Grappling with Whether the E-CAT is a fraud

I've been grappling with whether the Energy Catalyzer that Focardi & Rossi are claiming will go into production in 6 months is a fraud or not. I wandered over to the Energy from Thorium discussion board to see how they are dealing with the latest set of facts, and I find many of their comments constructive to the ongoing debate. So I'm cherry picking some of them below, the ones I found most valuable. I think it's important to preserve this discussion because they have had threads on cold fusion pulled before, and this one is getting heated.

Dennis Bushnell is a respected NASA scientist. I find it interesting that Rossi is saying Bushnell is wrong on his theory about how the E-Cat works. Now if Rossi was running a scam then surely he'd have agreed with Bushnell so as to have yet another reputable person on his bandwagon. Makes you think.

"Power output was estimated at 4.4 kW, and total energy produced at about 25 kWh" (from wiki). So I assumed it to be a very fancy chemical reaction because the ratio was only about 1 to 1.22.

However, I do realize that is quite some battery if it really came from ONLY 50 CC's of nickel !

The Rossi technology contained some very interesting and potentially useful trade secrets that may be well employed in the Lftr. One of them is the very low cost enrichment of nickel favoring Ni62 and Ni64.

I believe that Rossi is using the Soret effect to enrich the heavy isotopes of nickel when he formulates nickel oxide powder from pure nickel nano-powder.

Quote: Thermophoresis, thermodiffusion, or Soret effect (or Ludwig-Soret effect), is a phenomenon observed when a mixture of two or more types of motile particles (particles able to move) are subjected to the force of a temperature gradient and the different types of particles respond to it differently. The term "Sorét effect" normally means thermophoresis in liquids only. The term "thermophoresis" is most often intended to mean the behavior in aerosols,not liquids, but the broader meaning is also common. The mechanisms of thermophoresis in liquid mixtures differ from those in gas mixtures, and are generally not as well understood.

The phenomenon is observed at the scale of one millimeter or less. An example that may be observed by the naked eye with good lighting is when the hot rod of an electric heater is surrounded by tobacco smoke: the smoke goes away from the immediate vicinity of the hot rod. As the small particles of air nearest the hot rod are heated, they create a fast flow away from the rod, down the temperature gradient. They have acquired higher kinetic energy with their higher temperature. When they collide with the large, slower-moving particles of the tobacco smoke they push the latter away from the rod. The force that has pushed the smoke particles away from the rod is an example of a thermophoretic force.

Quote: The present of the strong temperature gradients can results to temperature gradient-driven diffusion (thermomigration). Thermomigration in solid is small and therefore one is usually can be neglected as compared to concentration diffusion. In a heat flow transient induced by electrical discharge, however, temperature gradient is order to 108C/cm and thermal diffusion contribution cannot be excluded, especially in melt state of the oxide. If a homogeneous binary compound is placed in a temperature gradient, a redistribution of the constituents can occur with one constituent migrating to the cold end of the specimen and other to the hot end. This phenomenon is called Soret effect.

The direction of the migration and values of the mass flows is defined by the transport heat f of the diffusing ions Q*. The values of the Q*’s for Ni and O thermomigration in NiO are unknown. However, we can use the approaches which were developed for liquid conductive compounds. Indeed, in this theory assuming that the liquid is a dense gas and applying the thermo-transport theory in binary gas mixtures the direction of the diffusion is determined primarily by the mass differences, the lighter component migrates to the warmer end and the heavy component to cold end.

With this in mind, we can assume that the Ni ions migrate towards the hot region, whereas the O ions diffuse to periphery of the melt region. As a consequence, a temperature gradient drives the establishment of concentration gradients. In the stationary state this concentration gradient depends on the boundary conditions. As melt region are closed for the exchange of oxygen with the surrounding gas phase, process end up with zero atom fluxes, defining the so-called Soret state with Ni rich region in center of the melt.

The data given on Fig.3 confirm an opportunity of an establishment of the Soret state at high temperature stage of the forming. The presented dates are SIMS images of the O and Ni distribution near NiO-Pt interfaces for initial oxide structure and after forming. We can see that only O diffuses away from local nonhomogeneous regions of the NiO during forming. Assuming that these local regions have highest conductivity and, as consequence, high temperature due to Joule hitting the atoms redistribution can be defined by thermomigration and Soret state establishment.

