Italian inventor Andrea Rossi's Energy Catalyzer device (E-Cat), which supposedly produces energy in the form of heat through a low energy nuclear reaction (LENR), has undergone third party testing by independent researchers at various universities for the last year. Their report has now been released under the name
Observation of abundant heat production from a reactor device and of isotopic changes in the fuel
Their central findings, from the abstract, are
The reaction is primarily initiated by heat from resistor coils around the reactor tube. Measurements of the radiated power from the reactor were performed with high-resolution thermal imaging cameras. The measurements of electrical power input were performed with a large bandwidth three-phase power analyzer. Data were collected during 32 days of running in March 2014. The reactor operating point was set to about 1260 ºC in the first half of the run, and at about 1400 °C in the second half. The measured energy balance between input and output heat yielded a COP factor of about 3.2 and 3.6 for the 1260 ºC and 1400 ºC runs, respectively. The total net energy obtained during the 32 days run was about 1.5 MWh. This amount of energy is far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume.
and
The isotope composition in Lithium and Nickel was found to agree with the natural composition before the run, while after the run it was found to have changed substantially. Nuclear reactions are therefore indicated to be present in the run process [...]
Since the measurements were all performed by independent researchers, at locations and using equipment of their choosing. Yet, much remains unexplained, particularly the lack of neutron or gamma emissions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:07AM
Not April 1st? Verified by 3 respectable universities? Using nickel, lithium and water?
It's almost too good to be true, what's the catch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:38AM
what's the catch?
As I see it, the catch in this specific case is that this isn't a peer reviewed study in a journal. I'd wait for at least one or two real papers before getting excited.
(Score: 1) by G-forze on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:40AM
That's not all. The researchers say they ran the device on continuous current, and not in "pulsed mode" to make the measurements easier. Supposedly, pulsed mode gives an even greater COP.
Also, according to Rossi, a 1 MW industiral pilot plant is being tested by an undisclosed customer at the moment. You can even get in line to buy your own! [ecat.com]
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 4, Informative) by solozerk on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:44AM
It does seem too good to be true, but there definitely appears to be something here. One of the author, Hanno Essén [wikipedia.org], is also the former head of the Swedish Skeptics Society (not exactly an organization known for its tolerance of crackpot theories).
Evidence of nuclear transmutation has also been reported in similar systems by private researchers at mitsubishi [lenr-canr.org] - later replicated by researchers at Toyota. There have been quite a few other experiments reporting similar findings those past few years.
This definitely should be investigated further, because beyond the amazing alleged energy production itself, the fact that this cannot be explained in any satisfying way by current theories suggest that it could lead to new exciting science.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheLink on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:23AM
This definitely should be investigated further, because beyond the amazing alleged energy production itself, the fact that this cannot be explained in any satisfying way by current theories suggest that it could lead to new exciting science.
This was why I was rather disappointed with the reaction of the scientific community to the "cold fusion" thing when it first came out.
Even if it didn't generate excess energy, it would have been an interesting phenomena to investigate, whether just for pure research or as an alternative energy storage method.
Yes many couldn't reproduce it, but a few could. There's plenty of valid scientific research that wasn't easy to reproduce in their early stages. The reaction of the scientific community was more religious than scientific - shunning of scientists and research linked to the phenomena.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:00AM
The problem is not only that people couldn't reproduce it, the problem was also that Pons and Fleischmann hindered evaluation of the results by not providing sufficient information to reproduce it. Basically it went like this (PF = Pons and Fleischmann; OR = other researchers):
PF: "We've seen this effect."
OR: "We cannot reproduce it."
PF: "Then you did something wrong in your attempt."
OR: "OK, please tell us what we should do to reproduce it."
PF: "No."
That's no proof of fraud, but certainly a strong smell.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 09 2014, @12:01PM
And in science, a strong smell of fraud is tantamount to fraud. Not like in business where you can get by selling snake oil or substituting melamine for protein. If the experimenters cannot explain the experiment, and provide for its repetition, it is not an experiment, it is a demo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:54PM
Given that it would have been easy to reduce the "strong smell of fraud", it's good enough for me to stay away.
Not like in business where you can get by selling snake oil or substituting melamine for protein.
And fraud is routine, caught by tests such as the "strong smell of fraud". If businesses exhibits behavior that could easily hide fraud, you don't bother asking if they're intentionally committing fraud or just acting incompetently. Either is bad for you to get involved with.
