Guest post by Ric Werme
Today is the customer test of Andrea Rossi’s 1 MW fusion reactor in his facility in Bologna, Italy. While Rossi initially expected to provide streaming video of the test, the customer nixed that because they didn’t want their people on a public video. (The customer has still not been identified.) Rossi also promised hourly updates during the test, but that didn’t happen, nor did I expect it too. In any major customer attending test, you just don’t take time off for that – the customer is far more important today than is the rest of the world!
I did promise in Tips & Notes to create this post this evening to provide a discussion forum, and a few details have made it out to warrant this post.
Bottom line – the customer will buy the reactor. The only thing that looks like a data point is that it was producing 470kW with zero heating power in (self-sustain mode). Given that one metric for a successful test was to produce at least 6X the input power, it certainly passes that test!
Rossi did get one blog post up (edited to convert all-caps to proper-caps and fix an obvious typo):
Andrea Rossi
October <28th, 2011 at 10:37 AM
First information regarding the 1 MW plant test:
We started regularly the test this morning . Everything is going well so far. The 1 MW E-Cat is working in self sustaining.
Tonight I will publish the non secret report that the customer will release.
Warm regards, I have to return to the plant. Sorry, I cannot answer to the many comments I am receiving. I will publish them probably I will never find the time to answer.
Warmest regards to all,
Andrea Rossi
That’s pretty much all there is from Italy so far. I don’t know if people measured 1 MW in powered mode, I assume somewhat more information will be released later this evening.
The naysayers are going strong, with comments like suggesting the customers consultants are in on the scam, and many calls to denounce the secrecy behind this test. Hey guys, this is a sales test, not a public event.
Even Jed Rothwell is upset:
[Vo]:Dismaying rumors about October 28 test
Jed Rothwell Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:34:00 -0700
I have heard that observers of today’s tests are only being allowed to look at the equipment for a few minutes at a time, and they are not being introduced to the engineers who are taking the data. They are not being given a chance to establish the bona fides of these engineers, or to confirm that they are fully independent from Rossi.
If this is true then it goes without saying these results will have zero credibility.
If this is true then Rossi has once again taken a golden opportunity to convince the world his claims are true, and used it to make himself look like a crook.
I hope this is not true.
Whatever happens, I am sure we will get the full story. The reporters there can be relied upon to tell us the truth. If they are not allowed to interview the engineers and they cannot independently confirm the data, they will say so. I am sure Rossi knows they will tell the truth, so it seems unlikely he would impose such outrageous conditions. Unfortunately, he has often done outrageous things, such as telling people they are not allowed to measure the temperature with their own instruments.
– Jed
I’ll update this later tonight. In the meantime, discuss away, but please keep in mind this was not a science demonstration, not a public demonstration, but a step along the path to the first sale.
Also, keep in mind what this isn’t – it’s not an efficient electrical power system. The output is hot water or low pressure steam. While that can be turned into electricity, thermodynamics says it can’t be very efficient. There are plenty of applications for this sort of process heat, and that makes a fine initial target market.
Other sources of information include:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:October_28%2C_2011_Test_of_the_One_Megawatt_E-Cat
Sterling Allan from PES is on site.
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/e-day-thread-rossis-1-mw-e-cat-plant-tested-by-first-customer/
One of the first independent blogs on the E-Cat.
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=516#comments
This is Rossi’s blog, where he expected to post hourly updates. He approves posts there, and he’s been too busy to do that.
Updates
Here are links to reports from two people who were observed the test:
Sterling D. Allan (who was present), with Hank Mills from Pure Energy Systems News reported:
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.
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.
Mats Lewan of NyTeknik reported:
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.
Rossi explained this with the customer’s priority to achieve self sustained mode, which supposedly makes the process more difficult to control than when electrical power is supplied to support the reaction.
“We had to decrease the power during self sustained mode as the temperature rose too much”, Rossi said after the test.
