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The E-Cat loses steam
Posted by Ugo Bardi on July 27, 2011 - 6:14pm
The "Energy Catalyser" (E-Cat) is a device that has been reported by two Italian scientists to be able to solve the world's energy problems by means of a nuclear fusion reaction. Unfortunately, there are serious doubts about these claims. In the figure above (from a paper by Peter Ekstrom ) you see one of the problems with the E-Cat: the trickle of the steam produced by the device in operation is way too small to indicate that it actually produces energy.
The E-Cat idea is rooted in the early work by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons who, in 1986, had claimed to have succeeded in fusing deuterium nuclei together ("cold fusion") and in obtaining an abundant source of cheap energy. However, the claims of Fleischmann and Pons were based on flawed experimental measurements and it turned out that there was no such thing as cold fusion in their setup. That didn't deter other scientists from looking for similar phenomena; a search that continues to this date. Rossi and Focardi have reported that they have been able to fuse nickel nuclei with hydrogen ones at low temperatures, generating copper nuclei and useful energy in the process. Accdording to their claims, the reaction must be started by providing some energy to the reaction cell, but the excess heat produced may be 30 times larger or even more.
The initial reactions to the claims by Rossi and Focardi were of cautious interest (for instance by myself and by Kjell Aleklett) or even of straight endorsement (e.g. by Hanno Essen and Sven Kullander ). However, these initial reactions were based mainly on the statements by the inventors of the E-Cat. In science, there is a shared belief that when a colleague tells you of something he/she has done, you don't assume right away that the measurement is wrong, a hoax, or a scam designed to make money. However, when the measurement is important, when it is crucial for the development of a new theory or disproving an old one, then it must be shown in detail that it was correctly performed and that it can be independently repeated. Of course, inventors don't have to show how exactly how their invention works, but it is in their best interest to show that it works.
So, let's examine the situation of the E-Cat as it stands at present. No direct evidence for a nuclear reaction inside the device has been reported, as would be, for instance, the emission of gamma rays. The only evidence available is indirect and it comes from the large amount of excess heat that is claimed to be produced by the reactor. As the only basis of the claim of nuclear reactions taking place, the excess heat (if any) produced by the reactor should have been measured with extreme care and with all the necessary precautions necessary to insure that it is significant. Unfortunately it appears that this is not the case. The set up for the heat measurements looks inadequate and amateurish; the results are unclear and repeatability has not been demonstrated. It appears legitimate to think that the claim of "cold fusion" by Rossi and Focardi rests on poor evidence, or even or no evidence at all.
A reasonably reliable calorimetric measurement of the heat produced by the E-Cat could be performed by cycling cooling water inside an insulated tank and measuring the temperature of the water. Knowing the amount of water, it would be possible to obtain a first estimate of the heat produced. That, in itself, would still not be enough. The heat measurement would have to be validated by replacing the E-Cat with a resistor and then measuring the power needed to heat the water at the same temperature as with the E-Cat in action. But the crucial test would be a "blank" one in which it would be shown that there is a significant difference in the heat generated by a functioning E-Cat and by a device where the "catalyser" is absent.
It is clear, however, that the inventors of the E-cat did nothing of that sort. They didn't close the cooling cycle, they let the steam vent out and they estimated the amount of heat created by assuming that all the water passing through the E-Cat is vaporized. That's obviously a very poor set-up that guarantees large errors simply because there is no way to be sure that all the water is vaporized. Yet, it is clear from this movie that this is the way the measurement was interpreted.
Even a poor experimental set-up can still tell you something if you use some elementary precautions. Simply by using two E-cats, one "active" and the other without the catalyst, it may be possible to see a difference if the excess heat exists. But Rossi has refused to address the question of a blank test. It may be worth mentioning at this point that the downfall of the 1986 "cold fusion" claims by Fleischmann and Pons started when they could not demonstrate to have peformed a blank test in their experiment.
Overall, Peter Ekstrom has a convincing point when he shows that the E-Cat is not producing any excess heat. As an answer, Rossi could find nothing better than calling Ekstrom "a clown". This answer was subsequently deleted from Rossi's blog, but it can still be found on the web, for instance here. This is just an example Mr. Rossi's general attitude regarding those who criticize him.
To all this, we may add other suspicious elements. Steven Krivit has correctly described several of the weak points of the claims by Rossi and Focardi. Then, we may add that the measurements made in Sweden showed that the copper purportedly created by nuclear transmutation in the E-Cat has the same isotopic composition as natural copper. That is simply not possible.
Of course, all this does not prove that the E-Cat cannot work as described, but the burden of proof rests on the inventors and it is clear that they are far away from being able to show that their device is an energy-producing machine based on nuclear fusion. It seems that the E-Cat story is rapidly moving to the realm of 'pathological science' . Grand claims of scientific revolutions supported by little or no evidence, ambitious recipes on how to save the world by some miracle machinery, gobbledygook masked as scientific theorizing, ad hominem insults to non-believers, etc.; it is a well-known pattern. From now on, we may expect to see another wave of conspiracy theorizing related to the E-cat. That too, shall pass.
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No free lunch then? What a pity!
What did you expect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch :-)
There are many things about this story that make it obvious that this is just another scam on the promise of "free" energy. There have been many of these before, and there will be many to come after this one. Some clues:
(1) The track record of the "inventor"
(2) Claims about not being able to disclose anything due to patent issues - it doesn't take long to apply for a patent, and even if it isn't granted yet, once it's applied for it will be yours if it's accepted
(3) The lack of simple measurements, such as demonstrating gamma rays next to the device. Since the "inventors" have more or less described the process as such with the exception of their "catalyst", a measurement of the gamma rays would give absolutely nothing away in terms of IP / patents, and would make their case for cold fusion about a zillion times stronger - also when it comes to attracting investors.
There was an article series about the "false fire brigade" recently - I disagree strongly with the conclusions of these articles, but the analogy of the FFB is really nice - everybody stands watching the house burning because there is a fire brigade standing next to it too, and these people will do something about it. The e-cat is another FFB - instead of using some of the simple solutions we have today (better home insulation, more fuel-efficient cars, getting used to less travel), we continue BAU and hope for miracles...
You're right, there is no such thing as a free lunch, not because of physics or thermodynamics but because of human nature:
http://www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad0509till.html
In the decade from 1984 to 1994 scientists at Argonne National Laboratory developed an advanced nuclear technology virtually unlimited by fuel supplies with a waste product sharply reduced in both radioactive lifetime and amount. However, the project was cancelled in 1994 for political reasons. Using this technology, a piece of nuclear waste the size of a half a ping-pong ball could provide the average American consumer with all of his or her energy over his or her entire lifetime. Even if the E-Cat worked, would it be able to survive the licensing process by the NRC? Would it survive the NIMBYism and BANANAism? Might politicians oppose anything with the dreaded "N" word after Fukushima even if the new technology solves all the problems or older light water reactors? According the the Hirsch report, an energy transition takes at least two decades of a "crash program." Could it even be implemented in time before mounting debt and peak oil make collapse inevitable? Clearly, no. Not by a long shot. However, maybe some future civilization could make use of it centuries from now.
The sooner we stop paying attention to crackpot scientists, who are clearly working outside accepted lines of scientific reality, the sooner we can start tackling our real energy problems with real solutions. I have no problem with Rossi and Focardi or Pons and Fleischmann doing dubious research. That is their right. But its a real shame when people spend so much time trying to evaluate an obvious error in the vain hope that it will be the magic cure. Please do us all a favor and just play the lotto.
Why can't we spend more time learning about a world electric grid, or high capacity rechargeable batteries, or even how to better insulate our homes? Looking at the details of cold-fusion is like homeopathic remedies to cancer. Please do not waste our time.
I would like to hijack this topic and discuss something else.
How about whether violence and greed can be overcome, or is it just too advantageous from an evolutionary point of view for humans to fight over resources with each other?
Waste your time?? Who is forcing you to debate this?
Some of us have followed Rossi and e-cat for half a year now. Yes, there are skeptics of course, but there are also lots of prominent scientists who agree that this is real. Hundreds of people are now involved in that industry, a dozen companies, industries in Greece and US, universities, etc. Of course you guys know better than all of them, right??
The thing is - Rossi has no obligation to set up tests that convince everybody. Doing so would compromize his intellectual property. BTW, there is also a competitor to Rossi so they are competing to get the products out first.
We'll see if the products work when they are launched in October, don't waste any time till then!
launched in October,
Exactly:
1) We'll all get to see if they meet the launch date.
2) If the product is what has been claimed if it ships.
3) And as mentioned in the drumbeat - it would not be a substitute for oil.
I've watched others come and go on their ship dates and not cash the checks their mouths wrote. Various Stirling engine makers, Blacklight power and their 2007 shipping briefcase sized battery that could move a car 1000 miles, EEStor.
The nice thing is, if they are a scammer, they gave drop dead dates by the end of the year. If they don't ship it's not like Hot Fusion power where we are still waiting.....
Based on what evidence? What does their agreement have to do with reality? Physics is not "socially constructed" like the rules of baseball.
Rossi has done enough demonstrations to attract money, but not enough to prove he can even produce one real working device, let alone mass-produce them. That's ideal for fraud.
All the more reason for Rossi to provide real proof, so the investment capital goes to him.
You don't talk about the elephant in the room. That elephant is fission power.
A number of panicked (or just apathetic) governments in Europe have used the Fukushima Dai'ichi incident as a pretext to shut down nuclear power. This move is receiving pushback from a number of sides, including environmentalists who don't believe that pollutant emission targets can be met without nuclear energy. The timing of the Rossi announcement is suspicious; it's at exactly the right moment to counter-attack the pushback and defeat its momentum. Even if Rossi collapses in October (like the Rapture which failed to occur last May 21), the damage will have been done.
A number of panicked (or just apathetic) governments in Europe have used the Fukushima Dai'ichi incident as a pretext to shut down nuclear power.