If the experimenters cannot explain the experiment, and provide for its repetition, it is not an experiment, it is a demo.
A "demo" of what?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 13 2014, @02:28PM
Strong smell of X is tantamount to X.
Very scientific I see.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday October 11 2014, @03:33AM
That last line should read "PF: We don't know"
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:46AM
Seems fishy :)
(Score: 2, Informative) by solozerk on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:54AM
They applied such measurement precisely because they previously evaluated a similar device (from Rossi), and their paper [arxiv.org] was criticized - rightly so - for not checking all possible avenues of secretly powering the device - this, combined with the fact that this previous test occured in Rossi's own lab using his equipment, made the results quite suspicious.
This new test occured out of Rossi's control - not his lab, not his equipment, and he was only present once at the start of the experiment to prepare his device.
(Score: 3) by forsythe on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:20AM
Thanks, I knew I'd heard of this sometime before. I had completely written it off as a clever hoax, but I'm glad to see that everyone involved improved their methods and gave it another shot.
Stories like this make me wish I were an expert in the relevant fields. Unexplained phenomena are fun.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Thursday October 09 2014, @08:26AM
Go look at the pictures of the "device" used in the testing. It's out in the open and looks like a pipe bomb with the the testing lab's power cables hooked up to it. Kind of hard to sneak anything inside it.
(Score: 2) by geb on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:17AM
Clamp ammeters in particular are a warning sign, because it is easily possible to fool them. If you have a cable that is really three seperate insulated wires under the plastic, you can loop current up it, down, then up again. The fields from one of the up wires effectively cancel out the field from the down wire, and so the ammeter only sees one third of the current flow.
If your external power supply can give three amps but the measurements all say one amp, it would be no surprise that you measure excess power coming out of the system.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 09 2014, @12:26PM
I haven't looked into this but their RMS performance is legendarily bad when you play pulse games. Not too bad at 50/60 hz AC, but if you think they'll give an accurate response off a arc welder or TIG.. well... they'll be maybe +/- 25% and they'll respond, kinda, but ...
In a way this is encouraging. If he wanted to rip people off it would make a heck of a lot more sense to generate "about 5% excess heat" as measured using 10% accurate (on a good day) meters. But he's got better specs, so maybe its not fishy.
Whats weird is wheres all the EEs? I mean from an engineering perspective if someone claims 50% excess power, I'd use a cheapie 10% accurate clamp meter and call it good. But if I (repeat I) knew I was going to end up as a footnote in a Nobel prize story, I'd be whipping out calibrated verified shunts, throwing a decent scope across the shunt, digitizing, then playing integration ohms law games. Thats how you really measure power without messing with stuff.
A much simpler way to measure total power over time etc doin it EE style is VLM wants in with something resembling a telco central office supply. Well, here you go, you've got two banks of batteries and you can torture one bank however you want with weirdo pulse waveforms but I'm charging the other bank using the finest advanced charging technology and we're swapping banks every X hours.
Or here, you have a generator and a 55 gallon barrel of diesel, and its no rocket science to figure out how much total thermal energy a space heater hooked up to that engine and barrel would generate, so ....
(Score: 1) by Delwin on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:56PM
I've noted before that until this thing is tested in total isolation (your diesel generator example) it's not going to get any real traction.
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Thursday October 09 2014, @11:58PM
Especially for DC!!!
Especially for DC super-imposed on AC... I'm not sure if a clamp on meter exists that could measure this.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:28AM
"Yet, much remains unexplained, particularly the lack of neutron or gamma emissions."
Certain slow neutron bombardments is completely radiation free asfaik. But they are hard to master otoh.
I think the main point will be:
* Does it work?
* Is it economically viable?
It's not like we would mind a new energy source.....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:54AM
If this is real, Rossi should be allowing reputable scientists to look at the "device", should have done so years ago, and could have become a billionaire by now. Instead, it looks like a scam or an incredibly crappy business strategy. At least as a scammer, Rossi isn't deluded.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:28AM
Oh, that's okay then(?)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:12AM
Might as well be a scam. So what?
It is irrelevant, if you look at the big picture.
What is relevant is that government(s) have not stepped in, declared it a matter of national security (they do take such measures with patents IIRC), and verified or dismissed the entire thing three months after it was first announced.
III world war possible if ukraine and russia do not settle over crimea: oil and gas
Middle east: oil and gas
ISIS getting money from: oil
And let's not even go into the other social consequences of a good source of energy.