UPDATE: I’ve allowed Ric Werme to post articles on this, with trepidation (as he noted in his first and second article on it), on the outside chance that there’s something of value here. I wrote in the first article:
Foreword: I gave Ric Werme permission to do this essay. I don’t have any doubt that the original Cold Fusion research was seriously flawed. That said, this recent new development using a different process is getting some interest, so let’s approach it skeptically to see what merit it has, if any. – Anthony
After learning of some background on the inventor (which I wasn’t aware of before today h/t to Lubos)I have very large doubts now. While Wikipedia isn’t the best reference, if there wasn’t some truth here in this reference, I expect it would be removed as libelous:
Petroldragon was an environmental technology company, which through the 90’s aimed to develop oil, coal, and gas from organic waste. It was founded by, and used patents of Andrea Rossi, and Sergio Focardi. In the late 90’s the company was found guilty of dumping environmental toxins, as well as tax fraud. Its assets were seized. [1]
News of the Rossi procedure, patented in Italy, was reported by major newspapers. Jimmy Carter showed his interest in the technology, and offered Rossi a permanent entry visa to the United States.[1] After ten months’ work and a financial investment of half a billion Lire, Petroldragon had a facility that produced twenty tons of fuel oil a day, transforming one hundred tons of organic waste.
In 1993, the company created the Petroldragon Formula 3 racing team – racecars powered by waste-derived fuel that were able to compete with cars powered by the most common petroleum products.
In the late 90’s the company was found guilty of dumping environmental toxins, as well as tax fraud. Its assets were seized, as well as Rossi’s personal assets, and Rossi was arrested and imprisoned.
The track record of the man (combined with the current cloak of secrecy) suggests that this may very well be a scam. Unless there’s some open access and independent documentation of success, I’m going to prohibit any further articles. As I’ve said in comments, we try out ideas here. Based on what I know now, I think this one needs to be put aside as unworkable, and very possibly a scam until such time it is proven. When/if it is proven as scam or factual, we’ll have another report. -Anthony
Update by Ric:
I told Anthony I’d pull some stuff together looking at the allegations in better detail. It appears the only decent source of information is from a web site Rossi created a couple years ago to address the Petroldragon saga. The events in question mostly occurred before the Internet, so there isn’t as much out there as I thought. If you believe Rossi stuck Italy with huge amount of abandoned waste, you won’t believe Rossi’s explanation. If any Italian readers can comment on the events from their memory, please do.
Rossi’s web site is http://ingandrearossi.com/ . While there is an English translation there, a better one is at Steve Krivit’s http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/RossiPetroldragonStory.shtml
A timeline seems to be the best way to summarize things:
1971 to 1996: Created Dragon, a division of his family’s business and
manufactured waste incineration and smoke purification plants.
1978: Awarded patent for a process to convert organic waste material to oil.
Started Petroldragon to commercialize it.
198?: US President Jimmy Carter offered Rossi a permanent entry visa to the
United States to develop the process in the US.
1990 (this year doesn’t make sense): Bought Omar Refinery to process oil from Petroldragon into products for
sale.
1987: Raw materials for Petroldragon had been considered “secondary refuse matter” They were reclassified “toxic waste” as were all products derived from them. “In a very short time, all equipment was sequestered. The government then determined that tanks used for storing incoming raw materials were illegal dumps of toxic waste.”
“What followed was Rossi’s arrest and imprisonment, without any possibility to save the companies. The massive media smear campaign was successful in suddenly wiping out companies whose brand value was estimated at 50 billion lire (around 30-35 million USD in 1987) and which employed 150 people.”
The saga continues on with references to infringing on petroleum based producers and crime organizations entering the waste management business.
He continues “In the past 17 years, Rossi has been in 56 trials, forcing him into deep debt because of the financial disaster, and it is still not completely paid off.
Of all 56 prosecutions, the ones which led to imprisonment ended with acquittals; only 5 of the prosecutions for tax crime ended with convictions (with some custody imprisonments). All of the other prosecutions ended with acquittal or for statute of limitation. The same Petroldragon and Omar customers, even those who suffered factory seizures or prosecutions because of involvement with Rossi’s companies, testified as witnesses in favor of the defendant.” (The customers had products derived from “toxic waste” and those without waste handling permits were now in violation of the 1987 law.)
2000: During a journey back to Italy from the U.S., when he landing at Rome airport, he was served an arrest warrant for bankruptcy of Omar company and immediately imprisoned.
2009: Went back to the U.S. permanently and he directed the development of a new energy source. (I don’t think this refers to the E-Cat.)
As for the gold trafficking, all I can find points to an ingandrearossi.com page that is only in Italian. The Google translation is as difficult to read as any, but Rossi says the gold was recovered in the Petroldragon effort and claims “And documents deemed illegal sales of gold? All regular! Documents for import and export of precious? All regular! Cash payments? The money laundering? No trace of irregularity, because all economic transactions were made with credit and non-transferable checks, never cash!
