A group of Italian and Swedish scientists from Bologna and Uppsala have just published their report on two tests lasting 96 and 116 hours, confirming an anomalous heat production in the energy device known as the E-Cat, developed by the Italian inventor Andrea Rossi.
The report is available for download here and on Arxiv.org.
I have earlier reported extensively on the E-Cat in the Swedish technology magazine Ny Teknik, but since more than a year very little new verified information have been available. This looks different.
The conclusion of the report is that the heat production is orders of magnitude beyond any conventional chemical energy source, beaten only by nuclear based power sources. Yet the scientists have systematically made conservative assumptions in order to base the result on a worst case scenario.
“Even by the most conservative assumptions as to errors in the measurements, the result is still one order of magnitude greater than conventional energy sources.”
In the tests, about 5.6 and 2.6 times the input energy was produced respectively (COP). An hypothesis for the lower value in the second test is that it might be explained by a lower working temperature , on average 302 °C against 438 °C in the first run.
In the second test an identical dummy reactor without fuel charge was run with the same experimental set-up and found to produce no excess heat.
In their report the scientists also describes a third test when the reaction went out of control and destroyed the reactor. Through the reactor tube made of ceramics and steel they could observe two red heat sources where the fuel charges supposedly were located (see picture above). The heat was so intense that the coils of a number of electric resistances that were being used to start the reaction could be seen as shadows against the glowing red light.
Another observation regards the shape of the rising and falling temperature curve, clearly indicating an active heat source which doesn’t behave as an electric heat source, but instead as an accelerating reaction.
Throughout the tests no significant radiation above ambient background could be detected.
The reactor used in the test was called the E-Cat HT, where HT stands for High Temperature. It’s also known as the Hot Cat and is a development of an earlier model that reached about a 100 degrees Celsius. In both models the fuel charge consists of a small amount of hydrogen loaded nickel powder plus some unknown additives.
The tests were performed in Andrea Rossi’s premises in Ferrara, Italy, in December 2012 and March 2013.
The authors of the report are Giuseppe Levi, physicist, Bologna University, Evelyn Foschi, Bologna, Torbjörn Hartman, Radiation protection responsible at the Svedberg Laboratory, Bo Höistad, professor of nuclear physics, Roland Pettersson, Lecturer in Physical and Analytical Chemistry and Lars Tegnér, physical chemist and former development director at the Swedish Energy Agency, all representing Uppsala University, and Hanno Essén, assistant professor and theoretical physicist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
A longer test of the same device lasting for about six months is planned to be made later this year.
We plan to publish a follow-up report with comments in Ny Teknik soon.
Update: Here’s our report in Ny Teknik with comments from Professor Bo Höistad (in Swedish only).
Mats Lewan: The Biggest Shift Ever. 
Levi and his associates are not electrical engineers. They should hire a bloody decent electrical consultant. If i was doing the test, I would use DC current and feed directly to the Hotcat’s resistors.
H-G Branzell wrote:” “They were fed by a TRIAC power regulator device which interrupted each phase periodically, in order to modulate power input with an industrial trade secret waveform.”
My interpretation of this sentence is that this modulation will have the same frequency as the AC, i. e. 50 Hz in Italy. If this is correct the modulation could have no influence whatsoever on the temperature in the fuel container. Even the temperature of the heating spiral will vary very little for this frequency. So the modulation of the AC current is at best a distraction.”
And in a later post: “Also, there is no mentioning of a variac in the third party report. Instead there is a triac regulator which gives a very spiky curve form as can be seen in the appendix that has been added to the report and it is still a matter of discussion if the instrument used, PCE-830, was capable of measuring the power that was fed to the heating resistors.”
This modulation will certainly not have any influence whatsoever on the temperature in the “fuel” container. Its main contribution is to reduce the power factor by shifting the phase between voltage and the fundamental component of the current and introduce harmonics.
In the March test the triac was replaced by another circuit, but the waveforms in the appendix are very similar to what you can see in triac circuits. Both the harmonic content and cos(phi) for the fundamental are below the limit 0.5 required for reliable power measurement with PCE-830 according to the specifications. The total power factor is certainly far too low!
