Posted on 01/17/2011 6:38:29 AM PST by Red Badger
Italian inventor, Andrea Rossi, claims to have an industrial product ready to manufacture that produces large amounts of energy reliably, safely, and much cheaper than coal or natural gas power. It utilizes the fusion of hydrogen and the common element nickel at relatively low temperatures.
Last Friday, January 14, we reported about a press conference held in Bologna, Italy in which Professor Sergio Focardi and Eng. Andrea A. Rossi, both of the University of Bologna, announced to the world that they have a cold fusion device capable of producing more than 10 kilowatts of heat power, while only consuming a fraction of that. This is the first public demonstration of a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor capable of producing a few kilowatts of thermal energy. At its peak, it is capable of generating 15,000 watts with just 400 watts input required. On Saturday, a forum was opened allowing for questions online from around the world.
This recent public demonstration alone is is a huge development, but what's more, they also claim to be going into production, expecting to have these available for purchase commercially within a year. This would become the world's first commercially-ready "cold fusion" device. They claim to have contracts in the USA and in Europe. Mass production should escalate in 2-3 years.
In his forum, Rossi wrote:
We have passed already the phase to convince somebody. We are arrived to a product that is ready for the market. Our judge is the market. In this field the phase of the competition in the field of theories, hypothesis, conjectures etc etc is over. The competition is in the market. If somebody has a valid technology, he has not to convince people by chattering, he has to make a reactor that work and go to sell it, as we are doing.
Inquiries about purchasing are to be directed to info@leonardocorp1996.com
Rossi estimates that the cost of energy made with this system will be below 1 cent/kWh, in case of electric power made by means of a Carnot cycle, and below 1 cent/4,000 M J in case of thermal power production for heating purposes. That is several times cheaper than energy from fossil fuel sources such as coal or natural gas.
According to Rossi, the demonstrated device shown last Friday is their industrial product that is claimed to be reliable and safe. In normal operation it would produce 8 units of output for every unit of input. Higher levels of output are possible, but can be dangerous. They will soon start serial production of their modules. Combining the modules in series and parallel arrays it is possible to reach every limit of power. The modules are designed to be connected in series and parallels.
Rossi also says that they have had one reactor that has run continually for two years, providing heat for a factory. Also, the reactors can self sustain by turning off the input, but they prefer to have an input. The device will be scheduled for maintenance every six months. You control it "just as you turn on and off your television set."
Here's a video excerpt of the demonstration in Italy last Friday. They allowed six people at a time to go into a smaller room where the equipment was located. The tac, tac, tac sound is made by the water pump, which is a precision dosator. You can see all three videos (in Italian) on the efagroup2010 YouTube channel.
According to Daniele Passerini who reported Friday's proceedings in his blog, the private invitation press conference was attended by around 50 people. Professors from the University of Bologna were on hand to verify that the experimental set-up was credible. Rossi explained that they were producing from the reactor about 10-12 kW, while the average energy input was 600-700W, which was also measured the dryness of the steam. The experiment was performed by the patent holders and professors from the University of Bologna unrelated to the project.
The amount of energy being produced was estimated based on how much water is vaporized per second. Also, to understand the source of the process of energy production, they sought to ensure that hydrogen was not being burned, by measuring the mass at the beginning and end of the experiment. A professor Levi used two sodium iodide scintillators to measure the radiation output.
According to a Rossi-Focardy paper (p. 4 of 9), similar results have been obtained in the factory of EON in Bondeno (Ferrara, Italy) in a test performed with ENEL spa on June, 25th 2009; as well as in tests made in Bedford, New Hampshire (USA) in a lab of LTI with the presence of the U.S. Department of Energy (November 19 2009) and of the U.S. Department of Defense (November 20 2009).
Some related research was published by New Energy Times in 2004. And even earlier in November 1998 at LENR-CANR.org In March of 1995 came a report titled "Italian cold fusion succeeded", stated that a 40-watt battery had been operated for four months continuous. So these guys have been at this for a long time.
