Posted on 01/31/2014 5:44:59 PM PST by Kevmo
Start-up purchases controversial cold fusion nuclear reactor E-cat - Let's see if it works
01/26/2014
A North Carolina based company called Industrial Heat LLC has come out and admitted that it now owns Andrea Rossi’s ecat low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology. Industrial Heat has put out a press release in which it confirmed rumors that it had spent $11 million to purchase Rossi’s device.
The press release also confirmed speculation that Tom Darden of Cherokee Investment Partners a North Carolina equity fund is a principal investor in Industrial heat. It stated that one of Darden’s associates J.T. Vaughn is the manager of Industrial Heat LLC. Industrial Heat LLC is based in the Research Triangle region around Raleigh, North Carolina where many technology companies have operations. Cherokee’s website describes Vaughn as a Senior Analyst at the firm.
Vaughn said that his company had acquired the intellectual property rights to the Ecat in the press release. Vaughn and Darden were convinced of the Ecat’s authenticity by a report prepared by physics professors Guiseppe Levi, Hanno Essen, Ronald Petterson, Torbojorn Hartman, Bo Hoistad, Roland Pettersson and Lars Tegner. The scientists tested the ecat in December 2012 and March 2013 and observed its operations. Vaughn and Darden also had an unidentified independent expert exam the ecat before investing their money in it.
The press release stated that Industrial Heat has prepared numerous patent applications to protect ecat technology but wouldn’t’ elaborate. The release didn’t say if any of these applications have been filed or not.
“The world needs a new, clean and efficient energy source,” Vaugh said of his reasons for acquiring Ecat in the press release. “Such a technology would raise the standard of living in developing countries and reduce the environmental impact of producing energy.”
The press release stated that Industrial Heat wants to enter into partnerships with other companies, universities and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) to develop LENR technology. It didn’t identify any of these partners or mention any specific uses for Ecat technology.
Predictably and sadly the cold fusion skeptics have already started attacking Industrial Heat. The Gizmodo blog is claiming that Darden and Vaughn were bamboozled and bought a reactor that might not actually work. Typically the skeptics provide absolutely no proof for their accusations they just make them and hope nobody questions their statements. Those who criticize Rossi for not verifying claims turn around and do exactly the same thing.
Tom Darden
Vaughn and Darden seem like hardhead and sensible businessmen who have done their homework. They actually looked into Ecat and got the facts before investing. Gizmodo mentions Rossi’s criminal conviction but doesn’t mention the involvement of distinguished professors such as Guiseppe Levi in the ecat project.
Industrial Heat’s confirmation is very good news, despite the skeptics. It’s the biggest investment so far in cold fusion and it proves there are far sighted businessmen interested in commercializing this important technology. Hopefully Industrial Heat will be able to commercialize the Ecat and looking into other LENR devices such asthose at Brillouin.
I also hope that Industrial Heat’s brave stand will inspire other investors to put their money behind low energy nuclear reaction. We need massive investment in this technology now.
AlainCo link 01/27/2014 9:04am
Thanks to relay that important news.
This news get even greater when to match it with the signed partnership of Industrial Heat LLC/Cherokee with Chinese officials in Baoding HIDZ about this new clean "Nickel Energy". http://www.icebank.cn/news/detail_2.php?id=113
When you observe the number of companies, http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/ more or less involved, startup and corps, with results or ambitions, you see that the probability of Cold Fusion being a scam as is the "official theory" is below anything realist.
The big question is why we are stuck in the beliefs that Cold Fusion is voodoo science.
