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  • E-Cat Technology - General Comments by Interested and Knowledgeable Individuals

    The Promise and Burden of the E-Cat

    E-Cat World

    Frank Acland
    11/23/2013

    Excerpt:

    The publication of the 3rd Party E-Cat Test report by Levi et al. earlier this year provided extremely compelling evidence that Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat invention is indeed real, and a revolutionary breakthrough in energy production. More than being a simple confirmation of Andrea Rossi’s claims over the years, it was a demonstration to the public that we have a technology at our disposal which will allow us to move beyond our present economic and political systems which are based on scarcity of resources, to a new reality in which abundance of resources is the norm.

    Andrea Rossi has discovered a process in which copious amounts of energy can be produced in a relatively simple way using nickel and hydrogen — two of the most abundant elements on the planet — in a clean and safe way. This discovery heralds the beginning of the end of an era in which the majority of our energy comes from burning of raw materials that are increasingly more difficult to obtain, expensive to purchase, and which pollute the atmosphere when they are consumed.

    The Levi report showed that the ‘Rossi Effect’ is a process that produces energy at a magnitude beyond any known chemical reaction. There is reason to consider it a nuclear reaction, and in fact Rossi himself says that Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) is not an inaccurate label, but still the exact nature of the reaction is unknown.

    Nevertheless, what the report shows is that energy production at magnitudes something akin to nuclear reactions in today’s nuclear power stations is possible in laboratory conditions, without dangerous radiation being produced. This is truly revolutionary, especially considering the extremely simple construction of the E-Cat reactor — basically a metal tube containing nickel, hydrogen and an unknown catalyst which reacts when heated and stimulated with some kind of radio frequency.

    All the evidence shows that Rossi’s E-Cat has the ability to provide energy in massive quantities extremely cheaply — and this is just based on evidence from an early version of the Hot Cat. As with any technological breakthrough, the early iterations are usually relatively primitive and unrefined. Almost certainly there will be improvements and refinements that will improve the E-Cat’s performance over time.

    So what is the significance of all this? In my estimation, it could hardly be more important. If the E-Cat can produce energy at the levels indicated by the Levi test, it means that we now have an energy source that supersedes all others in terms of efficiency and safety — which can provide tremendous social, economic and environmental benefits with far-reaching consequences.

    What would be the global consequence of vastly reduced energy costs? It would mean incredible relief for individuals, families, businesses and other organizations that use energy, which in turn would reduce the cost of production of any good or service that has energy as an input — which is pretty much everything. If energy is plentiful and cheap, standards of living will naturally improve. We are seeing breakthroughs in a wide variety of technological fields these days, such as robotics, manufacturing, transportation, computing etc., all of which require energy input — and when the cost of that input is reduced, the efficiency of those products and processes only increases. I consider the discovery of the E-Cat to be a seminal moment in modern history, and one that has the potential to move the planet into an era where scarcity of resources can become largely a thing of the past.

    In addition to the challenge of refining the technical performance of the E-Cat, something Andrea Rossi is continually involved in these days, we face the possibly more challenging problem of how to introduce it in a way that is of most benefit to the human race.

    Control of E-Cat technology now rests in the hands of Andrea Rossi and his unidentified partner. Rossi himself says that he has turned over the business decisions to the partner while he concentrates on the development of the E-Cat. There is intense interest from many parties in the technical and business operations surrounding the E-Cat, and in order to operate without interference, Rossi and Co. have built an impressive wall of secrecy around their operations, This technology has, and will continue to attract the attention of competitors who want to replicate its secrets, and opponents who feel threatened by it, and naturally, any business entity is going to be concerned with getting a reasonable return on its investment (probably in the millions of dollars so far), so they are very concerned about important information leaking out.

    .................................................

    View the complete article, complete with links, at:

    http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/11/th...-of-the-e-cat/
    B. Steadman

  • #2
    Mats Lewan Publishes ‘An Impossible Invention’ — Book about Rossi and the E-Cat

    E-Cat World

    admin
    4/2/2014

    Excerpt:

    I was pleased to discover today that Mats Lewan, Swedish journalist for NyTeknik magazine and blogger, has now added to his repertoire by publishing a full length book titled ‘An Impossible Invention: The true story of the energy source that could change the world’.

    Mats Lewan is well known to people following the E-Cat story, as he is one of the first (and few) journalists writing for a major media publication who has investigated seriously the work of Andrea Rossi, and has covered the story from its beginnings.

    The book is available in paper and ebook formats at http://animpossibleinvention.com/, and is available in English and Swedish — which in my mind is a terrific achievement for a book hot off the press. Mats Lewan is impressively fluent in Swedish, Italian and English.