The prosecution of Ariano Irpino, even myself, and acquitted all defendants in the investigation, not even get to trial on the grounds that: ‘… lack the evidence necessary to sustain the allegations in a process …’.”
So, was Rossi imprisoned? Yes. Did he break the law? Yes, but mainly because the law changed out from under him. Was he convicted? Yes, on less than 10% of the charges, and they were tax law violations, not a confidence scheme. Is he an evil person out to pull off the scam of the century? Probably not, as he seems to have not run afoul of the law before 1987. Does all this mean we should throw up our hands and write off Rossi’s LENR invention. I don’t think so, though it certainly adds a red flag. How about all the other evidence supporting LENR? I don’t think so. Does Lubos Motl know more about LENR than any of us? Probably, but I’m not convinced he’s right. Is Rossi or LENR too controversial for WUWT? Possibly, but I think it should remain because there are too many experiments with interesting results to be able to dismiss it.
-Ric
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http://www.princeton.edu/chemistry/macmillan/group-meetings/DEC_tunneling.pdf
“Quantum Tunneling in Chemical Reactions”
Might want to skip down 1/3 – 1/2 way through the paper and start with:
Organic crystal lattices are involved and chemical reactions that physics (chemistry is explained by physics) say shouldn’t happen are observed to happen.
Contrary to urban legend humanity is a LONG way from having a theory of everything. We have working theories. We don’t have complete theories.
With regard to Rossi’s imprisonment there are two things that come to mind. First is the trial of the scientists for failing to evacuate a city before a quake. Second is the Amanda Knox trial. The efficacy of the Italian judicial system has to be taken with some grains of salt. Say for example the Bonneville salt flats.
Lucy Skywalker says:
October 30, 2011 at 4:08 am
Well, no.
1/ Pons and Fleischmann [P&F] of claimed cold fusion have more in common with Muller et al then the rest of the physics community.as they chose to publish by press release rather then go through the standard peer-review process.
2/ After hearing the news, which, if true, would have been as important as the discovery of fire, many physicists around the world dropped what they were doing and rushed off to reproduce the P&F experiment. As null result after null result was reported, skepticism started to grow and justifiably remains to this day.
Climate change is an observational science.
One does not have a set of earth’s wherein on can vary the input parameters and study the resulting climate change. This is the reason why computer models, regardles of their accuracy and merit, are so extensively employed.
Fusion is an experimental science wherein experiments, especially table top claimed cold fusion, can be independently reproduced and tested.
3/ As back-to-back 511keV gamma photons are the characteristic signature of the claimed Rossi process, neutron, proton, and gamma photon emission are the characteristic signatures of the process the P&F claimed were occurring.
D + D → 4He* + 24 MeV
to
4He* → n + 3He + 3.3 MeV (ratio=50%)
4He* → p + 3H + 4.0 MeV (ratio=50%)
4He* → 4He + γ + 24 MeV (ratio=10−6)
No one to-date has produced a statistically significant neutron, proton, or gamma signal from a so-called cold fusion experiment. Nor have the reaction products 3He, 3H, or 4He been detected at levels above background.
4/ The experimental null results are bolstered by theoretical calculations that show that the overlap between the wavefunctions of deuterium in palladium is far to small for D + D fusion to occur.
5/ At least one of P&F have continued to claim cold fusion, not unlike Mann et al and their discredited hockey stick plot, despite the lack experimental evidence.
_____
In the case of claimed cold fusion, there is no conspiracy rather justified skepticism due to the lack of non null results. In this case, science has worked as it should.
The problem is that it means “reversed alchemy” 🙂 , as it turns a more expensive material into a cheaper one (Nickel to Copper)…
I have been trying to figure out why the I find this discussion of eCat drives me crazy, and Mr Werme rather snarky comment showed me the way.
Mr Werme “I don’t know, from some of the comments here and from my August post, I think there are people who could live a house heated by an E-Cat module and still claim it doesn’t work.”
Unfortunately you have it completely wrong, I am a skeptic, ALL I want to see is a real working unit, not some propaganda put out by Rossi, with your help. By the time eCat becomes a device I can have in my basement someone will have correctly instrumented one and will be able to factually say it generate power. Period. Then I’ll believe.
The problem Mr Werme is you, you are a Cheerleader, You Want to Believe. There is nothing more dangerous than a true believer. No amount of evidence, or lack of evidence will change your mind or convince you.