The authors do not discuss the problems of phase shift and harmonics. In the description of the December test, they write that the resistors were delta-connected, which seem strange, since it is difficult to get closed circuits that way fed by a triac interrupting each phase periodically. I believe the resistors were wye(Y or star)-connected to ground which is more usual when regulating power with triacs. It also fits more into the change to the new two-phase circuit for the March test, where it was possible to avoid the ground connection and reduce the possibilities for hidden power input.
It appears that the authors are not vary familiar with electric circuits and measurements.
.
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June 25 2013, TWO MYSTERIES
This is a quotation from Rossi’s blog:
Andrea Rossi
September 9th, 2012 at 6:07 PM
“Dear Brian:
It is necessary that I repeat the following statement:
THE HOT CAT ( REACTOR AT HIGH TEMPERATURE) HAS NOT BEEN YET VALIDATED, BECAUSE THE TESTS AND THE MEASUREMENTS HAVE STILL TO BE COMPLETED, AND TO COMPLETE THEM WILL BE NECESSARY AT LEAST 2-3 MORE MONTHS. I SAID THIS IN MY REPORT IN ZURICH AND I REPEAT THIS HERE.
THE PROFESSORS AND ENGINEERS WHO ARE MAKING THESE TESTS ARE SPECIALISTS AND THEIR WORK IS COMPLEX. FOR EXAMPLE, THE MEASUREMENT OF THE ENERGY CONSUMED HAS TO BE MADE IN A WAY THAT IS BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, SO NOW WE ARE REPEATING THE MEASUREMENTS USING A VARIAC TO AVOID THAT ENERGY USED BY THE RESISTANCES IS NOT MEASURED BY THE VOLTMETER AND THE AMPEROMETER (THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE MANY ISSUES THAT ARE UNDER PROBE). THEREFORE IT IS ABSOLUTELY WRONG TO USE THE EXPRESSION” THE ENGINEERS WHO PERFORMED THE PUBLISHED VALIDATION”, WHILE IS CORRECT THE EXPRESSION ”THE PROFESSORS AND THE ENGINEERS WHO ARE PERFORMING THE VALIDATION IN COURSE”
THE FINAL RESULTS WILL BE PUBLISHED IN A SCIENTIFIC MAGAZINE ONLY AFTER THE VALIDATION WILL HAVE BEEN COMPLETED.
I AM RECEIVING FROM MANY PERSONS THIS QUESTION: ”IS IT POSSIBLE TO INVEST IN THE HOT CAT”? MY ANSWER IS: NO, IT IS NOT, BECAUSE THE REACTOR FOR HIGH TEMPERATURES IS NOT READY, IS NOT AS PRODUCT, IS A PROTOTYPE SUBJECT TO RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AND I WANT NOT TO PUT ANYBODY AT RISK BEFORE THE HOT CAT IS NOT YET A PRODUCT. OF COURSE I BELIEVE IN IT, I AM INVESTING MY MONEY IN IT, BUT I WANT NOT TO PLAY FOOT BALL WITH THE BONES OF THE OTHERS
Warm Regards,
Andrea Rossi”
The third party report is here: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.3913.pdf
In this report tests from December 2012 and March 2013 are mentioned and before these a failed test was done in November 2012, it is said. Only the March test was attended by all authors of the third party report.
In his posting Rossi says that “THE PROFESSORS AND ENGINEERS ARE PERFORMING THE VALIDATION”, but this was in the beginning of September and the experiments had not started yet, or this test was not reported.
Also, there is no mentioning of a variac in the third party report. Instead there is a triac regulator which gives a very spiky curve form as can be seen in the appendix that has been added to the report and it is still a matter of discussion if the instrument used, PCE-830, was capable of measuring the power that was fed to the heating resistors.
I will leave these inconsistencies for you to ponder upon and hopefully comment on.
The report that I linked to in previous posting receives some heavy criticism in this document::
Comments on the report ”Indications of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor
device containing hydrogen loaded nickel powder.” byG.Levi, E.Foschi, T.Hartman,
B.Höistad, R.Pettersson, L.Tegnér,H.Essén.
By Göran Ericsson and Stephan Pomp
Division of applied nuclear physics,Uppsala University, Sweden
Click to access 1306.6364.pdf
Wow that was strange. I just wrote an really long comment but
after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again.
