Independent Researchers Test Rossi's Alleged Cold Fusion Device For 32 Days

WheezyJoe (1168567) writes The E-Cat (or "Energy Catalyzer") is an alleged cold fusion device that produces heat from a low-energy nuclear reaction where nickel and hydrogen fuse into copper. Previous reports have tended to suggest the technology is a hoax, and the inventor Andrea Rossi's reluctance to share details of the device haven't helped the situation. ExtremeTech now reports that "six (reputable) researchers from Italy and Sweden" have "observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, "far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume."... "The researchers, analyzing the fuel before and after the 32-day burn, note that there is an isotope shift from a "natural" mix of Nickel-58/Nickel-60 to almost entirely Nickel-62 — a reaction that, the researchers say, cannot occur without nuclear reactions (i.e. fusion)." The paper (PDF) linked in the article concludes that the E-cat is "a device giving heat energy compatible with nuclear transformations, but it operates at low energy and gives neither nuclear radioactive waste nor emits radiation. From basic general knowledge in nuclear physics this should not be possible. Nevertheless we have to relate to the fact that the experimental results from our test show heat production beyond chemical burning, and that the E-Cat fuel undergoes nuclear transformations. It is certainly most unsatisfying that these results so far have no convincing theoretical explanation, but the experimental results cannot be dismissed or ignored just because of lack of theoretical understanding. Moreover, the E-Cat results are too conspicuous not to be followed up in detail. In addition, if proven sustainable in further tests the E-Cat invention has a large potential to become an important energy source." The observers understandably hedge a bit, though: The researchers are very careful about not actually saying that cold fusion/LENR is the source of the E-Cat’s energy, instead merely saying that an “unknown reaction” is at work. In serious scientific circles, LENR is still a bit of a joke/taboo topic. The paper is actually somewhat comical in this regard: The researchers really try to work out how the E-Cat produces so much darn energy — and they conclude that fusion is the only answer — but then they reel it all back in by adding: “The reaction speculation above should only be considered as an example of reasoning and not a serious conjecture.”

Comments

Hoax

[ls671]

Of course, everything is a hoax and scientifically impossible until the day it is proven to actually work.

Re:Hoax

[Teresita]

Everyone that says they have a box that makes energy from nothing, I say, phase match your box to the line current from the local utility, roll your meter backwards, and cash the ensuing checks. Then talk to me.

Re:Hoax

[ShanghaiBill]

Of course, everything is a hoax and scientifically impossible until the day it is proven to actually work.

But to "prove" it works, you don't just have researchers look at it. They are trained to find experimental flaws, not deliberate deception. You should have professional magicians look at it. These are people who know how to find the "trick".

Re:Hoax

[swillden]

Of course, everything is a hoax and scientifically impossible until the day it is proven to actually work.

Nonsense.

Most real inventions go the other direction... first the theory, then the gradual working-out of the engineering processes required to make it work, a a little, then more hard work to refine it into something really useful and usable.

Most claimed inventions without theoretical justification also go a different way... they're thought a hoax and then are proven to be a hoax. The reason they're thought to be a hoax is exactly because nearly all of them are.

It is looking more possible that the E-Cat may not be a hoax. Further study may gradually exclude all other explanations, and eventually we may start to see conjectured mechanisms, one of which may emerge as the best explanation. Perhaps along the way we'll learn some new physics.

Or, we may find that the E-Cat is a hoax. That will be the less surprising (but sadder) outcome. Time, and further study, will tell. But if it does turn out to be real, your snark will still be completely wrong. Most everything that is real is known to be real before it works, and most everything that is a hoax actually is a hoax.

Re:Hoax

[timholman]

Everyone that says they have a box that makes energy from nothing, I say, phase match your box to the line current from the local utility, roll your meter backwards, and cash the ensuing checks. Then talk to me.

This, a thousand times over. Having a "free energy" machine, if it existed, would be like owning a machine that printed money.