Panicked? Hardly. The promise of the Peaceful Atom has shown to be a failure. Mankind has shown that it can not build things without failure. And the failure mode of Fission power takes whole swaths of land and destroys them.
As for "a pretext to shut down nuclear power" - care to expand on this theory in public? Nation-States removing the bones of the dead and replacing with broomsticks and working with PR firms to minimize the negative press doesn't sound supportive of your theory.
The timing of the Rossi announcement is suspicious; it's at exactly the right moment to counter-attack the pushback and defeat its momentum.
Rossi has been flapping his yap before the failure at Fukishima.
http://newenergyandfuel.com/http:/newenergyandfuel/com/2011/03/09/updati...
Just because it was nothing more than drumbeat material before now doesn't mean it was not chatter.
And finally - "cold fusion" may not have the same failure modes of Gigawatt Fission and may be acceptable due to the way it fails.
You are right in the observation that the device needs to be replicated and able to be mass produced. But as patents are nothing more than government fiat and the expression of government power - nothing stopping Nation-States from saying "we will give you patent protection and you won't need the weak trade secret claim. Show the world this magical device" Because if this thing is as magical as claimed - what is stopping a Nation-State from declaring its use 'for the state of emergency' and bypassing trade secret laws all together?
Remember that Cold Fusion devices are declared 'not patentable' by the US Patent office so to get a Rossi like device to market in the US of A the law is an obstacle.
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/2100_2107_01.htm
So to all the US based cold fusion believers - rather than keep posting to places like TOD - spend that effort getting FedGov to allow cold fusion to be patented.
the Rapture which failed to occur last May 21
*wry smile*
Oh, the Rapture of the Godly and worthy happened. Its just none of us made the cut :-)
The timing of the Rossi announcement is suspicious; it's at exactly the right moment to counter-attack the pushback and defeat its momentum.
Err that tin-foil-hat reflex would make more sense, if you had the time-lines right.
Rossi has been at this since well before the Fukushima incident. Try again.
Rossi's old news, but the hype machine wasn't behind him until just recently.
As Fierz noted, this is another False Fire Brigade, allowing a real fire brigade (nuclear) to be disbanded without too many protests.
Please don't hijack this post. Post your question to the Drumbeat instead. That's what it's for. (A new one will be posted in an hour or so. You might want to wait until then.)
I'm not sure that 'yet another silver bullet fails to solve the energy crisis' needs a top level post all of its own.
There must be a thousand similar projects with similarly dismal reuslts. A few that show some promise, but not one that will allow 7 billion people live on this planet in the ease and comfort that OECD nationals have come to expect as a right.
Well Duhuh! what else would you expect from COLD fusion?
Excerpt from an interview with Gary Taubes:
http://www.thedailybell.com/604/Gary-Taubes-Good-Calories-Bad-Calories.html
My memory of this, is that they claimed to have changed the measurement from one that involved a phase change (boiling water) to a continual flow one, that avoided it.
Does this steam example, come from before, or after that point on the time line ?
They also claimed large margins of excess heat, not just a few percent, but > 10:1.
Are there links to more test data ?
The good thing I can see about all this claim//counter claim, is there is a very near deadline, and a promise :
In October we will start up a 1 MW plant and our Customer will be the sole validator we will care of.
and this claim, suggests a lot of replication :
I am measuring the performance every day on 300 reactors.
Mr Rossi is painting himself into a corner.
Their claims are very confusing; there is no real complete description of what they have done. If they have more test data, I am the first to be interested.
Why can't their client lie about it? There is lots of money involved... so a certain client can say whatever they want.
Rossi's 'Customer' is "Defkalion Green Technologies", a rather nebulous Greek company with unknown backers, which appears to have been recently set up with the sole function of marketing Rossi's e-cat. Rossi is indirectly linked to this company via the business interests of his wife.
From a recent Defkalion email -
{snip}
Regarding exclusivity, having received expressions of interest from 63 countries and more than 850 companies, we decided to change our non-exclusivity approach so that due diligence and selection of multiple partners in any given country is the responsibility off the country rights holder. As such, we will only sign agreements with one company per country. Any additional factories will pass through this partner. (my emphasis)
{snip}
"We sell the rights to manufacture our products exclusively to one company for a given country at a fixed royalty price of 40.5 million Euros per factory producing 300,000 units annually."
{snip}
"Initial meeting in Athens during July and August (except 14-20 July and 10-20 August) to discuss and sign preliminary expression of interest contract, whereby the opportunity to secure the exclusive rights will be given."
{snip}
Nice work if you can get it! It looks like a magnificent pyramid marketing scam to me. Rossi as the point man has to keep the song and dance going as long as possible while Defkalion rakes in the licensing fees. At some point the whole kaboodle will collapse and the garnered fees will be found to be mysteriously missing - as will be the principle actors, Rossi and his chums in Defkalion.
...or maybe it's real. Time will tell. Either way it's a great story, and will make a fun movie some day. (Jim Carey as Rossi, and Danny de Vito as Focardi, the vertically challenged, ageing, retired Professor Emeritus of Physics)
Source: http://esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer
Steven Krivit's video and comments do not add weight to the likelihood of the e-cat working as described by Rossi. Ny Teknik's April video is a little more convincing, with a gurgling stream of steam into the blue bucket. But the isotopic composition of the Copper product apparently being that of native Copper does not accord with a LENR of Hydrogen with Nickel.
I would like to be convinced that the volume of Hydrogen admitted into the system is only the stated 1g per 24hrs. The Hydrogen bottles shown in the video are pretty large. Could there perhaps be a catalytic reaction of Hydrogen and Oxygen (from air) going on inside the e-cat, producing steam?
That's the most likely explanation to me.
They have their mystery box, and then there's this industrial-size cylinder of hydrogen being piped in. And of course, the whole thing surrounded by air.
1g of H2 in a nuclear reaction should make prodigious amounts of steam ... cheating with a few more grams could account for a little steam, and that cylinder could still last for months.
Just an edit to the suggestion of a catalysed Hydrogen/Oxygen reaction: if the electrical input (750W) is used to heat the incoming water supply, which probably contains dissolved atmospheric Oxygen, then this will come out of solution and be able to react with the putative Hydrogen supply. I don't know offhand if ordinary tap water, flowing at the rate specified through the e-cat, contains enough O2 to produce ca. 2kW of heat when combined with Hydrogen.
Don't get hung up on the size of the Hydrogen tank. It is more likely due to size/cost available from the local supplier. If they are doing the number of tests they are claiming to do then they may want a largish size anyway.
NAOM
Funny enough a friend sent me the link to these guys yesterday ..
the bit I worried about was "..been able to fuse nickel nuclei with hydrogen ones at low temperatures, generating copper nuclei and useful energy in the process"
30 times was claimed but I haven't the noodle to work out if that's enough energy to split hydrogen from water because if you're using Nat Gas then its just a fossil fuel extender.
I suspect it does not though.
may a niche for heating homes or some industrial purposes ?
but as the article states , we're not sure this thing really does work at all .
Forbin
PS: you can tear me to shreds now... ;-)
What measurements can one do on a F1 car that is idling in the garage ? The movie was not made to demonstrate performance.
If I put a pot on an electric cooking plate of 2000 Watts, put a cup of water in it and wait until it boils and then I continue to add cold water to compensate the vaporisation, the boiling almost stops completely and not so much vapor is produced anymore. Most energy is used to heat the cold water to boiling temperature. I even think that if I lead the vapor trough a hose, it would condensate completely in the hose. So 2000 Watt is a little underestimated for what is seen.
Every cook can tell you that.
So the video shows a heat production in the order of magnitude of a couple of thousands Watts while the input is not more than 3.4 Amps x 220 Volt = 748 Watts (if inductive parts such as transformers are used, the real power consumed is even less)
If you are not sure, try the above test with 750 Watts. (You will need a good dimmer) You will produce far less vapor than what was seen on video. I am also sure about this because I have a coffee machine of 750 Watts and it is SLOW ! Very slow !
Other experiment: my girlfriends steam-iron that works with an open water tank and just produces steam on demand. It has 2300 Watts and if you push the button continuously for minutes, it produces LESS than what you see on the video. The first few seconds it produces more, because of the accumulated heat in the heating element, but after half a minute the steam production is very reduced.
So your critics that measurements were not done very precise are correct indeed, but the order of magnitude of heat production of 2 to 4 times input power could be assumed.
With 750 Watts, you cannot produce what is seen on the video if you add cold water to the boiler.
So 3000 - 5000 Watts is comfortable for an open-system demonstration. Suppose one would prove 15000 Watts, by kicking this things ass. Nobody could stay in that room for longer than 15 minutes. It was already 31°C in that room.
I agree that performance tests should be done in closed-loop and pressurized systems as you describe it, with very good measurements. But... this was not the purpose of the video. On the other hand, in closed loop systems, one could say that it was possible to tamper with the measurements. So a visual demonstration is a little better.
Once more people are being sold snake oil - of course, when we want to believe (why not? Free lunches are, well great) it is easy to accept such claims. Yes, it is important to keep an open mind but the laws of physics are the closest we have to absolute knowledge and this process violates what we know as fact. Maybe they are using dark energy or antimatter or just common magic but not physics - to overcome the Coulomb repulsion of just heavy hydrogen requires a great deal of energy (read high temps as in 75 keV per ion) but to do that for nickel is far larger value. Yes, every snake oil salesman claims a catalyst (yet do not understand what that word really means - such things do NOT lower the energy of a reaction, only increases the rate of a reaction) but since they can't (or won't - good idea since this would help disprove their claims) do even high school level thermodynamics based heat production experiments in order to get a first order value, it is obvious they are frauds.
Remember, an electro-static fusor can produce 10E6 neutrons/sec and almost zero excess heat (far to small to measure) and these people can't even get a few neutrons? Oh, that’s right, their process produces no neutrons or gamma rays or x-rays or ... wait, where does the heat come from? Lets see, bottle of hydrogen ... metal ... pretty simple explanation for steam being produced there without restoring to wild speculation about fusion.
