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Al Fin

Al Fin

Al Fin runs a number of very successful blogs that cover, energy, technology, news and politics.

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Are we on the Brink of an Energy Revolution? Andrea Rossi to Build 1MW Power Plant

Andrea Rossi and partner Professor Sergio Focardi recently announced to the world that they have created a cold fusion device which produces more energy than it consumes. As you can imagine this has drawn a great deal of interest from the scientific community as well as a huge number of skeptics.

One way to prove your sceptics wrong is to actually do what you say you are going to do. Once the deed is done in a public and undeniable way, there is nothing left for the sceptics to say.

On October 7th, 2011, Italian scientific journalist Maurizio Melis of Il Sole 24 Ore, who witnessed the test in Bologna of the previous day, wrote:

"In the coming weeks Rossi aims to activate a 1MW plant, which is now almost ready, and we had the opportunity to inspect it during the demonstration of yesterday. If the plant starts up then it will be very difficult to affirm that it is a hoax. Instead, we will be projected suddenly into a new energetic era."

-- SilverThunder 05:52, 8 October 2011 (PDT) _Peswiki

But it may not be quite that simple. It seems that Rossi has not yet finalised the design for his ultimate E-cat reactor. How can he build a 1 MW plant if the basic reactor design is not yet completed?

Rossi is apparently struggling to come up with a satisfactory design for a small E-Cat. Today on his web site he issued this appeal:

“The E-Cat basic module “for the People”, that we will put in commerce within months, will be 40 cm long, 40 cm large, 40 cm high, will weight 60 kg, the shape of a cube. I need a design cheap ( I want to put it in commerce at a price of 500 euros per kW) but nice, very nice. I will buy the design which I will choose and everybody has my honour word that I will not use designs not paid. I need it within two months...

...Rossi’s business plans are still a mystery, and he’s surely taking an unconventional approach by looking for help at this point from the general public — but that is his style. No one can accuse Rossi of being conventional! Perhaps this little square box will be Rossi’s equivalent of the Model T — a cheap and simple machine that will be able to provide heat (perhaps in time electricity) to the general population. Maybe the idea is that just like with his 1 MW plant, you will be able to connect multiple boxes together to ramp up power capabilities. _via_Peswiki

E-cat diagram
Peswiki

Hank Mills at Pure Energy Systems (publisher of Peswiki) claims that Rossi's LENR concept has been confirmed by the most recent test. Mills goes on to describe the type of tests on the E-cat which he would like to see, in order to probe the full ability of the reactor.

Mills is not the only one who wants to see extensive testing of the concept and the design. If the "excessive heat" claim is proven, nuclear physicists will need to examine the design and come up with a testable explanation for the unexplained energy.

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It is well and good for Rossi to take a sledge hammer to his sceptics by way of a working 1 MW steam plant. But the rest of us want to know what kind of potential this approach may offer in providing a brand new source of cheap and abundant energy. We also want to know if an entire new branch of physics is about to be opened, with all the possibilities for new scientific knowledge and technology which that might mean.