You really can't ignore Rossi's past. He screwed up big time back in the 70s. Also, and this is just my personal opinion, the Defkalion guys look dodgy as hell. -----------------------------------

Joined: Dec 29, 2008 7:55 pm Posts: 67 Location: Syracuse, New York Axil wrote: NASA is working on Ni-H Replication and Theory Confirmation

Theory Conformation? Nonsense. No One yet accurately well documented that there is even an anomaly. All we see is their "spoon bender" dance, claiming they need to hide some secrets.

If you can get 24KW output from 300W input, then there's Nobel prize money waiting, as well as the fame and fortune that would come with blowing away current physics paradigms.

Are we to believe that some Hydrogen, mixed with some Nickel dust and some secret herbs and spices can generate energy at such magnitude? It is just coming to light now? Time to apply your Occam's Razor...

I'm not saying that "Cold Fusion" is complete nonsense, but I find it really strange that *everyone* who researches it is unwilling to accurately characterize the anomaly. It just seems too dang universal. I suspect those who do set out to accurately characterize the anomaly of cold fusion, after a time, quietly walk away. I suspect that is what will happen at NASA.

Joined: Jul 26, 2010 6:09 pm Posts: 102 Christopher Calder wrote: I think the point about the copper has validity, but the point about the energy possibly coming from the wall socket does not. The E-Cat has been run for hours without any electrical input at all other than for the electronics on board, which is minimal. The electrical input from the wall socket has been measured during every test, and the gear has been inspected inside and out for cheap tricks. Rossi is not going to pull a cheap stunt because any such action would inevitably be exposed.

Has this been proven conclusively? Have the following scenarios been considered:

1) Voltage at socket is not 240v but much higher. Higher voltage means less current passing through the wire 2) The wire in the power cord is not standard household wire but a heavier gauge 3) The power meter is not sensitive enough to capture the power being drawn from the wall socket. I recall someone posting on the Randi forum where a scam test rig demonstrated excess power yet all they were doing was pulling power from the wall socket while the power meter did not detect this

As an EE I'm well aware that there are many ways to 'fool' power readings, even unintentionally, and make it very hard to detect. I've bamboozled a few people in my day and academic types don't seem to be any better at fraud detection than most. Without being able to inspect it myself I must remain skeptical about others ability to detect a fraud. However if the sustained power output was several times higher than the power capacity of a typical subcircuit I would give it more weight. It would be substantially harder to fake. As it is, the power could be coming from the wall socket.

Christopher Calder Post subject: Re: Cold Fusion againPosted: Apr 17, 2011 7:13 pm

Joined: Jul 26, 2010 6:09 pm Posts: 102 Christopher Calder wrote: I scanned that document and found nothing that is damning against Rossi.

I hope you're write Chris but seriously do you not see similarities between what happened a few years ago and what's happening now? Rossi came up with a device which put out some amazing performance yet failed to scale. Also his "initial work" was destroyed in a fire ...

alexterrell wrote: rats123 wrote: I'm quite hung up on the Rossi device being plugged into the mains outlet so I have a question about this. What is the maximum power that can be drawn from a standard power outlet? Is this anywhere near 4kw, 10kw or 18kw?

In Europe 240 volts x 13 amps = 3.1KW, which is what large European kettles draw.

The house itself is normally on 90 or 110 amps. So in theory the house could export >20KW, though in practice the utilities are worried about >4KW of export.

So in short you can quite easily draw as much power from a standard household port as demonstrated by Rossi's device. Well, that is ... sad.

Joined: Jul 10, 2009 9:55 am Posts: 7 I'm not going to hold my breath. I'll admit I'm curious, but the fact that the power output fits nicely inside what a 220V subcircuit will provide and the copper isotope ratios are exactly the same as natural copper just sets off major alarm bells for me. I hope my fears are unfounded.

Hmm, "Goat Guy" makes some interesting observations and points out something that has irked me about the e-Cat. The point it is PLUGGED IN to the MAINS is something you just can't overlook.