Anyhow, just wanted to say wonderful blog!
Mats, you say that we have too little information about Rossi’s devices to have an opinion on various aspects of them. But for the E-Cat HT Rossi has been kind enough to reveal a lot of details. We have seen all the interior parts, except that we have not been allowed to peek into the nickel powder container. We did see it cut into halves though.
So what’s in the E-Cat HT? What you can see without taking it apart is the outer tube, about 9 cm in diameter. Inside the outer tube we find cylindrical heaters with an outer diameter that is close to the inner diameter of the outer tube. The heaters are cylindrical ceramic bodies with axial slots in their outer surfaces. In these slots electric heating spirals are installed. This kind of heater is designed for construction of electric heater cartridges e. g. for heating water and it is designed to transfer the heat outwards, radially from the open slots. Of course the interior of the ceramic body will also get hot, but the heat conduction to the interior is comparatively slow. In the center of the ceramic core is an axial hole with a diameter of around 3 cm into which the hermetically sealed fuel container is inserted.
Based on the description above there are two points that I would like to make. The first point concerns the modulation of the AC power that was fed to the heaters. Quoting from the report:
“They were fed by a TRIAC power regulator device which interrupted each phase periodically, in order to modulate power input with an industrial trade secret waveform.”
My interpretation of this sentence is that this modulation will have the same frequency as the AC, i. e. 50 Hz in Italy. If this is correct the modulation could have no influence whatsoever on the temperature in the fuel container. Even the temperature of the heating spiral will vary very little for this frequency. So the modulation of the AC current is at best a distraction.
The second point is that the idea of controlling a heat producing reaction with more heat is quite farfetched. Just imagine electric heat slowly working its way into the inner chamber, heating it up and eventually an unidentified reaction starts in the fuel. If the reaction produces some kind of radiation we know that it does not exit the outer tube. For that not to happen 99.999% or so of the radiation must be absorbed already by the inner chamber. Since the amount of heat that is produced this way is supposed to be several times the external heat that is supplied by the electric heaters it too should enhance the reaction und thus it would be pointless to turn off the electric heaters to stop the reaction. It will already be self sustained in the same way that a bonfire once started does not need the match that started it. According to Rossi a runaway reaction melts the nickel powder and the reaction stops by itself. And as we see, this should happen as soon as an E-Cat of arbitrary model is started. Since its fuel does not melt down each and every time the E-Cat is started there must be some basic misunderstanding here or somewhere else.
@Mats
The used Nickel powder sample supplied by Rossi also contained a substantial percentage of Copper, the supposed end product of the maybe nuclear reaction. It is very hard to imagine that Copper powder emanating from the transmutation of Nickel could magically migrate and mix with unaffected Nickel powder. Mats, you have studied physics, please explain to us how this could be possible.
Even if the sample was unaffected by the unknown reaction the conclusion of the repoart is still a contradiction to Rossi’s frequent statements that the Nickel powder he uses is enriched in certain isotopes.
Moreover, this enrichment is supposedly done with his secret, dirt cheap self invented enrichment process which alone, if it existed, could give Rossi a Nobel Prize and more money than he could ever use.
My understanding is that few believes in the Ni+H = Cu hypothesis now. In that case Cu might be contamination.
This also shows the need of much more controlled measurements.
@Mats
Ok, the first E-Cats were made from copper tubing, but to the best of my knowledge the nickel powder has always been enclosed in a stainless steel cylinder tight enough to keep hydrogen from leaking out and certainly tight enough to keep copper contaminated water out of it. Note that the report states that the copper content of the used powder is close to 10%. That is a lot of copper.
The unused powder had 0% copper in it, so the copper must have entered the scene during the “use” of the powder.
What is your opinion on Rossi’s enrichment procedure? Do you really think that he did invent a machine that can enrich nickel to a negligible cost? Or do you prefer to think that the nickel enrichment is not needed anymore and therefore the question is not interesting?
Contamination can happen in many ways. We know nothing about procedures of opening and closing the reactor, and of filling and emptying fuel from the device.
Regarding enrichment I would say the same thing — I have way too little information about the device to have any opinion at all on treatment or composition of the fuel.