In my comments I have been critical of Mr Watts for continuing to post stories about eCat, I changed my mind on that. Please continue to post about eCat but for gods sake find someone who is going to write objectively about the thing and NOT a TRUE BELIEVER.
Pete
What impresses me is not Rossi’s claims but the support he is getting from some mainstream scientists such as Focardi, Levi, Stremmenos, University of Bologna, Swedish scientists…..
What is impressing these scientists? Rossi’s nice words or Rossi’s ‘indisputable’ COP of 6?
As we all know, Fleischman and Pons’ claims have been replicated, only the mainstream science/MSM corrupt tandem just destroyed their reputation making Galileos out of the two. Meanwhile many scientists have carried out research, funded from their own bank account proving the LENR’s, albeit at very low energy outputs.
back in the 80s A friend walked up and said. “buy pallidium” He brother was at some university in Utah. There was some big announcement due. Buy options on the strange medal.
Next day,…of course. Pons and the other dude made their announcement. Others made money. Pump and dump.
people wonder how this scam works.. Its not about getting investor dollars or scaming customers..
To do this right your early investors and customer are on the take.. I wonder what commodity is in the secret catalyst? that’s where you makes the scam money. In the end the device doesnt work, but youve made bank
“Hydrogen Tunneling: First Experimental Evidence…”
There is a difference between discovering something truely new in a lab and faking up a supposedly nuclear powered water boiler, letting it produce some steam for a couple of hours and then let people responding to a blogpost somewhere search google scholar for possible cutting edge explainations for how it may or may not do what you say it does. Reminds me of all those people jumping onto a stage whenever somebody invented yet another perpettum mobile and claim its really zero point energy – just because they happen to believe in it and hope against hope that somebody making a video of a wooden box in a garage has somehow cracked it. As yet – no.
Esowatch has a rather complete chronology of this particular scam online here:
http://www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer
Steve Mosher, take 10 minutes and read this:
http://pesn.com/2011/10/30/9501941_Rebuttal_to_Krivits_Accusation_that_Andrea_Rossi_is_a_Fraudster/
I think there are better ways to “make bank”. Besides, Rossi has said the secret catalyst contains fairly common materials, so I don’t see much upside in a futures play on whatever it is. It reportedly isn’t some “strange medal” {sic}.
Typhoon says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:10 am
Sorry, Typhoon. You’re wrong. And you’re either in the employ of Big Oil that doesn’t want to see cold fusion take off, or you’re clueless to the facts.
Let’s let time work this out and at that point you’ll look back and admit you were wrong.
Dagobert says:
October 30, 2011 at 9:07 am
“Hydrogen Tunneling: First Experimental Evidence…”
“There is a difference between discovering something truely new in a lab and faking up a supposedly nuclear powered water boiler, letting it produce some steam for a couple of hours and then let people responding to a blogpost somewhere search google scholar for possible cutting edge explainations for how it may or may not do what you say it does.”
I always learn something in the process of looking into claims like this.
Did you know that hydrogen tunneling has been observed in organic chemistry? I sure didn’t. But I do now.
Dagobert says:
October 30, 2011 at 9:07 am
Bingo.
Diffusion of hydrogen in nickel can be calculated reasonably well ab initio – from first physics principles:
http://goo.gl/Rhl7o
Again, if the nuclear reaction claimed to be occurring in the nickel lattice
Ni58 + p → Cu59
Copper nucleus Cu59 decays with positron (e+) and neutrino (ν) emission in Ni59 nucleus according to
Cu59 → Ni59 + ν + e+
Then (e+) annichilates with (e-) in two gamma-rays
e- + e+ → γ + γ
is occurring,
then the basic physics of the detection, or not, of back-to-back [by conservation of momentum] emission of 511keV gamma photons [ γ ] should have been the first step in any proof of concept.
The fact that this has not been done is a massive red flag.
Arguments based on supposed power generation, appeals to authority, or invoking conspiracy theories are meaningless without this fundamental experimental test.
Peter Brown says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:44 am
MrV;
@davidmhoffer
I’m not sure about the whole patent/buyer/big business conspiracy you have outlined.>>>
Your premise seems to be that big business could simply steal one if they wanted. No, they can’t. That would be against the law. Further, they have no incentive. There’s no proof the thing works, and until there is, they won’t be much interested. Once the product hits the market and hurts their sales, then they might care. Maybe. Large companies are very slow to wake up. Remember Addresograph-Memograph? They had 100% of the calculator market which at the time were large mechanical devices with rows of button to enter numbers with and a large crank to add the current number to the running total. They went bankrupt while still explaining to their board of directors that those little electronic devices from TI and HP would never catch on.
