Twenty-seven years later we now know that what Fleischmann and Pons were observing was some kind of nuclear reaction but certainly not fusion. Why do we know this? Because isotopic shifts have been observed in room temperature experiments conducted at many other places, many with very prestigious credentials. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Naval Research Laboratory have all conducted experiments roughly akin to Fleischmann and Pons. At Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in India, researchers noted the phenomenon occurring in tritium.
What appears to not be fusion, but rather a neutron-induced reaction, has now been observed in many labs. The moniker LENR standing for low-energy nuclear reactions seems apt. Fusion is not what is happening. Rather the ambient room temperature chemical reaction being observed appears to be caused by weak interactions of ultra-low-momentum neutrons and neutron-capture processes. This is equivalent to the transmutation of elements something once thought of as being an alchemist’s wizardry rather than science.
Anomalous heat detected in E-Cat devices built by Andrea Rossi, the name most associated with cold fusion other than the original experimenters, may have a non-cold fusion explanation. And the reason that no commercial product has ever been shipped despite imminent promises of delivery has more to do with the fact that the anomalous heat generated is not always consistent, at least not enough to be a reliable new energy generating source.
States David Nagel, formerly with the Naval Research Laboratory and currently on the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at George Washington University, “LENR is real experimentally, and not understood theoretically…..here are results that you just can’t explain away. Whether it’s cold fusion, low-energy nuclear reactions, or something else—the names are all over the place—we still don’t know. But there’s no doubt that you can trigger nuclear reactions using chemical energy.”
Nagel calls LENR “lattice-enabled nuclear reactions.” One thing for sure, this is new science.
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The E-Cat he is delivering combines 106 small LENR units similar to ones that Rossi has demonstrated in the past. The 106 are contained in a 6 meter (20 foot) long container (see image below) and are hooked together in parallel. Each E-Cat features three cold fusion reactors measuring 20 x 20 x 1 centimeter (approximately 8 square inches and less than 0.5 inch in height). The reactors combine treated nickel powder and pressurized hydrogen gas and after receiving a jolt of electricity begin to generate the heat that has been called cold fusion.
The 106 LENRs contained in this E-Cat require a feed of 200 kilowatts of power at start up and continuously to sustain the cold fusion reaction. The claimed energy yield at 1 megawatt is 500% over the energy input. Of course what the plant is actually generating anomalous heat, not electricity. It is that heat that becomes the energy source to drive a steam turbine connected to a generator.
If you order online today expect delivery in approximately 4 months.
I don’t want to throw cold water on this but with plans to ship in four months isn’t it about time that Rossi made his E-Cat unit available for independent review? That’s one of many reasons that I remain a skeptic. RAnd I am still waiting to hear from the Australian company that was going to make a 10 kilowatt home version of the E-Cat available to its customers over a year ago.
The ExtremeTech site asks the question will we finally know if what Rossi has created is real or “snake oil?”
In the first demonstration the reactor is primed with argon, an inert gas. In the second demonstration the reactor will be primed using hydrogen. I have been watching the argon testing so far and as I said before, there is nothing terribly exciting about watching this in real time.
The narrator has stated to the viewers who are watching the live demo that we will not see a net energy output gain from argon but will see one when hydrogen is injected into the reactor.
Defkalion could learn a thing or two about marketing when doing a demo. If you had wanted to create a buzz in the room I would have started with the hydrogen to show net energy gain from the reactor and then used the argon control to show the difference. But maybe by doing it this way they want to demonstrate scientific rigor.
It will be interesting to see the results from the hydrogen. I’ll keep watching.
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For those of you who have been reading my previous postings on cold fusion this independent study represents a very interesting cold fusion development. But some of you who are new to this blog site may be unfamiliar with the subject matter. So here is a quick explanation.
Cold fusion the way Rossi is doing it is a process that involves infusing hydrogen into nickel. This causes a reaction in which electrons from the nickel combine with hydrogen to produce neutrons which then get absorbed by the nickel converting it into copper. This process is called transmutation and a great deal of energy is one of its byproducts. It is that energy that the E-Cat can then use to power devices.
The benefit of cold fusion over hot fusion reactors such as the ITER Tokamak, is relative safety. Cold fusion happens slowly. Hot fusion is fast. Cold fusion produces little if any ionizing radiation. Hot fusion produces a ton.
In this most recent development and because of Rossi’s past reputation t is hard to know whether we are being conned or that the report is the real deal. But the results announced come from seven scientists, two from Bologna University, four from Uppsala University and one from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. These scientists state:
“Measurement of the produced heat was performed with high-resolution thermal imaging cameras, recording data every second from the hot reactor tube. The measurements of electrical power input were performed with a large bandwidth three-phase power analyzer. Data were collected in two experimental runs lasting 96 and 116 hours, respectively. An anomalous heat production was indicated in both experiments. The 116-hour experiment also included a calibration of the experimental set-up without the active charge present in the E-Cat HT.”