Sorry - maybe someone like General Fusion is on to a good idea (and I'll believe it when they produce useable power but at least they are using proven physics that has appeared in open forums and published for review by experts) - but these people are either honest fools who can’t even realize their own mistake or dishonest liars out to make fifteen minutes of infamy and hurt real efforts by real scientist who are trying to develop the worthy goal of real fusion power – not magic only fit for a movie.
Score! This was my comment below in the original E-Cat post back in May....
In what container is most hydrogen distributed? (I don't know, but my guess is in a big steel tube like that one)
First off, lecture bottles are used when small amounts are needed (I have one of deuterium gas for my accelerator); next, a small glass container that could be pumped out and back filled with the 0.2 gm of gas would make faking less likely - that is so easy to do that I could do it at home.
The only reason for a serious researcher to have such large bottles is because they use a lot of gas. That explains his results very well - Ni (clean) as a powder with oxygen and hydrogen will easily cause the mix to burn with an invisible flame. So, yes, maybe his first experiment was an honest mistake but to take it this far and still claim Ni fusion is beyond the pale.
The cell is apparently controlled by applying / releasing the pressure of hydrogen. Using a relatively large pressurised reservoir means you can pressurise or release the vary small volume of gas in the reactor simply with two valves, so you don't need a pump. It's that simple.
Size of tank is irrelevant. You are watching the magician's right hand, pay attention to the left.
NAOM
"What measurements can one do on a F1 car that is idling in the garage ?"
Quite a lot, it turns out.
You can put the car on a dynomometer and see how the powertrain performs for real (no need to keep the engine at idle for that).
Also, you can read all of the engine computer's inputs and outputs at idle and during the dyno test.
You can bench test tires to see how much traction they have and calculate how much turning-force the tires can take.
I could go on...!
This F1 in the garage was meant to impress the neighbors' daughter. It just had to make some noise and smoke. It certainly was not intended to give tuning tips and information on performance.
No
Specific heat water - 4.187 kJ/kgK
Latent heat of evaporation - 2,270 kJ/kg
Your coffee machine is designed to give a slow flow of hot water by boiling only a small part of it so that the flavour of the coffee can be extracted.
The steam iron is designed to only give out a little steam not to saturate the clothes, the rest of the heat is required for , um, ironing.
A 2000W kettle pushes out PLENTY of steam.
NAOM
Actually, demonstrations were very well done, although they did some errors in total power output calculations. But this is not uncommon for people who does not care much how things are done by the book, but are just doing working systems. The chosen method was best possible on practical point of view, because industrial boiling water reactors produces steam and steam is what is wanted.
As the exit hose was the same in each demonstrations, and boiling produces always wet steam, that was measured to be 1.2%, that is typical for any boiling water reactors such as tea pot. Therefore steam temperature gives us directly the pressure inside E-Cat, because only (dry) steam contributes for pressure that causes elevated boiling point. And from pressure we can estimate relative total power output for each demonstrated E-Cat, if cooling water inflow rate is considered.
In April demonstration thermometer was calibrated that boiling point in normal pressure was 99.6°C. This should have been done in all demonstration and omitting this was very vulgar mistake from prof. Kullander and Essén. So I assume that the same thermomer was used in all demonstrations.
So, here are the temperature anomalies and corresponding estimated power output for all demonstrations of E-Cat: in December (101.6°C /9kW), January (101.2°C / 6kW), March (100.2°C / 1.2 kW), April (100.6°C / 2kW) and June (100.1°C / 1kW).
They are considerably lower that were reported, but also there is significant excess heat present. Therefore demonstrations were valid, although those scientists who observed them should have pointed out this common knowledge that steam pressure causes elevated boiling point even in tea pot. Instead some of the critics such as Krivit, talked about ultra wet steam that is almost physical impossibility and requires wery special circumstances. This kind of false criticism is stupid and insulting.
Why is a criminal convicted of fraud and had created a multi-million dollar environmental contamination disaster being allowed to pedal his false and unverified claims here? The man is worse than a fraud – he is an environmental criminal.
Why are you in such a hurry to cry "fraud!"?
If he's right, he's performing ground breaking science on his own dime-- no tax payer dollars involved.
If he's wrong, it's his reputation and money that are harmed-- not ours.
Personally, if he turns out to be right, I think he deserves a Nobel-- just reward for a scientist (engineer) who broke new scientific ground against a headwind of "fraudster-callers".
And what does his history have to do with anything. You need to read up on the details; every story has 2 sides, and he was trying to do some very good environment-saving at the time that he got caught crosswise with politics.
In this post I didn't call him a fraud - sorry I missed that. I do strongly feel that he is a fraud, and past history is very, very good indicator of that. Maybe I'm wrong about his intensions but his results make no physical sense and he offers zero proof but steam coming out of a tube and his claim of high power output - strong claims require strong evidence.
Well, this does establish the truth of the old saying, "There's a sucker born every minute".
The quote was attributed to P.T. Barnum, but it was actually his rival, David Hannum who said it. At the trial to determine the truth (Hannum sued Barum) it turned out that everybody was a sucker and both Barnum and Hannum were displaying fake versions of the fabled Cardiff Giant. The only difference was that Barnum knew his was a fake, while Hannum thought his was real. See P. T. Barnum Never Did Say "There's a Sucker Born Every Minute"
But back to the topic at hand: As the author says, the inventors could demonstrate the validity of their experiment by running a dual controlled experiment, one run with a catalyst and a control run without. If the experiment actually worked, the one with catalyst would generate much more heat than the one without catalyst. The inventors are not going to do that because the two will probably generate the same amount of heat.
As with Fleischmann and Pons' experiment, the basic physics don't work out. The key indicator is the total lack of dead bodies lying around the apparatus. If this was real cold fusion, the hard radiation from it should kill everyone in the room, and if the inventors were qualified nuclear physicists, they would know that in advance. 'Nuff said.
There have been dozens of different "they could prove it if they only did this..." proposals in the various forums. Alternatively, they could proceed with "Plan A"-- produce 1MW of anomalous heat by October. *If* they accomplish that, they'll prove their invention to a lot more people, but not everyone, of that I am sure.
"The key indicator is the total lack of dead bodies lying around the apparatus. "
I agree. This is a very important contradictory fact as to what is claimed by Rossi.
As far as also I understand the physics involved the claimed reaction (if possible) must be accompanied by radiation (gamma). Maybe if I undertook some seirous studying I would be able to do the math involved in calculating leveles of doses. However as far as I understand it those who have done the math have found that the claimed reactions (type and extent) would quickly result in lethal doses of radiation for those surrounding the equipment ("dead bodies"). There just is/was not enough shieldning mass to quell this radiation to non-lethal levels.
Excuse me for just repeating the argument, but I am confounded by the fact that the apparent absence of high emission of gamma-radiation does not receive more place in the discussion. Since this absence by itself seem to falsify the claims. In some article I read (I have no link presently) there was someone who had some metering device for gamma-radiation (not just for number of photons but also energy-spectrum of these), but he was not allowed to use it.
(And this is not just of academic interest. As good as it would appear to be for humanity if the claims were true, it would not be good for my personal financial position. )
Elm, I agree that this is a very important point; probably falsifying the whole idea. However, I also note that there exists literature on the subject - even published in serious journals - that claims to explain the lack of gamma ray or neutron emission. The idea is that there exist mechanisms that allow this energy to relax in the form of lattice vibrations. I am not expert enough in these matters to judge whether this is pure gobbledygook or real science - of course, the fact of having been published in a refereed journal does not rule out gobbledygook. I asked to colleagues more expert than me and the answer was, mainly, "I have to look into this more in depth" But they didn't scream and run away after having looked at the first page of these articles.
So, I think that the lack of gamma rays is not sufficient for not leaving open that "small door" that I was mentioning. As OldFarmerMac says, there is probably one chance in 10.000 that there is any fusion in Rossi's apparatus. However, as we all know, the point of the scientific method is to reduce uncertainty as much as possible but never to zero!
Ugo, thanks for your answer. If such an hypothetis have been published in a scientific journal maybe I should rest my case regarding this aspect of the issue (radiation).
Still, we now have two process to account for that does not confirm to "standard" science.
1. A fusion reaction.
2. Some form of decay of the fusion product that does not confirm to what one would expect (i.e. gamma-emission).
I wrote to Essén regarding this and got an answer where he mentioned two possible decay reaction (of an unstable copper-nucleus formed when a Ni-nucleus absorbs a proton). One involving gamma-radiation, another involving emission of a neutrino. The latter would thus release energy without gamma-emission if I understood correctly.
And then of course we have the issue with the isotopes.
How would Rossi benefit if he does convincing public demonstrations? Truth is that economic benefit would be inversely proportional to that how seriously Rossi is taken in big circles. If nobody does believe him, he has more time to ensure good market share and great economic power.
This is why burden of proof is not in Rossi's hands because he would not care less whether people believe him or not. We can only be lucky that he gives us some information, because he could also keep all in secret.
E-Cat is not in the realm of science since it is protected by a trade secret. Science starts with publication of experimental results including the full protocol for replication. Theory follows. Anything less is a religious argument.
Rossi's claims cannot be verified nor falsified until there is disclosure.
Moreover, the terms "skeptic" and "believer" have been reversed from the first months of the P&F announcement:
"Skeptics" are those who are virtually certain that P&F's claims cannot be valid. That is to say, they "believe".
"Believers" are those who admit there needed to be more of a focus on the replication of the phenomena -- including replication of the purported errors leading to their published and Science Citation Indexed paper -- before drawing conclusions. That is to say, they are "skeptical".
The pathological science here is clearly documented in the book "Excess Heat" by Charles Beaudette: Empirical results replicating P&F's phenomena were systematically blocked from publication because they violated "theory". That is religion, not science.
This sordid history exposes a structural failure in technological civilization and tends to lend credibility to those outside the scientific mainstream. Those identifying with the mainstream had better clean up their own house before ranting on about "kooks" or you'll end up enabling characters like Pol Pot. That is how serious this structural failure is.