"There are 3 different angles of either cheating, or of proving that the thing works. None of those have really been addressed. The "cheating" angle could be done so easily and invisibly that it simply wouldn't be noticed by the observers. The "need for continuous input power" is all but a give-away that something is amiss. The lack of quantitative isotopic analysis of the before/and/after samples is a 400 pound red herring. The "oh, but if you knew the isotopic ratios, it would give away the science" angle is a 3 dollar bill. It would give away next to nothing. It would PROVE or DISPROVE a nuclear change-of-state. "

I think the e-Cat would get a lot more credibility if it was not plugged into the mains.

Axil wrote: Politically, Rossi is in a strange place. He is desperate to show a nuclear energy source for the Cat-E reaction, but he is hard pressed to do so; the experiments don’t cooperate. He has no idea what is going on. He also predicted positron annihilation from the ash but he has not detected it. Rossi has no idea what is producing the heat in the Cat-E and he has given the U of Bologna 1,000,000 Euros to find out.

If he already has distribution deals, he could simply patent his 'invention' the regular way rather than the paranoid fraudster way of incomplete nonsense patents and not bother with these ridiculous demonstrations. How does this crap not stink to you?

http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?page_id=2 Prof. George Kelly (University of New Hampshire – USA)

Maybe they get a hold of him with a ouija board to review their publications. Or maybe they're just referring to some student or the janitor.

The fake scientists with the fake journal, the cagey description of his device with his refusal to file a normal patent, grandiose claims, magic show demonstrations, his criminal background, all of these add up to a giant steaming pile. Then there's the company that was invented sometime, oh, in January. But it has momentum, just light blacklight power did. In three years Rossi will probably have 50 million in VC just like Randell Mills, some complicit accomplices/idiots and no product whatsoever.

I ran across this post by Brian David Josephson regarding the Rossi Reactor. 3/27/2011

Brian David Josephson, FRS (born 4 January 1940; Cardiff, Wales) is a Welsh physicist. He became a Nobel Prize laureate in 1973 for the prediction of the eponymous Josephson effect.

1. on the basis of the 2nd investigation by the U. of Bologna, where 15kW was generated continuously over a period of 18 hours, I have little doubt that the Rossi reactor is real and that over the next few months everyone will have to accept this.

2. why it is not published in the journals like any other scientific discovery? Ans.: it is normal for inventors to keep details of their inventions secret until they can get protection with patents. Rossi apparently put nearly all his own money into developing the reactor and naturally wants to get some of it back rather than competitors reaping all of the benefits.

I have heard that Rossi did not wish to go public till the 1MW reactor had been constructed, but his collaborator Forcadi publicised the initial demonstration.

And even I have to admit that until the time Rossi reactors are in common use (which, if it happened, would bypass the need for validation by journal publication), I could be wrong about the Rossi reactor, I just find that implausible taking everything into account (including the fact that I have seen clear evidence that LENR is real in labs I have visited), so I am prepared to stick my neck out.

(Regarding the proof is in the pudding)…But what is the pudding? Elsewhere there has been discussion of this point, along these lines: Will the sceptics accept it when the 1MW generator is demonstrated? No, that is no different in principle from 15kW. When a few firms are using it? No that hardly proves anything. When 50 firms are using it? No, that just shows there are gullible people around.

(regarding the thousands of claims like this floating around that are either shams, or bogus. )

Yes. But how many of these have been checked out by university depts. as Rossi's has (and he is willing to allow further investigations)? And what kind of evidence is there in most of these cases? With the Rossi expts. the methodology is trivially simple since the effects are so large, even schoolchildren could do it (and incidentally there have been schools where the children have been set checking out cold fusion devices as an exercise, I believe this was organised by someone called John Dash). All that has to be done is to measure the temperature of the incoming and outgoing water and the flow rate, and you can compute the amount of heat generated. Of course you have to consider carefully what errors there might be. Our HoG, bless his heart, pointed out that it is possible to load hydrogen into a substrate and store a great deal of energy that way, but when I asked him whether that mechanism could explain the 1 gigajoule observed in the 2nd. U. of Bologna expt. he fell silent.

