Posted on 11/06/2011 3:50:39 PM PST by Kevmo
The Science Behind the E-Cat Cold Fusion Reactor
I was initially very dubious when hearing about E-Cat, a cold fusion reactor supposedly invented by Andrea Rossi. The first 1 megawatt unit was reportedly sold to a secret customer two days ago. Mainstream press has mostly ignored the invention so far. However, I found out there is a surprisingly rich history of scientific research and experiments about the mechanism it employs, nickel–hydrogen fusion. Evidence proving that the device is working keeps piling up and up. This is to a point that I am now personally convinced that this is one of the greatest (accidental) discoveries in human history.
Nickel–Hydrogen Fusion Experiments
The Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) published in 2008 a long report entitled Cold fusion - The history of research in Italy which is very broad in scope and contains a section giving a good summary of the research sparked by Francesco Piantelli's initial discovery:
"The research in the field of nickel–hydrogen systems started from an experimental observation by F. Piantelli at the end of 1989 concerning a strange thermal effect at low temperature in a sample of nickel with hydrogen. Piantelli spoke of this effect to his friends S. Focardi and R. Habel during the SIF congress in Trento (October 1990)."
However, due to chronic lack of funding, research progressed very slowly over the following years. Eventually, experiments were performed thanks to loans and direct participation from many colleagues and friends from the University of Siena and Bologna, from INFN, ENEA, CNR of Pisa, CISE, the Navy Academy and the Municipality of Bologna. Focardi et al. first formally published their results, in 1994, in the peer-reviewed article Anomalous Heat Production in Ni-H Systems, in which they detail a system with a cell that appears to produce power of up to 50 Watts, while absorbing hydrogen as evidenced by a pressure decrease. They cautiously do not attempt to explain these strange results, but invite the scientific community to look at the results while merely concluding:
"Up to now we are not able to formulate any consistent model which comprehends the phenomenon."
Their discovery receives some attention and, in 1996, prompts a team from the CERN to reproduce the experiment: Investigation of anomalous heat production in Ni-H systems. The CERN discovers results consistent with Focardi et al.: excess heat around the nickel bar and hydrogen absorption. However they also placed an additional temperature sensor on the container of the cell which was unable to measure any significant excess heat. They theorize that the nickel bar is merely prone to local variations of its thermal characteristics (ie. no excess heat), correlated to the phenomenon of hydrogen absorption. They concede that hydrogen absorption remains unexplained .
Focardi et al. took this feedback into account, and started measuring the temperature from outside the cell's container while continuing their research. In 1998 they publish a subsequent article, Large excess heat production in Ni-H system, describing in great details two cells with multiple sensors, some outside the container. They show that the excess heat is indeed more subtle when measured outside the container (see Fig. 6), but it is still present:
"The existence of an exothermic effect, whose heat yield is well above that of any known chemical reaction, has been unambiguously confirmed by evaluating the thermal flux coming from the cells."
One of the cells ran continuously for 278 days and produced an excess power of about 900 megajoule, while another ran for 319 days and produced 600 megajoule. In Cold fusion - The history of research in Italy, the researchers add that they observed events of nuclear origins:
"During the experiments, which altogether lasted for about 15 years, many phenomena witnessing nuclear reactions inside Ni samples in H atmosphere were observed. While it was producing energy, the cell which produced 900 MJ emitted neutrons for some days [...] equal to 1000 times the neutron flux due to cosmic radiation. [...] Other events, whose existence can only be due to nuclear reactions, were observed at the end of the experiments [...] We observed in remarkable quantity Cu and Zn (with atomic number greater than Ni), F, Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Mn, Cr, Fe (Fig. 3)."
(One nickel atom fusing with a pair of one hydrogen atom and one neutron would produce one copper atom (Cu), or zinc (Zn) if fused with two pairs. This would indeed indicate that fusion is taking place.)