    I have only learned about this in the past couple of hours, so have not read the book — but just browsing through the information and the site, and reading some of the sample chapter, I think it is going to be essential reading for serious students of the E-Cat and those following Andrea Rossi’s work. I will certainly be purchasing a copy.

    Here’s a short sample from chapter 1:

    I had tried for weeks to create a mental picture of the man, this strange Italian who seemed to have invented, or perhaps one should say discovered, an unparalleled source of energy with the potential to change the world. Literally the whole world. I had not met him, only heard his energetic voice on the phone a few times and seen a couple of short video clips from a presentation of his invention in Bologna on January 14, 2011—the presentation that led me to this remarkable story. Without deep thought I had imagined him as a typical clichéd inventor. You recall the movie ‘Back to the Future?’ Something of that sort, aside from Christopher Lloyd’s bushy white hair: a little manic and on edge, with an intense but somewhat distracted look in his eyes. Obviously this had little or nothing to do with the man standing before me on that cold and snowy afternoon, February 3, 2011. We stood at the entrance to the editorial offices of the newspaper Ny Teknik in central Stockholm, where I had worked as a journalist for more than ten years. No evasive look. On the contrary, facing me was a relaxed man in his 60s with lively eyes and a friendly smile, dressed in a gray jacket and a dark overcoat.

    “Buongiorno!” Andrea Rossi said, extending a friendly right hand, easy and relaxed. In his left hand he held a copy of Ny Teknik in which we had published, the day before, a major feature interview of him and his scientific advisor Professor Sergio Focardi, with a photo of both men. Almost a comical pair: Rossi’s slightly lanky but vigorous frame and steady gaze, his arm around Focardi, a head shorter and a bit chubby. Focardi’s wondering eyes looked out from behind dark brown, horn-rimmed glasses with classic ‘50s cut and thick lenses.

    ..................................................

    View the complete article at:

    http://www.e-catworld.com/2014/04/02...and-the-e-cat/
    B. Steadman

    Comment


    • #3
      The Peak Oil Crisis: Cold Fusion Update

      Falls Church News-Press

      Tom Whipple
      4/16/2014

      There are at least four contenders in the race to bring a cold-fusion powered heat-producing device to market in the near future. These are the Rossi E-cat project now based in North Carolina under the aegis of a new firm called Industrial Heat; the Brillouin and SRI effort to develop a nuclear reaction boiler out in California; the Defkalion Green Technology’s effort in Vancouver and Greece to market a heat producing device later this year; and finally BlackLight Power’s radically different “hydrino” technology which, if it proves to work at a commercial scale, could trump all the rest.

      Of the four, Rossi’s E-cat has received the most publicity – at least on the internet if not in the mainstream media. Last week a new book by Swedish journalist, Mat Lewan, entitled An Impossible Invention, was released. Lewan relates the story of Andrea Rossi and his E-cat in much detail from the time when Rossi first decided to research the phenomenon, through the first semi-public demonstration in January 2011 to the current time. If nothing else, Rossi is important to the cold fusion story as he was the first to demonstrate commercial-scale production of heat and may be the first to develop a commercially viable product.

      Lewan, who trained as a scientist before becoming a journalist, started as a skeptic. However, after attending many demonstrations, making measurements of his own, and conducting extensive interviews with Rossi and independent scientists, he has become convinced that Rossi and his heat generating device are for real. He concludes that we are on the cusp of a new age in which virtually unlimited quantities of clean, cheap energy will be at the service of mankind.

      The Rossi story, however, is nearly as bizarre as that of the mainstream media’s treatment of the cold fusion story. Rossi came upon the idea that he should work on cold fusion in 1995 while sitting in an Italian jail for six months – but that is another story. Upon release he returned to the U.S. where he had been developing thermoelectric generators for the U.S. government and began experiments with nickel and hydrogen as a way to produce heat without a chemical reaction.

      After years of experiments, and the encouragement of a well-respected Italian physicist, Sergio Focardi, who Rossi had called in to evaluate his work, he finally hit upon powdered nickel, a catalyst (possibly lithium), and a reactor configuration that would produce commercial quantities of heat – well beyond the test-tube scale that many other scientists had been observing over the previous 20 years.

      In 2010 Rossi and Focardi self-published a paper about their work, but of course left out the details of the key catalyst. As cold fusion devices are generally un-patentable due to prejudices left from the Fleishman-Pons era, the only protection an inventor has for now is to keep key details proprietary. This withholding of information by Rossi, and others working in the field, coupled with no firm idea as to how what is known as the production of “anomalous heat” actually works, has made the whole topic highly controversial.

