mechanical properties to “tunnel” through an electrostatic barrier. Proved to work in semiconductors. If it works to provide cold fusion … wow!
But alas! If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. On the other hand, “Probable” is not “Certain” – and the Josephson effect relies on very small probabilities sometimes coming true. Someone has to win the lottery…
There is an analysis here:
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/3705report3.shtml
It looks like the power output really needs verification.
This is also from a country in which you can take 1 Lira and Presto! convert it to 100,000 Lira without any increase or decrease in fiscal mass…. The ancient Romans had an expression for this: caveat emptor…
Latest!
2012 Olympic stadium to be lit using karma and nice thoughts.
UK National Health service to be replaced with Dream catchers ,crystals and chanting.
IMF reports that Wishing upon a star, may cure global economic crisis.
and some bloke says he has created an over-unity device.
Is my calendar wrong?
The first of of april was a while back.
“While one can only hope that the device really does work as advertised, if it really does work what would preclude the use of the lower temperature/pressure steam to operate a less efficient electric generator?”
You know, I’m thinking the best use of the thing is as a heating/generator unit. Install in a hot water system. You may be able to use the temperature differential to create currents as well, which could spin a generator to recoup some of the input energy. To optimize you’d need to plan a new system… not thin tubes with a lot of drag, maybe something more akin to the ocean current. 🙂
Or you could just use it like a heat pump… put in a little energy, get more out of it.
Alex the skeptic says:
August 5, 2011 at 3:07 am :
Besides, how could one produce cheap fusion energy after we had spent trillions of dollars on hot fusion reactors that never worked?
If Rossi is right, bye bye ITER project. Hence Rossi must be declared wrong.
Please, the cost of Iter is estimated around 13 billion euro .
What trillions? in imagination? The cost is about as much as a naval plane carrier, which may be sunk in case of war. Do you think if a method of “beaming people” was invented any country would hesitate to stop carrier production?
An absolutely excellent post. Thanks very much Ric. Exciting times even allowing for all the caveats. A few diagrams of the possible ‘nuclear’ processes would be welcome.
Good to see Liquid Fluoride Thorium mentioned in an earlier comment.
It pays to read E.E. “Doc” Smith! at a later age, that way you get the finer points and their is a lot. Now take common sense, if it works, it works, Simple. If “science” cannot say how it works, that does not negate the fact it works.
Same with claims of “scam” insults not science. They set a delivery date, if the meet it and it performs, then the fact applies “it works”. if not then you can start talking of scams.
Jack Simmons says:So far, no takers.
A 1MW demo appears to me to be a DO.
If it works the world has changed. If it flops – so what.
My name is Thomas Edison. I invented the light bulb and the phonograph. As you all know this was a total flop and the world still burns Oil Lamps and has not heard of music.
And the world is flat and we will fall of the edge if we go to far.
I had the impression that the readers of WUWT were ‘skeptics’. ie looked at an idea and questioned and looked for real answers.
Seems to me to many readers in this post have formed a ‘ consensus ‘ and are not looking at possabilities.
How about – hay that sounds good – lets check it out
or – thats a con – bugger off.
Sounds like a AGW convert.
I don’t know if the demo will work or not . Evidence,evidence etc
I’ve been following Rossi closely all year. He is a pretty dodgy character – with a decades long history of promised breakthroughs with no follow through.
http://www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer
His E-Cat demonstrations have been woefully deficient, with most educated analyses of video and data released pointing to huge flaws that could fairly be interpreted as there being no excess heat above that provided by the electrical heaters. The only demo that would have been convincing was done with only one of his colleagues present (Levi) and there has been no release of data from that demo to back up his claims.
At this point I don’t trust Rossi, his behaviour is at best evasive – as he could have easily done a demo in a few hours that would be incontravertible proof (eg a drum of water being circulated through the device by a pump, and simply observe it’s rate of temperature increase), and his excuses as to why he doesn’t do a convincing demo are pretty thin.
I still wouldn’t discount that there is something going on, There are multiple other sources now who are claiming similar though less spectacular results (Piantelli, Brian Ahern et al). Maybe Rossi has simply been exaggerating. Also Dekaflion – his greek commercialisation partner – must have done due dilligence using engineers who didn’t get their engineering degrees from diploma mills (like Rossi did)
I prefer to be a cheerleader. There are so many exciting things being worked on- just because we don’t necessarily understand it doesn’t mean it can’t work. Joule Energy making diesel from algae, waste water, sun and CO2 to the projected rate of 15,000 gals/acre at 1/3 the cost of today’s conventional diesel. Cellar Energy making hydrogen infused beads as a substitute for gasoline. Perhaps all pie in the sky at commercial levels of production, but it wasn’t that long ago that a 64K desktop computer was the cutting edge of computing. I have no doubt that many reading this blog can even remember that.
