Yesterday Sterling D. Allan of PESN and Frank Acland of E-CatWorld conducted a one and a half hour interview with Andrea Rossi hosted by Gary Hendershot on his Smart Scarecrow service regarding developments in the E-Cat technology based on the cold fusion technology called “LENR” for Low Energy Nuclear Reaction.
SmartScarecrow has chat room where people could post questions, several of which were presented to Rossi during the show. At its peak, there were just over 1000 people listening to the live broadcast, which began at 4:30 pm Eastern time (GMT-5), with nearly 200 people in the live chat.
The conversation while on YouTube is audio only. Rather than sit through over an hour and half here is a brief summary.
What Rossi and the enthusiasts have learned is it’s a very long path from the lab demonstration unit to production. Mr. Rossi’s credibility has taken quite hit from observers without familiarity in making such a jump. Every little glitch in the scaling that fails has to be worked back, discovered, redesigned or engineered and then the process starts in again.
To build the 1-megawatt unit takes 106 reactors, so getting each one built is quite an undertaking for a startup. Meanwhile the company is well, starting up, getting located, equipped, supplied, staffed and all the myriad details to build something. Days means weeks and weeks could be months adding up to years.
Loaded E-Cat for Transport.
Related article: Scientists must Study the Nuclear Weak Force to Better Understand LENR
The very first unit experienced just these kinds of problems and wasn’t in fact actually shipped; a second unit with the results of the experience from the first build is what was delivered to the U.S. military customer.
Currently, a unit that was built for delivery has just been shipped after a test suite was run. Shipping for the container-sized unit would be almost a month and simply installing the unit will take a month as well.
That puts two 1 megawatt units out the door.
Understandably, with all the outside attention the customers have no intention of public acknowledgment of the deal, delivery or results. Quiet is the word – no one wants onlookers hanging around and the attention on a very technical and controversial device.
The next important point is safety. This is new technology with all the enthusiasm comes novelty and inexperience. The E-Cat gets hot, very hot, past the temperature of boiling water and there are 106 of them in a smallish box. It’s not something the untrained need to be near.
These points also have thrown the brakes on consumer-sized units. The certification and safety agencies that need to sign off on something like this require extensive testing before they will approve it to be made available to the general public. It would seem the famed UL Laboratories attempt is on hold. That makes sense, as the UL isn’t holding a protocol in the files for the testing. Something has to be built up and the experience needed is sparse at best – missing as a practical matter – for any protocol at all.
Mr. Rossi is getting data and did say that these plants consume only 1 gram of Nickel for every 23 gigawatt-hours of heat they produce.
There is also a hotter running model called the “Hot-Cat”. The Hot-Cat runs at 350ºC and Mr. Rossi said it is “very stable.” At this temperature, he said that creating electricity will be easy, and that they are making progress on building one. He also confirmed that the European based world wide operating firm Siemens is still working with his firm to generate electricity.
Hot-Cat Testing to Destruction.
Related article: Nuclear Fusion – Possible at Last?
The Hot-Cat is garnering attention as well. A test was run back in late March with over 120 hours of continuous no interruption running. The test was run by four professors from different parts of the world, with Mr. Rossi absent, though he was available if they had any questions. The professors used their instrumentation and they controlled the cabling. The group hasn’t provided Mr. Rossi with the exact results but he said, “they were “smiling” and indicated that it was “very good””.
Meanwhile Mr. Rossi is staffing up. The company has 2 specialists working on electronics for the control systems. They have made enormous progress in the last 7-8 months. They also work on any kind of thing connected with electricity.
There are 3 specialists working on thermal technical problems: thermal dynamics, upgrading the heat exchanger and upgrading the energy density. Two specialists are working on design, external aesthetics as well as functionality and space utilization for energy density optimization.
There is a team that makes tests of plants, to run plants; to invent new things that improve efficiency. Plus a manufacturing team and another team working on prototype design in the U.S. (for 1 MW plants).