But experience shows that it is not possible to reason with 'deniers', and for that reason I'm probably not going to stay in this discussion for much longer.

Axil wrote: I ran across this post by Brian David Josephson regarding the Rossi Reactor. 3/27/2011

Brian David Josephson, FRS (born 4 January 1940; Cardiff, Wales) is a Welsh physicist. He became a Nobel Prize laureate in 1973 for the prediction of the eponymous Josephson effect.

It would be a simple argument from authority, except the authority has gone off the deep end a long time ago:

In 2005, Josephson said that "parapsychology should now have become a conventional field of research, and yet parapsychology's claims are still not generally accepted".

Quote: You could see as many as four new LENR reactor models hit the streets in the next year or two.

We could see hyperspace starships by 2015 too, but I wouldn't bet on either one. Seriously, this lone inventor in a workshop making globally disruptive technology is a popular meme that died out in practice in the 19th century.

Axil wrote: Dr. Miley has determined that “cold fusion” is not fusion at all but a low energy fission reaction of a degenerate form of coherent entangled hydrogen. He has determined by experiment that these particles (a high compressed population of at least 100 atoms and possibly more) of hydrogen are superconducting; thereby demonstrating the coherence and entanglement of these particles.

Oh, its inducing beta decay. I mean inducing fission. I mean its creating unstable monopoles that catalyze proton decay. Or now its some technobabble with degenerate hydrogen? Seriously? Do you even read what you write?

Quote: Forming a Bose-Einstein condensate from nuclei of ordinary hydrogen (spin ½) was not thought to be possible but Rossi has showed that it can be done via a fermionic condensate.

Forming a condensate from the nuclei at any pressure we can actually interact with is impossible because of coulomb barriers. Of hydrogen atoms, no, its been done years ago, and with a multitude of other alkelines beyond hydrogen. Rossi wouldn't be the first, if he was demonstrating a condensate. Which he isn't. He's demonstrating a magic trick to defraud investors. Sorry I mean 'partners.' See Randell Mills for instructions on how this is done.

Look, stick to star trek with their Heisenberg compensators. This technobabble might be fun if you're writing a sci fi story and need placeholder technology. In real life it just serves to defraud the credulous.

I have stated this in relation to the possible application of the Widom-Larsen theory. This is the orthodox most popular “cold fusion” theory. I later became dissatisfied with this theory because it does not elegantly describe how isotopic wastes are formed and reflect their relative abundance.

This conjecture formulated by Dr Miley more elegantly describes how nuclear wastes are formed in a “cold fusion” reaction and accounts for their relative abundance.

Quote: Or now its some technobabble with degenerate hydrogen? Seriously? Do you even read what you write?

The formation of degenerate hydrogen has been experimentally demonstrated by Leif Holmlid at the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Chemistry

Leif Holmlid : Quote: My (main research interest is Rydberg Matter, which is a state of matter of the same status as liquid or solid, since it can be formed by a large number of atoms and small molecules. For a more complete description, see Wikipedia. One result from my research on Rydberg Matter was recently described in an article in New Scientist.

The lowest state of Rydberg Matter in excitation state n = 1 can only be formed from hydrogen (protium and deuterium) atoms and is designated H(1) or D(1). This is dense or metallic hydrogen, which we have studied for a few years. The bond distance is 153 pm, or 2.9 times the Bohr radius. It is a quantum fluid, with a density of approximately 0.6 kg / dm3.

A much denser state exists for deuterium, named D(-1). We call it ultra-dense deuterium. This is the inverse of D(1), and the bond distance is very small, equal to 2.3 pm. Its density is extremely large, >130 kg / cm3, if it can exist as a dense phase. Due to the short bond distance, D-D nuclear fusion is expected to take place easily in this material

In his paper, Dr Miley explains how Rydberg Matter might fission and produces the distribution of nuclear ash in the exact proportions seen in the Rossi reaction. He explains the derivation of the magic numbers of fission ash distribution indicating a threefold property of stable configurations at magic numbers in nuclei indicating a quark property.