There are several issues with the Rossi device:
1. It wasn’t Rossi who developed the device in the first place, it was another Italian physicist.
2. It uses slightly different components to replicate the experiment demonstrated in Japan by Arata in 2009
3. Like many other experimenters in India, Russia, the US, Italy, France, Japan, to name a few countries – the demonstrations of the excess heat are still all in the tens of watts to 100+ watts.
4. If the predictions of a Bose-Einstein condensate model of the reaction are verified, then replication of the conditions should be easy, if not, then flim-flam starts to be a real possibility
The latter condition will require specific radiation types and values to be detected in the reactor, or a similar reactor.
Radiation has been detected in the Pd-D reactors, and in Ni-H reactors, as well as Ti-H. Temperature is a requirement – arcs regularly produce radiation – nuclear radiation, but here we are looking for a specific reaction chain with definite products. One would think that a Mossbauer Effect type setup would deliver the information in a precise manner.
Just my $0.02 (of a heavily devalued $).
@RockyRoad:
“The $200 to $300 million to fund Rossi’s venture has been raised through a private placement.”
Really? That is an extraordinary fund-raising to have pulled off, especially for something just coming off the lab bench.
The following is in response to those who questioned my “usual warning signs” statement:
Initial Claim: I have a “black box” that produces “X” without consuming “Y”
Skeptic: Show me.
Response: Here’s the box making “X” with no external sources of “Y”
Skeptic: I can think of a dozen ways to do that. The box is of sufficient size to have stored enough “Y” to have produced the limited amount of “X” you have shown me. I notice it quit making “X” after a short time.
Response: That’s because the Aardvark interferes with the Jimjam. We’re working on that.
Skeptic: Show me what’s inside the box.
Response: Can’t do that. You might steal my invention.
Skeptic: That’s what patents are for.
Response: Garbled
Subsequent Claim: We’ve stopped the Aardvark from interfering with the Jimjam. The box now makes lots and lots of “X”.
Skeptic: Let’s do a controlled test with independent, expert observers.
Response: Don’t have the time. I’m busy building a bigger box, raising investor funds and taking orders. Trust me. You don’t want to miss out on this exciting opportunity!
Some Guy says:
August 4, 2011 at 9:07 pm
Yes, but (and I’m going beyond my skill here) you need to include the binding energy of hydrogen. In stellar fusion, going beyond iron is endothermic (e.g. fusing Fe with Fe), but here the binding energy of hydrogen comes to the rescue, apparently up to much heavier nuclei.
I think I saw that on Rossi’s blog, if I hunt down the link, can you write a fair critique?
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Jim says:
August 4, 2011 at 9:43 pm
I though we dealt with that in January. One of my motivations in writing that post is that virtually nothing escapes the attention of WUWT. Anthony had strong reservations about my first post, but it worked out better than we expected. As an engineer, I don’t see this as a promotional post – there’s no place to invest or buy. I find it interesting, and given the many mentions of E-Cats in comments to other posts, I think this post is late.
The longest, most sensible, least hypish monitor of cold fusion/LENR is Jed Rothwell, see http://www.lenr-canr.org/ . He’s documented some 20 years of success and failures, and yet the old work is hard to dismiss. None of that warranted coverage here, I think that 12 kW does.
If it’s a scam, it’s quite a scam, we’ll find out soon enough. Rossi announced the 1 MW reactor in March saying it would be ready in October. If this were a scam, he’d be talking about delays to work out manufacturing glitches, but apparently things are going well. We’ll see.
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dwright says:
August 5, 2011 at 12:13 am
I noticed a number of comments went into the spam filter. Are you referring to the Jubal Harshaw comment or the heating a castle comment? If it’s something else, try posting it again, I don’t fully trust WordPress. Actually, I barely trust WordPress.
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Mike Lorrey says:
August 5, 2011 at 12:32 am
The Swedish Skeptics Society review was based on a six hour demonstration, a sample of unused nickel, and a sample removed after two months. The demonstration run produced 25 kWh in a 50 ml reaction space. I assume galvanic energy is simply chemical and doesn’t include structural energy of the metal lattice, right? Even if all 50 ml were nickel, 25 kWh seems like a lot of chemical energy to me.
There is claimed to have been many months of testing, that there’s more than just the public and private demonstrations.