Another excerpt from an interview with Gary Taubes:
http://www.thedailybell.com/604/Gary-Taubes-Good-Calories-Bad-Calories.html
http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Science-Short-Weird-Fusion/dp/0394584562/ref=s...
Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion
Taubes is hilarious. His book was subtitled: "The Short Life...of Cold Fusion". So if Gary predicted it would die a slow, decades long death, why subtitle his 1993 book, "The Short Life...of Cold Fusion"?
Here's the real story about the unqualified Gary Taubes and his religious beliefs that continue in their undead state long after empirical evidence:
Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed by Charles Beaudette, pages 275-277
Now, if you want me to propound a conspiracy theory involving Gary Taubes, one must ask cui bono? The answer is clearly "Pol Pot"! There's your mastermind behind Gary Taubes!
It's at least entertaining to read about the study of non-existent phenomena. Perhaps we should have a key post debating the pros and cons of the flat earth theory, and then from there we can do an evolution versus intelligent design debate.
As Beaudette concludes:
The "phenomenon" is "real" whether you believe that there is heat behind the phenomenon or bad experimental protocol. The point of scientific replication, true skepticism, is to establish in what manner the phenomenon came about. None of the true believers in the established conjectures of physical theory have bothered to seriously read even the original paper by Pons and Fleischmann, let alone set up experimental protocols that replicate P&F's purported experimental errors. P&F did publish a paper. They did, in their original announcement, state that the levels of neutrons measured were at least a factor of a billion too small for the levels of measured heat. They did run control cells. They did have adequate mixing. They did account for recombination of the electrolysis products (H2 and O2). Other than their admission that even the minute amount of neutrons they thought they had detected was too high (an error that is understandable given their authority is in electrochemistry and calorimetry -- not nuclear physics) NONE of the theories about experimental errors committed by P&F held up under even the most cursory examination; and even so P&F did subsequent experiments to demonstrate that these theories were false. The rejection of Oriani's P&F replication paper by Nature within the first year of the announcement (which was in 1989, not 1986 as the original article above states) is, at best, a crime against science by placing theory above experiment. At worst, it is a crime against humanity more monstrous than Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao combined.
All is rhetorical posturing around a subtext of true belief in their conjectures of physical theory (ie: we can ignore, for the sake of those who define "skepticism" as an exercise in consensus building as opposed to individual integrity, the possibility that the theory itself is flawed).
You keep using the word "skeptic", but it doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not the same as "open-minded". In fact, it is quite deliberately closed-minded about extraordinary claims which are not backed by extraordinary evidence.
Belief that anything is possible is not a virtue.
What is belief that nuclear energy cannot be produced with virtually no radioactivity? Is that "skepticism" or is it dogma?
Or is dogmatic exclusion of possibility "skepticism" in your book?
That is the logical consequence of your comment taken in context.
People who know physics believe nuclear energy w/o radioactivity is possible. p + 11B -> 3α + 8.7 MeV.
If you pay attention to the technical nits about Rossi's claims, including the lack of significant gamma emissions (how does the purported copper nucleus de-excite?), you'd know that the critics are applying physics too.
Good grief. Not only have you ignored my point that Rossi is not participating in a scientific dialog and may in fact, be issuing disinformation for any of a variety of reasons, you haven't escaped from the theocratic placement of theology over experiment. Rossi aside, experimental results have supremacy over theory, let alone interpretation of theory. The "critics" aren't "applying" physics. They are interpreting physical theory. Moreover, as anyone who understands formal proof is aware, theories as complex as physics are vastly more difficult to exhaustively interpret than are simple axiomatic systems such as ZFC set theory -- which is provably unable to prove all true theorems.
Your question "how does the purported copper nucleus de-excite" is absolutely no criticism of any published experimental protocol and the purported results. Scientifically the results stand or fall not on criticism from theory, but on failure of replication.
Experiment can falsify theory but theory cannot falsify experiment. Indeed, not even experiment can falsify experiment! There are idiots posing as "skeptics" who think that because guys like Lewis et al failed to replicate the P&F effect, (and indeed, even P&F had difficulty replicating the P&F effect once their original batch of Pd ran out) that this is a P-pperian falsification of the original P&F experimental observations. Were it not for the replication by other researchers, one might be able to argue that the P&F effect did not "exist" in the first place from the viewpoint of science as a public activity. But when journals like "Nature" reject entirely valid papers reporting replication of the P&F effect on the grounds that they run counter to some interpretation of physical theory, then we are headed for the dark ages. Indeed, given the energy and environment crisis, and how crucial research like this is; for all practical purposes, we are now in the dark ages.
I'm sure you worship P-pper so go read Him again.
What part of "the trickle of the steam produced by the device in operation is way too small to indicate that it actually produces energy" is not based on experiment, to list just one objection to Rossi's claims?
It would be one thing if the E-Cat produced measured, replicatable results which are not explained by current knowledge (pitchblende creating shadows on unexposed photographic plates, anyone?). It's another thing if the measurements purporting to show something out of the ordinary are obviously and grossly erroneous. Last, when the Cu isotope ratios required by Rossi's theory are not measured in his samples, we know something bogus is going on.
That is, indeed, the strongest argument the critics have precisely because it is based on observation, not theory. The essence of my point is given in my original post, "This sordid history exposes a structural failure in technological civilization and tends to lend credibility to those outside the scientific mainstream." In other words, while Rossi may end up setting back the consensus vindication of P&F, in the meantime, the majority of the credibility he enjoys as a result of non-disclosure can be laid directly at the feet of this structural failure in technological civilization. If P&F had been treated in an intellectually honest fashion by the scientific mainstream, this problem with Rossi would not exist.
You're tangling yourself in knots arguing about the scientific method.
Either Rossi is doing science, or he's doing business. If he's doing science, his results must be repeatable by outside researchers. If he's doing business, he must sell, rent, or give his machine to customers, who can try it out and confirm that it works as advertised.
Either way, science or business, his machine has absolutely zero value until it leaves his lab.
No, I'm attempting to untangle the knots created by pseudo-skeptics when they conflate what Rossi is doing with science. I've repeatedly stated that this is not science -- that it is business. Hence my repeated phrasing "you ignored my point that Rossi is not participating in a scientific dialog", "Rossi aside, experimental results have supremacy over theory", "E-Cat is not in the realm of science", "Rossi's claims cannot be verified nor falsified until there is disclosure."
In the realm of business, clearly the "skeptics" are neither customers nor investors nor coinventors so they simply have no business involving themselves with Rossi, whether he is a con-man, a fool* or the man who shall slay the dragon that attacked P&F.
*The absence of adequate steam in the exhaust would lend support to the idea that Rossi is more a fool than a con-man. Why would a con-man allow such an observation to take place? Surely, you don't think he is that stupid if he has, otherwise, pulled the wool over the eyes of the Swedish Skeptics Society, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, and physics researchers from the original university. But if we accept that he is such a fool, he, again, is likely to be stupid! Talk about getting "tangled in knots"!
Yes, the Swedish Skeptics Society has published an article on this issue. It is written by Hanno Essén – “Kall fusion igen?” (dated 2011-03-06).
http://www.vof.se/aktuellt.php?year=2011#notis472
The final touch is as follows (translated from Swedish by Google translate with a couple of minor corrections by me):
So far there are no indications that has made me suspicious, although many questions still exist. This is because this is not a question of basic scientific research but of invention, patent and industrial secrets. The really interesting physics comes first when the science is allowed to study the guts (interior) of the reactor, but then it will explode if everything goes as it looks right now. Stay tuned, as they say.
(The part about exploding I do not quite understand in Swedish either).
As far as I can see the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences has not made any statement regarding this issue.
"p + 11B -> 3α + 8.7 MeV"
Dr. Robert Bussard
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606
It is interesting to see how "peak oilers"/"constrained-energy-future--people" defend their world view by not looking at this issue with an open mind; the exact same way that people with interests in the oil business look at peak oil.
Anyway, there is a quite thorough summary on how to spot if its a fake or not:
http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_proof_frames_v401.php
All the methods of scamming seems to be ruled out, but not in a single experiment.
I am not a quantum physicist, but perhaps it is a Bose-Einstein Condensation-reaction? http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=501
I guess only time will tell, and October isn't that far away.
Time will tell but until then the site at http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_proof_frames_v401.php seems to be the best resource for now.
A working e-cat would be pretty nice. A lot of things get possible that seem far fetched, space travel for example.
With this kind of power it would become possible to start extracting CO2 from the atmosphere as well.
But would the e-cat come soon enough? The world would still be heavily dependent on oil for quite some time, even if it arrives in October. Maybe the collapse would overtake us before the e-cat could be scaled up.
Of course, like many here I think this is too good to be true as well. Still, there seems to be no hard evidence against it at this time. Also, for the guy who said that no radiation is produced, that is not true. There is (or there is claimed to be) a gamma radiation coming from the device. That is why it is surrounded by lead, after all.
Also, while it is wise to be sceptical, we who read TOD and are informed about PO might have a harder time accepting e-cat or any solution to the dire situation we find ourselves in. In a way, we are invested into our doom scenario. If the e-cat or any other LENR device turns out to be real, we look mighty silly with our worry and our conferences and our debates on TOD. All the energy and sorrow made irrelevant because the Cornucopias were right all along.
Wouldn't that be ironic?
Paranoia is a disease unto itself, and may I add, the person standing next to you may not be who they appear to be, so take precaution
I for one look forward to October. Either to get some real hope for a way out of the corner we have painted ourselves in or to finally get rid of a techno solution. If the e-cat is not working as advertised, any other solution (if it exists at all) will come too late.
This was my first post on TOD altho I have been a long time lurker here.