Commercial Development
Unfortunately, the 2008 report Cold fusion - The history of research in Italy abruptly ends with these promising research results, and Focardi et al. appear to have stopped conducting further public research since this time. Instead, around 2008, Andrea Rossi reportedly came to Focardi with a way to catalyze (accerelate) the reaction to a point that it made it commercially viable. So he started working with Focardi with the intention of commercializing an energy reactor based on nickel–hydrogen fusion .
Rossi has a tumultuous history to say the least. More of an entrepreneur than a physicist, he was offered a permanent entry visa to the US to develop some of his unrelated ideas. Later, he spent time in prison in Italy because his company was found guilty of environmental crimes and tax fraud. He has since then returned to the US .
So there we are today, the odd couple of Focardi the physicist and Rossi the entrepreneur are collaborating on the E-Cat, but the press unfortunately focuses too much on Rossi's tumultuous past or lack of credentials, when Focardi spent 20+ years studying the phenomenon .
It does not help that Focardi and Rossi are extremely bad at making themselves look credible. (Although this is changing slowly.) The E-Cat website is very amateur-looking, with typos on the home page ("E-Cat is a devise [sic]..."), poorly produced and unstructured videos presenting the device, and biographies written to inflate their egos ("scientists from all the world agreed that the invention of the energy catalyzer was the best invention to this date in regards to solving the energy problems of our world", from here.) On top of that, the community demands more scientific evidence, but they have mostly ignored Focardi et al.'s 1998 paper published in Il Nuovo Cimento, as well as this one from 2010 sharing a bit more. And Rossi and Focardi now refrain from divulging too many details, to preserve their commercial advantage .
The only details that are being shared is that they enrich nickel with two useful isotopes, nickel-62 and nickel-64, reduce it to micrometer grains, process it to increase the number of surface tubercles (this increases the surface area of nickel and improve its reaction with hydrogen), and add a secret ingredient to break apart the molecular hydrogen (H2) into atomic hydrogen (H1) .
Like many scientific discoveries, the exact mechanism by which this nickel–hydrogen fusion occurs is not fully understood. Christos Stremmenos, former Greek ambassador to Italy and former physics professor at the Università di Bologna, researched nickel–hydrogen fusion before meeting Andrea Rossi, and offers a probable explanation of the theory behind it. Yeong E. Kim from Purdue University also published a paper suggesting that Bose-Einstein theory may be explain the E-Cat device.
Stremmenos became involved with Rossi and Focardi, and helped set up a company in Greece to manufacture the E-Cat on their behalf: Defkalion Green Technologies. Greece is a strategic choice as it is a (small) producer of nickel .
The very latest developments are documented in impressive details on a site maintained by Christopher Calder.
My Thoughts
Nickel and hydrogen are extremely abundant on Earth. Only an infinitesimal quantity of these materials is necessary to produce significant energy levels. Rossi states that one pound of nickel can unleash as much energy as burning approximately 1590 barrels of oil. Nickel–hydrogen fusion would effectively solve mankind's number one problem by providing clean energy at very low cost. Rossi estimates that today's E-Cat design can achieve $.01/kWh when mass-produced, which is about one tenth the average worldwide domestic cost of $.10/kWh. And the technology can only improve!
It is shocking that nickel–hydrogen fusion was accidentally discovered barely 20 years ago, that a breakthrough occurred 3 years ago, that it is still not well understood or studied, yet that a device exploiting it is readying for commercialization. The joke that "cold fusion has always been a few decades away" will soon be dead.. .
I am positive that this pair of guys who started in a garage are on their way to an energy revolution .
eCat ping!
Keep waiting. After Rossi sells his 30th unit, maybe he’ll feel the need to get to independent verification.
His caution would be more convincing if he hadn't held a string of crappy (Kevmo's word) demos accompanied by thousands upon thousands of blog posts and associated hype.
How can you say that, if you don't know what chemicals he's using?
Pick the most energetic chemical reaction and compare it.
Good idea. How many gallons of liquid did he use?
Hehe.