But there is another comment in the report that puzzles me. The authors state at one point “no extra heat was generated beyond the expected heat from the electric input.” Does that mean that input equaled output? So are we not seeing a net gain in energy derived from the interaction of the elements within the E-Cat? A final comment, however, states: “Even by the most conservative assumptions as to the errors in the measurements, the result is still one order of magnitude greater than conventional energy sources.” And by conventional they mean fossil fuel derivatives like gasoline.
So has Rossi with his E-Cat produced a commercial cold fusion reactor? Are we witnessing the beginning of a revolution in energy production?
The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project, a web site dedicated to verifying Fleischmann and Pons’ cold fusion discovery raise some interesting questions about this latest finding. On their website they state the following:
“We …. on behalf of the global population, call on the authors and Andrea Rossi to make the raw data and more detailed instrumentation details for the entire test available for verification of calculations made from the data. We are willing to host the data and help stimulate the analysis of it, or simply be another participant re-analyzing it.”
I think Rossi should take up this offer. After all if cold fusion proves viable it can be an incredible energy source and Rossi would be a leader in producing a commercial cold fusion reactor. But without independent verification to validate his claims, Rossi’s past and current secretiveness and obfuscations continue to make any of his pronouncements on cold fusion sound dubious.
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Miley, seen in the image below, is a big believer in the potential of cold fusion and his credentials lend weight to his claims. The device he has created differs from that created by the controversial Andrea Rossi, the name most associated with LENR, that is after Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who first reported the phenomenon and gave it its moniker, cold fusion.
Today the term LENR has replaced cold fusion. LENR stands for low energy nuclear reaction. Miley’s device, seen in the drawing below, does not require an external heat source, relying on the chemical reactions within it to produce the heat energy needed to run the unit. The fuel is ZrO2 (zirconium dioxide) and deuterium pressurized to 413 kilo pascals (60 psi). And unlike Andrea Rossi, Miley’s results should be available to the public since he is working in an academic institution. I tried to find a journal reference to Miley’s experiments using Google Search but was unsuccessful. Maybe it’s a bit premature.
Miley has stated publicly that the phenomena he is observing is not chemical but nuclear. His LENR device is small and the question is, will it scale to yield enough energy to become commercially viable? Recently, Miley obtained the first U.S. patent for a LENR device, something no other LENR researcher has accomplished to date. And recent reports state that Miley is working on 3 Kilowatt and 30 Kilowatt LENR designs.
I will keep you posted. I’ve written to Professor Miley to see if he will agree to an interview and will keep you informed. Are we a step closer to a real commercial LENR? I hope so but will remain a skeptic for the moment.
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Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, back in December of 2011 during an interview on science talked about cold fusion and work being done at the University of Utah. He was referring to the Fleischmann/Pons experiments that led to the 1989 cold fusion announcement. Here is a transcript of his comments:
“I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with — with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.”
I’m glad he added that last sentence since it appears the University of Utah had “solved” cold fusion in his previous sentence. Is it coincidence that Mr. Romney sees cold fusion as a solved technology because it comes from an educational institution in the state of Utah? Is this faith-based science?
Did Mr. Romney not know that the University of Utah discontinued experiments in cold fusion two years after the 1989 announcement?
Did he not know that the University of Utah allowed its cold-fusion patents to lapse in 1998?
Did he not know that the original researchers, Pons and Fleischmann went to France to continue research for a subsidiary of Toyota and that the research funding from Japan stopped in 1997?
Don’t get me wrong, I think cold fusion would be an incredible technology if it could be pulled off. But every reference to it invoking proof comes with caveats. It’s always in the lab, or somebody has written a paper, or posted experimental results.
Take for instance the proof claim using a National Instruments video, a talk given at a recent conference. This video clip isn’t about cold fusion. It’s about measuring results from experiments using technology created by National Instruments, in particular, LabView, a new software application.
The video provides no proof of cold fusion’s viability other than to describe it as controversial and talk about someone’s masters thesis that lists 184 examples of “positive” experimental results. At the end of the talk the presenter states “we don’t judge, we measure.”
At this conference National Instruments sponsored a panel of experts and a LENR was demonstrated on the show floor. But the “expert” panel hyped the technology rather than demonstrated commercial viability. Representatives from companies like Defkalion Green, that purport to be ready to bring their Hyperion cold fusion reactor to market, did more talking than showing.