      While the semi-public demonstration in January 2011 met its goals of producing steam before an audience of invited scientists and members of the press, the claims that the device was powered by a nuclear reaction raised a storm of controversy focusing on the notion that such a device could not be real. While a few Italian newspapers covered the event along with a handful of websites specializing in cold fusion, the mainstream media stayed silent and largely remains so to this day.

      Interestingly enough the first demonstration seems to have raised the most interest in Sweden. Five days after the first demonstration Lewan wrote a story for his Swedish newspaper, Ny Teknik, which attracted widespread attention in Sweden, and eventually led to support for Rossi from the country’s electric power industry. The next two years were taken up in a search by Rossi for a partner that would test his device, bring credibility to his work as well as finance its development, and allow him bring a heat producing device to market.

      At one time or another, partnership deals were about to be struck with five different organizations in Greece, Sweden, and the U.S. but for one reason or another they fell through, sometimes with recriminations. During this time however, Rossi, possibly with the help of a noted Japanese scientist, came up with a new design for his device which raised its operating temperatures considerably. In October 2012 Rossi concluded a deal with a then-secret U.S. partner in whom he had enough confidence to turn over the secrets of his designs and catalysts to the new partnership. At the end of 2013 the news leaked that Rossi was now with Cherokee Investment Partners in Raleigh North Carolina and was working out of a new firm called Industrial Heat to develop and market products based on his designs.

      Currently Rossi and Industrial Heat have their latest device out for lengthy off-site testing and evaluation by an independent team of scientists financed by Sweden’s electric power institute. It is hoped that the results of these test will be available within the next few months and will be long, thorough, and independent enough to convince the world that Rossi’s device does indeed produce the claimed amounts of heat.

      ......................................

      View the complete article at:

      http://fcnp.com/2014/04/16/the-peak-...sion-update-2/
      B. Steadman

      Comment


      • #4
        Interview w/ Journalist Mats Lewan On E-Cat, Andrea Rossi, & An Impossible Invention

        The Project Avalon Forum

        jmag0904
        5/9/2014

        Excerpt:

        Hope you all like it. Just recorded yesterday. Thanks for your support:

        View the complete post, including full audio track of the interview, at:

        http://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...ible-Invention
        B. Steadman

        Comment


        • #5
          An Impossible Invention: The True Story ...

          zpenergy

          vlad
          7/20/2014

          Excerpt:

          Testimonials From the Issue 115 of the Infinite Energy Magazine: New Book Highlights a Potentially World-Changing Energy Source

          Italian inventor Andrea Rossi and his E-Cat technology are featured in a new book, An Impossible Invention: The True Story of the Energy Source That Could Change the World. The self-published 309-page book by Mats Lewan was simultaneously released in Swedish and English on April 2, and is available in print and digital format.
          Read our full story about the book release, including mini-reviews by numerous people in the LENR community (this also includes the interview linked below).

          Purchase the book, which LENR researcher Michael McKubre says “everyone should read.”

          Read our interview with author Mats Lewan.

          View the complete post, including links, at:

          http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?...ticle&sid=3555
          B. Steadman

          Comment


          • #6
            Andrea Rossi's E-Cat Devours Lockheed's Hypothetical Compact Fusion Reactor

            Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works Division has announced their plans to build a compact nuclear fusion based reactor prototype within five years. The LENR or Cold Fusion E-Cat – which actually exists today as a commercial product – offers more benefits with none of the drawbacks. Did the positive findings of the Lugano report force Lockheed's hand?

            Pure Energy Systems

            Sterling Allan
            10/22/2014

            Excerpt:

            STERLING ALLAN'S COMMENT: I agree that the E-Cat holds proven promise for resolving the world's energy needs. However, we need to make the point that there are several other exotic free energy technologies also getting close to emerging, which will also provide clean, affordable, practical energy -- and some of them may have advantages over the E-Cat for certain applications. The E-Cat isn't the only promising technology in view. I list it as number 5 in that ranking because it isn't as close as those ahead of it in the list. See http://Top5Energy.

            The Hot-Cat test setup, glowing, as it produces heat equivalent in the kilowatt range at around 1400ºC -- 3.5 times more than the input required to run it.

            Allegedly, the first commercial Lockheed Martin reactors capable of producing 100 MW would be small enough to fit on the back of a 16-wheeler, and could be ready for use in a decade, after producing their first prototype in five years from now.