So, greetings fellow doomers o/
Claiming gamma radiation for the process is like claiming cold fusion in general - where's the proof? A cold fusion unit producing kilowatts of fusion based power would produce a very large gamma radiation flux (many MeV range so the lead would have to be rather thick). Such energies anyone could measure using very simple equipment and that would be very hard to fake - that alone would present a very strong case that he has some fusion but no one has presented such hard data in the link I've seen - show it (give a link would be nice that shows an independent person making that measurement) and I will start to believe that some type of nuclear reaction is occurring. Otherwise, just wanting to believe something does not make it true.
By the way, space travel was not a 'big' jump in anything but material science in the 1950's - relative to rocket 'physics', Newton generated all the required physics over four hundred years ago and even outline a satellite orbit around the Earth! All chemical reactions used by most rockets were well understood by the 1900's. Space travel is not like claiming that unknown physics is occurring for cold Ni fusion. Sorry, not in the same class.
There is no hard proof. There hasn't been any indepent investigation. And the secret catalyzer is not revealed.
Their is only their claim of radiation, hence the lead shielding.
It will be revealed come October one way or another.
As for space travel, given a power source like the e-cat would definitly cut down on travel time quite a lot, as you could accelerate for weeks or months. That would be a big game changer.
By October, Germany's rash decision to terminate the nuclear industry may have been set in stone. If it weren't for the E-Cat, the anti-nuclear interests wouldn't have any answer when people ask "how do renewables keep us warm on windless winter nights?"
Nobody outside of a small minority has ever heard about Rossi. It's not being disscussed in any mainstream media outlet I know of. Not in Germany, Europe or the US. Probably because it's not going to work anyway.
And there isn't any real answer to your question. I was against the exit of the nuclear power. However, I changed my mind recently. I see no way how nuclear could compensate for the loss of energy from oil. Since it looks like there may be very well be a fast collapse coming, keeping the old nuclear plants going doesnt look like a solution, more like an additional problem to deal with. At least we won't have to worry about cooling the reactors.
A scenario of a broken grid due to bad maintance and bad weather coupled with a dimishing avaibility of fuel for cooling just sounds too nightmarish to me.
I would be in favor of constructing newer reactors, tho, if BAU continues long enough to allow such projects. But keeping the old reactors running with higher demand every year? Doesn't sound like a winning long term strategy.
But it's all idle talk anyway, nobody will consider a return to nuclear energy.
For now that is. That might change pretty fast when people get cold.
I do. For one thing, nuclear power in the oil states would free up all the oil they're burning to make electricity. For another, nuclear process heat improves the energy balance of biofuels. And as a European, don't you think that a switch back to rail transport from private cars and over-the-road trucks is feasible and even desirable on its own merits?
There are ways to package spent nuclear fuel, even fairly "hot" fresh rods, so that they will remain safe with passive cooling. Modern reactor designs use passive cooling also.
Would you rather have a sudden collapse precipitated by a forced nuclear shutdown?
Nuclear plants can be uprated (and many in the USA are being uprated), but demand in Europe could probably be shrunk by the simple expedient of slashing immigration. Again, the problem you point to has bad government policy as one of its major factors.
That's the problem: instead of a rational consideration of the issues and a long-term plan, an ill-prepared industry will suddenly be forced to reverse course to meet a preventable crisis. That's where you'll find the biggest dangers.
How much oil is burned to generate electricity? I dare say it pales in comparision with oil used in transportation.
And yes, rail transport would be preferable.
How many reactors would you say would be needed to replace the oil used in transportation?
Wich leaves you with the question of long term storage. The modern reactor designs I know of which use passive cooling use a storage of water at the top to cool down. That depends a lot on the weather and still needs active cooling after a time.
But I'm aware that there are better designs.
It looks like there will be a collapse anyway. Would you rather have a sudden collapse and no way to shutdown your reactors?
Good to know that their are safe now. Of course, they were safe before so it's pretty much just for the look of it, I guess. How old is your oldest reactor? What is its expected life time? Why not build new ones?
Well, we can definitly agree on bad government policy. I think that is a problem not unique to the Europeans.
If I had anything to say Id go for nuclear in way. The old reactors have to go, sooner or later.
Better now, while we can still maintain our grid and control a shutdown.
A wishlist for any new reactor would include the ability to burn the already existing spent fuel rods, really walk-away-safe using stirling motors to cool using internal heat or some other scheme, throrium based would be cool and an alternative to boiling water like molten salt would be nice as well.
But I dont think BAU can contiue long enough to allow that.
Your suggestion to keep the existing system running will migate the coming energy crisis somewhat. Not enough to keep everybody from freezing tho. That would require an significant upgrade in capacity.
But it would not be enough anyway. And with the current economy what it is and the future outlook equally bleak it's not hard to imagine that vital maintaince will not and cannot be done. You end up dependent on a higly complex system with ever increasing rate of failure, no exit strategy an no way to handle the waste.
It is not a winning strategy.
Saudi Arabia generated 174 TWH in 2009, 65% of it from crude oil. That's 311 billion kWh/day or about 410,000 bbl/day at 45% efficiency, and it's growing while production is shrinking.
Many island nations generate the bulk of their electricity from oil, as does Hawaii.
It does, and I'm glad you agree. This makes rail one option for reducing petroleum requirements while maintaining both the economy and personal mobility.
Some years ago I calculated it would require about 180 GW to replace the USA's motor fuel with electricity, using somewhat pessimistic assumptions about efficiency. With efficiencies, it would take on the order of 100 modern reactors, roughly doubling the current US reactor fleet (in numbers, not wattage).
If personal car trips are replaced with trains, streetcars and electric scooters, the reactor count goes down a lot more.
Dry cask storage is suitable for centuries.
Given the mass chaos and starvation that a collapse would cause, I don't see any reason to worry about something as small as reactor failures. The only moral thing I can see is to prevent a collapse if it is humanly possible.
The earliest license expiration date on the US's list of reactors is 2029 (go to tab 3, it's not hot-linkable). The US would have new reactors under construction, except the Obama NRC (headed by anti-nuclear activist Gregory Jazko) continues to obstruct and drive up costs.
The USA went from the first nuclear chain reaction to the first atomic weapon used on an enemy target in less than 3 years. I think you'll be surprised at what can and will be done when the opposing activists and special interests are swept out of the way by necessity.
This is already beginning. Flibe Energy is preparing to work with the US military, which is not under NRC authority, to develop liquid-fluoride thorium reactors. China announced a thorium reactor effort last January. Things are going to change, the only questions are a. how fast and b. where first?
Ah, I assumed you were talking Germany or Europe.
A switch to a different way to produce electricity istead of burning oil would be preferable, obviously. Altho Id say that some of those nations are in a perfect spot for solar thermal as well. Especially Saudi Arabia could benefit from that. Nuclear is an option too, of course, but your example of Hawaii is maybe not wise. It does have rather active volcanoes, probably not the best spot.
Thats a good summary and better than I would have assumed. There are still some issues, tho. No electric cars, no suitable battery and constraints of needed inputs. Need a lot of lithium for that. A infrastructure that supports your new fleet of electric cars and a population who can afford it. The biggest issue might be time. Given that peak oil was in 2006 and we see the effects in the economy already how much time do you have to raise the 100 additional reactors and the change in infrastructure.
In a tent in Los Alamos?
You can have mass starvation and chaos or you can have mass starvation chaos and huge areas of land poisoned with radioactive isotopes. I dont see a single reactor failure as a small thing. Multiple reactor failures at the same time most definitly is not a small thing.
Of course it would be the moral thing to prevent collapse, there is no need to argue about that. The question is if it is possible at all. If it is not possible to prevent, which is my current position, the focus shifts to harm-reduction and loss limitation.
I dont see that. The earliest seems to be Browns Ferry-1 with an expiration date in 2013 and Arkansas Nuclear 1 with an expiration date in 2014. Lots of them expire in 2014 actually. And it looks like Dresden-3 expired in 2011 and Dresden-2 in 2009.
And that the US might have new nuclear reactors by now is besides the point. A lot of stuff could have been done. But it has not. That is kind of the crux as time is running out fast.
Oh, no argument. A lot still could be done if we, the people, just get our act together. But do you see that? Let's take a look at the US right now. High unemployment, lots of people on food stamps, crop failures due to either weather too hot or too wet, the population unaware of the whole peak oil issue and divided by R and D rhetoric, economy close to or worse than great depression levels. I guess I could go on. Do you see any of this getting better anytime soon?
I guess there is a path with higher than zero chance of a emergency programm to build reactors and the surrouding infrastructure. But a scenario with increasing pressure to to the system until a some form of collapse occurs is far more likely.
I've heard about the chinese thorium program but the US military one is news to me.
Still, I think you are asking the wrong questions. The questions is, does it come fast enough? And will it be enough?
What about the likes of passivhouse? Or desertech? I use about 1/4 the energy of the average american, and even maybe half as much as the average german, and I get along just fine. And with a little more wits and effort, I could do a lot better.
And I live where it is hot in the summer, and cold in the winter.
We have a wonderful, well proven, stable fusion reactor already working for us, Big! low upkeep!! cheap! Clean!. Hermann Scheer told us all about it a long time ago.
Takes Money? Not nearly as much as all the stupid toys we are spending our planet on now.
The volcanoes are on the island of Hawaii, most of the population is on the island of Oahu (linky). Petroleum supplies more than 80% of Hawaii's fossil-fired electric capacity. If lots of those oil-fired plants were replaced by mPower or Hyperion reactors, a good deal of oil would be freed for other uses.
I can't expand the shorthand of your objections into anything I recognize as true. There's plenty of lithium, and plenty of ways to avoid the need for lithium (or zinc, or whatever).
Recognizing that certain assumptions are behind the pessimistic conclusions, and changing the assumptions... that kind of out-of-the-box thinking seems to be scarcer than it really ought to be.
I don't actually expect that the job will, or can, be done with PWRs. Other technologies appear to scale much faster, and address the issue from more than one direction. I shan't go into detail here, as I have a work in progress.
On the Lake Michigan shore at Big Rock Point and Charlevoix, among other sites.