Rossi claims he has constructed 1 MW reactors. Assuming this was true, and assuming Rossi could sell that power for just $0.10 USD per kW-hr, then he has a machine that effectively generates income at the rate of $100 / hour. Use half of that income for operating costs and personal expenses, and Rossi makes a net profit of $36,000 a month if the machine runs 24/7.

In a year Rossi has $432,000. Long before then, he would be able to build a second generator, doubling his income. Assuming one generator could "double" itself every six months, in five years he has a profit of $18.4M USD each month. In less than a decade, he is the wealthiest man on the planet.

So why isn't Rossi doing that, instead of trying to get investors to write checks? Because he can't, of course. Like all frauds and pseudoscientists, he is utterly incapable of actually doing anything useful with his so-called "invention".

Re:Hoax

[radtea]

Their measurements indicate more power is output than was input.

These measurements indicate the researchers have created an almost cartoonishly bad "open calorimeter" that they do not calibrate at anywhere near the operating temperature despite their estimate of heat balance being acutely dependent on making multiple temperature-dependent corrections accurately.

If a fourth year engineering student handed this experimental setup in as a design project, and included the low-temperature "calibration" as part of the design, I would fail them.

Re:Hoax

[peragrin]

Right and how do you keep it secret? once you start passing them out(even if you are just selling the power) someone will cut it up and duplicate it. Look at the number of cheap iPhone knockoffs that appeared a year after the iPhone came out. He doesn't have apple's lawyers to defend him.

Re:Hoax

[gweihir]

Here is also a nice analysis by some real scientists: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pap...

Re:Hoax

[alexgieg]

Yes, and Special Relativity is a minor antecedent to Einsten's real contribution, General Relativity. SR was a nice sum up of what was known until then, but not fundamentally novel, which is why he didn't earn his Nobel for it. Now, GR on the other hand was the kind of stuff that only happens once a millennium.

The usual way for something like GR to be developed would be by scientists noticing slight problems in measurements, then doing more experiments, then trying to generalize from those perceived mismatches, then testing again and again and again etc. It'd have taken several decades. Einstein took a different approach. He went on to think very hard on the fundamentals of Physics for about 10 years, then noticed that things couldn't work any other way and so formulated GR entirely. And it was so well done that it's been confirmed since the very first experiment that went to test its specific, outrageous claims (and there are a lot of those). He nailed it all correctly the very first try.

This is why he's recognized. E=mc2 is minor. GR is the true genius part.

Re:Hoax

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

No, his case is not 100% different. There are ways to fool everyone, including physicists and other professional scientists. Heck, the physicists at CERN fooled themselves for quite a while when their experiments demonstrated that they had succeeded in sending information at greater than the speed of light.

If the inventor actually made a real patent with a full technical explanation, physicists would be in their prime and could actually pick apart the flaws in the design and figure out that it does not work and that the results cannot be reproduced.

However, experimental physicists operate under the presumption that everyone they work with is honest and doing science. That's how they are trained. In fact scientists might be the most open and honest professions. That's also why physicists and other scientists are easy to fool IF you exploit the fact that their skepticism is going to be largely directed toward your science and engineering, not your honesty.

You set up the device, break into the lab at night, charge it up, and there's a good chance they'll never notice. A magician or a cop might be more likely to figure it out because they've been trained to think skeptically about the honesty of others and have experience dealing with fraud and criminality.

Any suffiently advanced tech...

[trims]

is indistinguishable from a Rigged Demo. Or in this case, Rossi is counting on the inverse.

We've long been down this road. Rossi refuses to let anyone see how the thing works. He refuses to allow input monitoring (i.e. the Ecat is always plugged into an external power source, and he refuses to allow an ampmeter to be run on it).

He's also never shown the interior of the Ecat, so there's no verification of the fuel being any different between start and finish of the run. In fact, the concentration of Copper isotopes after the run is suspiciously identical to naturally occurring copper.