Creative people are often eccentric and also anyone with emotions might be very excited about ecats possibilities and what it could mean to the world if it is actually real. They might be excited enough about it to want to blog about it a lot. If he acted scripted and dull I might wonder about it more because in the real world everyone is different. I have run into so many real life characters in my life that make sitcom and TV characters seem boring and unoriginal that much about people's uniqueness does not surprise me.
“The next step will be an IPO.”
Most businesses never have an IPO. Why do you think one would be appropriate in this case? I doubt that they would go there...
If it were possible to buy a $100 interest in this I probably would at this point, from what I have read so far. If I were in a position to examine it, I would invest more perhaps. With my background it would be pretty difficult to fool me.
Some IPO's are done to make a business more open and credible, especially when reports are filed with the SEC. Rossi could use a lot of that.
From E-Cat New.com Nov 2:
“Andrea Rossi
November 2nd, 2011 at 4:35 AM
Dear Francesco D.M.:
We are just producing heat, so far.
Probably we will sell shares to allow everybody to participate to this enterprise. But before this we have to consolidate our manufacturing and commercial system.
Warm Regards,
A.R.”
Are you sure you don’t want to get on the prefered customer list?
“Rossi could use a lot of that.”
If he can sell working units, that’s all the credibility he needs.
If you want to pursue those facts, start here.
How to Prove that the Rossi/Focardi eCAT LENR is Real (or Fake)
LENR.QUMBO.com ^ | April 6, 2011 | Alan Fletcher
Posted on Sunday, June 05, 2011 7:52:15 PM by Kevmo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2730401/posts
You can thank B4Ranch
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2800077/posts
Unfortunately, if Rossi hired a bunch of actors to pretend to be the customer reps, created an elaborate year-long special-effects-derived series of demos, bribed, hypnotised or otherwise fooled Focardi, Levi, Kullander, Essen, Bianchini, Stremmenos.
Did he convince a bunch of Greek crooks to set up a dummy company called Defkalion to pretend to fight with him over the non-existent eCat, to perpetuate the illusion and spin it off into a competing mirror-scam?
Has he convinced his former partners to set up another company called Ampenergo to pretend that they had a contract for The Americas for a substantial sum or that they just did this with no proof because they have worked with Rossi and trust him because he’s such a fine fellow?
Who arranged for Piantelli, Miley and a host of others to try to fool the world into thinking that cold fusion was real, got NASA, SPAWAR, The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and The Defense Intelligence Agency to say nice things about the field, got Bushnell to make a fool of himself, sold his profitable company to his ex-partners in order to spend that wealth on a multi-million dollar scam.
Was he certain that once he got all the above ducks in a row he would pretend to sell the first device and then reel in the true target of his dastardly plan – the second (this time genuine) buyer of a 1MW plant that will net him $2 million dollars until they want their money back or sucker a $100 million dollar deal under the table? He has experience in pulling the wool over all these idiotic eyes and knows that they will just take his word for it and not want to test if his 1MW plant can heat a small village without truckloads of coal or oil or a big fat electric cable coming into the container from beneath the floor (no you can’t lift the carpet!)
In order to pull this off, Rossi had to risk discovery by interviewing all the people he subsequently fooled so that he could only invite the gullible Professors and not the brilliant anonymous posters on the Internet who surely would have found him out – then all bets are off.
I’m with the guys who think that Rossi is an idiot and they are all geniuses .
Nice edit. Thanks, B4Ranch.
After I posted to you, I almost took on the task myself, but couldn’t find anywhere to insert breaks without doing a bit of re-writing. While looking it over, I read it for the first time, and I’ve got to say, that’s a snappy come-back to all the naysayers. Good job.
That said, I’m still watching these developments with interest. Thanks for posting the updates.
A liter per second gives you plenty of room for adding chemicals to your exothermic reaction.
It's the only way to ca$h in.
I’ll repeat what I wrote in another thread about Rossi: his story is replete with virtually every red flag imaginable for pseudoscience:
- The inventor has a history of making pseudoscientific miraculous energy claims that later proved false or fraudulent.