I don’t know how much energy was produced by the two month run, but it’s immaterial as the Society didn’t have control of that reactor during that run.
Read http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece
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eco-geek says:
August 5, 2011 at 12:44 am
As has been noted, you forgot the heat of evaporation. We’re not talking tea here, we’re talking water vapour.
Amp and volt meters can be modified to display wrong values. While scientists and engineers are poor choices to identify scams, one thing to do is to observe everything that might be a red flag. While there are things to do to get 12 kW down the lamp cord (e.g. higher voltage, better conductors), noting that the cord appears too small to carry 50 amps is well worthwhile. It’s one of the first things critics would identify as an external source of energy.
The voltmeters and ammeters said 400 watts. If that’s all the evidence you need, then fine. It’s not enough for me.
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Alan Bates says:
August 5, 2011 at 12:47 am
The claim is that water flows around the reactor, the nickel is bathed in hydrogen gas. We can add it to the “red flag” list if you wish.
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Wally says:
August 5, 2011 at 1:09 am
It came from a large hydrogen tank. “Large” is a concern, but if you go out and buy hydrogen, that’s what an industrial outfit might get. The hydrogen usage was closely monitored, the claim is that 1 gram or so was used. Not sure which demonstration that was in. Apparently the observers were satisfied with the measurements.
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Peter the Pedant says:
August 5, 2011 at 1:48 am
Arrgh. And I just recently figured out that kilo is abbreviated in lowercase. That surprise must have pushed out the rules for units named after people. Lower case for the name (watt, hertz), capitalized for the abbreviation (W, Hz), right?
I may go back and edit the post to fix that….
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Julian Braggins says:
August 5, 2011 at 2:20 am
Links? I remember a fellow who made the New Hampshire news at 11 with a converted clothes dryer that had a drum in a drum and oil between. The claim was it was an over unity device using friction as the source of heat. I figured his utility power meter was failing and recording too low. He might have been right after all? Probably not, but I’ll have to take away one negative point!
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Pete H says:
August 5, 2011 at 2:29 am
Yeah, I left that out. Apparently there are scammers involved after all. Don’t buy an E-Cat from some shady character in a shopping center parking lot!
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Lance says:
August 5, 2011 at 3:14 am
They’re there, (and spike upwards when the larger devices are shut down) but at a lower energy than fusion theory suggests. Hence the lead shielding, apparently only 3 mm needed and only when operating.
I find so many uninformed statements by so many of the above posters that all I can say is that most of you are reacting without one ounce of applicable information. I suggest you all go do some serious homework before making completely laughable statements you’ll eventually regret (especially those that apply hot fusion criteria to “prove” it doesn’t work, or chemical reactions as a substitute).
I hate to break it to you all, but LENR/CANR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions/Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions) is a family of real, verifiable, replicable processes that have tremendous potential in energy and related fields. But drag along in the rear of scientific progress if you want–I would have thought readers of WUWT would have educated themselves rather than exposing their ignorance so willingly. In this I have been disappointed.
By the way, if this was a scam, you’d be able to participate with stock purchases, right? Wrong. No stock is for sale and no options are available (at least in Rossi’s venture–others may offer investment opportunities which doesn’t mean they’re scams, either). This group has already secured sufficient funding through private sources to construct facilities to fabricate 300,000 E-Cat units a year and from the profit from these sales they will expand their industrial capacity to meet demand. Indeed, fabrication of units on a smaller scale is happening even as we speak.
The bottom line is transformation of certain elements into other elements with E = MCC the only equation that properly quantifies the reaction. Classical physicists are tearing their hair out and ripping their clothes in protest. How easy it is to play the fool.
Let’s forget the people involved. look at the science.
Has this “experiment” been replicated?
These statements/stories are not worth a fig until some-one else can show that it can be done
@OldJim
A demonstration unit in January took 400 watts in and put 12 kwatts out, boiling some 8.8 liters of water in 30 minutes.
If boiling means bring the temperature of the water to 100 degrees Celcius then I am right. If it means ….and then converting it to steam then you are right.
One of the criticisms of this demonstration was the change of phase made for difficult estimations of the heat output. In later experiments the energy produced was measured single phase i.e. by just measuring the rise in temperature of a flowing water stream. This is a much more convincing method and the results are convincing.
Claude Harvey,
X.L.N.T.!
Christian says:
August 5, 2011 at 5:55 am
You assume it is “something just coming off the lab bench”. Your assumption is wrong (see my prior post, please). Please do some research on the subject before commenting.