So far the only thing I believe you can discuss is whether there’s anomalous heat or not, and possibly also the characteristics of the temperature development. Everything else will remain to be discussed when there’s more data.
@Mats
Here you will find the missing report on the isotopic ratios in Rossi’s used Nickel powder:
Click to access 20121204Kullander-Ni-Isotopes-LIG1204121.pdf
The surfaced report is over a year old and the conclusion is that there has been no isotopic shifts in the Nickel.
This is true. But I have also understood, as I pointed out before, that the issue is not simple. In this case a very small sample of a relatively large amount of supposedly used fuel powder has been analyzed. Given that we don’t even know what kind of process or reaction might be affecting the fuel it’s difficult to draw any conclusions. It’s even possible that the sample has been taken from a point in the powder that was not affected by the undefined and unknown reaction.
You simply have to make much more controlled experiments, which I hope will be done.
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If the input energy is doubt, rig the thing up to a diesel powered generator.
To prevent any other energy sources (e.g. mircrowaves) conduct the experiment in a Faraday cage room. You then have a true ‘black-box’ system.
Fill the generator with enough fuel to last 100 hours, and conduct a null ice melting test using the electricity to heat wires to melt ice directly.
Repeat the same experiment with the e-can device in between.
Compare ice melts…
I have a question & please excuse any ignorance that my question infers.
Do we know whether this type of reaction is nuclear or as of now, some unknown form of chemical reaction, or something else totally different. Likes of which I couldn’t even begin to speculate.
I have struggled with the concept of ‘cold fusion’ as an idea for a while, but I’m a sceptic up until something is proven, rather then being a “pathological sceptic”. Something like this is extremely interesting to me & I of course wish the best of luck to all those involved in this project.
Greg, the point of the report is that it’s an indication of a heat production of which the energy density is many times greater than any possible chemical reaction.
That basically leaves us with nuclear reactions whose energy densities are about a million times greater than that of chemical reactions.
However, no known type of nuclear reaction has the characteristics that fit in this case.
This is the dilemma.
Mats
Mats Lewan, do you know (or can you ask somebody who knows) what kind of iron Kullander & Essen found in Rossis used fuel sample? There was a discussion about isotopic composition of Ni and Cu, which were too close to natural ratios for being products of nuclear transmutation, but no single word about the isotopic composition of the iron (they found 11% of iron in the sample).
This is very important piece of information, which can reveal the nature of energy producing process!
Hi Allan,
I don’t think Kullander’s analysis of the ashes has been disclosed yet. But I know that the issue is not trivial. The sample of the ashes was of several grams. When you make an analysis of that sample you pick a very little amount from it, which means that you don’t necessarily get the full picture.
Let’s say that this is a nuclear process with some kind of nuclear transmutations involved. We don’t know what these transmutations are so we cannot know how much energy they give, but if they are like other nuclear transmutations the energies involved are relatively high and the number of atoms affected compared to the whole sample is little. We don’t know either if the process takes place everywhere in the fuel or only in very limited zones, which means that we might pick a sample with atoms that have not been affected/transmuted. In other words — to make a significant analysis of the ashes you need a very small amount where you are sure to pick material that has been effected. Then you need to make long series of analyses under extremely controlled conditions.
The bottom line — Kullander has not been able to do this. And I suppose that what has been possible to do gives a result that is too insecure to be relevant.
Hi Mats,
I agree with this, but 11% is a large fraction and if this iron has unnatural isotopic composition, then it can provide us a glue about the source of the energy, especially so if there is far more than 0.28% of Fe58. This is a rare form of iron and can be a result of other nuclear reaction, (stimulated?) alpha decay of Ni62. This is almost a miracle, I know, but it is still better than whole bunch of miracles needed for other hypotheses for being right. I’m a firm believer in the “conservation of miracles.” 🙂
Rossi himself does not believe any more in the Ni+p=Cu hypothesis and he has recently applied for a patent about the usage of Ni62. Also in their 2010 paper Rossi and Focardi state clearly that there is no other elements in the fuel, only nickel and hydrogen and if this is true then the “secret catalyst” must be an isotope of one of them.
Erm–let’s not party too hearty yet. A friend passed on the following link: http://news.newenergytimes.net/2013/05/21/rossi-manipulates-academics-to-create-illusion-of-independent-test/
The test was using clamp ammeters to measure current, which were hugging the cables provided
by Rossi, and no internal access to the cables was available.
