Posted on 11/06/2011 3:50:39 PM PST by Kevmo
The Science Behind the E-Cat Cold Fusion Reactor
I was initially very dubious when hearing about E-Cat, a cold fusion reactor supposedly invented by Andrea Rossi. The first 1 megawatt unit was reportedly sold to a secret customer two days ago. Mainstream press has mostly ignored the invention so far. However, I found out there is a surprisingly rich history of scientific research and experiments about the mechanism it employs, nickel–hydrogen fusion. Evidence proving that the device is working keeps piling up and up. This is to a point that I am now personally convinced that this is one of the greatest (accidental) discoveries in human history.
Nickel–Hydrogen Fusion Experiments
The Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) published in 2008 a long report entitled Cold fusion - The history of research in Italy which is very broad in scope and contains a section giving a good summary of the research sparked by Francesco Piantelli's initial discovery:
"The research in the field of nickel–hydrogen systems started from an experimental observation by F. Piantelli at the end of 1989 concerning a strange thermal effect at low temperature in a sample of nickel with hydrogen. Piantelli spoke of this effect to his friends S. Focardi and R. Habel during the SIF congress in Trento (October 1990)."
However, due to chronic lack of funding, research progressed very slowly over the following years. Eventually, experiments were performed thanks to loans and direct participation from many colleagues and friends from the University of Siena and Bologna, from INFN, ENEA, CNR of Pisa, CISE, the Navy Academy and the Municipality of Bologna. Focardi et al. first formally published their results, in 1994, in the peer-reviewed article Anomalous Heat Production in Ni-H Systems, in which they detail a system with a cell that appears to produce power of up to 50 Watts, while absorbing hydrogen as evidenced by a pressure decrease. They cautiously do not attempt to explain these strange results, but invite the scientific community to look at the results while merely concluding:
"Up to now we are not able to formulate any consistent model which comprehends the phenomenon."
Their discovery receives some attention and, in 1996, prompts a team from the CERN to reproduce the experiment: Investigation of anomalous heat production in Ni-H systems. The CERN discovers results consistent with Focardi et al.: excess heat around the nickel bar and hydrogen absorption. However they also placed an additional temperature sensor on the container of the cell which was unable to measure any significant excess heat. They theorize that the nickel bar is merely prone to local variations of its thermal characteristics (ie. no excess heat), correlated to the phenomenon of hydrogen absorption. They concede that hydrogen absorption remains unexplained .
Focardi et al. took this feedback into account, and started measuring the temperature from outside the cell's container while continuing their research. In 1998 they publish a subsequent article, Large excess heat production in Ni-H system, describing in great details two cells with multiple sensors, some outside the container. They show that the excess heat is indeed more subtle when measured outside the container (see Fig. 6), but it is still present:
"The existence of an exothermic effect, whose heat yield is well above that of any known chemical reaction, has been unambiguously confirmed by evaluating the thermal flux coming from the cells."
One of the cells ran continuously for 278 days and produced an excess power of about 900 megajoule, while another ran for 319 days and produced 600 megajoule. In Cold fusion - The history of research in Italy, the researchers add that they observed events of nuclear origins:
"During the experiments, which altogether lasted for about 15 years, many phenomena witnessing nuclear reactions inside Ni samples in H atmosphere were observed. While it was producing energy, the cell which produced 900 MJ emitted neutrons for some days [...] equal to 1000 times the neutron flux due to cosmic radiation. [...] Other events, whose existence can only be due to nuclear reactions, were observed at the end of the experiments [...] We observed in remarkable quantity Cu and Zn (with atomic number greater than Ni), F, Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Mn, Cr, Fe (Fig. 3)."
(One nickel atom fusing with a pair of one hydrogen atom and one neutron would produce one copper atom (Cu), or zinc (Zn) if fused with two pairs. This would indeed indicate that fusion is taking place.)
Commercial Development
Unfortunately, the 2008 report Cold fusion - The history of research in Italy abruptly ends with these promising research results, and Focardi et al. appear to have stopped conducting further public research since this time. Instead, around 2008, Andrea Rossi reportedly came to Focardi with a way to catalyze (accerelate) the reaction to a point that it made it commercially viable. So he started working with Focardi with the intention of commercializing an energy reactor based on nickel–hydrogen fusion .
Rossi has a tumultuous history to say the least. More of an entrepreneur than a physicist, he was offered a permanent entry visa to the US to develop some of his unrelated ideas. Later, he spent time in prison in Italy because his company was found guilty of environmental crimes and tax fraud. He has since then returned to the US .
So there we are today, the odd couple of Focardi the physicist and Rossi the entrepreneur are collaborating on the E-Cat, but the press unfortunately focuses too much on Rossi's tumultuous past or lack of credentials, when Focardi spent 20+ years studying the phenomenon .