Doing a lot of digging into Rossi's Journal of Nuclear Physics blog shows that scientists are posting and linking speculation that "hydrinos" (of Blacklight Power fame) or shrunken hydrogen atoms may be involved in this cold fusion and process and their formation may be the source of most of the energy released.
Rossi Energy Amplifier
They received PCT patent number WO/2009/125444 on October 15, 2009, with an additional patent having been filed. Once the second patent is awarded, then the information about how they achieve their results will become public knowledge. Meanwhile, they are keeping that information proprietary.
Simply put, the effect involves pressurized dihydrogen gas (2 bars is the lowest mentioned in the patent and 80 bars is what was used in the demonstration) is placed in metal tube with nano powdered nickel and a heating element (resistor). Somehow the dihydrogen gas is split into atomic hydrogen. When heat is applied the atomic hydrogen reacts with the powdered nickel to produce energy up to 400 times the input energy. Undisclosed catalysts are used to increase the efficiency of the cell.
Andrea Rossi is listed as the inventor. He is also the primary operator of the http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/ website and forum, where the information about the technology is posted.
Some other technical attributes of the process include:
* Regular Ni is used even though other isotopes may provide better efficiency. They think all the isotopes work to produce the effect. * For some unknown reason, not all of the Ni in the cell reacts with the hydrogen to produce energy. The percentage of the Ni that reacts is very low. * Even though the percentage of the Ni that reacts with hydrogen is very low one kilogram of nickel powder should deliver 10 kW of energy for 10,000 hours. The consumption rate of hydrogen and nickel are 0.1 g of Ni and 0.01 g of H to produce 10 kWh/h. Note that for every picogram of nickel that is actually fused or reacts to the hydrogen, much more must be added. Not all the nickel added will react. So if you add 0.1g of Ni to produce 10kWh/h only a small fraction of that Ni will actually be utilized. When the device shuts off due to running out of fuel most of the .1g could be remaining. * Tungsten is in no way used. However, "other elements" are used. * Radiation is produced. However in the device demonstrated which is made for commercial use no radiation escapes due to lead shielding. The fact that radiation is produced is proof of a nuclear reaction. * In the demonstration device for every unit of input there was approximately 37 units of output. * A small percentage of the nickel is transmuted into copper. The amount of copper found in the cell is far greater than the impurities in the nickel powder. None of this copper is "unstable." * There is no radioactivity in the cell after it is turned off. No nuclear "waste." * All of the information needed to successfully replicate a self sustaining system is in the patent application (which is being held proprietary presently). * The power density for thermal energy only is 5 liters per kilowatt. * The hydrogen has to be all hydrogen with no deuterium or heavy hydrogen. Apparently, any heavy hydrogen stops the reaction. * This current system never goes below 6 times more energy out than in. During the test it produced 20 times more energy out than in. In the lab they have done similar tests and obtained 400 times more out than in, but it produced explosions. * (speculation, pending clarification) The fuelling of the system could probably be done via a relatively inexpensive fuel rod that would need to be replaced every few months.
Reaction to the Press Conference Announcement
You would think that something of this magnitude would be reported widely by the media -- at least the alternative media -- but as of Sunday evening, 9:00 pm MST, there have only been three hits in Google news, including our story from Friday.
Steven Krivit, who specializes in cold fusion reporting, wrote a couple of pieces at NewEnergyTimes.com (2), but both were critical. I wrote the following comment in response, which he posted.
Hi Steve,
I read your two stories at New Energy Times, and while I appreciate the points you brought up, I need to say that I’m not convinced that these discredit him substantially.
First, I looked through the http://ingandrearossi.com/ website (linked from the Wikipedia article), which describes the waste-to-energy and imprisonment from Rossi’s vantage point.
Given how corrupt the various governments of the world have become, it seems to me to be more of a case of suppression on their part than of an act of a serious moral breach on the part of Rossi. At worst, it was a violation of a law unknown to Rossi. We see that kind of thing regularly in the free energy world as outside-the-box inventors try to also run businesses, but don’t know how to do so and can get in trouble.