Clamp ammeters, which uses magnetic field around the wire to estimate current, can be easily fooled to report any current or no current at all by additional wires inside (and possibilities of other manipulations of magnetic field are endless, such as shielding, additional winding, ferrite rings etc).
Bottom line – if clam ammeter is used, the cable is a part of measurement system. Without full access to the inside of this cable (or using your own wire) it is not an independent measurement. It is under complete control of the provider of the cable and maker of black box that powers it.
Below articles shows a nice schematic demonstrating fooling clamp ammeter to report zero current:
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e-cat-is-back-and-people-are-still-falling-for-it/
The only way to avoid this vulnerability is to make voltage measurement across your own independently calibrated sense resistors connected to each wire going into the system (e.g not to use clamp ammeter), or to use your own wires for all inputs. Failing to consider this completely invalidates the test as independent.
Regards,
Yevgen
This confirmation of cold fusion, some 24 years after Pons & Fleischmann, will produce profound effects in global financial and fossil fuel industries. There is immediate great risk that $4 Trillion of investment in fossil fuels could become stranded assets. Even if cold fusion is seen to be real but a few decades away from full globalization there will be a rush to sell these stranded assets at deep discounts before they lose all value. You can read more details at this link http://goo.gl/A7UgP
Reblogged this on paul8ar.
Remember folks — no trolling or allegations please. Such comments will be trashed (unless you attack me which I’m used to).
No one should attack you, you are doing a great job Mats!
This looks encouraging. . One can only ask why Rossi waited until he was on the edge to be ridiculed..he acts erratically and gives no confidence. .maybe that’s his plan though..
Jed Rothwell wrote: ““It is not possible that Rossi was lying or faking in previous tests and only now he has something real.”
Right. But it’s entirely possible that he was lying and faking in previous tests and he found a new way to fool the same people he fooled before. That’s why this is not truly an independent test nor an adequate one. I suggest you take Storms’ cautions to heart. There are a lot of ways bad measurements could account for the results. And running six months with bad measurements won’t reveal the truth any more than an hour run.
For openers, isn’t it strange that they calibrated with DC and their experiment took place with complex (and proprietary meaning secret) waveforms? Isn’t it unusual that the emissivity of the paint was unknown and that the only available measurement of output heat flow is radiation measurement? Surface temperatures are not the same as calorimetry. There was no need to go to this ridiculously complicated system to check out the ecat and Rossi’s veracity. It should have been done with the *original* device purported to produce 10 kilowatts from something the size of a tennis ball at around 100 degrees C. That’s amenable to proper calorimetry easily. The problem, of course, is that such proper calorimetry was never done.
They measured the power going into the power supplies, before the waveforms were produced. Even if you assume that every joule of electricity was delivered to the device, that cannot account for the reaction. It could not make the device incandescent, or melt it.
“But it’s entirely possible that he was lying and faking in previous tests and he found a new way to fool the same people he fooled before.”
I doubt it, for a couple of reasons:
Several experts tested Rossi’s reactors when he is not present. They tested the factory heater in Italy, and a similar reactor in the U.S. Focardi talked about this on a video interview on Italian TV, and the people who did the tests sent me photos and data. Unfortunately, they asked me not to publish it.
If what you say is possible, you or some other skeptic would have described a method of doing it by now. You have not. Your assertions about possible errors have been incorrect as far as I know. I may not have kept track of all of them. People such as Hanno Essen know much more about measuring power and energy than you do, and they have dismissed your hypotheses. Just because you claim a person can cause instrument artifacts, that does not mean a person actually can. You would have to demonstrate this before I believe it. That is, you would have to set up a machine and show that instruments such as the ones listed in this report display the wrong answer by a gigantic margin.
People have been measuring heat and electric power at these power levels for well over a century, in commercial and industrial applications. If there were ways to fool experts using standard instruments and techniques, someone would have discovered them by now. It is very important to measure electricity and heat accurately. A person could steal millions of dollars by coming up with the kind of techniques you believe exist. A person could also kill large numbers of people.
