Posted on 04/09/2011 2:06:23 PM PDT by Windflier
This FAQ covers Andrea Rossi's technology, which combines small amounts of ubiquitous and safe Nickel and Hydrogen in the presence of proprietary catalyst under pressure and heat to generate a large amount of heat. It also addresses questions about the commercialization under way.
FAQ
What is the Energy Catalyzer?
It is a "Cold Fusion" device developed by Italian engineer and inventor Andrea Rossi. It produces heat by placing nickel powder of very small particle size (nano-meters to micro-meters) in a pressurized hydrogen environment along with currently undisclosed (for proprietary reasons) catalysts that enhance the reaction. When this environment is heated to approximately 450 - 500 C, a nuclear reaction starts taking place. This reaction releases a large amount of energy while consuming very little hydrogen and nickel powder.
How much energy does this system produce?
There is currently only one model of reactor that has been disclosed. It is designed to produce 10 kW of continuous thermal energy in the form of heated water or steam. However, this is not the upper limit of the energy the system can produce. It can be throttled up to 130 kW or higher, but that is avoided except during experimentation for safety reasons.
What proof do we have this technology works as claimed?
Andrea Rossi has used one of these devices to continually heat one of his factories for two years. In addition, recent publicized tests performed by third party scientists at the University of Bologna have verified that the output is far beyond any chemical reaction possible, that there are no hidden external sources of energy feeding the reactor, and that the output far exceeds the energy input. In one test, the device self sustained with no input for a period of time before the short experiment was ended. Another experiment allowed the reactor to run for 18 hours producing a constant average output of 15 kW utilizing only an average of 80 watts of input. Successful tests such as these have impressed scientists and have inspired the one year research program at the University of Bologna .
why not email him, his email address was submitted when he opened the corp in Florida
HE STILL USES AOL L —— O -—— L
The power input isn’t what provides pressure, so far as I can tell, it’s a pressurised container. I presume the container provides the “pressure”, in the sense of not allowing the pressure to escape. You can create a high enough pressure to hurt yourself in a pressure cooker with no power input at all, just by throwing baking soda and vinegar in the cooker and sealing the lid shut.
Do you have any idea how many millions of pounds per sq inch would be required?
He is looking 300 pound pipe, the stuff will critically fail at 425 pounds per square inch.
I highly doubt he is using that container to pressurize that experiment. It would be suicide.
Well, he certainly isn’t using 80 watts of input electrical power to do it. Whatever the amount of pressure he needs, it has to be from a pressure vessel. I don’t see how it could be from the small amount of input power.
He doesn’t have to deal with physics if it is a fraud.
If it is a fraud, it will become clear soon enough. And since he seems to be saying nobody should give him money until he delivers, it seems that the only people who could be “defrauded” would be people who don’t take his advice. Pretty odd fraud.
Absent attempts to steal money from people, at worst he’s just stringing us along in an elaborate april fool’s hoax. I certainly am not making plans for my future based on his device, so if it turns out his device doesn’t work, it won’t bother me a bit, and if it DOES work, it will be cool.
“Pretty odd fraud.”
This is very standard Fraud/Con, that is why I detected it so quickly.
The internet is great, you can see a con going on from a distance and keep your wallet safe.
What’s your perspective in this case?
“You can create a high enough pressure to hurt yourself in a pressure cooker with no power input at all, just by throwing baking soda and vinegar in the cooker and sealing the lid shut.”
Yes, pressure due to chemistry, not due to energy created by nuclear fusion. I suggest you read the article again.
Note: I used to work at a nuke plant with PWRs (pressurized water reactors).
“...It produces heat by placing nickel powder of very small particle size (nano-meters to micro-meters) in a pressurized hydrogen environment...” pressurized means that an outside energy source is being used to pressurize the environment inside where the ‘fusion’ is supposed to occur.
This is neither chemistry nor cooking technology, Charles.
Where is the evidence of anybody being tricked into investing money? If he’s just wasting his own money, all he’s wasting of ours is our time, and only as much was we let him waste.
I bet there were times in most inventors lives where people around them thought they were crazy. I bet there’s lots of “inventors” who were crazy, and never invented anything useful. But I’m not going to worry about the crazy inventors wasting my time, lest I miss the one that really invented something nobody was crazy enough to think about.
Only the first quote is in the article. The second part is NOT in the article. Nothing in the article indicates that "pressurized hydrogen" means what you claim it means. There's no reason to require that the pressurized hydrogen be pressurized by the outside energy source.
But I don't even get your argument. I could build you a device that had nothing but water, a pressure vessel, and an 80-watt power source, and create pressurized hydrogen. I just need a catalyst to use the electrical energy to separate the oxygen and hydrogen in the water. I'm not saying that's what he is doing -- I'm saying it is so easy to do that, so I don't understand your arguemnt that the outside energy source is setting up a self-contained pressurized area.
So far as I know, the only way we use power to set up pressurized containment is when we create plasma fusion with coils, or high-power lasers. I don't see him using those devides here.
I have no idea if what he is doing works, or not, or if it is chemistry, or not. He says it isn't chemistry because it gets too much power output for chemical processes. But right now in Japan they have a nuclear reactor where they put NO power in at all and they get pressurized hydrogen, so much so they have to inject nitrogen in the hopes of not having an explosion.
I don't think that's what his device is doing either, but as I said, I'm really just not understanding the complaint about "pressurized hydrogen". Can't I get pressurized hydrogen in a cannister, and use it to blow up balloons? Is there some trick to pressurized hydrogen I'm not understanding?