Second, regarding the Journal of Nuclear Physics; again I can relate to Rossi. In a world where academia has spurned cold fusion as a political hot potato, rejecting papers on political, not scientific grounds, I can see why someone would try to provide an alternative method of publishing material along these lines.
I agree that it does look a bit hokey, but I cut him a lot of slack for the above reason. I certainly wouldn’t call it a "scam" as a result.
It seems to me that rather than jumping to a stance of criticism, you should try to encourage and validate the amazing claim.
Meanwhile, I got a couple of emails from some other associates who apparently are in process of checking into the claims and the company with the possibility of striking up a business relationship.
The claims of Rossi are very bold to say the least. They claim to have an industrial product that produces large amounts of energy reliably and safely. This product is not claimed to be a prototype, but is said to be ready to manufacture. These claims deserve serious attention. Could the alternative energy solution we have all been hoping for finally have arrived?
Either this is legitimate (which is what we would hope) and is huge news, or this is a hoax or scam and those involved deserve to totally discredited for the rest of their lives and made an example of to discourage other frauds. Either way, it is important we pursue this rabidly.
Actually there have been recent papers providing a theoretical explanation for cold fusion on a different basis that the muon-catalysis theory mooted back when Pons and Fleischman were in the news. From the abstract of one I gather that the basic idea is that deuterium nuclei infiltrate the metallic lattice and once in close proximity and a low energy state can quantum-mechanically tunnel into each other’s location.
There have also been some long-running cold fusion experiments that keep reporting neutron bursts.
Seeing that neutrino physics got completely upset recently, causing a rethinking of the standard model of particle physics, I’d not be so sure something if fraudulent simply because current theory won’t easily account for it.
If we truly desire to explore ‘space’, we have got to ditch the outer space treaty and create a possibility of profit there.
As things stand now, anything mined in space belongs to the world and is completely without profit.
Exactly. I'm not going to consider this anything other than a scam until they demonstrate NET POWER OUTPUT with no input power other than redirected output power, and maintain that output power for a long time.
Wake me when they have actual power generation up and running.
[ Or General Electric................. ]
Or the greens...
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” - Paul Ehrlich (an eco-weenie)
[ If we truly desire to explore ‘space’, we have got to ditch the outer space treaty and create a possibility of profit there.
As things stand now, anything mined in space belongs to the world and is completely without profit. ]
Correction, they will belond to China, outerspace treaty or no, they will be the ones to colonize the solar system if we are too complacent to do so.
Sorry, I tried to be PC but screw it, the real words better describe exactly how I feel!
Well......... it's a lot more than 400W , and that's all you need to know before you invest.
: )
OF COURSE, they NEED more “funding” to study this and perfect the process, which is not being made available to the rest of the science world. So, if they have this device so well developed, they why not produce it instead of begging for more money to study it some more?
“What the hell is “10KW” of heat?”
Since one watt is equal to 3.41442595 BTU’s you should be able to do the math.
I believe it is what anybody would do. If you had a hen that laid golden eggs you would sell the eggs and not the hen. Likewise I do not believe that any rational person who was the sole owner of a device that produced more power than it consumed would sell the device.
ROFLMAO!
Good for grinding KNO3.
We so cavalierly throw around a trillion. A trillion is a BIG number.
How many people do you think there are who might be capable of working on such projects? 10,000? If each was given a million dollars for salary and lab expenses, and remember that some of those 10,000 would be working together, that would be ten billion (with a B). A trillion is still a long way off.
ML/NJ
I thought that my Tennessee senators were among the most disgusting Republicans in the Senate, but Tom Coburn is over the top!
It’s only “bad news” if you are being facetious. If true, it would be awesome news (even for the oil company stockholders, as they would also pay less for energy as a consolation to the reduced value of their stock in obsolete companies).
But that said, this is “no” news because this report can be discounted with extreme prejudice. Like others have said, when they generate power, they can get back with us.
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