Now, given the possibility of making all these problems less relevant, would you not pursue every remotely interesting idea in energy production or not?
The big picture is: even if new energy sources were discovered, the status quo prefers keeping people under scarcity, abundance is freedom, scarcity is control.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Thursday October 09 2014, @12:16PM
You seem to be focusing on oil and gas. This might make an interesting basement furnace which would bother the natgas guys. The power to weight ratio means its not going in aircraft or likely cars. The coal industry will be pissed off.
I see this a lot on numerous sites. "If they invent antimatter / fusion / cold fusion then the oil companies will be pissed" No actually the coal companies.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday October 09 2014, @04:58PM
First, this still stinks to high heaven of, "SCAM!" to me.
But, if it is true, then even the petroleum industry will be in trouble, only not before the coal industry.
Given sufficient cheap energy input, you can extract CO2 from the atmosphere and refine it into any hydrocarbon you might desire, including the various light and heavy ones produced in refineries. It's an energy-intensive process and a net energy loss; it's an energy storage system, a battery, and not an energy source. But the end result is gasoline you can pump into your car's tank and kerosene for the jets to burn and even asphalt for your roads and roofs -- the latter, of course, which would ideally instead be (mostly) PV panels.
Before oil gets to $200 / barrel, it'll be cheaper to do that whole schtick with solar power (at today's prices for solar, especially as solar prices continue to drop) than to mine oil deposits and refine them -- especially since the oil that's left to mine is such low quality (Canadian tar sands, the proverbial joke of last-ditch desperation).
We still might not be able to afford the synthetic stuff, granted (in which case we're totally fucked)...but it'll still be cheaper than mining....
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 10 2014, @03:30PM
"We still might not be able to afford the synthetic stuff, granted"
Ah not necessarily. See a plant that eats energy and air can make fun stuff if there are no capital or labor costs. Think .mil.
We'll see something like star wars moisture collectors for the DoD before any civilians outside disaster areas get their water that way.
When that is taken into account, its quite possible that the net total systemic cost is cheaper if you use some natural feedstocks (aka pump that oil)
For a current day example think of some kids junk food candy that is mostly preservatives and artificial food colors and flavors. Despite most of it coming out of a chemical plant, its still cheaper to use wheat and corn as raw feedstocks than to go total synthetic.
The vitamin biz is like this too. It is true that you COULD do a total synthesis of any vitamin or other micronutrient (other than minerals obviously) but its cheaper to refine algae / bacterial / byproducts.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:34PM
Makes you wonder what these guys will do when they wake up to the realization that their main export product will be obsoleted quickly. Nationwide luddism on the international arena? desperate and destructive action?
Suppose it works and it will then cut electricity prices to near the distribution cost. Fossil fuel and fission nuclear power plants will then be economically unviable. The lowered electricity price will cause a surge to drop petrol cars in favor of electrical ones. Rail transport will make trucking gods a thing of the past. Real reduction in CO2 emissions will be a possibility and international limits will likely be renegotiated and tougher.
Cash flow to oil producing countries will take dip. And perhaps most importantly the credit rating for new investments will take serious hit. Corporations that depend on resources that will be obsoleted will take a serious plunge as they will be deemed essentially worthless.
Countries that depend on extraction and fuel export may have their state budget slashed and spiral down into a political chaos. Countries that export minerals will likely see an increased export because now you have the energy price to make good use of them. Countries that depend on an industrial base or services will likely get new possibilities to run even heavier with the catch that access to minerals might limit expansion.
Otoh, current cars still need petrol regardless if electricity was free. New power plants takes time to build. Lubricants and plastic production still needs oil.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:40PM
But they have it, examined it and analyzed it. TFA:
In short, it's a Al2O3 tube with some electrical heating elements and a thermocouple to control the temperature inside.
Rossi even let them analyze the powder used as fuel: a mixture of nickel and what seems to be Lithium Aluminum Hydride (see page 28).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday October 09 2014, @02:05PM
This is a tiresome attempt to bamboozle the non-technical public.
I could eviscerate their experimental setup, but instead I will point out that Figure 13 and 14 described as "Ragone plot of Energy storage" as the following legend.
"The E-Cat, which *would be* far off the scale here, lies outside the region occupied by conventional sources."
In their fantasy they cannot even bother to make up a number to stick on SOMEONE else's chart!!!
This is not even a high-school report, it is very poorly setup.