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Perhaps one item of interest to many working on the technology from other ideas is Mr. Rossi’s explanation of how the reactor starts. He explained that each module has essentially two apparatuses inside: and activator and the reactor. He calls the resistive heater element the “mouse” and the reactor the “cat”. It takes a little tease from the mouse getting in front of the cat’s nose for the cat to go off running. He compares this to the little amount of energy required to get the reaction going, using outside electricity to bring the resistive heater up to a temperature that the reaction takes place. Of the two components, the reactor is only “the size of a whiskey bottle”.
For the future Mr. Rossi noted most of the R&D would stay in Italy, but that the rest of the operations are taking place in the U.S. (Florida). At one point in the conversation he talked about the friendliness of Sweden to his company, due to their need for heat and their environmental consciousness. They are in process of developing manufacturing capability there as well.
For many the Rossi E-Cat story is about the news and promotion efforts. That would be quite a story in its own right, but for most of us Mr. Rossi’s progress depends on the ability to attract enough attention to get the edge of the wedge into the market while building up a stronger technology and attracting the world’s best innovative minds to help.
We’re coming up on three years of watching Mr. Rossi. Most any fraud would have fallen apart long ago. What is actually here for the future is getting less cloudy and a bit clearer for our inspection. If you want to gripe – take it to the patent offices – were these bureaucrats helping we’d have a very complete look. Until that happens the game of information release will have to be played to keep the intellectual property secure while luring just enough customers to keep development on track.
However one feels about Mr. Rossi one must respect that he has come quite a long way and looks to be on track for further progress. Your humble writer wishes him God’s Speed and good luck – as he surely needs them.
By. Brian Westenhaus
Original article: An Update on Andrea Rossi and the E-Cat
Please correct the text.
He has already been caught out in so many lies, it boggles the mind that people can still believe him. There is no mythical partner or Ecat factory churning out devices, just Rossi sitting in his workshop posting on his blog.
This is no different to the dozens of scammers before Rossi - Steorn, Perendev, Intelligentry. I can't believe the writer actually believes this.
Rossi is so clearly dissembling in this lame interview, he couldn't fool my grandmother.
For some bizarre reason, you seem to take Rossi's word as truth. In fact, Rossi's past history is that he was convicted of investor fraud in the Petroldragon affair, resulting in massive environmental pollution and damage. He was also arrested in Italy for illegal transactions in gold. In addition, he lied and cheated to the DOD and took over a million dollars for thermoelectric devices some of which never existed and others of which never worked. No working device was ever shown to the DOD.
I don't completely agree with Rand that Rossi does nothing but sit in his condo in Florida and write on the internet. He has also managed to bamboozle and fool a few old scientists who should have known better. He performed misleading demonstrations and he got away with it because of the gross incompetence of the people witnessing the testing.
Rossi has NEVER shown a properly calibrated and blanked test. He's been told that and has made nonsensical excuses about it on his silly blog which he pretentiously calls the "Journal of Nuclear Physics" (it's no such thing).
It is absolutely amazing that this transparent scammer stil fools people into writing an article like this one. EVERY ASSERTION IN THE ARTICLE is simply something ROSSI SAID! There's not one proper proof that any of it is in any way true.
Rossi has never named a single customer. There is no reason at all to believe he has any. Rossi has never conducted a proper test of the equipment even though it is straightforward and inexpensive to do so and would not endanger his intellectual property.
What will you say, Brian, when Rossi has nothing more than words after two (or ten) more years? If you really believe Rossi, call him up and press him to let you talk to one of his customers. Ask him to get a proper test done by a credible agency. See what happens then.
You are typical of a small group of gullible people who believe what you want to believe when you see it from probable crooks like Rossi and Defkalion or from wishful thinkers like Miley, Swartz and McKubre.
It would be wonderful if LENR worked. But given that it's a nuclear process which could, if it were real, generate thousands of times the energy density of dynamite, where are the VERIFIABLE and BELIEVABLE experiments which show all that energy?
If all you have to show are the nonsense experiment Nelson reported from Defkalion and the constant stream of disingenuous and obvious lies from Rossi, you aren't helping your case!
skepticism and many other blogs , MARYYUGO has been kick
off by Vortex-I.