Charles Beaudette in Excess Heat gives his clear vision :
http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
"The upshot of this conflict was that the scientific community failed to give anomalous heat the evaluation that was its due. Scientists of orthodox views, in the first six years of this episode, produced only four critical reviews of the two chemists’ calorimetry work. The first report came in 1989 (N. S. Lewis). It dismissed the Utah claim for anomalous power on grounds of faulty laboratory technique. A second review was produced in 1991 (W. N. Hansen) that strongly supported the claim. It was based on an independent analysis of cell data that was provided by the two chemists. An extensive review completed in 1992 (R. H. Wilson) was highly critical though not conclusive. But it did recognize the existence of anomalous power, which carried the implication that the Lewis dismissal was mistaken. A fourth review was produced in 1994 (D. R. O. Morrison) which was itself unsatisfactory. It was rebutted strongly to the point of dismissal and correctly in my view. No defense was offered against the rebuttal. During those first six years, the community of orthodox scientists produced no report of a flaw in the heat measurements that was subsequently sustained by other reports.
The community of scientists at large never saw or knew about this minimalist critique of the claim. It was buried in the avalanche of skepticism that issued forth in the first three months. This skepticism was buttressed by the failure of the two chemists’ nuclear measurements, the lack of a theoretical understanding of how their claim could work, a mistaken concern with the number of failed experiments, a wholly unrealistic expectation of the time and resource the evaluation would need, and the substantial ad hominem attacks on them. However, their original claim of measurement of the anomalous power remained unscathed during all of this furor. A decade later, it was not generally realized that this claim remained essentially unevaluated by the scientific community. Confusion necessarily arose when the skeptics refused without argument to recognize the heat measurement and its corresponding hypothesis of a nuclear source. As a consequence, the story of the excess heat phenomenon has never been told."
in fact there is more than that, big problem with epistemology for Nuclear Scientists (who forgot theory was subordinate to evidences, and that replication was a slow and hard job for chemist and for most other scientists).
He describes well the media cascade when sanctified scientist make strong claims based on his own physicist ego and is superior incompetence in a foreign domain (calorimetry), despite the fact that his claim were quickly dismissed as unfounded... Errors can get viral when launched by influential individual in community where trust and dependence on peer-opinion is the rule.
When this affair will be cleared we will have to open the archive and find where are the errors. They are like for subprime crisis or Enron, in group-think, which is as Roland Benabou explains, derived from the inter-dependencies and hierarchy in academic society.
The Cold Fusion/LENR Ping List
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/coldfusion/index?tab=articles
Vortex-L
http://tinyurl.com/pxtqx3y
I need an LENR Stove to heat my house this Winter.
Dang $11 million huh...
Somebody must know something a lot of folks here don’t.
If this takes off, there’s not going to be enough pies for the faces of those who shot their mouth off here for years.
Perhaps the rest of us who were patient and urged folks to wait and see, had the right idea all along.
I really think this proves there is no 'there' here.
11 Million is still 11 million.
They saw enough to at least take a bet on a long shot.
DARPA probably spent a lot more research hafnium. Not to mention what has been spent on hot fusion.
Hope it works, but I will remain on the skeptical side until it’s proven.
But I am willing to remain open minded about it and enjoy these posts.
Not necessarily. Big energy companies will spend $11 million just to see how something will work, which implies they do believe in the plausibility of the idea.
They won’t spend $11 billion until they know they have something viable.
I wish Rossi luck and hope it all works out for him.
Rossi Confirms Position at Industrial Heat LLC
Posted on January 27, 2014 by admin • 2 Comments
Here’s a final confirmation about Andrea Rossi’s official position. Last week when I asked him what his reaction was to the press release from Industial Heat, he responded, ‘no comment.’ Today he was asked another question on the Journal of Nuclear Physics about about his official position:
“Dear Andrea
You always say you’re chief scientist at your new partner. Since the press release from Industrial Heat, LLC, I wonder, are you now chief scientist at Industrial Heat, LLC, or is there another comp. involved?”
Rossi’s response:
“Regarding the so called Rossi Effect, I am the chief scientist at Industrial Heat.”
http://www.e-catworld.com/2014/01/rossi-confirms-position-at-industrial-heat-llc/
In before the “this is just a front for the oil companies, who bought it so they could bury it” comment...
So basically Rossi sold it to himself?
It will be a while. In 1976 I needed a computer to do my homework on. I couldn’t afford one until 1982 when I bought a used Apple//e with 128K memory and 144kbyte drives for $3500. Now we can get Gigs of memory & speed for $400 in a laptop.