Without a plausible independently tests explanation, it is not believable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jcross on Thursday October 09 2014, @02:48PM
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's damned easy to say these things from an armchair. Many, many technologies have been really difficult to get from the lab bench into reliable commercial use, and probably a lot of good ideas have been abandoned along that road for lack of funding and such. This will be especially true when nobody understands quite why the device is working. I concluded this guy was probably a crackpot or scammer some time ago, but now I'm not so sure anymore...
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday October 09 2014, @06:51PM
armchair or desk. What they have written is rubbish. The device might work, it might be magic. But what was written was a very badly designed experiment with NO details of the mechanism beyond what you get on a "McDonalds special sauce" advert.
The smoking gun that one learns from many reviews is that they compare known numbers (figures about "ragone" energy) to a fictional "if we had them they would be off the chart!!"
What is this, spinal tap? (Goes up to 11....).
Complete rubbish.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:36PM
There's no mention of "Ragone energy", just a Ragone chart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragone_chart), which is a perfectly legit plot of energy density versus power density. I admit it was a bit lazy not to plot their own data point along with the others, but all they were trying to show was that it wasn't likely to be chemical energy driving the measured effect. The energy/power density numbers given right above the chart are 2-3 orders of magnitude beyond the chart's range in both dimensions.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday October 09 2014, @08:26PM
Any time someone writes an article citing a source that has no relation to their claims , I think "what are they trying to say?".
It is like scientific online dating , "this is true and my stuff looks like this".
The biggest problem with this setting is the inability of the setup to separate the energy from the test setup. Getting more heat from a setup while adding heat? Maybe its just burning?
For example, if they wanted a plausible setup they would have 2 IDENTICAL setups and change ONE parameter. There are too many things changing in this "study" to say anything definitive other than passing electricity through copper creates heat.
It might be a breakthrough, but as of yet no evidence has been presented. all speculation does is blur the boundaries for those who do not have the technical skills to critically dismantle their claims. Check your wallets...
I truely love science because new things are found all the time , the change our knowledge of the world. This does not appear to be anything new.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 10 2014, @05:29AM
>Getting more heat from a setup while adding heat? Maybe its just burning?
Is that not why they they did the energy analysis? Total heat output appears to have exceeded the input by about 1MWh over the 32 day trial, or about 3600MJ. Total mass of the device was ~452 grams. Even assuming the entire frigging thing was fuel that burnt up in the course of the experiment we're talking almost 8000MJ/kg. Coal is only 20-30MJ/kg. Liquid hydrocarbons are all about 50+/-10MJ/kg. Even hydrogen is only 142MJ/kg. There's basically no known chemical reaction that can deliver anywhere close to the power densities observed, even if the whole device was actually a solid chunk of fuel. That leaves either nuclear energy or a flawed experiment as the only reasonable explanations.
(Score: 1) by solozerk on Thursday October 09 2014, @10:32PM
"Opinionated Science" indeed. It must be nice to have all those absolute certainties all the time.
Are those claims extraordinary ? yes. And they do require extraordinary evidence (which this report isn't - it's more like an encouraging starting point for more evaluation).
Is it possible that those (reputable) academics have been fooled in some way by Rossi and his industrial partner ? of course. But the experimental protocol, as well as other details in the report, make this rather unlikely. Read it ! They don't pretend to understand what's going on here - they don't even offer ways to replicate the experiment, since they were basically provided a black box to test by a third party. They simply performed a lot of work towards a thorough evaluation of an unknown device (a second one [arxiv.org], fixing a lot if not all of the issues with the first one [scienceblogs.com]), and obtained extraordinary results - the wording in the report make it clear that they are themselves pretty baffled by the result, but don't see any obvious way for those results to have been cheated (and at least one of them [wikipedia.org] has a lot of experience [wikipedia.org] in debunking bullshit claims and seemingly revolutionary "inventions"). They are, however, engaging their reputation by publishing this.
You could criticize their methodology (once again, it seems solid IMHO given the context); you could even suggest that they have been cheated in some way despite this methodology (once again, it seems unlikely but at least it would be an interesting consideration); instead you choose to point a relatively minor and frankly irrelevant part of their written report: the fact that they have included an incomplete Ragone chart [wikipedia.org], simply saying that if their results are replicated, then this new alleged energy source would be way of the included chart (and if you do want to see a chart that includes said alleged energy source, see here [forbes.com] - third image in the article).