I wonder where he gets his paycheck , EXXON ,CIA , NRO ??
See SPAWAR the US NAVY research center: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VymhJCcNBBc
AND READ this OFFICIAL PATENT:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8419919.pdf
Yes. I am being generous because I don't think he's a scammer. He recently reported that in his lab, an LENR reaction produced several hundred watts of power sustainable indefinitely. He then showed data which amounted to less than 8 watts for a few minutes, in support of the claim. That's within measurement errors. He then told Krivit something about one of his staff making an error. He has never show the hundreds of watts although he keeps projecting that his team will make batteries to replace radioactive power generators in spacecraft. That's purely wishful thinking IMO. If he has LENR batteries, let's see them.
How moronic can you be to mistake the inability of SOME other researchers to duplicate the effect (when nobody claimed to fully understand what was happening) for proof that there is no reality to it? This is just STUPID. it HAPPENED. And many people have reproduced the effect. And the energy released is huge. It was a massive shame on the " scientific Comunity" the way they treated Pons and Fleischman.
There is heaps of evidence that the physics. Is real.
But wait--I haven't been asked to invest; in fact, any requests to invest have been declined by Rossi.
Now THERE's a scam for ya--somebody you describe as a "criminal" but making nary a cent on the people he's supposed to be criminalizing.
In the meantime, you keep us posted on these types of "criminals", maryyugo.
You go, girl!
Just because he doesn't bother with small fry like you doesn't mean he hasn't fleeced some gullible fat cats. When will the investors complain? Sometimes it takes a long time.
Just look at Steorn, the Irish "company". Amazing claims but no product ever sold in six years, their own "jury" said they had nothing, and their magnet motor, shown a couple of years ago to the public, needed a big battery and could barely keep itself moving even with that. And no complaints yet, 20 million Euros later. Whether Steorn investors ever complain or not may depend on the agreements they signed. If those are worded to provide only for "best efforts", suing Rossi may be difficult and take a lot of time.
Rossi and Defkalion behave exactly like Steorn and like all the other investor scams before them. But it may be a lot more time before we find out what they really are. That they are legitimate companies is unlikely. They both lie consistently and constantly and way too much to be legitimate. They even call each other liars (exactly like the Rohner brothers)!
And John Cook, whether or not cold fusion/LENR is real has nothing to do with whether or not Rossi and Defkalion's exorbitant claims to huge power levels are real. Nobody else makes the same claims. And neither Rossi nor Defkalion has ever properly demonstrated that their claims are valid.
Form a National Commission to research LENR energy production from devices such as Andrea Rossi’s ECAT.
For the last 57 years we have spent an average $393 million a year on hot fusion research for a total of over $22 billion dollars and have yet to develop anything useful for the average citizen.
In contrast in the 24 years since the announcement of the discovery of Low Energy Reactions by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann we have spent far less than 1% of the total spent on hot fusion even with very promising results shown by our own SPAWAR Naval research lab.
Current evidence points to a real effect that could provide all the energy we need. Many prestigious research labs have shown research evidence that LENR reactions are real even with the shoestring budgets put forth to study the field.
It is time for the United States to put serious effort and research into the field of LENR.
Sign the petition if you agree: http://wh.gov/SyJC
Apparently he is spending most of his time on the internet creating article here and there to self-support his fantasy. Also his blog is a misuse of the title.
ANDREA ROSSI HAS BEEN AND STILL IS A GREAT SCAM ARTIST!
PEOPLE WAKE UP!
There is not debate that heat is being generated but you are a fool thinking this means LENR is real. That article is by no means a peer reviewed experiment confirming LENR because there are unknowns in the experiment. That's the problem with Rossi. He is claiming material be unknown because it is a trade secret. Guess what. IF this worked and he sold it, someone would actually get the material and analyze it and it would not be a trade secret. It's a scam. It was a staged test that didn't confirm what you think it did. You need to take a hard look at what is going on and not stand blindly by Rossi.