- The research has not been made available for peer review.
- Indeed, the inventors haven’t even thoroughly explained how their machine works at all.
- In lieu of peer review or independent verification, they held a public demonstration.
- Those who attended the public demonstration were apparently not allowed to take their own measurements or verify that the measurements being taken were accurate.
- Nor were attendees allowed to inspect the machine, or observe it for more than “a few brief moments.”
- There was a generator running that could explain the power that was ‘generated.’
- Instead of prioritizing independent scientific confirmation, Rossi has apparently instead prioritized setting up a company and selling his as-yet-unproven product.
- And this:
“Rossi claims his company, Leonardo Corp., will produce the E-Cat machine, which he first demonstrated earlier this year at the University of Bologna. Proof of the experiment’s success is that the customer will pay for the technology and start using it, he said. As for the skeptics, Rossi said he needs to prove the experiment only to his customer.”
That’s not good science AT ALL. Showing that people will by your product is NOT evidence that the product actually works (see: Airborne, available in grocery stores everywhere), and the fact that Rossi would make such a statement at all ought to throw considerable suspicion. He seems to be demonstrating outright disdain for proving his own scientific claims. That’s the kind of defense made for devices like that fake bomb detector in Iraq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651), and that even got people KILLED.
I’ll repeat what I wrote in another thread about Rossi: his story is replete with virtually every red flag imaginable for pseudoscience:
***Most of these we have covered over and over again on these LENR threads. Do you honestly think you’ve brought something new to the table?
- The inventor has a history of making pseudoscientific miraculous energy claims that later proved false or fraudulent.
***Exaggeration, a form of straw argumentation. Note the ‘miraculous’ tag.
- The research has not been made available for peer review.
***That is a secondary consideration for Rossi, who will make his splash by selling units. You do not seem to be aware of the fact that Rossi & Focardi submitted their findings for peer review & were denied publication because what they claim is ‘impossible’.
- Indeed, the inventors haven’t even thoroughly explained how their machine works at all.
***Much of science works in this way.
- In lieu of peer review or independent verification, they held a public demonstration.
***Much like the Wright brothers.
- Those who attended the public demonstration were apparently not allowed to take their own measurements or verify that the measurements being taken were accurate.
***Not true for the earlier demos; the October 28 demo was for the customer.
- Nor were attendees allowed to inspect the machine, or observe it for more than “a few brief moments.”
***Not true for the earlier demos; the October 28 demo was for the customer.
- There was a generator running that could explain the power that was ‘generated.’
***True. The customer would have had to be an idiot not to have checked that out.
- Instead of prioritizing independent scientific confirmation, Rossi has apparently instead prioritized setting up a company and selling his as-yet-unproven product.
***Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that as a priority. Again, the Wright brothers are a good example. Steve Jobs is another.
- And this:
“Rossi claims his company, Leonardo Corp., will produce the E-Cat machine, which he first demonstrated earlier this year at the University of Bologna. Proof of the experiment’s success is that the customer will pay for the technology and start using it, he said. As for the skeptics, Rossi said he needs to prove the experiment only to his customer.”
***And your point is?????
That’s not good science AT ALL.
***But it does appear to be good business.
Showing that people will by your product is NOT evidence that the product actually works (see: Airborne, available in grocery stores everywhere),
***See Wright brothers, laser pointers, Apple Computer...
and the fact that Rossi would make such a statement at all ought to throw considerable suspicion.
***You’re stuck on stupid. You can’t get past this suspicion and look at the data that Rossi has generated.
He seems to be demonstrating outright disdain for proving his own scientific claims.
***That is frustrating, I know. But in a way it gives him a strong head start against competition. This is business now.
That’s the kind of defense made for devices like that fake bomb detector in Iraq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651), and that even got people KILLED.
***What a ridiculous example. The folks who would be buying Rossi’s product aren’t putting their lives on the line.
Feel free to add to the knowledge base. Even if you add chemicals to the exothermic reaction, you still can’t generate enough heat to account for the observations.
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