To be a little more specific, this test involves three instruments: a clamp on ammeter downstream of the power supply, a voltmeter, and an IR camera. It is literally hands-off. Other than the voltmeter, the instruments brought by the outside researchers never comes close to the cell. They did use a thermocouple to confirm the IR reading, but it is not necessary. (It shows a 3 deg C difference because it is under plastic sticker holding it to the surface.)
You would have to explain how Rossi can magically make an ammeter or an IR camera work wrong. After they measure amperage, voltage, emissivity, and air temperature, everything else is first principle physics. Air temperature has only a negligible effect so even if Rossi has cast a spell on their thermometers it will not help him.
All of the instruments and the cylinder at every moment during the test are recorded on video, in order to “produce a nonfalsifiable document” as the authors put it. No one touched any part of it during the test.
There is no way Rossi could have cheated. It is physically impossible. You need to put that notion aside — although I am sure you will cling to it instead. The only possible cheating would involve all 7 co-authors plus Rossi. So now he has persuaded several new scientists from U. Uppsala and The Royal Institute of Technology to join him in his scam? I don’t think so!
A great post. .I totally agree. .I assume that the only thing one can have towards Rossi is that his erratic behaviour is delaying the introduction of a new power source that can save million of lives. .
Jed,
I understand that in one test the clamp on meters were upstream of the control box. But Rossi or his people still supplied the mains power. That could have been altered so as to transmit more energy than the instruments could register. For example, the wave form and power factor could have been altered.
Power calculations from temperature involve a fourth power calculation which is extremely error prone. A small error in the input to the calculation results in a huge error in the result. An error in the emissivity also results in too high a power out calculation. I have not finished evaluating the paper with regard to the assumptions it made and the controls and calibrations it tried to incorporate.
I think that like all the other indeterminate tests Rossi provided, this one will also remain indeterminate. I do not think it will ever be repeated properly outside of Rossi’s facilities.
I never suggested that the co-authors were conspiring with Rossi or cheating. I am exceedingly suspicious about Levi due to his close association with Rossi, his highly tangential answers to Krivit during an interview and his refusal (to Josephson) to repeat his earlier, simple direct experiments using liquid flow calorimetry but with proper calibration and controls. That refusal is unconscionable and impossible to comprehend. It would cost nothing and would require less than a week. I suspect his original test is either a measurement error (thermocouple too near heater) or deliberate fraud. I have no proof. It’s just a suspicion.
I think the others are honest but that they did not go far enough to make sure all possible ways that Rossi could cheat were eliminated. Unless a team composed of better specialists (for example heat transfer experts) tests the ecat in a truly independent manner, we still won’t know. Of course this could all be settled if Rossi would name a single customer who was truly independent, credible and reliable, and who would allow independent testing of a sold ecat or plant. I predict this will never happen.
@MY
“But Rossi or his people still supplied the mains power. ”
too dangerous for a magician, since the scientist have access to the mainplug freely without being controlled.
the best evidence the test is genuine? out of the black tube itself (which may not be LENR reactor, but an antimatter bottle of alien technology), is that ROSSI let independent people (including a member of the skeptic society) be there without control.
Just alone that fact cancel accusation of scam theory…
about errors, with a COP of 6, you could make an industry with that level or error…
as I said sometime, if LENR was not nuclear, but either fraud, strange chemical reaction, or anything else , anyway it is a GREAT DISCOVERY IN SCIENCE ! (bigger than simply a low energy nuclear reaction, which is new but not so alien).
even fraud and error follow the law of physics…
accusation of fraud, follow the rule that without evidence there is no risk in voiding claims.
<>
And that’s the perfectly rational gist of it all. While I do not share your well known and prolonged antagonism toward Rossi as a person, and I am sympathetic with devious methods that he might need to overcome the many conflicts of interest and obstacles that would naturally oppose any individual attempting to seize control of the motors of the world, none of the more obvious methods of unequivocal tests/demonstrations of e-cats seem to have ever been performed in public. Occam’s Razor suggests the rational explanation. None of Rossi’s species of cats can pass simple unequivocal tests.
It’s likely that to enable the conduction of a conclusive public demonstration of any species of “excess energy” cat, nearly any local electrical utility company would provide a free tamper-proof meter, dedicated power feed, and power use monitoring electrical engineer.