            By Hank Mills
            Pure Energy Systems News

            Due to the existence of the E-Cat or Energy Catalyzer, there is no reason – whatsoever – for traditional hot fusion projects to be proposed or continue. No complicated, expensive “hot fusion” technology can compete. Andrea Rossi's technology offers a way of producing vast amounts of power while using no radioactive materials, producing no nuclear waste, and emitting no radiation into the environment. In addition, E-Cat reactors can be made from nearly all off the shelf components; once mass produced, they will be dirt cheap. So the announcement by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division of their theoretical plans for a Compact Fusion Reactor or, more formally, the “High Beta Fusion Reactor” seems to have been little more than a move of desperation.

            The fancy graphics produced by Lockheed to promote their currently non-existent claim the technology will “restart the atomic age.” In reality, the technology to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and eliminate the use of dangerous conventional fission reactors already exists in the form of the E-Cat. For a number of years, experiments with real world E-Cat reactors (which are small enough to fit on a desktop) have proven they are capable of producing several times more power out than they consume. Certain tests of the E-Cat have demonstrated the ability of the technology to completely self sustain – producing a constant output of power without any input except for the small amount needed at start up. Moreover, the Energy Catalyzer is capable of producing extremely high temperatures in a stable manner (over 1,400 degrees Celsius) beyond what is required for electrical generation with standard turbines.

            No dream, fantasy, or pipe dream: the E-Cat is real and works today. A recently released report describing a thirty-two day test of a high temperature E-Cat in Lugano, Switzerland has confirmed both massive excess power generation and isotopic ratio shifts in the fuel that provide hard proof of nuclear reactions.

            As this article is being written, Industrial Heat – the company that acquired the E-Cat technology from Andrea Rossi – is continually testing over a hundred reactors that compose a one megawatt plant. This plant is located in the factory of an undisclosed customer. After at least a year of testing has been completed, the customer will share the performance of the plant with the world and allow visits. The E-Cat is in process of going commercial.

            The Compact Fusion Reactor of Lockheed Martin, however, does not exist in the real world. If a government or business had a billion dollars in the bank and a plan to convert over to fusion energy, they could not purchase a CFR. Not a single reactor, even a prototype, has been constructed. Also, after a prototype is constructed, they claim to need another five years to develop a commercial product. This means, at best, commercial CFR's will not be available for a decade. This is of course if their technology actually works, and they do not run into problems. Most likely, there will be hurdles and issues appear they do not expect.

            Let's compare Lockheed's non-existent technology with the E-Cat.
            • Once the results of the first year of operation of Industrial Heat's one megawatt plant are released, commercialization can proceed rapidly. At best, Lockheed will need ten years to reach the same point. Before the first CFR prototype is built, it will be running five years or more behind the E-Cat. Also, embarrassingly, the first prototype of the CFR will only be designed to operate for ten seconds. It is only going to be a proof that the theory works. E-Cat reactors have already been operated for many months. In the recent Lugano test, the reactors were run for thirty two days non-stop.
            • Even if Lockheed is capable of producing a fully functional reactor in ten years, they will be using at least one radioactive material (tritium), producing radiation inside the reactor (including dangerous neutrons), and producing some nuclear waste. The E-Cat will be using no radioactive elements and will not generate any radiation or nuclear waste.
            • The Lockheed CFR will be a far more complicated product than the E-Cat. Unlike the CFR, an E-Cat reactor will not require huge electromagnets and will be simple to mass produce. The components of the actual E-Cat reactor are common: alumina tube, resistors, and fuel powder comprised of nickel, lithium, iron with hydrogen.
            • The Lockheed CFR is one massive reactor. The first E-Cat plant is modular – composed of over a hundred smaller reactors. If one E-Cat reactor fails, the faulty reactor can be extracted and a new one inserted. In the CFR, if one part fails the whole device will become disabled.
            • The Lockheed CFR will be far more expensive than the E-Cat. In addition to the fact that the components and fuels of the E-Cat will be much cheaper, due to the lack of radiation and nuclear waste the technology will be capable of being used almost anywhere.

            The advantages of the E-Cat over the Compact Fusion Reactor are clear. If Lockheed and other companies truly desired to end the energy crisis and bring almost free, clean energy to the world, they would have been building and testing cold fusion or LENR devices for decades. Some people claim the reason they have not is ignorance in that they simply do not realize the E-Cat is a real, working technology. This may be a small factor why some scientists have avoided LENR research, but I think there is another reason -- an explanation that should make all citizens who believe in freedom and liberty fume with indignation.

            Conventional hot fusion technology is controllable by the powers that be; cold fusion is not.