Once the big boys catch on that there is a competitive threat, then they’ll arrange to get their hands on one by buying it “used” from someone else. No need to risk charges of theft, industrial espionage and so on until they’re actually convinced they have a competitor to be concerned about.
Typhoon says:
@Typhoon
There have been non-null results for P&F. Quite a few of them.
Here’s some very recent discussion:
http://www.rle.mit.edu/rleonline/ProgressReports/3696_48_PR152.pdf
The faithful come in two flavors, by the way. The “True Believers” and the “True Disbelievers”. Are you one of the latter? The usual place we experience this faith dichotomy is religion. There are those that believe there is a God and there are those that believe there is not a God. Both positions require faith. Science is agnostic and someone who respects it does not become a True Disbeliever in P&F but rather keeps an open mind and watches (even with a jaundiced eye) for further developments. Anyone that keeps up with physics could not help but know that P&F effect is still on the table with ambiguous, confounding findings of excess energy and ongoing research into it.
Ric Werme: “I don’t know, from some of the comments here and from my August post, I think there are people who could live a house heated by an E-Cat module and still claim it doesn’t work.”
It’s a testable hypothesis. Produce a house heated by an E-Cat module and we’ll see. We could have two identical houses in rural Minnesota or Sweden, one heated by electricity, and the other heated by the E-Cat, same indoor and outdoor temperatures, from October through May. The house heated by the E-Cat module should not use more than 16% (an expert can calculate a better value based on data of houses of that type in that setting) of the electricity used for the other house. (This can be modified if the E-Cat is to be started with gas heating instead of electricity — 83% gas savings.) But as I noted above, Rossi has spent the time since August NOT PRODUCING a house heated by an E-Cat module. It isn’t too late, though, and maybe he’ll have one ready by Jan 1, 2012, to operate through May. That would be an ok test.
Alex says: As we all know, Fleischman and Pons’ claims have been replicated, only the mainstream science/MSM corrupt tandem just destroyed their reputation making Galileos out of the two. If Pons’ and Fleischman’s claims had been true, we’d have fleets of vehicles of all sizes powered by Pons/Fleischman devices — city sewer systems as well, malls and large buildings, university dormitories, hospitals and assisted living facilities, PV panel factories, cruise liners and freighters, military vehicles. You’d need shielding from the gamma rays, but that is a cost way lower than the energy savings. There are many more consumers of energy than there are producers, and they all want cheaper energy. Even GE, Sharp and Siemens, who manufacture energy equipment, want cheaper inputs to their manufacturing processes, and they’d make a bundle selling the Pons/Fleischman devices.
Cirrius Man: I really can’t believe anyone can be so stupid to try a scam in this manner.
I think that arguments like that are comically inadequate. He does not have to scam everyone — he does not even have to scam many people, or even a few people. He only needs 1 rich investor. My belief is the opposite of yours — almost certainly there is at least 1 sucker out there with money. Suckers invest in mysterious hedge funds and mortgage-backed securities; how could Rossi be worse than that? Judging from their comments here, Lucy Skywalker and some others would invest in Rossi if they had the money.
“But as I noted above, Rossi has spent the time since August NOT PRODUCING a house heated by an E-Cat module.”
Funnily enough – he claims just that. In his patent application he wrote:
“A practical embodiment of the inventive apparatus, installed on October 16, 2007, is at present perfectly operating 24 hours per day, and provides an amount of heat sufficient to heat the factory of the Company EON of via Carlo Ragazzi 18, at Bondeno (Province of Ferrara).”
Makes you wonder how he still hasn’t got a clue how it works. What Province of Ferrara officials would say about an untested nuclear reactor running in their vicinity is another question. Probably they’d put him in jail again (or maybe they showed up on his doorstep with a Geiger-Müller counter and – just like everybody else – couldn’t find any evidence of a nuclear reaction whatsoever).
There are lot of biological proton tunneling reactions; they are detected using D2O and T2O and analyzing the kinetics.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/5/055002/fulltext
Typhoon says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:05 pm
“Thus the kinetic energy of the protons, of the hydrogen atoms, is about 7 orders of magnitude [a factor of 10^7] too low for the claimed nuclear reaction to have occurred in the device.”