That would sufficiently settle the input energy question. High school physics classes equipped only with instruments consisting of cheap wristwatches, plastic buckets, bathroom scales, and alcohol tube thermometers, could weigh several garbage pails of crushed ice, and the amount of near freezing liquid water produced by recirculating water through the cat’s guts and the garbage pails of crushed ice. That would settle the output energy question. What could be easier or more definitive? Do a test run with electrical power applied and no hydrogen in the cat. That gives a null reference. Then let Rossi inject the hydrogen, secret ingredient, shock his strange cat anyway he likes, and have the high school students simply measure how much faster the ice melts. Rossi might be able to fool professors of physics, but it seems extremely unlikely he could fool the high school students, investors, or the public, with the simple melting ice test. When Rossi rapidly melts a few garbage pails of crushed ice with an objectively supervised and dedicated mains power supply, I’m a believer, and an investor, as I suspect you also would be.
Mats Lewan: Are you a professional scammer or are you just stupid? Shame on you either way.
While I disagree with Mats and I think Rossi has just found a new way to fool the same people he fooled before, it’s no reason to be rude with Mats. I think he’s sincere and he’s trying his best.
I suggest you carefully consider Dr. Edmund Storm’s cautionary post on Vortex:
“Edmund Storms Mon, 20 May 2013 09:15:15 -0700
Before we get too excited. I think two questions need to be answered.
1. When was the calibration done and under what conditions. The amount of heat being radiated depends on the value of the effective total emissivity of the surface. This value will change with time and temperature. Therefore, the value needs to be determined as a function of temperature both before and after the hot-cat was heated. Details about how the temperature of the surface was determined also need to be provided. A detailed description of the test is required before these claims can be accepted.
2. How long does the hot-cat function at such high temperatures. This time will determine whether the device is a practical source of energy. The extra energy may be real, but if it only lasts a short time before the NAE is destroyed, the value of the design is limited.”
I would also ask what equipment was supplied by Rossi and what was provided entirely by the experimenters. I have not finished reading the paper but I am skeptical about the accuracy of both input power and out. As in the past, it is possible, even likely, that Rossi (or his surrogates who may have present during the experiments) found a way to fool the scientists.
It would be much more convincing if, instead of going to this very demanding and difficult to understand test, Rossi had simply had earlier tests repeated with PROPER CONTROLS AND CALIBRATIONS. He has **always** refused to do this. A perfect example of a test that would need to be properly redone was Levi’s original using liquid flow calorimetry but no proper calibration.
Also convincing would be if Rossi could produce an independent and credible customer who had bought a “megawatt plant” and had, in fact, extracted substantial power from it over a long period of time– for example heating a building or a chemical process plant.
Without more evidence, it is very hard to believe that this is not just another case of Rossi cleverly fooling people who very much want to believe him.
Rossi has presented a very strange method of proving his technology just as he did in the past. Much easier and more straightforward ways are available with the old ecat and lower temperatures which do not require measurement of radiative heat transfer.
Reblogged this on too old to die young and commented:
A break-through in “cold fusion” ? At least it’s interesting to follow the experiments ….
so how much water (medium) was heated to what temperature?
How much energy as observed by heating a mass of any subtance was observed?
Why was the Ecat not simply tested for a month?
By simply tested i mean by a customer?
Or an INDEPENDANT testing lab?
HYPERGOLIC?
maybe!
Why was there a need for Ross’s acknowledged supporters to conduct this test?
Why NOT an independant lab?
For crying out loud, read the report.
You wrote that the e-cat energy output has been “beaten only by nuclear based power sources.” That is inaccurate. The e-cat did not exhaust the fuel in these test runs. It would probably have to run for months to do that, possibly for years. In that case it would probably produce more energy per gram of fuel than a fission reactor.
In other words, this can be compared to a test run of a uranium fission reactor for 116 hours, which leaves plenty of un-fissioned uranium in the fuel rods.
Jed, the energy and power densities conservatively calculated in the report are about 100 or 1,000 or even 10,000 times those for conventional energy sources whereas nuclear power sources generally have values about one million times those for conventional sources. In this sense the output is beaten by nuclear energy sources.