This isn't perfect science - it isn't an experiment that can be easily replicated by anyone anywhere to confirm those claims; it is, once again, what seems to be a pretty independent and pretty solid evaluation of a proprietary (belonging to the Industrial Heat company) device - with the claimed objective by the later of having at least one third party evaluation in order to be able to patent the device, protect their IP and go public with the alleged technology. It isn't even peer reviewed (although said company has said that it has been submitted to the Journal of Physics D. [wikipedia.org], a peer reviewed journal, for publication). But that being said, if you want to criticize the paper, please offer relevant and pertinent objections. In any case, time will certainly tell (and pretty fast) if this is indeed bullshit.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday October 10 2014, @01:16PM
It doesn't need to be perfect, but the "over complicated look" and the extraneous information included, strongly suggests a scam or incompetence. Take your pick.
The inventor was present to carry out the test "The dummy reactor was switched on...by Andrea Rossi"...? it is nice to know he didn't interfere, much...
Seriously, this paper is rubbish. It uses the trick of complicated things in proximity to something unknown, to try and infer something important. They try to justify their readings by telling you who did what- "MR X is expert in radiation detection". Irrelevant.
They weigh (Fig 1.) the device AFTER the test? Why? They weigh it twice to make sure! But it is not weighed before?
They then use the single weight reading to go off on a fantasy prediction of its energy storage capacity!! A lovely quote "Considering we do not know the internal structure of the reactor"... Yes, that's the point.
I will say it again, this "paper" is rubbish.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:50AM
I follow quite a few discussions about this in sweden (where it for some reason is argued about the most) and in general it all tends to come down "we belive it when it starts to feed power to the electricity grid".. if it is something new then it is great - build a heap of them and sell us the power but up until then either show us the physics or it will (and should) be dealt with as snake oil.
And since I'm in too much of a hurry to read the pdf, just how much was the group allowed to control the experiment? did they try to feed the e-cat from a mobile generator (if not there are ways to hide the power draw)? and also for how long did they run it (if it was for less than a couple of months it is for all intents and purposes a moot point anyway)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @08:04AM
From TFS: "Data were collected during 32 days of running in March 2014"
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Thursday October 09 2014, @08:29AM
Look at the pics in the PDF. Seems unlikely that anything was "hidden" in that setup.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:12AM
Good Sir, you're repeating yourself [soylentnews.org]. Sure, in another thread but still.
Am I right or is he right?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Thursday October 09 2014, @04:54PM
Not physically hidden but electrically hidden..
Anyhow, now I've skimmed thru the pdf and realized it didn't mention a thing about the power source itself..
All in all the fast way to settle this I guess would be to set up six* ecats to heat water, in an enclosed space, hook that space up to a turbine and a variable dummy load (to absorb excess power) and after a week or so (when the devices has settled) disconnect it from gridpower and just do an endurance-test (where the ecats power themselves). The interesting thing here would be to see how much power is burnt away in the dummy load.
Doing this would settle the entire issue within a year or so..
(seems it claims to give power in a ratio of 1:1.2-1:1.5 six would make up for turbine ineffeciencies)
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 10 2014, @04:42AM
Indeed, it would be *very* hard to argue against a generator that powered itself plus delivered excess power for an extended period, regardless of whether it was violating accepted laws of physics to do so.
And considering that this thing is being measured delivering 3.2x the energy applied, it should be easy enough to set up such a system, it only needs to hit 31% efficiency for break-even, and that's not *that* hard to do. Of course the more stuff you put in your "magic power box" the more power you could secret away, but I don't think there's anything non-nuclear that could store a years worth of power.
Of course, if these folks are truly independent and did their job right then they have pretty well established that this thing is worth serious investigation. A first for this device, and a very heartening
Then again I'm highly suspicious of their use of thermal imaging for caloric assessment - as any first-year physics student can tell you temperature and heat have about as much to do with each other as volts and watts. Perhaps I'm just ignorant of state-of-the-art caloric assessment techniques, but it seems to me that thermal imaging only tells you the temperature of the object, and that to convert that to heat flow in an open-air assembly you need to make a LOT of assumptions, to the point that it would invalidate any results you might generate.
So, can anybody offer an informed statement on the accuracy of doing calorimetry with thermal imaging as described?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:35AM
The researchers made a huge effort to verify the eCat claims. Their instrumentation is good, their measurements and calculations careful. I still don't believe it.