By. Al Fin


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  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    There is a tendency for those new to this subject to flip it in the junk-science bin. Before you do that, read the 2 briefs at eCatNews.com. These highlight why so many people including a Nobel physicist and the former chairman of the Swedish Sceptics' Society along with the chief scientist at NASA,Langley give Rossi's claims direct and indirect support.
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    Thank you for your informative reporting of this story Al. While yet to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, if this technology turns out to be validated it is, in the words of NASA scientist Dennis Bushnell "capable of, by itself, completely changing geo-economics, geo-politics and solving climate and energy.” That's a mouth-full and it's potential alone makes it worth following.I think it also important to note that Mr. Rossi is not the only player in the game regarding this technology. Rossi's former business partner, Defkalion Green Technologies, also has announced plans to commercialize this technology in the very near future, as has Italian researcher Francesco Piantelli.Whether or not you actually believe that anything will come of this, the ongoing story is quite fascinating in and of itself. There are a number of sites following this story closely but for interested parties I would recommend the Vortex-1 discussion form and ecatnews dot com.
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    This is a very complicated situation in which some scientists think that Rossi has accomplished cold fusion and many think he's made a big mistake or is lying.There are some fairly simple steps Rossi could have taken to resolve this. They involve getting the machine tested independently by a credible group or institution or lab. It's not expensive or particularly time consuming and would not reveal his secret. He has not had it done in almost a year of talking and giving unclear demonstrations.
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    Room for comments is pretty short here. I will try to add the rest of the story:In addition, Rossi is involved in an ongoing battle of words with a company which was supposed to distribute his technology to the whole world except the US. This company, Defkalion Green Technologies, claimed, last Spring, to have made working machines based on Rossi's technology. They said these machine had an output of 20 times the energy they were supplied and could sustain outputs of 20 kilowatts for six months on a few grams of nickel and hydrogen fuel. Nobody has ever reported in public that they saw any such machine, a photo of such a machine or any evidence that they exist. The company does not reply to requests for evidence.Since those claims, Rossi says on his blog that he never gave Defkalion the technology! They continue to claim that he did.2gvez
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    So many scientists have tested the E-Cat hand-on and come away convinced it works that the odds of a scam are very low. We should all hope it works because the other new energy sources all have so many problems that they cannot replace fossil fuels. See THE RENEWABLE ENERGY DISASTER at:http://renewable.50webs.com/
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    Many aspects of this whole story resemble a free energy scam, for example the one perpetrated by Steorn who claimed they had a magnetic motor and produced nothing after investors gave them ore than 20 million Euros. Or the one by Carl Tilley who claimed to have an electric car that did not need recharging. There are many such stories over the last decades and this may turn out to be just another. Rossi plans to demonstrate by the end of this month, a "one megawatt (million watt) plant" which will make a lot of hot steam. How he plans to test it is unknown and tests of such large machines are very difficult. Why he wants to make such a large device when he's avoided getting a proper test of smaller ones is unclear.
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    LENR is a promising alternative energy source that has gotten very little attention and often faced hostility due to initial problems in replication. Despite this, a number of research teams over the world have been working on it for the last 20 years. Mr Rossi claims to have made a breakthrough that allows him to control the Ni-H reaction with relative ease.While there is controversy about Rossi's way of handling things, and about LENR in general, with the delivery of a functional 1 MW heating plant to a customer, the truth will undoubtedly come out. So far Rossi has kept to his promised schedule.
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    There are already patents to convert the LENR energy directly into mechanical energy, without the old steam engine from James Watt. With that engine it is possible to make electricity to load a supercapacitor in a e-car.Mr. Rossi you should rethink your business model and sell technology-sharing licenses .A license for about 5 $ / kW th would be justified.If one considers that in the world every year about 60 million new cars will be produced and all have a LENR drive with 50kWth. Mr. rossis income: $ 15 billion per year !!!!!web4Y0U
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    For God's Sake! Why are governments not investigating this from top to bottom?What is stopping this ?Why havent more people become involved?Free Pizza lasts about 10 seconds!Free energy it seems is distasteful, WHY?Mike
  • Anonymous on October 13 2011 said:
    In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. abs-cbn live The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company.
  • Anonymous on October 14 2011 said:
    It's a great story but not only is Rossi avoiding objective testing but he has a record of having scammed before. The only real question is how much hype he needs to generate before he can somehow turn all this notoriety into money.the secondary question is what tricks has he employed so far. We don't need Swedish scientists doing the investigations, we need Randi the magician to debunk the scam.But there is no point in having a magician on site until Rossi is prepared to co-operate.I suppose there's also the chance that he's honestly deceiving himself.But a solution to the world's woes? How gullible are you?
  • Anonymous on October 14 2011 said:
    Why does everyone ignore liquid thorium reactors? Thorium is as cheap and plentiful as lead, there is enough supply for a thousand ywears, there are no meltdown scenarios possible, it actually can use some nuclear waste material from non thorium plants, and no leftover bomb making material is produced. waste
  • Anonymous on October 14 2011 said:
    I'll be delighted if this is real and it works. I'll also be remarkably surprised. I'm not sure what the point is, however. As energy problems go, it's probably simpler to focus on the exploitation of thorium as the Chinese and Indians are both doing.
  • Anonymous on October 15 2011 said:
    The people who count are not ignoring thorium based reactors, Mr Delmar Jackson. They just dont feel like wasting their breath expaining them to the the ignoramuses unloading their phoney wisdom in the bloggosphere.As for this cold fusion device, PT Barnum said that there is a fool born every minute, but he should have said every second.
  • Anonymous on October 15 2011 said:
    Rossi's problems has to be well defined and it is this: it is a very great difference and distance in time, effort, work, moneybetween an partially controllable excess heat release and a usable energy source.add to this that the mechanism of heat release is unknown. Festina troppo lente!
  • Anonymous on October 15 2011 said:
    [quote name="Paul Story"]... many people including a Nobel physicist and the former chairman of the Swedish Sceptics' Society along with the chief scientist at NASA,Langley give Rossi's claims direct and indirect support.[/quote]The Novel laureate is Brian Josephson who also believes in homeopathy, psychic powers, and paranormal phenomena. Kullander, the Swede, always qualifies his remarks by saying more proof is needed. And Dennis Bushnell, NASA scientist, has never endorsed Rossi. He simply said that LENR and cold fusion deserved continuing research. Just setting the record straight.
  • Anonymous on October 15 2011 said:
    Milliwatts generated by the original Pons and Fleishman experiments were not considered proof enough. The sceptics demanded 100% reproducibility.They could only achieve 60%Now we have megawatts. Still not enough power? How about Terra watts?Pathological scepticism should be a disease listed in the DSM4.
  • Anonymous on October 16 2011 said:
    The people who think that there is a scam being foisted on the folks in the cheap seats need to be informed what that word means. What we are dealing with in this article is sheer ignorance, made possible because the desire to create, believe and circulate nonsense is immense, and increasing.Mr Fin thinks that his readership should take valuable minutes or seconds to absorb this tripe, because a new branch of physics could be at the starting line. Save your breath and ink maryyugo.Ignoramuses dont deserve your attention.
  • Anonymous on October 16 2011 said:
    A number of topic-specific blogs have been covering this developing story since the beginning of the year. They are doing so because despite some real reservations, there is now good evidence that Rossi's invention is real. the '1 MW' test due to take place later this month may well add to the evidence, or may even be conclusive.One thing that all these blogs have in common is the presence of 'troll' posters seeking to persuade all and sundry that there is nothing in the story, for reasons that are not entirely clear. One such commonly encountered ID is very much in evidence here with multiple posts, and seems to have been joined by another 'contributor' trying to push a similar line of negativism and ridicule.Anyone new to this story should visit ecatnews.com, peswiki.com or similar blogs for more information.
  • Anonymous on October 17 2011 said:
    [quote name="maryyugo"]...Since those claims, Rossi says on his blog that he never gave Defkalion the technology! They continue to claim that he did.2gvez[/quote]There are other people working on the same technology. Rossi is the most dramatic participant. What Rossi does or does not do takes nothing away from people like Piantelli, Patterson, Levi, Focardi, SPAWAR and now apparently Upsala university will be involved along with Univ of Bolognahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6nlHlW8VRcMY's sound of caution is warranted but it by no means requires one to believe there is foul play.The general public at this point in time does not have enough information to say wether or not this technology is true and/or viable. We need more definitive proof. But there is reason for hope above and beyond what we had for Fleishman and Pons
  • Anonymous on October 17 2011 said:
    Peter Roe says that there is good evidence that Rossi's invention is real. What he means by evidence is analogous to fools gold. There is no scientific evidence, and none is expected. And LCD, what the "general public" thinks is irrelevant where this issue is concerned, although I agree that if the GP think that the hip-hop or the droning of Bob Dillon is music, they may have a point, even if I disagree.
  • Another anonymous on January 17 2012 said:
    It seems to be quite fashionable to comment anonymously on Rossi's work here... Maybe nobody wants to have to eat their words later... !
    But the reality is that, however interesting the physics may be, there is nothing to show that this will ever stand any chance of producing energy at industrially useable levels.
    There's no such thing as a free lunch in nature... or indeed in Physics... so let's not kid ourselves. The "free lunch" of fossil fuels is just dumb old mankind cashing in on a short-term advantage... buring in a couple of hundred years most of the fossil fuel which fusion (sunshine) laid down for us on earth over the past few billion ! (Not something with much of a future I'm thinking)...
    But there is a real hope for the future... IF we can get over all the greed, delusions and empire building associated with the energy game... We need governments to get together and make fusion work... my money's on laser fusion (inertial confinement fusion)as the most likely to crack harnessing fusion with gain first... IF the funding can be maintained.
    Right now, we are too busy worrying about fat-cat bankers and oil-men however. Our grandchildren are unlikely to thank us for the current trend of sticking our fingers in our ears and our heads in the sand ! The energy challenge is right here and right now... and so is the environmental challenge. I guess its embarrassing on this web site to point out that even the cleanest gas makes CO2... and a few other nasties besides. Let's get real... we need a new way and we need it really soon ! When are the energy sector going to get serious about fusion ? My guess on that (sadly) is that they will ONLY get serious about fusion when they can be ABSOLUTELY SURE they can make a quick buck out of it ! What a sad epitaph for humanity ! We have fusion energy within reach, but nobody will go that extra mile to make it possible !
  • jfab on January 17 2012 said:
    "device which produces more energy than it consumes"

    If you mean that a traditional combustion engine produces more energy than it consumes (like, turning your car key takes less energy than moving the car) then OK. Otherwise no, a cold fusion such as the e-cat (if proved to work) would NOT produces more energy than it consumes.
  • kwhilborn on January 17 2012 said:
    This NASA video on a NASA website does demonstrate that NASA scientists are of the belief that Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) is the fuel of tomorrow.

    Although NASA does not confirm Andrea Rossi work as they have not tested it they claim they can replicate the experiments somewhat themselves.

    Here is the NASA video:
    http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/media/CC/lenr/lenr.html

    http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/media/CC/lenr/lenr.html
  • Good Elf on January 17 2012 said:
    Most machines produce excess capacity to do work using a "fuel"... no such thing as a fuel-less engine even if the "fuel" is simple sunlight for instance. A motor car uses gasoline as a fuel and Rossi's device uses Nickel and Hydrogen. The energy "density" for these types of "fuel" are quite different since gasoline can only "burn" chemical energy while Rossi's device is supposed to "burn" nuclear energy due to entropic transmutation of the element nickel into Copper.... both of which are non-radioactive.

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