One of those numbers corresponds to nickel and the distribution of ash around that element would yield high concentrations of ash namely copper and cobalt.

This fission mechanism in the Rossi reaction is more pleasing to me than the W-L mechanism that most assume. I repeat that this fission theory is Miley’s not mine; but I like it.

Quote: Forming a condensate from the nuclei at any pressure we can actually interact with is impossible because of coulomb barriers.

In condensed matter physics, screening of the Coulomb repulsion by electrons is important.

Dr Meley: Quote: At this stage, the following more hypothetical aspects about the detailed mechanisms may be considered. Based on the measurements of Prelas et al [17] it was concluded that to understand the reaction mechanism [18] that the deuterons solved in the palladium have a screening of the Coulomb repulsion by a factor 14 compared with a factor 5 for high temperature plasmas.

Rossi is using a catalytic material that is far more effective at screening Coulomb repulsion(2 to 3 times more) since he has stated that he does not use noble metals in his reactor.

Quote: Of hydrogen atoms, no, its been done years ago, and with a multitude of other alkelines beyond hydrogen. Rossi wouldn't be the first, if he was demonstrating a condensate. Which he isn't

Catalysts strip electrons from hydrogen to form hydrogen ions (protons) on the surface of the catalyst. Having a spin ½, The Pauli Exclusion Principle states that fermions cannot form a condensate unless they pair up to form a compound boson.

For bosons, any number of identical particles can occupy the same quantum state, as with, for instance, lasers and Bose-Einstein condensation.

More generally, no two identical fermions (particles with half-integer spin) may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. A more rigorous statement of this principle is that for two identical fermions, the total wave function is anti-symmetric.

A fermionic condensate is a superfluid phase formed by fermionic particles. It is closely related to the Bose–Einstein condensate, a superfluid phase formed by bosonic atoms under similar conditions. Unlike the Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates are formed using fermions instead of bosons. The earliest recognized fermionic condensate described the state of electrons in a superconductor; the physics of other examples including recent work with fermionic atoms is analogous. The first atomic fermionic condensate was created by Deborah S. Jin in 2003.

Deborah Jin observed the pairing and formation of a fermionic condensate among fermionic atoms for the very first time. The experiment involved 500,000 Potassium-40 atoms cooled to a temperature of 5 × 10-8 kelvin with a time-varying magnetic field applied to them. The findings were published in the online edition of Physical Review Letters on January 24, 2004.

Nobody has yet created a fermionic condensate using just protons, except maybe Rossi. Admittedly, this is just a conjecture.

The reactor used in the demonstration is now being mass-produced in Florida for delivery to a Greek licensee in October 2011. One hundred such units will be connected in series/parallel arrangement to make a one-megawatt demonstration power plant. These are being produced at Rossi's expense under an agreement that the Greek customer, Defkalion, pays only if performance specifications are met.

Rossi is betting his own money on success and therefore has no incentive to mislead anyone to raise money.

Rossi has been very responsive to critics, answering questions freely on blogs. When skeptics suggested fraud, he even allowed a physicist at the University of Bologna to modify the test setup and examine the insides of the reactor. He reran the demo for 18 hours with a non-boiling output measurement setup. The 18 kW power output obtained for 18 hours neutralized the skeptics, who had suspected a hidden battery.

Rossi: “I am assuming all the risks. No one is risking any money except me.”

Intentional fraud by Rossi is not supportable by the facts at hand. Facts notwithstanding, you have other unspoken reasons for claiming fraud that are yet to be revealed.

For your claims of fraud to be taken seriously, you must have supporting facts and evidence not just the vague felling of discomfort at facing a situation that is new to your experience.

Joined: Dec 20, 2006 7:50 pm Posts: 529 Bet you guys think that in Vegas they really do pull a ball out of the air.

Axil is being the worst, hypothesizing all kinds of mechanisms for this magic trick to somehow be real. But it stinks to high heaven of fraud. Here's what I guarantee is going to happen:

He will never make any full description of the inner workings of his device. He'll cite protecting his investment or some such thing even though this is exactly what patent is for. He will never have independent validation of his device. Because it doesn't actually work. He will miss every projected timeline for releasing a device. Six months will turn into a year, will turn into 18 months, etcetera. The full scale operation will always be just around the corner. Several VC companies will be solicited for 'ground floor' opportunities after several more public 'demonstrations' (Vegas magic shows.) See blacklight power for an instruction book on how to defraud VC.