Why? Because - despite their best efforts - this still was not an independent test. Rossi insisted on being directly involved: "Rossi later intervened to switch off the dummy, and in the
following subsequent operations on the E-Cat: charge insertion, reactor startup, reactor shutdown and powder charge extraction"
The article claims that they measured a net power generation of 1.5MWh, which is an average of nearly 2000 watts over the 32 day test period. They also claim a power input of only 800 watts, so they are more than tripling the input power. If results were that clear and power generation that effective, Rossi wouldn't be bothering with tests like this, he would be building power plants.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @11:02AM
Rossi wouldn't be bothering with tests like this, he would be building power plants.
How would he or anyone get the money and backing to build power plants without demonstrations like these?
Especially with so many people saying it's a scam?
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:43PM
By doing a demonstration _not_ like this.
By doing a demonstration that does not require the inventor to actually fiddle with it (doesn't scale well to power plants all round the world...)
By doing a demonstration that powers itself and does not require continuous power from the grid
By giving independent labs complete details how to create your device and replicate your results
IF this thing works, its biggest potential may be in micro-generation and remote or mobile power generation - what is the point of having a 50kW magic power source in your basement if you still have to be connected to the power grid (all the time) to use it , how many power plants require continuous input from the grid of a third of their output capacity ?
If you want funding for this thing I'd suggest what should be one very easy demo:
* start it / prime it /whatever you term the power input requirement as - from a battery
* keep the battery charged from the output
* while the battery is used to power something else
Then phone Elon Musk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:58PM
100% true. If the device worked, he could produce a demo that doesn't require Houdini to be standing by, flipping switches and picking pockets. He would get far greater media attention than before, and the future would be nuclear.
This is how you get attention for a tech people think is a scam. [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:06PM
It doesn't sound like the device generates electricity: only heat. That is, it got a bit more than 3 times as hot as the energy input. Now, that definitely looks like an energy source, but to convert the heat to electricity, you're going to have to go through a generator of some sort, and those are only ~30% efficient. So, 3x energy input to the 30% generator gives you just about as much electricity as you started with.
It's a big step between being an energy source and being an electricity source.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 10 2014, @05:07AM
Well, 30% is good for consumer generators designed to operate of a wide range, but it's not *that* hard to do better. Running at 1260C and assuming a 20C heatsink the Carnot limit is 1 - (20+273)/(1260+273) = 80.8%. Then again a car engine can reach 2500C and is doing good to hit 30% efficiency: the devil is in the details.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday October 10 2014, @04:59AM
>what is the point of having a 50kW magic power source in your basement if you still have to be connected to the power grid (all the time) to use it
Well, presumably you wouldn't connect it to the grid, instead you'd couple the thing to a generator which would then supply it with sufficient power to continue operating, plus deliver excess power (and a lot of excess heat) for you to use as you see fit. Add some batteries to "jump start" the thing and handle power fluctuations and you're good to go.
As it happens virtually every traditional fusion reactor design (and a few fission reactors) require you to continuously supply a substantial fraction of the generated power to to sustain the reaction - given the nature of the energies involved that's considered a Good Thing (tm) - your choices are pretty much limited to a reactor where you maintain a steady power input to regulate the reaction, or a reactor that no longer requires outside power input to sustain the reaction (aka has gone critical), after a few seconds of which you likely get a very loud "boom" and a spectacular light show.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday October 09 2014, @03:01PM
A power plant does not mean "a huge friggin building on dozens of acres of land which makes power". A power plant can be a diesel genset in a 20' intermodal container or a closet in your home with a battery and inverter.
Even a small demo system with a generator would suffice.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:40PM
Interesting historical tid bit. the early nuclear reactors all consumed more electrical energy than they generated. Note I said "electrical" energy, they made a ton more thermal. It wasn't until many years later that they added generators to the systems.
Why waste the money to build a generator loop when all your trying to do is prove if the reactor works or not?
Unless all the researchers were in on it it would be hard to fake these results. Now they need to build another unit and test it again, without Rossi having any access to the device. If that one shows excess energy others will start taking this tech seriously.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:05PM
"net power generation of 1.5MWh"
Technobabble for most non-EE ish people.
So thats 1500 kilowatt hours. Thank you SI system I didn't want to express that in slug footcandles per fortnight or whatever imperial BS.
A typical figure of merit is you can't buy a COTS rechargeable battery that exceeds many hundreds of watt hours per kilo. The one in your car, unless you own a Tesla, is a lot worse BTW.