That seems to be the nature of cold fusion proof these days. A few websites, blogs and chats extolling a product and technology that fails to deliver. I’d like to see it if it is real. And I am certain Mr. Romney wants it to be as real as his positions and policies on so many other subjects for which he purportedly has expertise or receives expert advice.
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In the latest posting, July 24, 2012, Andrea Rossi, the developer of the energy catalyzer cold fusion technology he calls E-Cat, claims he will deliver the first commercial 1 Megawatt e-Cat plant this year. He also indicated that a performance report showing that E-Cat is stable in temperatures over 1,000 Celsius will be released in a couple of months. This isn’t the first time that Rossi has promised delivery. Nor is it the first time that he has promised to release a report on the technology.
If you are unfamiliar with LENR and the E-Cat in particular, the technology relies on a chemical reaction that transmutes two elements into another releasing energy in the form of heat. In the case of E-Cat the elements are powdered nickel infused with hydrogen transmuting into copper. The amount of energy released is claimed to be 100 times the energy input. Rossi reports he can get enough heat from E-Cat cold fusion to power up steam turbines for electricity generation. Ultimately he hopes to directly generate energy from his E-Cats without a turbine. Well we’ll see!
Not to be outdone, a Rossi competitor, in fact a breakaway company called Defkalion is building its own LENR and joining up with a Swiss start up to deliver a car with a LENR on board. The first generation of iCar, the name the company has chosen, will use a Tesla Model S. The LENR is the Hyperion Series B. The developers of the technology claim the Hyperion will generate 10 to 45 Kilowatts of thermal energy. To produce 45 Kilowatts the LENR will consume only 300 watts. The iCar will have a single charge range of 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles). The power storage of a Hyperion LENR is estimated to be 400 times the amount stored in conventional lithium-ion battery packs currently used by Tesla.
After successfully demonstrating the first generation iCar, plans are in the works to launch a second generation vehicle with an on board LENR capable of powering a car for 140,000 kilometers (87,000 miles) between recharges.
Again I ask the question, is all this hype going to actually produce something real? If so, then we will witness an energy revolution. If not, we can always remember P.T. Barnum’s quote, “The bigger the humbug, the better people will like it.” And this is one humdinger of a story right now.
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Enter Andrea Rossi, an Italian inventor of E-Cat, the energy catalyzer. In a headline dated July 16, 2012, a new Australian company, E-Cat Australia announced that it was taking orders for a 10-Kilowatt home unit and 1-Megawatt industrial unit with delivery promised by mid-2013.
On the website the cost of the home unit is estimated between $2,000 and $2,500 Australian dollars as posted. Refill cartridges of which you will need one every 6 months, are priced at $150. The lifetime operational estimate for each unit is 20 years. The website promises an 80% saving on electricity and gas bills. Homeowners can sign up to be on a wait list.
The E-Cat industrial unit is priced starting at $1.5 million U.S. with a promise of delivery in 3 to 4 months. Buyers are asked to place a down payment of $500,000 on the 1 Megawatt unit and more on higher output units. The company offers a 100% money-back guarantee should the unit not perform as specified.
Is this flimflammery? Are the people running E-Cat Australia bag men? The general scientific community are total skeptics about the claims Rossi makes about E-Cat technology. So how does it work and why are scientists in general calling this a load of hooey?
E-Cat uses powdered nickel and hydrogen to generate an exothermic reaction, namely heat. The heat is then used to produce energy. The device infuses the heated hydrogen into the nickel powder causing transmutation of the nickel to copper with the byproduct as much as 100 times the energy input in the form of heat.
When Rossi applied for an international patent it was rejected by the issuers as offending the generally accepted laws of physics. Although demonstrated to academics, Rossi’s E-Cat has never been independently tested and the only papers on the subject appear on his own blog site which he has given the very official name, Journal of Nuclear Physics.
At this site you can find a journal-styled article complete with mathematical formulae and posted in March 2010 called “A new energy source from nuclear fusion.” The article provides experimental results from what is referenced as “a process and apparatus not described here in detail and protected by patent in 90 countries.” It goes on to state the the process produces heat output up to 100 times the energy input through the interaction of the nickel and heated hydrogen.
When I first heard the word transmutation in documents on the E-Cat site my thoughts went back to my boy scientist days reading about alchemists who always tried to turn base metals like lead into gold.
Transmutation can happen. There is no doubt about that. You can turn lead into gold but you need an enormous amount of energy to do it and the energy you use would cost more than the value of gold that would result. Today we transmute elements all the time using particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider.
So I leave this question with you, is Dr. Rossi a bag man out to swindle a whole bunch of Aussie home and business owners not to say the rest of the world with his promise of cheap and clean energy? What do you think?
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