Oh, and Axil continues to post verbose nonsense about imaginary mechanisms for a device that doesn't actually exist for months on end. Honestly, this hyperoptimistic belief in faeries is more than sad. Its like watching people defend the dean drive.

You mean as opposed to just coming out and telling you you're an incredibly credulous fool inadvertently promoting fraud?

Christopher Calder Post subject: Re: Cold Fusion againPosted: Mar 31, 2011 11:17 am

Joined: Jul 07, 2010 4:49 pm Posts: 208 Location: USA Your fraud theory supposes that Sergio Focardi and Joseph Levi are also crooks. I just do not see that as likely at all. One crook or one delusional nut case is one thing. Three respected scientists being crooks, with two of them not having a clear profit motive, makes no sense to me. Time will tell.

Quote: I fully believe there is something going on here which is outside the realms of currenctly acceptable science

See specially “Recapping W--L in condensed matter metallic hydrides” …pages 12 to 21

LENR involves atomic coherence in metal lattices, nuclear coherence in many bodied systems and quantum mechanical entanglements.

Quantum mechanical entanglement and nuclear coherence in the dense matter of metal lattices haven’t been studied much. All the very smart people are studying smashed sub atomic particles at nearly light speeds. All the R&D research money in physics is going to that work and if you want to make a living in physics, that is what you do; it’s traditional. Only a few physics super gurus call the shots and they like it that way. For physics, if you want to eat regularly, you follow the herd.

The harmony of many atoms being all connected and acting in the same way will produce results that differ significantly from a single atom so acted upon.

The LENR term for it is the “Born-Oppenheimer Approximation Breakdown”. From the Rossi reactor results, beta decay is accelerated; and gamma decay is thermalized also.

Atomic coherence is not universally maintained at all times, and when it occasionally breaks down, you will detect erratic busts of rouge gamma rays and neutron escape.

It also looks like atomic coherence will constrain gamma radiation as long as coherence is maintained even after the Rossi reactor is shut down and stops producing heat; no gammas are emitted or at least not much.

I like harmony; I like a symphony over a solo. Not many people understand such harmony… or want to, but I want to and am starting to… but so far only in principle.

Christopher Calder Post subject: Re: Cold Fusion againPosted: Mar 16, 2011 12:30 pm

Joined: Jul 07, 2010 4:49 pm Posts: 208 Location: USA slowcooker wrote: While I realize that it is a couple of decades late to be saying this, I really regret the coining of the term Cold Fusion. I have ever since Pons and Fleischman held their press conference so long ago. Whatever is going on, whether viable or not, is not fusion in the traditional sense and many of us have used the original meaning of the term 'fusion' as a stick to beat this research with. Obviously to everyone here, there may be several effects at work in this poorly understood field (if we can call it a field), none of which are fusion as we came to know it in the mid-twentieth century.

Assuming that there really is a pony in there somewhere, it is a pity that our use of language -- of all things -- has held back research that might have brought something worthwhile into being.

If you compress a hydrogen nucleus into a nickel atom to form copper, how can you not call that fusion? It is not the kind of fusion that takes place in a hydrogen bomb, but it is literally fusion. No? Rossi just calls it a E-Cat, Energy Catalyzer. Explain why that is not fusion.

Joined: Mar 16, 2011 8:16 am Posts: 2 Location: Downwind of MIT Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I'm talking about semantics-based objections, not physical theory, the former getting in the way of the latter. For all I know, it may well be fusion, but we've been stumbling over terminology for two decades and need to realize the fact so we can get on with the science.

Joined: Aug 21, 2008 12:57 pm Posts: 1963 Going back to the assumption that the secret catalyst must be radioactive based of the reluctance to allow radiation analyzers to be used during the first demo of the Rossi reactor. And taking into account the interest Rossi had in waste to oil production using nickel catalysts, a new radioactive catalyst candidate has emerged.