I don't expect it to stay there that long. The SNF is a massive untapped resource, which I hope will be converted to starting fuel charges for fast-spectrum reactors. There's enough in the USA right now to start about 40 GWe of capacity, and existing LWRs add enough to start another 1-2 GWe every year.
I see pressures building while entrenched interests try to keep the status quo long enough to cash out. The USA is seeing establishment pols tossed out by popular insurrections within the major parties, so their time is short. Their ability to block newer technologies is just as short.
There are e.g. LMFBR plant designs on the shelf right now. A concerted effort ought to be able to build several prototypes in 3 years and establish a factory to build more quite rapidly (there are no major forgings or pressure vessels required).
I don't know if it will start fast enough, but there's enough for centuries with only the fuel (DU) that's sitting in warehouses today. Scaling is a question I'm working on.
Its a good thing that the "deep thinkers" of the world had figured out that if you just take the forest industry wastes and turn them into charcoal to make Charcoal Zinc batteries that the energy problem is solved then.
This is a joke, right?
Not to him, it isn't. It's one of his strawmen (based on this article).
If you charred all of E.B.'s strawmen and buried them, you'd solve the problem of anthropogenic carbon emissions.
Nope - a zinc carbon system powered by charring 'waste wood' was proposed. When challenged about how the 'waste wood' left in forest clearing helped the soil and how the proposed plan would take the macro-minerals out of bio-circulation said proposer claimed "the market will solve it".
But that's what happens when Libertarian Engineers try to solve things based on their faith in "The Free Market" and technology. Add some "Humans are exceptional" dressing to the word salad of their postings and its a complete delusional dinner.
Because if "The Free Market" actually worked - humans would have them.
If Libertarians were effective - The Libertarian party would actually get more than 10% of the national vote on a regular basis.
Humans are exceptional - but suggesting solutions that poison the biosphere like Chernobyl and Fukishima perhaps isn't the best example of "exceptional" one should use.
A working e-cat would be pretty nice.
The claim by the makers is such exists.
Why waste any energy on 'em till they miss (or make) the October date?
I would suggest that you study a little on Bose-Einstein Condensates and not use an article with the same advisor as the subject in question.
NAOM
Hooo boy! Where do you go from here: "Oil Drum takes perpetual motion machine seriously!"
(Laugh)
Right now I'm trying to get some cold fusion out of a bottle of red wine. Main Street winery Merlot 2006 (!). Not bad, not as subtle as it could be, a bit of oak going down, does not produce any tritium so far nor can I get enough hydrogen out of it to power a 1/53 scale model of a 1957 Chevy.
Maybe its brainlock on my part but if energetic forces could be obtained by non-energetic means out of common materials wouldn't the ENTIRE UNIVERSE BLOW UP?
Just askin'?
"... wouldn't the ENTIRE UNIVERSE BLOW UP?"
Well, actually, current theory supported by ample observation, is that the entire universe IS blowing up. And that the explosion got started slightly less than 14 billion years ago. So the blow up can't be blamed on e-cat demo toward the end of 2011.
In this case, this will play out as they pretend to bring a 1MW demonstration plant into production. One megawatt is a substantial amount of power. If the plant produces that much power, it will be noticed with remote sensing --- or not. Wait and see.
I think Ugo is doing a good job of playing straight man to these fools. What they are doing is less dangerous than what the Tea Party Republicans are doing. More dangerous than that rapture guy a few weeks ago. But not really dangerous to the whole of the civilized world.
The problem I have with this post is that just because the E-Cat may turn out to be a failure doesn't mean that all so-called "cold fusion" can be dismissed as bunk. In particular, the "nuclear" reactions used in the E-Cat involve Ni and Cu which lie at the top of the nuclear binding energy chart right next to Fe-56, whereas the reactants in D + D -> He-4 used in the Fleischmann-Pons setup have a much higher binding energy differential.
Moreover, since the original Fleischmann-Pons experiment in 1989, the excess heat effect they observed has been reported in several hundred different experiments. Also, the reasons why many early attempts to replicate the original results were unsuccessful are now largely understood.
An excellent summary of the roots of the "cold Fusion" controversy by Peter Hagelstein of M.I.T. plus an update can be found here:
http://www.rle.mit.edu/media/pr151/34.pdf
As I see it, the odds are maybe ten thousand to one against any particular scheme , such as this one, which is in apparent violation of well known and long accepted physical principles.
However, it is a fact that new principles and new facts that contradict accepted theory ARE sometimes discovered, at long intervals.
There are enough dreamers out there that one of them can be counted on to turn up something significant occasionally.
Unfortunately, the odds against any cheap fusion energy scheme working on a practical or even theoritical scale are apparently astronomically high.
So the way to bet is against any particular scheme, but on long term progress in general.
There is, however, a question of timescale. Even the most unexpected new principles mature into established technology fairly quickly, if they have any practical value.
Maxwell's equations predicted the existence of radio waves in 1864; by 1888, 24 years later, Hertz and others had confirmed the predictions and developed a working communication device. By 1894, 30 years later, radio devices were being used commercially.
Quantum mechanics went from a couple of unanswered questions about the behavior of orbiting electrons in atoms to a fully-developed theory of the nature of everything between 1913 and 1925, an 8-year period. By the early 1930s, the principles of quantum mechanics were being used to describe entirely new devices, like the semiconductor diode.
Pons and Fleischmann's results were published in 1989. It has now been 22 years, and neither the theory nor the technology has advanced significantly since then. This strongly suggests there's no real physics there to discover.
Pons and Fleischmann's results were published in 1989. It has now been 22 years, and neither the theory nor the technology has advanced significantly since then. This strongly suggests there's no real physics there to discover.
In the Maxwell/Quantum Mechanics examples - how much effort was given in the timespans cited VS post Pons/Fleischmann case? If one is going to draw conclusions - do you have normalized data or just Steven Cobert "truth in your gut"? If you have normalized data - do post a link to it.
Sites like http://www.lenr-canr.org/ to track what is going on WRT research attempts.
It could be worse - one could be looking for Hydrinos.
(Hydrinos are unique enough to have a patent pulled. "cold fusion" is just not patentable in the US of A)
It doesn't really matter. Since the Industrial Revolution, successful paradigm shifts in engineering and physics go from concept to to practical device in a couple of decades, regardless of technology. Any idea good enough to matter attracts enough manpower to make it happen.
Semiconductors: 1940-1970
Lasers: 1950-1970
Nuclear fission: 1938-1950
Longitude chronometry: 1715-1759
Steam engine: 1770-1800
Vacuum tubes: 1885-1920
The exceptions are technologies with limited applications (general relativity, for instance) and technologies which rely on gradually improving manufacturing technique rather than new physics (optics, for instance). Cold fusion is neither of these.
Since the Industrial Revolution, successful paradigm shifts in engineering and physics go from concept to to practical device in a couple of decades, regardless of technology.
Now the "regardless of technology" part just ain't true.
AI in computers could be cited.
What is generically branded 'nanotechnology' - the interaction of materials at the atomic force interaction level could also be cited.
But I'll go with the sorrta on topic - Fusion. Hot Fusion. The gross physics is shown every day with the sun. Man showed "Human Exceptionalism" with the open air demonstrations of Fusion - the Fusion Bombs.
Yet Man hasn't managed to make electrical power via hot fusion.
Cold fusion is neither of these.
'cold fusion' "effects" are not reliably reproduceable. This may be because it doesn't exist. It could be because its not understood well enough. The problem for Rossi is he can't explain what's going on - just claims he's got a magical process. If Rossi can demo the pile of magic on October - the reproduction question gets answered with 'yes' but the explanation as to what is going on is still up in the air if no one but him and his people can touch the magical do-hickies.
I'm considering only technologies that *did* eventually end up changing the world. Technologies which have not yet shown a payoff may not just be "slow", they may be either impossible or impracticable. I can give plenty of examples of technology that have lingered for decades or centuries with little practical success: astrology, alchemical transmutation, homeopathic medicine, water dowsing. But can you think of one that actually *worked* in the end?
As for your specific examples, nanotech and AI are only a couple decades old, and both have already resulted in mass-market products (the accelerometer and voice recognition system in your iPhone, for example). "Strong" nanotech and AI may well turn out to be dead ends. The fact that hot fusion power has shown little practical success despite 50 years of effort I take as a very bad sign for its future.
I'm considering only technologies that *did* eventually end up changing the world.
Then there is selection bias.
Cold fusion may exist and may never amount to anything. Say Sonofusion exists - how ya gonna make that work in volume for power generation? An example of a parlor trick like 'cold fusion' may be - With a roll of tape you can get X-rays - neat science but no really way to go from it to mass produced power.
As for your specific examples, nanotech and AI are only a couple decades old, and both have already resulted in mass-market products
"nanotech" has existed from before Man. Because interactions at the atomic level has existed that long. Man is only now beginning to understand. What used to be called 'chemistry' in the 1950's is now called 'nanotech' by marketers.
As for AI - not at ALL what was pitched back in the 1970's or 1980's.
The fact that hot fusion power has shown little practical success despite 50 years of effort I take as a very bad sign for its future.
Hot fusion works - its why we are all here for without the Sun life on Earth would end.
The problem I have with this post is that just because the E-Cat may turn out to be a failure doesn't mean that all so-called "cold fusion" can be dismissed as bunk.
Shhh, there is axe grinding to be done.
"cold fusion" may exist but never be able to be a power source. And its not like any of the neigh sayers will step up and say "I was wrong" just like how none of the 'Fukishima won't be a problem' sayers have stepped up and said 'I was wrong'.
Rossi has an October date - he's got credibility if he makes it. More if he can show others how to reproduce the results. And for a workable solution - he'll need to be able to show others.
Till he can show others - why waste a whole lotta time on the claims?
Perhaps the simplest and most angst avoiding path here is to simply wait till October, and as with the "Customer", see if it works. If it does, then argument and speculation as to the question of why and how it works can be carried on endlessly...
If it works, great and marvelous, if it doesn't then its yet again another case of "these aren't the droids' we're looking for". Arguments for the sake of arguing (which is running rampant on the planet), may be obtained at "The Argument Clinic" (following payment of a small fee of course).