He's also never explained why there are no gamma radiation dangers, despite the physics which say that if the reaction he claims is going on, anyone within 10 meters for more than a few minutes should die of radiation poisoning.

Really, folks, this nothing more than a charlatan peddling his wares to folks. Any "scientist" who values his reputation shouldn't come with 100 miles of this guy. And shame on Slashdot for even publishing this claim. What, we're next going to entertain claims of people who say they can transform Lead to Gold with only this special black-box machine?

Oh, and ExtremeTech is about as reliable for this kind of reporting as The Daily Mail.

-Erik

Re:Any suffiently advanced tech...

[Charliemopps]

They did run an amp meter on it. Also, they know the power supply he was using and it's standard. They were able to measure all inputs and outputs. It put out more than it took in, by a lot. More than could be accounted for given its mass.

I'm not saying this is real... but when they really do figure out how he tricked them it's going to be really clever I bet.

Can someone else build one?

[tomhath]

Reproducible results means someone else can build the device and get the same results. Unless that happens it's a hoax.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[ShanghaiBill]

But you contradict yourself. If (as you said yourself) that he could not get a patent, then trade secret is his only real protection.

He didn't get the patent because he didn't actually describe how the device works. You can't patent a secret, and keep it a secret. The reason he didn't describe how it works is almost certainly because IT DOESN'T WORK. If it is a hoax, everything he is doing would make complete sense. If it is real, then nothing that he is doing makes sense. So someone who is behaving like a fraud, claims to be able to violate the known laws of physics. If anyone wants to bet that this is real, I'll give you 100 to 1 odds that it is not.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[ShanghaiBill]

the guy has developed a device that can store and regurgitate energy with a far greater energy density than gasoline.

There are plenty of other explanations:
1. There is a hidden power cable
2. He recharges the battery while the researchers go to the toilet
3. He is feeding in power through inductive coupling.
4. Something else I didn't think of.

Look, I went to a magic show in Las Vegas, and I saw a guy make an ELEPHANT appear out of thin air on a raised platform. The audience was in a horse shoe layout, and was viewing the raised platform from 270 degrees. I have absolutely NO IDEA how he made that elephant appear. Yet there is no question in my mind that he didn't really materialize an elephant out of thin air. If someone can pull off that elephant illusion, then faking cold fusion well enough to fool a few researchers should be easy. I don't know exactly how the researchers were fooled, but there should be little doubt that they were.

Since you are using occam's razor

[aepervius]

occam's razor is that just as with the first "independent" check this was actually not independent at all, was in Rossi lab with Rossi condition, and Rossi could have simply ordered some specific isotope and mixed it to make it looks like the ratio changed.
 
A true independent test is made in a lab own premise, with a machine they can watch and look for, and rossi not getting his finger on it at any point. THAT is an independent test. What we got is a second circus show. Oh sorry I meant "independent test". With big scary quotes.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[hairykrishna]

I am a physicist. I strongly disagree with your view that the methodology is sound.

The measurement methodology for the 'power out' was not the way I would do it. It effectively comes down to measuring the temperature of the 'reactor', in air, and applying calculations. Temperature is measured via an IR camera. It is filled with many ways that they could mislead themselves. I have personally used such a camera to measure surface temperatures in a high power density accelerator target and it is far from a straightforward enterprise. Why not just load the whole thing into a bomb calorimeter? That's the immediately obvious way to measure what they want to measure.

They do not adequately describe their power input. They start out with 3 phase. There's some kind of power supply box in the chain before the resistors. Who supplied this box? More details on what's actually measured as 'input power' is required. Is a circuit diagram too much to ask for?

The isotope data would be compelling. However, it's clear from the paper that Rossi handled the fuel at loading, removal and possibly at points in between. Substitution would have been trivial.

No radiation was observed. LENR, cold fusion, whatever you want to call it where no radiation is emitted is completely incompatible with all known nuclear physics. The idea that it doesn't violate any known physical laws is nonsense.