            All conventional hot fusion reactors – like the CFR – are complicated and expensive. A small team of engineers in a third world country would probably not have the skills, access to materials, or funding to build one. Although a CFR would probably be much cheaper to build than previous models of fusion reactors, it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build the first prototype. The E-Cat reactors that are already being used to produce power in the factory of a customer probably cost a few hundred dollars to build. Also, they would use mostly common components. If they had the ability to produce the fuel, the same team of scientists and engineers would be able to build an E-Cat with little effort.
            .................................................. ....


            View the complete post at:

            http://pesn.com/2014/10/22/9602554_A...usion-Reactor/
            B. Steadman

            Comment


            • #7
              What Andre Rossi is afraid of?

              ZPENERGY

              Posted on Saturday, December 13, 2014 @ 21:31:03 EST by vlad

              View the complete post at:

              http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?...ticle&sid=3586
              B. Steadman

              Comment


              • #8
                Making a Nuclear Power Point

                The New Indian Express

                V Sudarshan
                3/22/2015

                Excerpt:

                The February 25 issue of Current Science (Vol 108, No. 4.) contains a special section on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), which is, to say the least, remarkable. The preface terms the putting together of so many papers by scientists involved in the field as constituting a “major review”. It is remarkable as LENR is, as the preface to the special section terms it, “a silent revolution in nuclear science”. This column dealt with this phenomenon some two years ago. But on the 26th anniversary of the discovery of what was called “Cold Fusion”, it is worth dwelling on this development, especially since there is more recognition of it now. After Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, two chemical scientists, told the world on March 23, 1989, that they had succeeded in producing a great amount of heat by passing electricity through palladium inserted in heavy water, at room temperature, without radioactive emission, two things happened. On one hand, the big guns, who were invested heavily on ‘hot’ nuclear fusion and fission, came down heavily on this so-called experiment. They began to call it “junk science”. Since efforts at replicating the Fleischmann-Pons experiment ended with unpredictable results, it was easy to rubbish “cold fusion”. The two scientists themselves were not able to provide a convincing explanation to their experiment.

                Fleischmann and Pons became a flash in the scientific pan but their experiment captured the imagination of other scientists. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) put together groups of scientists, at one time as many as 12 groups, numbering almost 50, to see for themselves if the phenomenon was real. The man who gave the go ahead was P K Iyengar. The initial observations were encouraging. But after the US Department of Atomic Energy weighed in with a negative report, the then ayatollah of BARC who succeeded Iyengar, declared that he thought cold fusion to be nonsense, and declined to give institutional backing into its research.

                Yet, cold fusion enthusiasts have grown in number worldwide. This is based on the realisation that the incipient criticisms were misplaced, even wrong. As one scientist (Michael McCubre) points out elegantly: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” There have been as many as 18 international conferences devoted to this subject. In January 2011, Italian Andrea Rossi announced he had developed a working reactor (e-cat), where he had heated a minute amount of hydrogen in a lead chamber containing nickel powder. I’m told hydrogen turns nickel into copper and while doing so gives off both heat and gamma rays, which are held in by lead. Rossi has now got a one-megawatt reactor going, which can be ordered for about $1.5 billion. Here is the link in case you don’t believe it: http://ecat.com/ecat-products/ecat-1-mw. It consists of 106 e-cat units mounted in a “standard shipping container”. The standard delivery time is four months. There are also home variants in the works. The preface to the special section in Current Science points out that analysts are terming LENR as “disruptive technology” with the potential to turn the world economic order topsy turvy.
                - (bold and color emphasis added)
                ..........................................

                View the complete article at:

                http://www.newindianexpress.com/colu...cle2724158.ece
                B. Steadman

                Comment


                • #9
                  The ECAT 1MW plant is now available on the market.

                  Excerpt:

                  Sign up and pre-order, and secure your place on a waiting list with the right to priority treatment and faster product delivery.

                  The ECAT 1MW plant contains 106 smaller ECAT units mounted in a shipping container. Valve for filling the Hydrogen is on the front of each unit, together with electrical connection to the immersion heater used to start the reaction.

                  Production & Manufacturing plans are under way 2013. Current delivery time is estimated to four months. Warranty for functionality is two years with a guaranteed COP of 6, and the plant has an expected life span of 30 years.

                  The ECAT 1MW plant is constructed inside an international standardized 20ft container which can easily be transferred between different modes of transportation (e.g. ships, air cargo, trains and trucks).

                  The plant consists of small parallel modules. Each reactor contains three cores and consumes small amounts of treated Nickel powder and Hydrogen gas (under pressure, approx. 15 bar). The plant is recharged by specially trained and certified personnel.