Now I,m going back to monitor more of the rapidly cascading next stage of the World Economic Collapse, etc.,etc..
Dollars to donuts, it's not going to be over in October. There won't be anything new in October, but there will be an excuse of some sort. With the deadline pushed up, no doubt. (Technical difficulties, legal/patent/permit issues, etc. My favorite Steorn Orbo excuse: friction is more of a problem than we expected.)
The simple answer to "why not wait" is "because while your attention is on Rossi, the anti-nuclear activists are busy closing off your access to the only proven reliable non-carbon energy supply."
Germans especially should demand that the Merkel government put all nuclear shutdown plans on hold until some sort of proof is in hand. Say, 10 megawatts (net) of E-Cats operating on German soil.
"because while your attention is on Rossi, the anti-nuclear activists are busy closing off your access to the only proven reliable non-carbon energy supply."
Yes, the bad failure modes have been proven to be reliably catastrophic.
But rather than spend time debating the matter in a cold fusion FPP - why not write up a FPP explaining why Fission is a great idea and why North Korea, Iran, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe should have as many Fission reactors as they need to provide all that "proven reliable non-carbon energy supply".
Because I've not seen an argument why some of Humanity is to be allowed Fission power and other parts of Humanity are not here on TOD. A supporter of Fission should be able to explain why.
And there is nothing stopping the German Government from saying "You want exclusive rights in Germany? Step up to the plate. Show us the working proof and you get exclusive rights for X years." to Rossi or whomever is claiming they have magic energy-do-hickies.
If you have actual PROOF to back up your theory - that Germany is gonna chase this e-cat thing and that is why they don't need Fission power - do post the proof. Otherwise its a theory about people conspiring to take action.
Fukushima festers quietly everyday in the news.
You have to go looking for it, but it is there.
11,000 results on Google News search today.
Rossi is a motorcyclist, as far as the public knows.
Or a soccer player.
17,000 results today on Google news search today.
Bigger than Fukushima.
Rossi Fusion?
45 results on Google News search today.
Smaller than Fukushima.
Vole?
1500 results on Google News search today.
Rossi Fusion is less visible than voles.
I don't think anyone is much holding their breaths.
You've been told before by a German guy that you're completely off track, and I'm telling you again: nobody, except for a few tec or physics nerds like me even knows about Rossi and his e-cat. I've never heard any anti-nuclear activist arguing that we can use the E-Cat instead of NPPs. I have not seen an article on him in any mainstream media.
So, while you may be bothered by the decision of the German government to shut down all NPPs, it should be discussed somewhere else, because that decision has absolutely nothing to do with Rossi's claimed invention.
The paid trolls I'm seeing on energy discussion sites have suddenly "gotten religion" with Rossi. One on GCC is also touting the Blacklight hydrino scam as well. This trickles up to Merkel & company, because the grass-roots are where the public pressure comes from.
Dear The Oil Drum editors:
Let's not have more articles like this. Articles on energy pseudoscience, even ones critical of it, serve only to attract people to this blog who have nothing constructive to say about energy and our future.
As for the specific technology of cold fusion and the E-cat, the ball is in its creators' court: either perform open, verifiable, controlled experiments to clearly demonstrate excess energy to informed scientists; or if you wish to retain trade secrets, sell a device to the public that clearly works as advertised.
Until cold fusion's proponents can do one of these, they are not worth our time, and their legions of apologists do not deserve our attention.
When someone comes up with a perpetual motion machine claiming to solve global energy crisis and plans to go into production, what do we do? Simply ignore it? We have exchanged hundreds of emails under banner confusion, and whilst most of us are >95% sure this is some form of hoax or mistake we cannot discount it completely since we don't have the experimental evidence to do so.
The fact that the Ni and Cu in "spent" fuel both have normal isotope compositions as measured by the Swedes is sufficient evidence for me to conclude this is a hoax, combined with worrying absence of radiation from the fusion products - but then why are they doing this if they are so certain to get found out?
There's a very simple explanation for copper in Rossi's cores: the housings of the test units photographed for the public were made of (rather crudely soldered) copper plumbing parts.
Yes, one can not but wonder "why are they doing this if they ar so certain to get found out."
Maybe there exists opportunities to accumulate considerable/large sums of money during the time before this happens. In this cased from gullible investors.
Into my mind comes the fortune-hunters that bought Saab-automobile. (Supported by the ECB and the Swedish government.) Before this adventure (most likely) crashes they will have enriched themselves immensely. In the latter case from tax-payers money.
Yes, the isotopes were the final nail in the coffin.
Why do this sort of thing if you'll be found out? Fame, fortune & glory in the meanwhile. Frustrated scientists can have a high discount rate like everyone else, and be as self-deluded as any human. The surprising thing is that it doesn't happen more often.
I believe that this article is worthy of the time of many TOD readers for the following purpose: to sharpen our scientific reasoning skills. Very few of our readers and posters are working scientists, but a number have solid science and engineering credentials. The peak oil problems we face are difficult because of numerous problems with measurement, understanding of error, precision, data integrity, data interpretation. The posts that interest me most are not those which denigrate or attack the credentials of others, but those which address whatever is proposed by some authors with the best scientific reasoning they can muster. It is easy to go off the deep end in promoting or dismissing someone else's work. But argument based on scientific reasoning can ground discussion of all relevant issues. I would prefer it if testing results of any near term peak oil hypotheses did not disconfirm the null hypotheses. I would feel much more secure if 2040 was the likely point at which production began to permanently decline. However, among posters at TOD, I find convincing arguments by such as Westexas, Sam Foucher, WebHubble, et al. I keep looking for reasonable arguments from data from such people as Michael Lynch, CERA, etc and I don't see any. This is why scientific reasoning is important to me. I am a psychologist, not a geologist, statistician, chemist or environmental scientist. We have a number of folks whose ability to argue the science increases my confidence that near term peak oil is very likely. This may be proved wrong, but if that does happen, it will likely be due to flawed data rather than poor reasoning.
By examining the claims of some of those who report some possible solution to major energy problems, I think we enhance our credibility rather than detract from it, especially if posters develop solid arguments. Ugo Bardi strikes what seems to me a good balance of taking the claims seriously enough to evaluate them; he does not deny that the claims are possibly true, but does amass evidence and reasoning to indicate they are probably not true. The discussion which follows interests me to the extent that posters find reasons to agree or disagree with the content of the article which are grounded in scientific reasoning. Good science is the best way we have of understanding phenomena of the natural world. Open debate is the way we may distinguish good science from bad. And that is what I hope we at the TOD will strive for wherever it takes us.
And I take it that someone has checked that the 'water' supply really was water, and did not contain Hydrogen Peroxide. H2O2 decomposes in the presence of a catalyst, such as Manganese Dioxide or Silver, to water/steam and Oxygen, generating 98kJ/mol of heat.
At a flow rate of 4L/hr, with a 60% solution of H2O2 decomposing to H2O and O2, would generate about 1.8kW, which added to electrical input of, say, 400W, would be sufficient to vaporise 1g of water per second, i.e. the observed rate for the April experiment described in http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_proof_frames_v401.php
I think a fake of this nature is unlikely, however.
Well, I see that there is a large spread of opinions about the E-Cat; some people have a "Let's wait and see" attitude while others consider it such an obvious hoax that they question if it was even appropriate to mention the subject on TOD.
On the latter point, I think that for those of us who are interested in energy technologies, it makes sense to consider all the possibilities. As I said in a previous post of mine; i was fascinated when the claims by Pons and Fleischmann came out in 1986. And I was fascinated again this year with the claims about the E-Cat. One thing that made the subject worth studying was that it had its origin in the work by Piantelli and Focardi; whom I have reason to consider to be honest people. And it had a stamp of approval from some researches of the university of Uppsala whom, also, I have plenty of reasons to consider honest people. So, I felt that the subject was worth some more in-depth examination. It turns out that we are seeing, most likely, a repeat of the Fleischmann-Pons case: an error in the measurement that misled even experienced researchers. It happens. At least, "cold fusion" made me study some interesting theories in quantum mechanics; possibly these theories don't apply to the real world, but it is a fascinating subject nevertheless.
In general, we should always leave the door open for the unexpected. After all, think of nuclear fission. It is a clever trick that we found. Fission coupled with a chain reaction that produces large amounts of energy is something extremely rare in the universe. We know that it has happened naturally once, a couple of billion years ago on our planet, but we don't know any other case. And, yet, we could exploit this quirk of nature and use it to produce a significant fraction of the energy we use; to say nothing about building up an entire system dedicated to killing everyone on this planet!
So, I can't exclude that we could find a little quirk that would give us energy from fusion in conditions very different from those of stars. For a moment, the E-Cat seemed to have a chance to be that little quirk. It turns out that most likely it is not. But I would still leave a tiny, tiny chance that maybe we could find it; someday, somehow. Or, most likely, never.
At least, "cold fusion" made me study some interesting theories in quantum mechanics;
A bit of a derail from Nickel, but still "cold fusion" - what the heck is the deal with Sonofusion?
Do you know about sonoluminescence? It is a purely none nuclear effect. You put strong sound waves into a liquid it forms voids (bubbles) at the low pressure points and when the high pressure part of the wave comes along it compresses the bubble. It smashes shut very fast and very hard creating high pressure at the center point. This through chemical level processes makes a flash of light.
In sonofusion the idea is to use a liquid made of material likely to fuse. One material that folks associated with Oak Ridge tried is deuterated acetone. Where the hydrogen in the acetone is replace with deuterium. The hope being that the high pressure and temperature at the small point in the middle of the collapsed bubble will have some fusion take place. This is standard high temperature fusion.
Ugo
I don't even rate it as a wait and see. Go away and come back with a proper demonstration is more like it. All it is demonstrating is a pipe with some vapour coming out of it. That is all.