It does not help that Focardi and Rossi are extremely bad at making themselves look credible. (Although this is changing slowly.) The E-Cat website is very amateur-looking, with typos on the home page ("E-Cat is a devise [sic]..."), poorly produced and unstructured videos presenting the device, and biographies written to inflate their egos ("scientists from all the world agreed that the invention of the energy catalyzer was the best invention to this date in regards to solving the energy problems of our world", from here.) On top of that, the community demands more scientific evidence, but they have mostly ignored Focardi et al.'s 1998 paper published in Il Nuovo Cimento, as well as this one from 2010 sharing a bit more. And Rossi and Focardi now refrain from divulging too many details, to preserve their commercial advantage .
The only details that are being shared is that they enrich nickel with two useful isotopes, nickel-62 and nickel-64, reduce it to micrometer grains, process it to increase the number of surface tubercles (this increases the surface area of nickel and improve its reaction with hydrogen), and add a secret ingredient to break apart the molecular hydrogen (H2) into atomic hydrogen (H1) .
Like many scientific discoveries, the exact mechanism by which this nickel–hydrogen fusion occurs is not fully understood. Christos Stremmenos, former Greek ambassador to Italy and former physics professor at the Università di Bologna, researched nickel–hydrogen fusion before meeting Andrea Rossi, and offers a probable explanation of the theory behind it. Yeong E. Kim from Purdue University also published a paper suggesting that Bose-Einstein theory may be explain the E-Cat device.
Stremmenos became involved with Rossi and Focardi, and helped set up a company in Greece to manufacture the E-Cat on their behalf: Defkalion Green Technologies. Greece is a strategic choice as it is a (small) producer of nickel .
The very latest developments are documented in impressive details on a site maintained by Christopher Calder.
My Thoughts
Nickel and hydrogen are extremely abundant on Earth. Only an infinitesimal quantity of these materials is necessary to produce significant energy levels. Rossi states that one pound of nickel can unleash as much energy as burning approximately 1590 barrels of oil. Nickel–hydrogen fusion would effectively solve mankind's number one problem by providing clean energy at very low cost. Rossi estimates that today's E-Cat design can achieve $.01/kWh when mass-produced, which is about one tenth the average worldwide domestic cost of $.10/kWh. And the technology can only improve!
It is shocking that nickel–hydrogen fusion was accidentally discovered barely 20 years ago, that a breakthrough occurred 3 years ago, that it is still not well understood or studied, yet that a device exploiting it is readying for commercialization. The joke that "cold fusion has always been a few decades away" will soon be dead.. .
I am positive that this pair of guys who started in a garage are on their way to an energy revolution .
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/coldfusion/index?tab=articles
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=61
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2800077/posts
Unfortunately, if Rossi hired a bunch of actors to pretend to be the customer reps, created an elaborate year-long special-effects-derived series of demos, bribed, hypnotised or otherwise fooled Focardi, Levi, Kullander, Essen, Bianchini, Stremmenos and convinced a bunch of Greek crooks to set up a dummy company called Defkalion to pretend to fight with him over the non-existent eCat, to perpetuate the illusion and spin it off into a competing mirror-scam and convinced his former partners to set up another company called Ampenergo to pretend that they had a contract for The Americas for a substantial sum or that they just did this with no proof because they have worked with Rossi and trust him because he’s such a fine fellow, arranged for Piantelli, Miley and a host of others to try to fool the world into thinking that cold fusion was real, got NASA, SPAWAR, The Defense Threat Reduction Agency and The Defense Intelligence Agency to say nice things about the field, got Bushnell to make a fool of himself, sold his profitable company to his ex-partners in order to spend that wealth on a multi-million dollar scam; certain that once he got all the above ducks in a row he would pretend to sell the first device and then reel in the true target of his dastardly plan – the second (this time genuine) buyer of a 1MW plant that will net him $2 million dollars until they want their money back or sucker a $100 million dollar deal under the table because he has experience in pulling the wool over all these idiotic eyes and knows that they will just take his word for it and not want to test if his 1MW plant can heat a small village without truckloads of coal or oil or a big fat electric cable coming into the container from beneath the floor (no you can’t lift the carpet!) and that, in order to pull this off, Rossi had to risk discovery by interviewing all the people he subsequently fooled so that he could only invite the gullible Professors and not the brilliant anonymous posters on the Internet who surely would have found him out – then all bets are off and I’m with the guys who think that Rossi is an idiot and they are all geniuses .