                  Orders are accepted from all over the world and require a routine due-diligence process. Customers must comply with several criteria set by Leonardo Corporation in order to qualify for a purchase of a ECAT 1MW plant.

                  ECAT 1 MW Plant Features
                  • ECAT 1 MW Plant is a Heat Plant with 1 MW of thermal output through a normal pressure warm water/steam outlet. It can easily be coupled to a secondary high pressure loop for local or district heating.
                  • ECAT 1 MW Plant produces energy through a so-called cold fusion process. No combustion takes place; instead Nickel and Hydrogen merge to produce Copper. Per unit of weight, this process is at least 100,000 more efficient than any known combustion process.
                  • ECAT 1 MW Plant is made up of smaller modules where the actual reactor is the size of 20cmx20cmx1cm. These small reactors are coupled in modules of 3 pieces each, then these modules in turn are built into a 20 ‘container with a series of 106 pieces. Power density in the small reactor is as high as 100 kW / L
                  • Due to its structure, the ECAT 1MW plant is extremely easy to use. It is delivered in a standard container which can be stacked if your solution requires multiple ECAT 1MW plants. It also has a convenient plug’n’serve design that makes installation straight forward.


                  View the complete post, including photos, at:

                  http://ecat.com/ecat-products/ecat-1-mw
                  B. Steadman

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Scientists warming up to ‘cold fusion’, see potential in ‘other nuclear’ energy

                    The Hindu Business Line

                    M Ramesh
                    4/9/2015

                    Excerpt:

                    Chennai, April 9:

                    About thirty scientists from all over India met in Bengaluru on Tuesday to discuss ‘the way forward’ in an emerging cheap and clean source of energy, called ‘low energy nuclear reactions’, or simply ‘cold fusion’. The meeting was chaired by Dr Anil Kakodkar, former Chairman of the Department of Atomic Energy.

                    The meeting was held at the instance of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said Dr Baldev Raj, Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies, who co-chaired the meeting.

                    Dr Raj did not give details of the meeting—he feels it is up to the Ministry to do so—but he said that the basic message that came out of the meeting was that there was a need to study ‘low energy nuclear reactions’ more.

                    The objective of the meeting was to further study the phenomenon of ‘cold fusion’, devices based on which are beginning to be commercialized elsewhere in the world.

                    Some experts, such as Dr Mahadeva Srinivasan, a scientist who worked for the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), believe that cold fusion has the potential to become the primary source of energy in the not-so-distant future.

                    Dr Srinivasan, who attended the Bengaluru meeting, said that one of the decisions taken at the meeting was that four groups of institutions and scientists would get into cold fusion research and there would be an informal oversight committee. Some of the institutions involved are the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), which, incidentally, was once headed by Dr Baldev Raj, the IIT-Madras, and the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology.

                    What is ‘cold fusion’?

                    Just as energy (heat) is produced when a nucleus splits in the nuclear power plants that we have, energy gets generated also when two nuclei merge. But it requires enormous input energy to get them to merge, as they contain positively charged particles—protons—and same charge tend to move away, not to come close. Therefore, to get nuclear happen at room temperatures—cold fusion—has been thought to be impossible.

                    In 1989, two American scientists—Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons—conducted some experiments and observed more heat given out than they could explain and inferred that the excess heat was due to nuclear fusion reactions. They became instant celebrities in the scientific world, but in a matter of weeks they got branded as incompetent scientists, or even frauds, after thousands of others tried their experiment and got no excess heat. ‘Cold fusion’ was practically buried.

                    But the subject was roused again in 2011, when an Italian engineer called Andrea Rossi unveiled his invention—a fist-sized device that produced more energy than it consumed, using only nickel powder spiked with some chemical, and hydrogen as raw materials. He kept the name of the chemical secret.

                    An outraged scientific community branded Rossi a charlatan, but the engineer proceeded regardless and started selling his ‘E-Cat’ machines and has scaled up their capacity to 1 MW.

                    But lately the world is being less cold towards cold fusion, thanks to a number of experiments that proved that E-Cat-like devices work, though nobody, including Rossi, knows how.

                    For instance, a group of scientists performed “independent third party tests” on the E-CAT in February-March 2014 at Lugano, Switzerland and the results were announced in October. Their report said that the devices produced more heat than can be explained by chemical burning and conceded that they had “no convincing theoretical explanation”. But the report also said that the results were “too conspicuous not to be followed up.”

                    Another scientist, Alexander Parkhimov of Russia, also conducted experiments using E-Cat-like devices and said that they produced energy.