It takes a while for the affordability/homeUse curve to come our way.
And this is related to Power, not How Many Bits a CPU can process. We all knew that there would be tremendous increases in transistors/mm on wafers because there was vast room for improvement, but the process technology had to improve.
When you’re pushing bits on silicon, their mass for a trillion of them is still less than an amoeba. But when this Power technology is in full production and you divide the smallest unit by a trillion, the mass being pushed will be maybe 7 or 8 magnitudes higher than bits on silicon.
Here’s another way to look at it. If you were to increase the mass of these bits being pushed by electricity by 20 orders of magnitude, it might weigh as much as a tennis ball. Let’s say you had a material to build a car that weighed as much as a tennis ball but had the same strength as Carbon Fiber. You’d have a lot of room for improvement, wouldn’t you? It might take a few decades, but you’d be flying in outer space by that time. You can see why pushing bits across silicon is easier than pushing mass or generating energy.
Admittedly, this is just a handwaving analogy because I don’t have the time to check how many orders of magnitude makes sense in each scenario. But the overall point is easy to see. One technology was easier to push and make progress on.
I keep hearing about such I've also keep hearing aliens have landed and Bigfoot is real.
If the tech works looks hook her up and let it run.
I guarantee you if it works there is a market.
But damn it unveil it and lets roll.
America needs new cheap energy. If this is it WTF are they waiting for?
Mike Markula bought a sizeable chunk of Apple for $250K. You would have been among the critics who would have said that for such a small amount, “ this proves there is no ‘there’ here.”
DARPA probably spent a lot more research hafnium.
***Thanks for posting that earlier. It was fascinating reading and I’ll need to read up more.
He didn’t sell it to himself since he doesn’t own the company but as chief scientist he still has control over testing and implementation and if you’re familiar with his record that means there’s no possibility this company will get to see what the ECat will do.
Interesting. The reason why I don’t often go to his website has been his track record. Maybe now that some things are out in the open, he will prove more trustworthy on his public statements.
Maybe I’ll even post a “Rossi says” article on Free Republic, which I have not done for at least 2 years... not that you’d know that from the invective thrown my way by the skeptopath crowd.
Good enough to squeeze a few more years of promises out of it.
Ah, more “green shoots” in the E-Cat world!
I wish them the best. We will find out in the end. If it goes LENR’s way then don’t forget that skeptics make us sharper and better at what we do. If it goes against LENR then don’t forget that dreamers scientist and inventers gave us all we have today. And in the face of sceptism.
Call me skeptical because I still have not seen a public test showing it works.
***By that time it won’t matter. If you had $20M to invest, you’d have gotten a private demo. Same thing happened with the Wright brothers. They refused to demo to anyone who wouldn’t agree to buy airplanes if the demo were successful. That period lasted 5 years.
I keep hearing about such I’ve also keep hearing aliens have landed and Bigfoot is real.
***Look at Scientific Instruments, the leaders in Measurement. They looked at over 150 replications and said There is a REAL Anomaly here. Both Toyota and Mitsubishi have generated LENR replications. Has any other multi$Billion company said aliens or Bigfoot is real? How many times have aliens or bigfoot been replicated? More than 14,700, like LENR?
If the tech works looks hook her up and let it run.
***It is extremely tricky.
I guarantee you if it works there is a market.
***There’s an obvious market. It’s just such a tricky phenomena that it took this long to get past the doubt stage. This didn’t happen to High Temperature Superconductivity (just as surprising results in 1989) because there wasn’t an entrenched industry readily willing to trash it.
But damn it unveil it and lets roll.
***I agree. In fact, I’m looking to invest but get stymied at every turn.
America needs new cheap energy. If this is it WTF are they waiting for?
***Patent protection for their IP. Relief from the Controlled-Hot-Fusion boys who have pissed hundreds of $billions down their rathole scam and still have the Defense industry behind them. Various other major hurdles. Bringing a new technology to market is difficult enough; doing it under these conditions is more hazardous than flying the first airplane.
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