There is a number of problems with Rossi’s answers.
1- That hydrogen works and not deuterium is a red-flag. Any LENR mechanism involves tunnelling through the internuclear barrier and hydrogen has a greater de Broglie wavelength than deuterium: the shorter the de Bloglie wavelength, the greater the tunnelling.
2- Ni-62 is the most stable nucleon. Any first step involving this nucleon will be very endothermic (secondary reactions from the first set of products may be exothermic) and heating the reactor to 500 degrees Celcius is not going to do it.
3- Ni-64 has a half-life of less than 72 hrs, thus it needs to be created by absorption of 2 neutrons by Ni-62, a very unlikely reaction without the presence of a fairly strong neutron emitter in the reactor. Heating to 500 degrees Celcius is not going to do it. The most abundant Ni isotope is Ni-58 and that will imply an absorption of 6 neutrons to produce Ni-64 (Ni-62, being the most stable nucleon, is not in the picture) making it very, very unlikely.
4- Now comes the central issue: the source of neutrons. First, whatever the neutron source, most of the neutrons will not interact with the Ni nucleons and will reach the exterior and become detectable outside the reactor. And Mr Rossi’s FAQ makes no mention of neutron or of any kind of external detection of any kind of particle or radiation. To say that hydrogen gas alone works and not deuterium brings about another flag: only by absorption of a neutrino can a positron and an electron can combine to produce a neutron.
At least with deuterium, at very close proximity to the Nickel nucleon, the orientation of the deuterium nucleon can be such to have the neutron closest to the nickle nucleon and have the neutron transfer to the Nickel from the deuterium: result is 1 neutron added to Nickel and production of a hydrogen atom. Neutrinos interact very, very weakly to matter. If there was any neutron source, it will have to be from some radioactive isotope in the Ni alloy. Heating up to 500 degree Celcius will not do the trick for neutrino absorption.
5- Some para-scientific issues. The quest of transmutation of matter through chemical means has been the dream of alchemists for centuries, if not millennia. This delusion is still strong today. The presence of a paper in a peer-reviewed journal is not a gold standard, not even a lead standard of proof. The same goes with patents. The gold standard is reproducibility in an independent lab. In blog: newenergytimes.com/2011/01/15/rossi-discovery-what-to-say, all I read is some minor nitpicking between teams who are into the cold fusion kick. But the biggest flag is Rossi stating he has a factory running for 2 years on this technology and he will not identify the factory. Show us the factory and leave us alone while we inspect it.
6- More para-scientific issues. Scam artists flock to the same scam. We had Mark Goldes and Mr Randell Mills pushing the Ni-H scheme, explaining it with the hydrino theory (which is garbage).
But Goldes and Mills apparently were successful to lasso in some suckers, er, investors. At least Mills was honest enough to state that Raney-Ni was used; there is always some Al and oxygen in the Ni. Why shouldn’t others get on the Ni-H scheme? This time, instead of hydrinos, some vague LENR is invoked.
The suckers, er, investors are not that innocent and want regular and periodic progress reports. And if supposedly progress takes form of platitudinal and vague news reports, then so be it.
7- Nickel and hydrogen (in all conditions and proportions) have been used in industry in the hydrogenation of many organics. Energy balance of reactors are measured very carefully. If there were - in any small part of the reactor - processes imputed by Rossi, Goldes, and Mills, the reactor will reach criticality pretty soon. So far, no such incidents have been reported.
“absorption of a neutrino can a positron and an electron can combine to produce a neutron.”
correction:
absorption of a neutrino can a PROTON (not positron) and an electron can combine to produce a neutron.
But they overcame the repulsion by having a clasping bubble that is so violent that heat and light are released. You could visibly see it.
Hmm, I spent a while wandering around and asking the grad students questions. What I saw was positive and negative electrodes, one of which was palladium, bubbling away in what would be best described as fish tanks.
The Palladium electrodes had been soaking in deuterium or something before being used and then it was just like electrolysis to get the fusion reaction going. What they were doing was measuring the temperature in the tank (uninsulated) and comparing its temp to the electricity they were putting in.
According to one of the grad students, occasionally one of the electrodes would heat up and start bubbling the water like mad. That was when they guessed that they had achieved fusion. Invariably the electrode would be ruined and the process halted after the electrode became pitted.
They were trying all kinds of variations to try and consistently get the reaction to occur, but they never could. I am pretty sure that it was a faulty power supply, as simple and odd as that.
I do remember reading something about the collapsing bubbles, but it would have had to have been the bubbles from the electrodes. Could they have been shorting and emitting light? I don't know.
The one I saw actually had ultrasound introduced to the heavy water with a charge added to the water.
The hydrogen would bubble and then collapse suddenly crushing the hydrogen.
Let me see if I can find you a link.
Part of this type of con is to make sure that no one else knows that you were given money. Without a trace if possible.
The less evidence there is that you were given money, the more likely you avoid prosecution.
Also, everyone heard you say it is your own money and you didn’t want their money.
Makes a nice defense in court with lots of witnesses for you to call.
This isn’t a very good link, but I just did a quick look
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php/15802-Cold-Fusion-Bubble-Experiments-Verfied
These experiments were at least reproduceable if not fruitful.
Just more info, it is at some of the links above:
He has a hydrogen tank attached to the experiment (hem defrauder)
How do you get someone's money without them knowing it? Isn't that simple theft, and not a fraud, if you take someone's money surreptitiously, without their knowledge?
Wouldn’t that be a source of pressurized hydrogen?
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