This “proof” is the equivalent of using 19th century physics to “prove” that the atom bomb won’t work.
LENR reactions are not hot fusion. You can’t judge them in the framework of hot fusion science. The fact that LENR reactions exist and have been replicated over and over can’t be “disproven” by trotting out a bunch of energy calculations based upon a theory that clearly doesn’t apply.
You seem like a person who understands standard quantum physics,Typhoon. Unfortunately standard quantum physics doesn’t account for LENR reactions. It is 20th century physics in a 21st century world, if you will. Fortunately, the physics that will define 21st century science has already been developed by Frank Znidarsic. If you want to understand the physics of LENR reactions, you need to study the work of Frank Znidarsic. If you understand his mathematics of the transition state (which is much simpler than you would expect, requiring only an understanding of high school algebra to understand), you will quickly see how and why the Coulomb barrier is not a factor under the conditions that Rossi is creating in his e-Cat reactors.
DocMartyn says:
October 30, 2011 at 10:58 am
Certainly.
However, nothing to with nuclear reactions of the type claimed by Rossi et al in their device.
Typhoon says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:05 pm
Ric Werme says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:15 am
The process that Rossi claims is occurring in the device::
Ni58 + p → Cu59
Copper nucleus Cu59 decays with positron (e+) and neutrino (ν) emission in Ni59 nucleus according to
Cu59 → Ni59 + ν + e+
Then (e+) annichilates with (e-) in two gamma-rays
e- + e+ → γ + γ
Positron emission here gives two big problems, if the above reaction is indeed to what Rossi attributes energy generation.
1. The 511 keV energy of the positron annihilation photons is quite high – very easy to detect externally by a geiger or proportional counter. These photons MUST be detected for Rossi’s hypothesis to be confirmed.
2. The 511 keV photons from positron annihilation cannot be the basis for heating of anything smaller than a very big building or a small hill. From an object of the size of Rossi’s units nearly all the 511 keV photon energy would escape.
Typhoon says:
October 29, 2011 at 11:05 pm
Ah, so you and Lubos reject all LENR claims, not just Rossi’s.
Clearly if LENR occurs, it requires something we don’t understand. I haven’t found a hypothesis I like and readily admit I’m not qualified to evaluate any of them properly anyway.
The “problem” with LENR is that it simply refuses to go away. Polywater crashed spectacularly after someone reproduced it with sweat from his tennis shirt. LENR has kept producing tantalizing hints that something is out there. The “problem” with Rossi’s device is twofold: 1) Rossi isn’t a scientist and his goal is to produce a product, doing science comes second; 2) he may be a lying scumbucket scammer.
Of course I agree it would be nice to see some careful measurements made on an E-Cat module, but I understand why Rossi sees that as a waste of time when there’s a schedule to meet. I don’t have time to hunt down the references, but Rossi says he heated his work shop last year with one of his modules. Which maybe be the deluded claim of a lying scumbucket scammer.
Dagobert says:
October 30, 2011 at 3:40 am
I don’t see it crying out “it’s a scam,” it cries out “it may be a scam.” Perhaps some of that comes from being a software engineer – we tend to avoid absolutes. I’d have trouble agreeing that the sun will rise tomorrow, and not just because it won’t rise tomorrow near the North Pole.
As for what would convince me it’s a scam is for the customer to be unable to get his MW (or half MW) out of the system they bought. Even that wouldn’t rule out LENR in all cases, but it sure would leave a rather high bar for the next technology.
Peter Brown says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:44 am
Perhaps. My comments above explain some of the position I’ve taken. Sure, I want to believe that Rossi has a new source of heat, I don’t think I’m a true believer (too absolute, per above). However, I’ll grant you that self assessment generally comes in too high.
Dagobert says:
October 30, 2011 at 9:07 am
Aha – that was the URL I was looking for last night. (Oh gee, it’s in my August post, one source I didn’t review, but should have!) That page is useful as a view from a true disbeliever, one who has a lot more time than I do. Peter Brown – you’ll find it a fine antidote.
One more recent scam? delusion? was a high efficiency thermoelectric module that wound up either not working or worked no better than conventional modules. It would be nice to know more about it, but I’ve never seen more than what’s in the esowatch page.
I really can’t believe anyone can be so stupid to try a scam in this manner.
We should never assume that other people all think alike, and think like us. If he is a con artist, he thinks he can fool someone.
Last comment from me.