Quote: Edmund Storms: Rossi hit upon this somewhat by accident. He was using a nickel catalyst to explore ways of making a fuel by combining hydrogen and carbon monoxide and apparently, observed quite by accident, that his [?????] was making extra energy. So then he explored it from that point of view and, apparently, over a year or two, amplified the effect.

He’s exploring the gas loading area of the field. This is also a region, a method used in the heavy water, or the heavy hydrogen, system. But in this case, it was light hydrogen, ordinary hydrogen and nickel and what happens is quite amazing.

You create the right conditions in the nickel, and he has a secret method for doing that, and all you do is add hydrogen to it and it makes huge amounts of energy based upon a nuclear reaction.”

Technetium-99 decays almost entirely by beta decay (.294 MeV is about 10% of the speed of light), emitting beta particles with consistent electron energies and no accompanying gamma rays.

Moreover, its long half-life means that this emission decreases very slowly with time. It can also be extracted to a high chemical and isotopic purity from radioactive waste. It is a world class beta emitter which has been considered for nanoscale nuclear battery applications. In other words, Technetium produces fast (heavy) electrons in great abundance.

Like rhenium and palladium, technetium can serve as a catalyst. For some reactions, for example the dehydrogenation of isopropyl alcohol or saturated fats, it is a far more effective catalyst than either rhenium or palladium and is the top absorber of hydrogen among all the metals.

Its melting point is very high at 2200C and it can take the high heat in Rossi’s reactor.

Reaction of technetium with hydrogen produces the negatively charged hydride [TcH9] ion.

On another note, rare earths have some of the lowest work factors around. They are in the 2.5 range give or take.

It has been found that the radiation from Technetium lowers there work factors substantially. That means that these rare earth elements radiate electrons like crazy; that is, there thermionic electron emissions are very large.

When a combination of the rare earth oxides: europium oxide, ytterbium oxide and lutetium oxide are used in combination with Technetium their already low work functions compound on themselves reducing there combined work functions even further thereby generating large thermionic electron emissions at low temperatures. This work function reduction is somehow produced as a result of the radiation from Technetium.

This conjecture supports both the production of both vast amounts of high speed electrons and the absorption of loads of hydrogen; two key factors that must be optimized for LENR to occur.

This Technetium and rare earth admixture is now my leading contender for the Rossi secret catalyzer. It is also consistent with what the Rossi patent states.

Joined: Aug 21, 2008 12:57 pm Posts: 1963 http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_m ... ntent=main

Quote: Ny Teknik: We talked with the Swedish physicist Hanno Essén who has the hypothesis that it may involve runaway electrons at relativistic speeds (near speed of light) that form a kind of plasma (his paper here). Would that be possible?

“It is certainly a very intelligent theory. The person who says this surely has a very high level of preparation. It demonstrates that we must be very careful not to expose anything before the patent is granted,” Rossi answered.

This Hanno Essén paper deals with the catalyzing of fusion by electrons at relativistic speeds. This fits in with many of the tidbits of seemingly disjointed data have been discussed here and elsewhere.

Radiation is important … First of all, Rossi is reluctant to have the radiation profile measured saying that this profile would tip off his industrial secrets.

Next to produce kilowatts of power, only 1 gram of very pure nickel powder is added to a thin hollow copper tub of limited volume (one liter) is described in the Rossi patent.

This means that the nickel powder is applied as a uniform surface coating on the inside of the copper tube (used beacuse it provides high thermal conductivity at a reasonable cost) to even out the heat transfer to the circulating water on the outside of the tube.

A even powder coat is indicated, because an uneven coating would cause a heat distribution that would burn a hole in the soft copper at a hot spot.

Puting this all together, this all means that this secret catalyzing surface treatment must be a radioactive material that produces relativistic electrons at or on the surface of the pure nickel powder.

When a radioactive isotope is placed (imbedded) within 15 microns of a surface of a material, ionizing radiation (knock-on electrons at relativistic speeds of about 10% of the speed of light) will escape to the surface of that material.

Such fast electrons will catalyze a fusion reaction between the nickel and the hydride coating in the presence of motion (thermal vibrations at 300C) of the crystal structure of the nickel nanopowder.