                    Furthermore, several universities (Texas Tech University of the US and the Tohoku University of Japan, to name two examples) are opening research divisions or forming committees to look into cold fusion.

                    Next week, the 19{+t}{+h} International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-19) will take place in Italy. The ICCFs have been generally dismissed as ‘meeting of believers’ but this time around many potential investors, notably the Bill Gates Foundation is taking part in it.
                    - (bold emphasis)
                    .........................................

                    View the complete article at:

                    http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...cle7085742.ece
                    Last edited by bsteadman; 04-10-2015, 05:16 PM.
                    B. Steadman

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Darden on Industrial Heat's new lab space, controversy surrounding its technology

                      Triangle Business Journal

                      Lauren K. Ohnesorge
                      10/9/201

                      Excerpt:

                      Tom Darden, CEO of Raleigh-based Cherokee Investment Partners, is among Industrial Heat's financial backers– an entity that has raised at least $11 million since it was founded in 2012.

                      While no products are in production, the online vitriol for what Industrial Heat is trying to do is strong. But so is Darden’s hope that, circulating among the theories and processes Industrial Heat is sorting through, is an innovation capable of saving the world.

                      “If scientists know nothing about it, a scientist will say this cannot occur because it’s not consistent with the laws of physics as they are currently understood,” he says, recognizing the fact that mainstream doubt over whether cold fusion is even feasible has existed for decades.

                      “The reason for the controversy is scientists look at it and say, ‘I don’t see how this could work.' I can’t debate with that. What am I supposed to say? I don’t know how it works. There are many things where I don’t know how it works.”

                      And that’s not stopping his investment. Nor is it stopping the online attacks Industrial Heat, which spun out of controversial research by a man named Andrea Rossi, receives in online forums.

                      Rossi’s technology, dubbed E-Cat, is a black box that, according to reports, uses cold fusion to generate large amounts of green energy cheaply. Darden sees it as an alternative to the coal plants pumping pollutants into the sky, and says his team is “increasingly interested” in funding the work. He is “absolutely not” ready to release a timeline as to when data will be available, however.

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                      View the complete article, including image, at:

                      http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/...e-cary-nc.html
                      B. Steadman

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                      • #12
                        Historic event: One-year 1 megawatt E-Cat trial completed

                        An Impossible Invention

                        2/18/2016

                        Excerpt:

                        On February 17, 2016, a 350-day commercial test of a one megawatt heat plant based on Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat was completed. The event must be considered historic since it’s the first time an industrially useful amount of energy is produced over such a long time from this kind of yet unexplained radiation-free nuclear reaction—LENR or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions.

                        To be clear, the report from the one-year trial, which has been controlled by a major independent third party certification institute, will be released only in about a month, and until then no official information is provided on the test result. However, multiple sources have told me that the test has been successful.

                        Earlier, some sources having visited the test plant told me that the COP, Coefficient of Performance, i.e. the ratio between output power and input power for control, was in the range 20—80, meaning that the heat plant was consuming 12—50 kW while producing 1 MW—the average consumption of about 300 Western households, including electricity, space heating, water heating and air conditioning.

                        I have also been told that the total amount of fuel—mostly harmless elements such as lithium, hydrogen and nickel, according to Andrea Rossi’s granted patent on the technology—was in the range of tenths of grams. And supposedly the charge has never been changed during the year. On the other hand, after one year’s run, the reactors are now being recharged for further operation.

                        All this might be confirmed by the third party institute, that has been controlling the heat plant 24/7 with video cameras.

                        The test has been undertaken by Andrea Rossi and his US industrial partner Industrial Heat, and according to Rossi, commercialisation of similar industrial heat plants will be initiated as soon as possible, provided that the result is positive. Industrial Heat has acquired the right to produce and sell E-Cat based technology in, as far as I have been told, North, Central and South America, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

                        Needless to say, the consequences of such an energy source for the world will be huge. And the consequences for industry, finance and society is also the focus of the New Energy World Symposium or NewS, which will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 21, 2016, provided that the report from the test is clearly positive.

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                        View the complete post, including links and image, at:

                        https://animpossibleinvention.com/20...ial-completed/
                        B. Steadman

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                        • #13
                          Not snake oil anymore

                          The Hindu BusinessLine

                          by M. Ramesh
                          2/14/2017

                          Excerpt:

                          Within this year and the next, Dr Randell L Mills, the strange Harvard-trained medical doctor who gave up his practice for his physics hobby, will either become as famous as Einstein or be proven to be what the scientists have been calling him for three decades — a fraud.

                          Since 1991, he has been working on an invention based on an odd theory of his — that an electron in a hydrogen atom can be nudged closer to the proton, and release energy in the process.