The report contains a pix of the device on a cheap cooking class scale (well, slightly better, but not a six sig fig analytical balance) showing it masses about half a kilo.
So if it was a COTS lithium battery you'd expect ah maybe a quarter kilowatt hour out of it. OK impressive about 6000 times more than a COTS battery. He doesn't have a bunch of radio shack lithium AA cells in there.
High tech lab only probably vaporware one time use best result we got and give us a grant as reported in the free press you might get one kilowatt hour out of a unobtanium research level lithium battery weighing that much.
However, there's more to chemistry than rechargable batteries.
A watt hour is exactly 3600 joules or a KWH is close enough to a MJ not to matter (for one sig fig). Thats mega joule not "minecraft joules" the predecessor of minecraft RF power. But I digress.
So dude is getting about 3000 MJ per kilo of "thing". Obviously a bunch of pipes and stuff are not generating power. So he's getting maybe to one sig fig "four thousand MJ/Kg"
Thats WAY beyond any fuel I can think of. ALL hydrocarbons are about 50 MJ/Kg off the top of my head (now don't give me shit about Bunker C actually being 42.424242 or methane/natgas being nearly 60, "about to one sig fig" all hydrocarbons, all of them, are about 50 MJ/Kilo, because you can F around with how you arrange H and C atoms but fundamentally, its just a pile of H and C atoms) So an energy density per mass of about 100 higher than petroleum based fuel. So its not just a rounding error.
Assuming the measurements are good.
Or back to my original assertation that it makes no sense to non EEs, the point I'm making is its maybe almost ten thousand times higher energy density that your laptop battery and a hundred or so times higher density than the gas tank of your car or any other fuel. So its no rounding error or minor miscalculation (any miscalculations are my own)
(Score: 1) by G-forze on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:10PM
The 1,5 MWh they got out of the device was during the 32 day time span, after which they had enough data to rule out any chemical energy source and turned it off. There is nothing saying it could not have gone on for much longer. In fact, Rossi's aim is a device which needs re-fueling every six months, and runs continously in between.
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 09 2014, @01:55PM
Page 25 of TFA:
(they fed about 1g of "fuel" into the e-cat)
Page 26:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by emg on Thursday October 09 2014, @04:59PM
"Obviously a bunch of pipes and stuff are not generating power."
You do realize you can send power along 'a bunch of cables and stuff', right?
I haven't looked at this in any detail, but just looking at the pictures, I can think of plenty of ways to get power into the device.
BTW, if anyone really believes this is really a nuclear reactor of some kind, why aren't governments demanding he be licensed for building nuclear reactors?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 10 2014, @03:53PM
Power plants are big. Power plants require a ton of money to construct. And a lot of legal hurdles to overcome. Does Rossi have that money? Does he have the legal knowledge? Probably not. He needs other people to work with him, and in order to do that he has to prove the damn thing works. Which is what he's trying to do.
Of course, it could be a fraud, I'm not denying that. Particularly since it sounds like he's rather hesitant to try to explain the damn thing. Maybe he can't quite explain it either though, he just stumbled upon it and knows it works. Maybe he's absurdly paranoid -- given how revolutionary this device could be, that's not *entirely* unjustified.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by geb on Thursday October 09 2014, @09:41AM
I remain extremely skeptical of this, for the simple reason that every demonstration of these devices has had an external power source. The demonstration of the megawatt scale e-cat was hooked up to a megawatt scale diesel generator. Supposedly these outside power sources are just there to prime the device, but we've never seen one operating on its own output. The "priming" power had to keep running for the entire length of the demonstration.
It ought to be trivially easy to prove these things can provide power. Have one run on its own power! Isolate it from outside energy and show that it can keep running! You wouldn't need a super expensive setup to do it. You can get superbly efficient stirling-type heat engines for very small sums.
This ought to be the bare minimum level of proof you provide before selling devices commercially, but it hasn't happened. Either he's selling half-understood half-functional lab curiosities as finished products, or it's a flat out scam.
(Score: 1) by HCeline on Thursday October 09 2014, @10:46AM
You can get superbly efficient stirling-type heat engines for very small sums.
Off-topic, but I've been looking for someone who sells sterling-type heat engines; but have yet to find anything between small-useless-lab-demonstration-model-size and about-10kw-geothermal-heat-pump-main-unit-size. If you know where one can buy a sterling-engine between these sizes, please let me know.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 09 2014, @12:14PM
talk to a (real) machinist, someone locally will make you one by hand (well, machine tools) for a price you may not like.