The most probable radioactive element used to do this is thorium. It is easy to get and not too radioactive or dangerous with a long half-life.

Once the nickel/hydrogen fusion reaction gets going it builds on itself… this fusion reaction produces more radioactive relativistic electrons at the surface of the pure nickel powder from thorium and so on back and forth in a chain reaction.

I’m not a denier, Kevmo.

To me, science is about proof. And proof is based on doing the same operation or experiment, over and over and over again, with each an identical (or nearly identical) result.

That is proof. I take nothing on faith.

You have several fundamental flaws in your post.

At its peak, it is capable of generating 15,000 watts with just 400 watts input required
Source

15,000 Watts is 15 KW. The input power is 400 Watts (0.4 Watts) so the efficieny is 15,000 Watts / 400 Watts = 37.5, or you are getting ~38x more power out than you are putting in.

This is a Low Energy NUCLEAR reaction, not chemical.
Source

A team of Swedish skeptical PhD's examined 4 small reactors. They dismantled 3 of them, and reassembled them, leaving one reactor without the shielding - and again confirmed their operation.
Source

Rossi's invention has been independantly validated at 800% efficiency
Source

The Greek Government has given The "GO" condition to build a new power plant on the E-Cat Focardi & Rossi device in Xanthi, Greece.
Source

You're forgetting about turbulence (not applicable here, but for completeness' sake I mention it); and surface effects which can be very ticklish to reproduce. On a trivial level, try seeding some crystals in Organic Chem I and explain why half the class never gets any results ;-)

It does raise an eyebrow that there is no agreed-upon mechanism (yet); but the fact that he is only accepting payment from that Greek company AFTER the 1 Mw prototype *works* argues in his favor.

Cheers!

Good selection.

One thing you have to watch for is a comment from a HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS professional who demands results from LOW ENERGY PHYSICS that are comprehensible in the same terms.

Not sure that's going to happen with LENR ~ even though a 1600 degree operating environment does seem kinda' hot, it's not thermo-nuclear Fur Shur.

Been reading everything there is available about this stuff and it seems to me that Rossi's catalyst may well be a LITHIUM plate hooked up to AC current. You should be able to boil off spare neutrons at will once the plate gets up to a specific temperature. You'd need a computer chip and thermocouple operating a switch across the current to keep it at the right temperature ~ hence the time lag between start up and operations. I have no idea how long it takes to heat up a sheet of lithium.

The other item folks in LENR target and folks in Strong Nuclear Reactions avoid is that for any LENR process to occur you need to turn a top quark into a bottom quark. The High Energy Physics guys may be avoiding discussions of flipping quarks for reasons we can't imagine, but their "control" folks in the nuclear weapons industry may well have limited their options.

Our guy at NASA is outside that industry so he may be someone to really listen to when it comes to what is understood in High Energy Physics about the current theories about the atomics of LENR.

It would be wrong to attribute simple avarice to all of the critics of LENR.

It is unfortunate that science without proof has devolved into “junk science”.

For example, the Jack Ward Thomas report concerning Spotted Owls and how they only existed in old growth forests. That statement, by the way, is false.

Evidence of Spotted Owls thriving in second growth timber was excluded from the report, which resulted in the report being criticized by the States of Oregon and Washington.

Short version: Rossi is using his own money, a lot of it, and only gets paid if it works. Given that, it might be a scam of some convoluted type or he might be just plain wrong, but this also might be real.

If his 1MW plant goes online in Oct, we’ll know for sure. And only then...

Whatever theory anyone comes up with it has to also explain the conversion of Carbon 14 to Nitrogen 14.

Even better, it has to explain the anomalous results of a small experiment conducted in 1937 ~ that got completely drowned out by the excitement of building nuclear bombs.

The current theories do explain both ~ except where the Low Momentum Neutrons are coming from that trigger Carbon 14 Beta Emissions.

Not a chance, if it works they will declare it a fraud regardless, there is no way in hell our public masters will ever let anything like this see the light of day. A cheap and abundant source of clean energy will do nothing but fuel the thirst for freedom and independence. We will never know either way.

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