                          Work this into a device, and what have you? A source of infinite, clean, cheap energy.

                          A regular hydrogen atom has one electron whizzing around the nucleus that contains one proton. Mills says when you bring the electron closer to the nucleus, it is a different form of hydrogen.

                          He calls this form of hydrogen ‘hydrino’; scientists call this bovine excrement. If there were ‘hydrinos’ wouldn’t they have known?

                          It’s like saying an English professor can’t tell noun from verb.

                          Scientists were aghast, but none of the derision and scorn poured on Mills by the pundits of physics deterred him from the pursuit of this clean energy source or securing a hundred millions of dollars of funding. But, he pulled a rabbit out of the hat—came up with a machine that makes energy.

                          Putting it to test

                          Since the middle of last year, Mills has been demonstrating his invention, which he calls ‘SunCell’. His New Jersey based company, Brilliant Light Power, is now being taken more seriously. In January this year, CNN found the SunCell worthy of a short documentary.

                          A July 2016 press release of Brilliant Light Power gives validating quotes by Bucknel University professor, Dr Peter Mark Jansson, and Dr K V Ramanujachary, Rowan University.

                          The device works by shooting very high amount of current (12,000 amperes) in two streams of molten silver through hydrogen gas, produced right there from water, in an oxide catalyst. The reaction induced by the current creates plasma (a cloud of electrons, protons and neutrons prised loose from their atoms) which bakes hydrogen atoms into ‘hydrinos’. The energy released heats up a shield (called ‘blackbody radiator’) to incandescent temperatures of 3,000 degrees C. The light the radiator throws off is captured by photo-voltaic cells to let out a stream of electricity.

                          Brilliant Light Power is working towards commercialisation in 2018, leasing SunCells of 150 kW capacity at prices that will enable the user to have electricity at 2.5 cents (₹1.67) a kWhr.

                          On the other coast of the United States, another company, called Brillouin Energy Corp., has been labouring over cheap, clean, non-conventional energy.

                          Its efforts have been in the direction of ‘cold fusion’, or nuclear fusion at near-room temperatures, or technically, ‘low energy nuclear reactions’, or LENR.

                          The e-cat experiment

                          Now, LENR might ring a bell. The public has gotten somewhat familiar with LENR ever since a maverick Italian engineer called Andrea Rossi announced a few years ago his invention of a cold-fusion based energy device, the ‘E-cat’, which works with passing current through a smattering of hydrogen and nickel and lithium compound.

                          What happens inside the E-cat is deep science, but basically, things get reorganised at the sub-atomic level, resulting in the hydrogen turn into helium, releasing energy on the way.

                          The E-cat has become the subject of a legal battle with Rossi and an American company called Industrial Heat.

                          Rossi claims Industrial Heat has failed to cough up $ 89 million as contractually due after his successful one-year demonstration of the e-cat, while Industrial Heat disputes the ‘success’ part of it—the matter is in the US courts (see ‘Cold Fusion: This time for Real?’ Business Line, April 12, 2016) but it has helped mainstream cold fusion.


                          Brillouin reactor

                          Brillouin Energy, incidentally funded by the same investors as Industrial Heat, said in early January that it had got its device checked out by an independent body, SRI International, California. SRI, without going into the merits of Brillouin’s reactor, said that the device works in the sense that it produces more energy than it consumes.

                          Like Rossi’s e-cat, Brillouin uses nickel and hydrogen, but converts hydrogen into helium using electromagnetic pulses, releasing energy. In Brillouin’s device, the output energy is only slightly higher than input, 1.2 to 1.4 times (compared with Rossi’s claim of over 50), but the company is satisfied with this milestone and expects to develop it further. “We still have much work to do,” said David Firshein, Brillouin’s Chief Financial Officer and spokesman, in an email to BusinessLine, adding that “our goal is obviously to commercialize from here.”

                          In the meantime, Rossi has been furiously trying to develop a prototype of a commercial version of his e-cat, which he calls QuarkX. He said in December last year that he is testing it with the help of a US military engineer and has hinted that he is aiming at a public demonstration of the device in February.

                          Meanwhile, Rossi’s estranged commercial partner, Industrial Heat, is going after other cold fusion intellectual properties.
                          Of these there are many. Several entities – individual or groups of scientists, educational institutions, companies (like Brillouin) – are researching into LENR or validating other’s efforts so much that it looks like movement today. -
                          (color emphasis added in the above article excerpt)

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                          View the complete article, including image, at:

                          http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/...cle9543129.ece
                          B. Steadman

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