[Vo]: October 28 Established ECAT System Facts
David Roberson
Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:58:30 -0800
I would like to have access to the known facts associated with the latest test
of the 1 MW ECAT system. Is it possible for us as a group to keep a list of
what we know must be true about the test and other facts that influence the
measured performance? I am including a beginning list that should be reviewed
for accuracy and appended to by vortex members. Thank you.
1). The ECATs were preloaded with water prior to beginning the test.
a). A reasonable estimate of the water held within the 107 ECATs is 107 units x
30 liters/unit = 3210 liters.
b). The water within the 107 ECATs is replaced in approximately 3210 liters /
675.6 liters/hour = 4.75 hours.
2). There is no pump within the output path between the ECAT’s and the large
water storage tank.
a). This configuration absolutely demands that the output vapor must be greater
than atmospheric pressure. This is necessary to push the water out of the
dissipaters.
b). This pressure can be estimated by someone who is skilled in the calculation
of liquid and vapor flow through pipes and dissipaters.
3). The average input water flow rate for the ECAT’s was 675.6 liters/hour.
a). The output flow rate is 675.6 liters/hour / 3600 seconds/hour * 1000
grams/liter = 187.667 grams/second. Using this value and information from NIST
leads to the following conclusion.
b). 105 C is the average temperature output of the system, and 18
C average input.
c). If only liquid water is ejected by the ECATs, the minimum system power
output is 187.667 grams/second * (440.27 joules/gram liquid at 105 C – 75.544
joules/gram liquid at 18 C) = 68.45 Kilowatts.
d). If vapor is the only output then the maximum system power output is 187.667
grams/second * (2683.4 joules/gram vapor at 105 C – 75.544 joules/gram liquid
at 18 C) = 489.4 Kilowatts.
e). The true power output of the system must lie between these two values.
4). The customer had an engineer named Domenico Fioravanti and helpers to
verify operation of the system.
Dave
[Vo]: October 28 Established
Boy, mainstream physics must be severely threatened if you have to resort to this asinine wall of breathless, completely unreadable text as your supposed "response."
More than anything else, your utterly ridiculous and obviously contrived and cognitively manipulative reply makes me think that these guys have actually developed commercially viable cold fusion.
I’m highly skeptical that it’s time to railroad yet...
No, let’s be honest.
Global Warming, or Climate change is an open conspiracy between pay-for-postulates scientists, globalists, and eco-nuts.
E-Cat is, at worst, a small scale fraud. At best, maybe a usable heat source.
Please do NOT paint both with the same brush. Global Warming is 100% junk, for sure. Jury still out on E-cat (although there is the smell of fraud, there is no proof yet, so we should give the benefit of a doubt). Long term, the truth will come out.
If E-Cat works, the customers will report its success to their friends, and word will get out. Once they have a customer, we don’t HAVE to believe them, but at the same time, they have nothing to ask from us.
I hate to say it, but suppose this reaction does NOT create energy. With the price of copper, this device might be worth it for the alchemy alone :^D
Boy, mainstream physics must be severely threatened if you have to resort to this asinine wall of breathless, completely unreadable text as your supposed “response.”
***Response? It’s the first post in the thread.
More than anything else, your utterly ridiculous and obviously contrived and cognitively manipulative reply
***Reply to what? What are you jabbering on about?
makes me think that these guys have actually developed commercially viable cold fusion.
***Your writing is no better than the blurb I posted.
Then feel free to refute the science behind the facts generated on the ground.
What's "on the ground" is a black-box.
That ain't science.
But there are scientific facts being generated. Feel free to refute them. If you can.
I bet it will be buried and the whole thing will get “Palinized”
Big oil both domestic and abroad doesn’t want to hear this, electric energy groups from the very top all the way to battery manufacturers won’t be too enthusiastic. They will repress this politically because if say within a decade word leaks out, plans leak out and the average person can make his own unit and use it at home, at work and for transportation the taxation of fuels, energy and such will plummet.
I believe it worked and that it most definitely is scaring a lot of people. It will upset a lot of people. Probably the biggest threat ironically may come from Islam. just think about it it, Islam has never embraced new technology.
There are "scientific facts being generated" in the same sense that sexual-harassment accusations are being generated against Herman Cain.
Try to stay on topic.
Kev, how ‘bout a few paragraph breaks in that? I’ve been trying to read it every time you post it, but it’s just blinding. Thanks.
Maybe this should be posted in the religion forum. wink,wink
I believe it worked and that it most definitely is scaring a lot of people.
***There aren’t that many options for the competition other than to try to buy it with big piles of money. They missed their big opportunity to sabotage the experiment. The next big opportunity is to plant fake evidence of a fraud, which so many would be willing to believe.
I don’t think they would bump Rossi off because it would draw too much attention.
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