Small ones are popular model building topic, I've got a couple village press books and in my infinite spare time I'll probably make one, etc etc. Someone who's already done that would probably be highly amused at working on commission.
The liability waiver will be interesting depending on what you're trying to do with it.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Thursday October 09 2014, @04:11PM
The bigger demonstration models I've seen run on a candle flame, so that's about 100W input; you want something between that and 10kW (not sure if that refers to input or output, but it doesn't matter for some order-of-magnitude scratchings...), so sounds like you want about 1kW, more or less?
A quick google for "1kw stirling engine" turns up http://seftonmotors.com/ [seftonmotors.com] and http://www.genoastirling.com/engine-available.php [genoastirling.com] on the first page, and a little poking through results and further searching turns up http://www.whispergen-europe.com/productspec_en.php [whispergen-europe.com] and http://www.microgen-engine.com/ [microgen-engine.com].
(Score: 1) by HCeline on Thursday October 16 2014, @10:29AM
Thank you, the first link was new since last time I searched, and just about what I was looking for.
(Score: 1) by Rich on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:34PM
I read the paper, it looks like they used reasonably fine instrumentation, at least for a first look.
A self-powered device going through mechanical electricity generation would not be sustainable with the measured losses. However these losses seem to be convected and radiated away. I'd be curious how insulation would effect the balance. If the required input is (evenly spread) heat, then it should be a runaway reaction. I think any judging of the outcome from the energy balance is a definitely premature, especially given the history of "cold fusion".
But what entirely baffles me is the balance in isotope shift in Nickel. Almost all Nickel seems to have become Nickel-62 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-62 [wikipedia.org]) which happens to be the most stable of all nuclei. Now this is something on the level where Hahn was scratching his head asking himself "There can't be barium?".
(Score: 2) by cyrano on Thursday October 09 2014, @05:46PM
I've been following Andrea Rossi for a number of years now. I'm as skeptical as anyone, but I've seen no reason to doubt him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_(entrepreneur) [wikipedia.org]
I seem to remember reading the French, German and Italian versions, but they're all gone or nearly empty.
I've done my own research in the PetrolDragon affair.
You need to know the history. Rossi bought a very badly polluted petroleum refinery to turn into a waste treatment facility. The idea was greeted with a lot of obstruction. The local government didn't want to admit they never had any concern for pollution, so they were against the whole idea. But the worst adversaries were to be found in the waste "treatment" industry. In Italy, in these days (1978), that was basically the mafia and "treatment" was simply dumping by night.
It ended in some adversaries using pollution control laws against Rossi. This legal battle took many years and resulted in bankruptcy for the refinery. Rossi was acquitted for the vast majority of the cases, except a few very technical minor tax fraud disputes. He spent almost four years in jail, before being acquitted, for something he didn't do.
He was trying to clean up someone else's mess and that mess was used against him by the people who created the mess.
In my eyes, the guy at least deserves some respect for what he's trying to do.
IIRC the very first power plants were sold to Greece and I seem to remember that an Asian country was buying some sets too. One can wonder why there haven't been any announcements since...
The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. - Kali [kali.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 10 2014, @03:02PM
From your own wiki link:
It still sounds like his whole career has been that of a snake oil salesman.
(Score: 1) by Viadd on Saturday October 11 2014, @04:54AM
They didn't do a real control run without the magic powder added. They did do a much lower power run (~440 W) without the powder, then compared it to the result of pumping twice as much power into the charged device.
They also didn't directly measure the temperature of the tube with a contact thermometer, even though they are calculating that the bulk of the power output came out as thermal infrared (which has a T^4 dependence on temperature). Instead they relied on thermography, using a thermal imager that they don't give any calibration data for, especially at the alleged 1400C that they read off the imaging software.
They don't directly measure the heat output by, e.g. heating up a known quantity of matter with a known heat capacity. They say that it would be more complex to do this.
(Score: 1) by Viadd on Saturday October 11 2014, @08:03PM
I have figured it out. They were using the wrong emissivity curves to convert from thermographic imaging to actual temperatures. (They were using the total-power curves instead of the curves appropriate for their camera bandpass.) Approximating the correct curves and applying to their data drops the temperature from 1400 C to 875 C, which makes the excess energy disappear.
I have sent more details to some of the authors. It will be interesting to see how they reply.