However, if this would turn out to be a nuclear reaction I believe we will find figures around one million also for this process and in that case the lower numbers in the report probably depends on the extremely conservative calculations, e.g. including the steel taps of the reactor tube in the weight of the fuel.
And also in this process I would expect to find lots of “un-used” fuel even after months of operation, if it’s a nuclear based reaction.
You said “heat production” which I took to mean energy density, not power density.
Conventional fission reactors fuel rods do not have high power density. I do not recall what it is, but it is lower than a combustion reactor core. (Lower than fire, in other words.)
Nuclear bomb power density is very high!
If Rossi’s device is made into practical technology, I expect the power density and energy density will range from low to very high. It will be whatever the product designer needs. A device such as a thermolectric pacemaker battery will have low power density and a low temperature. You do not want to implant a red-hot object in someone’s chest. An aerospace engine will have high power density, up to the melting point of the materials. It seems this device exceeded these limits, and partially melted, indicating that Rossi does not have perfect control yet.
At least six other cold fusion devices has melted or vaporized. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=187#PhotosAccidents
I do not think the input to output ratio (COP) will be an issue. Rossi and others have demonstrated reactors running with no input power for hours or days at a time. It may be safer or more convenient to have input power modulating the reaction, but I predict this will be a small fraction of output.
My numbers referred primarily to energy density.
In Levi Fig. 9 the energy storage compared to chemical sources is off the scale. Alan Fletcher made a nice version of this graph showing what happens when you zoom out the log-scale graph to fit in the Hot Cat data:
Congratulation Mats!
We will talk about planet earth before and after Andrea Rossi
It is truly a joy watching “skeptics” try to explain away this report. The best part of this news is that this design will be hitting the market this year! I wonder at what point the codgers will stop trying to kill thing new fangled device…perhaps when competition in other countries have substantially lower energy costs, and America’s production expense goes through the roof?
Regarding skeptics, on Vortex I wrote that it is time for everyone to accept Rossi’s claims. All of his claims, including previous ones:
“It is not possible that Rossi was lying or faking in previous tests and only now he has something real. No one can go from nothing to something as dramatic as this in one step. It is time for the skeptics to admit they were wrong about Rossi. (Real skeptics, I mean, not the pathological ones.)”
Some of Rossi’s previous tests did fail, as he himself readily admitted. Frankly, I would be suspicious of any cold fusion device that works all the time. I have been to several labs and read hundreds of papers. I have never heard of a cold fusion reactor that always works. If commercial cold fusion is developed it will be far more reliable than today’s laboratory reactors. It will be as reliable as an automobile or battery. These machines do fail, but only once in thousands or hundreds of thousands of runs. (I have a 22-year-old car that I have started roughly 11,000 times. It has failed to start 3 times, but it was my fault twice — I left the lights on.)
I doubt that Rossi’s devices can be improved and tested enough for general commercial use in only one year. Twenty-first century standards for reliability and safety are too high for that. Devices would have to undergo thousands of hours of testing at places like the Underwriter’s Laboratory before they can be sold in most markets. There are similar requirements in Europe and Japan.
Brad, what will you say when we continue for another year or more with nothing on the market and no credible and independent customers willing to come forward? Because I am reasonably confident that this is what will happen!
Brad Arnold – That will be something interesting to watch: countries/leaders/politicians trying to ‘get on board’ or ‘trying to derail the new energy reactors’ and protect the old energy production giants. Those who are able to keep the new reactors out of their country, will suffer later when low cost energy elsewhere makes their products lower cost. jdh.
Congratulations Mats! Thank you for bringing the news of the eCat so early on. Now we finally we have undeniable evidence that Rossi’s technology works as promised. You took a risk by reporting on something this controversial so early, but it was the right decision, and you deserve great respect for your work.
Finally. Wonderful day.
Congratulation Mats, it’s time for your revenge too.
I hope this time your editors will close their mouths for a while. I will not get angry if you will not publish or if you will edit this ;-).
😉
My editors have nothing against publishing relevant reports. In this case we’re only waiting for comments from a couple of scientists who have commented on this issue before.
Grande Mats.
Tempo al tempo, la pazienza è la virtù dei forti.
What a huge day for planet earth!! Congratulations to Andrea Rossi and his team and many thanks to the professors who took the time to complete and publish this study!