Bloody excellent point!
I was thinking the same thing. This event has a much more of a ring of authenticity to it exactly because of the involvement of UoB.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 01/27/2011 10:38:26 AM PST by The Comedian
A couple of weeks ago we reported that the Italian inventor Andrea Rossi has announced that he has a commercial ready cold fusion reactor that is safe and reliable, capable of producing 10 kW of heat; and is in process of going into production, with a 1 MW plant being built ganging 125 of these units together.
Rossi has allowed outside scientists to perform tests on the module and report on their findings. Papers on these tests have begun to emerge.
In a paper that came out Monday morning (Italy time), Prof. Giuseppe Levi of the University of Bologna describes two experiments. One was performed in December of 2010 and the other on January 14 of 2011, during the public demonstration and press conference. In both experiments Andrea Rossi's cold fusion reactor is tested to determine if more energy is output than input. The results are clear that in both tests much more energy was produced than was put into the system.
In the first test, Levi reported that Rossi's device actually self-sustained for approximately 15 minutes after all power was cut, until they had to stop the reactor by applying additional cooling water. When reading the document one may realize that the output energy for the second test is missing. However, this information has already been posted and was over 10KW.
In the second paper (ref, pp. 7-12) Dr. David Bianchini, also of the University of Bologna, describes his tests to determine if radioactivity is escaping the system for safety purposes, during the January 14 demonstration. He detects no radiation escaping the shielding of the system.
Another paper describing a test to determine what radiation is produced inside of the cell is posted here.
Then, in a paper that came out on January 26, Mauro Villa, also with Bologna University, describes his tests to determine if any gamma radiation is being produced inside of the reactor. Two holes were placed in the shielding to allow radiation to be measured. No gamma radiation significantly above background was detected. However, he does not discount the possibility of lower energy gamma rays being produced.
Classical physics predicts that some type of radiation must be produced by the system to heat the components of the reactor to heat the water. Villa had predicted that gamma radiation is the most likely culprit, but his measurements did not verify that premise. So either this is not a fusion reaction according to classical physics, or there is some kind of new physics taking place that is yet to be understood and characterized.
Some speculate that perhaps X-Rays are being emitted. The lead shielding in the apparatus is consistent with this presumption. This would be similar to the X-Rays produced by Black Light Power's system involving Hydrinos – a smaller, more energetic variation of the hydrogen atom. (Ref.)
Rossi claims that outside scientists have tested his system to determine if X Rays are produced, but has not yet received the results.
Since these new papers have been posted many new messages have been posted in the comment section of the Journal of Nuclear Physics blog run by Rossi. Some of his answers confirm what he has already said, and others give new information. For example, He is starting a 1 year research program with the University of Bologna to investigate the reactions inside of the reactor. Work on the 1MW plant is nearing completion and will open in a "matter of months." The wait is mostly due to "authorization" issues. The volume of the reactor is 1 liter. They expect their patent that covers their catalysts and special processes done to the nickel to be granted by the time the 1MW plant opens. When the patent is granted they will release full details on the catalysts, special processes done to the nickel, construction of the device, etc. They have ran their device in self-sustain mode for several hours at a time.
So where are we at this point?
It seems more people think this technology is legitimate. Of course the final proof of this will be when the 1MW plant opens.
Also, the news about his technology is spreading. Articles have appeared in EE Times, Zero Hedge, Popular Science, Discovery, TechEye, Fox News, Gizmodo, Motherboard, Mother Nature Network, and elsewhere. Most of these are highly skeptical and cite PhysOrg as their primary source, which cited our January 17 PESN coverage as its primary source.
We continue to chronicle the main developments at PESWiki.com.
Lawrence Rayburn has posted some comments in a forum, which we've compiled, in which he seems to think it wouldn't be hard to build one of these cold fusion reactors. He claims to have built a working Tesla Radiant Energy Collector some years ago, but he thinks this cold fusion reactor is much more simple and plausible for widespread implementation.
“...In the demonstration device for every unit of input there was approximately 37 units of output.”
“During the test it produced 20 times more energy out than in. In the lab they have done similar tests and obtained 400 times more out than in, but it produced explosions.”
Wow explosions. Sounds better than most US universities where kids are smoking bongs, playing video games, trying to “hook up” and Jethro & Demitrius at Corn Cob U is trying to run the I back or the option or the “veer.”
At Notre Dame the circula is giving muslims medlas for partial birth abortion.
Bloody excellent point!
I was thinking the same thing. This event has a much more of a ring of authenticity to it exactly because of the involvement of UoB.
It's a pity you never learned subject/verb agreement in your schooling. It would make your idiocy so much more convincing.
Just imagine if we told OPEC that they can EAT their oil, where would Jihad Jonny get the money to build a suicide belt>
Deployment of commercial generation using this process is the real test of its viability. If they can generate 37 times the input energy, and do so in the labs of independent observers, then that’s pretty conclusive. Even if it doesn’t generate high enough temperatures for electric power, if the units can be made inexpensively enough they can be used for heating and hot water production in hotels and apartment buildings.
Thank you for saving me the trouble of writing that. I was gonna write it in Latin, but English is fine too.
Wow ... adding a Proton to Ni. Something weird is going on, I didn't read any H getting bumped to He.
I am curious as to the various states of output to input, and that an output of 400:1 producing explosions - I wonder what 'type' of explosion they were creating. I'm not a chemist, but based upon the ingredients I don't see anything doing more than a 'pop' - and that being H2 being oxidized.
If this works out, this will revolutionize the world. Coal fired plants will be obsolete, nuclear will be used ONLY for weaponization, LG generation plants will be possibly used for Peak Demand situtaions.
Our reliance on Fossil Fuels will all but stop. We can tell our Arab 'Friends' that they will have to find another way to finance ways to destroy us.
Mo more econoboxes!
Do you think the greenies would approve of an EV version of this Ford
So Al Gore would need, what--about 50 of these to power his compound, Rancho del Megajoule...?
Thanks for that.
Ditto
In all seriousness, if today, we stopped all imports of middle eastern oil, tomorrow (or shortly thereafter) would be TEOTWAWKI.
So, they’ve run it for “several hours” at a time, and it produces 1kw of output per 5L. Let’s be generous and say that “several” is 5, so we get an even 1kWh/L. That’s 3.6MJ/l. Gasoline has an energy density of about 35MJ/l. Just ignoring the energy that they input while they’re running it (which is where they’re getting this “gain” factor from), if this thing is starting out with even 1/10th the *chemical* energy of gasoline, that explains everything.
Their nuclear reaction proposal makes no sense for several reasons. Esp. since they’re using normal nickel, since adding a proton to Ni-58 means you get radioactive Cu-59, which distinctly isn’t happening. Their shielding explanation makes no sense either, since while lead will block all alpha, and most beta, it won’t with gamma or neutrons. Copper is an exceedingly common contaminant by the way — it’s in the wires they’re using, the tubing, it’ll be found as an impurity in the nickel, and you find copper dissolved as a contaminant in tap water (due to copper piping). Finding copper means absolutely nothing.
Want to know what’s most likely actually happening here? Their “treatment” process for the nickel is most likely making it reactive in some way or another. For example, if their “treatment” process involves electricity and water, they’re probably loading it up with hydrogen (making nickel hydride), which is being released as they heat the nickel and either burning or catalytically decomposing. This would also explain the explosion they reported — if they outgas hydrogen too fast and it accumulates rather than steadily burning, you’ll get an explosion when it does ignite.
Nothing to see here.
Yup, like I said, it will change humanity.
For the better.
Yeah not to pound the table but this school is almost 1,000 year old.
U.S. universities will destroy their credibility in a heartbeat to advance the leftist agenda or give Obama another medal.
The you know who’s are “graduates” from Harvard, Princeton and Columbia but the transcripts are sealed? He needs a TOTUS to talk to little kids???
Loads of US unis push the GW agenda and have courses in it along with women’s studies and other grievance agendas.
UNi of VA and Penn State are up to their eyeballs in the GW fraud with that one professor. VA AG Ken Cucinelli was suing him for defrauding state taxpayers!
I would think U of Bologna probably told them - this better work or we look like fools.
This is especially after Pons and Fleischmann at U of Utah. Pons lives in France now? Hmmm... I wonder if it worked, they changed the formulas after they got a big payday.
YEAH! LIKE WHAT YOU SAID!
(Seriouusly, you are scary smart dude).
Most people do not realize it, but thanks to Texan George Mitchell, we are #1 in nat gas producting and reserves. This happened within the last 5 years. Mitchell’s horizontal drilling technolgy was the key.
I would bet we have 5 times the Saudi’s oil reserves just in Nat Gas on “federal land.” The states need to take the land back from the Feds.
Consider that immediately stolen.
Oh, and if you want hope for an economical fusion power plant, your best place to look isn’t random quacks with aluminum foil “reactors”. It’s HiPER (the HIgh Power laser Energy Research facility). It’s an ICF approach (Interial Confinement — I.e., “it takes time for things to accelerate, aka, explode, and matter can still fuse during that time” — I.e., “compress a fusion target enough with lasers, fast enough, and it’ll fuse”. However, unlike NIF (the National Ignition Facility), they’re not driving the fusion solely by the laser compression pulse (which requires a ton of energy and super-expensive lasers). Instead, they have a weaker pulse (which “only” compresses the pellet to 30 times the density of lead, instead of 100x), but then have a second “heating” pulse to superheat the high-density target as well, significantly increasing its fusion rate.
HiPER is, of course, a demo plant, not a power plant. It’s not designed for A) rapid reloading/refiring, B) capturing the heat output for power generation, and C) continuous operation (for example, durable breeder shielding). But these are simpler, more traditional engineering challenges. The key is that HiPER is predicted to produce a 100-fold fusion gain at a construction cost of $1B, using known, conventional physics. That’s really critical, because that’s easily a high enough gain to overcome system losses, and for a fusion demo plant, that’s a really down to earth budget.
The big physics unknown for HiPER to test, and the reason we can’t just start building fusion power plants based on the design now, is how effective the heating pulse will be when directed at a target with those densities. We know how normal density matter heats from ultra-short laser pulses, but not something 30 times the density of lead. The whole system and process needs to be well quantified before you can start commercializing it.
Old School Science would say the final proof would be replicable results.
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