Fleischmann-Pons at least produced something that others could take away and try. I will not argue their work one way or the other as there are others here that know far more. The outstanding point is that they did not rely on a 'secret sauce' for what they did.
Fission is based on clearly identified principles backed up with solid theory. This experiment is backed up with smoke and mirrors or should I say water vapour and a mirror 'physics' journal by the same person.
Where is the total net energy measurement? There are point measurements that can easily be faked but nothing to ensure that the total energy of the system is measured.
It is simply meaningless.
NAOM
1989, March thereof, is when P&F "came out" -- not 1986 as you repeatedly misinform your readers.
Moreover, their discovery dates from 1984 when they had a "meltdown" event representing vastly greater amounts of energy than can be explained by any experimental error or chemical process. Indeed all of their subsequent protocols were geared to prevent another such meltdown as it destroyed a substantial fraction of their laboratory. This was NOT an explosion. A Pd metal cube was almost completely fused and partially vaporized leaving gaping holes burned through hardened laboratory bench surfaces and inches into the floor.
Obsessing about Rossi's failure to follow scientific protocol is barking up the wrong tree. He's clearly not engaging in the very and necessarily public activity of science. As far as we know, he is deliberately misleading the non-investing public about any of a number of things simply for the competitive advantage it gives him -- and this includes the case where he has taken the P&F phenomenon to a commercial level, as well as the case where he is committing gross fraud.
Thanks anyway. We will see (hopefully) quite early whether it is an hoax or something different.
By the way, how is it going on with your Kitegen? Do you plan some article on TOD discussing the latest updates?
My view is that such claims are probably best presented and aired for what they most likley are- a SCAM.
However this is not the only example of poor science. The biggest source of wild and unproven claims continues to be those of the biofuels camp who make wild calims without any tangible proof, and in the process take investors money.
Could not agree more - talk about (me) missing the forest for the trees ... .
I would say this is a hoax. But further research makes me wonder. There seems to be something with this hydrogen-nickel reaction. Since there are multiple people showing energy gain from some variation of a hydrogen-nickel reaction, it makes me wonder why several people would all try to perpetrate the same hoax.
Randall Mills - Blacklight Power (has the same experimental evidence, but explains it with 'hydrino' theory
Andrea Rossi - E-cat (calls it cold fusion or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions)
Francesco Piantelli - Nichenergy (he did the original work that Rossi's is based off of)
I think the problem is that energy can be created, but there is no theory to explain it. So optimization and control is based on pure trial and error which doesn't blend well with the scientific community.
There are several different groups who are getting solid results. Although they still have to have validation / commercialization
Brillouin energy is getting about double to triple the energy from a few hundred watts. They are working with a researcher at Los Alamos for replication
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/brillouin-energy-will-replicate-at-los....
Piantelli work is getting about 1800 watts and multipliers of energy are in the Rossi range
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/07/piantelli-cold-fusion-work.html
Brian Ahern is getting about 8 watts without input energy.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/brian-ahern-getting-8-watts-in-low.html
There are researchers at NASA and the national labs who are investigating cold fusion / LENR.
There is McKubre at SRI that has interesting results. Not Rossi related, not nickel, power below 1 watt.
McKubre, M.C.H., et al., Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd Systems, in J. Electroanal. Chem. 1994. p. 55.
see
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusion.pdf
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusiona.pdf
"I think the problem is that energy can be created, but there is no theory to explain it."
Uh, actually: "The law of conservation of energy is a law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in a system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time). A consequence of this law is that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another."
I know, a big nit to pick......
Until Rossi is willing to say what he does all we have is some guy saying "I have a box it makes lots of power". This is not enough to be worth engaging.
Cold fusion or not, doesn't matter in the (not so) long run. You *did* read this article, didn't you? http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8155
What we really need to figure out is a system where humans can live and improve without ever growing energy needs *and* without destroying their species eventually (that's going to be a tough one).
The only existing humans I can see that manage to do this are some indian tribes in the jungles of this world. But instead of learning from them, we insist on convincing them of our "better" way of life.
In an effort to expand the thought horizon:
How about space?
Also, given "cold fusion" is real, this thread is an classical example of the typical reactions of an "traumatic" event - sometimes explained with the "F-trappan"-model in swedish (F-stairway). The "F-stairway"-model, has the 5 following steps:
Denial, rejection, explanation, understanding, changing or remaining. (All starting with F in Swedish, i didn't find an English equivalent)
Some posts are in the denial category, but this above post is in the rejection category, "it happened/is real, but it doesn't matter, it is of no importance"
What is the Swedish word for 'deluded'?
The Swedish for "deluded" would be "vilseledda".
If anyone for some reason would want a word beginning with an "f" one might also say "förledda".
Since no one else bothered, here is Rossi's arithmetic in response to Ekstrom's interpretation of the volume of steam emerging from the output of the E-Cat:
And here is Ekstrom's response to Rossi's arithmetic:
This exchange "boils down" to:
Ekstrom is departing from his strongest argument given in the original PDF, which essentially states that 5kW power being dumped into a room for even a few minutes would noticeably heat the room. That is the argument he should have hammered on and that is the argument that Rossi should have addressed.
Ekstrom's argument is clearly tendentious when he talks about "negative thermal efficiency". Rossi clearly stated that "up to" 5.4kW could be dumped into the room at 1W/cm^2 if that power were available.
Ekstrom's arithmetic is just as tendentious as Rossi's when he, himself, admits that "the main energy loss in normal circumstances is by convection" after presenting a reductio ad absurdum in terms of radiative loss. His figure of 500W as the top end is unsupported by any free convection calculation. Rossi's figure of 1W/cm^2, we may safely presume, includes his estimate of free convection which, again, is not calculated.
But all of this is moot if the room didn't heat up (assuming normal air conditioning capacity for the room and that the room was of reasonably limited size). How big was the room? Was there any special heat exhaust provision?
How convenient. Why was it not collected and measured?
NAOM
Ugo Bardi asserts:
This is an urban legend.
P&F did run two different "blanks", neither of which showed excess heat:
1) Replacing the Pd electrode with a "dead" Pd electrode. It had been P&F's observation that, for what ever reason, working Pd electrodes eventually ceased producing excess heat. Their hypothesis was that something in the Pd metallurgy or surface chemistry changed, rendering the cell inactive. This hypothesis was not falsified by the test. Indeed, subsequent experiments testing the importance of Pd metallurgy have been conducted and showed that when one researcher is able to reproduce excess heat, others can much more reliably reproduce excess heat when given Pd from the same roll of wire.
2) Replacing the Pd electrode with a Pt electrode. Again, the hypothesis is that Pd is essential to produce excess energy in cells of their design. Again, the hypothesis was not falsified by the test.
The urban legend arose from sloppy science jouralists like Taubes and sloppy thinking by physicists who failed to understand that a control experiment must be constructed to test a particular causal hypothesis (else all we have is "correlation does not imply causation"). In particular, in the discovery of a new and largely unexpected phenomenon, one cannot concoct a causal hypothesis to test and claim that no controls were run simply because no controls were run to test that particular causal hypothesis.
PS: Again I assert that Ugo Bardi has the year wrong. It was not 1986. It was 1989, March thereof.
Look at Krivit's "T-Shirt" video starting at 10:30.
Notice that at the critical point when Rossi is describing the exhaust route out for the steam, Krivit cuts. We might impute this cut footage to be of little importance but really, why cut it?
Also notice that at 10:43, Rossi states that there is very little condensation -- in contrast to his reply to Ekstrom's criticism.
This is the sort of noise, on both sides, that arises from the conflation of science and business. The controls on business fraud are virtually nonexistent until there is a monetary transaction. This is in contrast to science where replication based on published experimental protocol is the sine qua non.
The universe is exceptionally friendly to us. Its called the Goldilocks paradox.
Consider, if the strong nuclear force which glues atomic nuclei together were only a few per cent stronger than it is, stars like the sun would exhaust their hydrogen fuel in less than a second. Our sun would have exploded long ago and there would be no life on Earth. If the weak nuclear force were a few per cent weaker, the heavy elements that make up most of our world wouldn't be here, and neither would you.
If gravity were a little weaker than it is, it would never have been able to crush the core of the sun sufficiently to ignite the nuclear reactions that create sunlight; a little stronger and, again, the sun would have burned all of its fuel billions of years ago. Once again, we could never have arisen.
Such instances of the fine-tuning of the laws of physics seem to abound to our advantage. Many of the essential parameters of nature - the strengths of fundamental forces and the masses of fundamental particles - seem fixed at values that are "just right" for life to emerge and thrive. A whisker either way and we would not be here. It is as if the universe was made for us. The ascent of man is preordained by a beneficent cosmos.
After all these long eons the ascent of man continues. The laws of the universe would not let us down now when we really need them to come through for us. And nature has not disappointed.
Quantum mechanics will now allow us to prosper and be fruitful into the far distant future with the revelation of a safe, powerful and clean power source that will long endure throughout future ages.
Ausgang,
Having been away from the site, I'm not sure whether you mean this ironically or not. If so, my bad.
Since the forces and constants we observe are ridiculously improbably fine-tuned for life such as ours, there are several interpretations. (a) God: the entire universe was designed with this tiny planet and us in mind, or with various planets full of life in mind, by some being outside the universe who sees our existence, or brain-owning life's existence, as desirable for some reason. (b) There is only one universe, and it just-so-happens that it's fine-tuned for life like us, even though the odds against it are something like ten-to-the-123rd-power (if I recall correctly). (c) That some process exists which creates multiple universes, and all possible values for physical laws and constants are expressed in them.
(a) requires more than one universe as well as a willingness to invoke fairly circular logic in an exceptionally exceptionalist narrative. (b) is so preposterously unlikely as to be impossible. (c) could happen in many ways from mathematically simple assumptions.
However, if (c) is the case and this is a universe which is fine-tuned for life, it's not surprising that we find ourselves discussing it here in one of the relatively few life-friendly universes, just as we find ourselves discussing it on earth and not on Neptune.
HOWEVER, the "goldilocks" conditions which allow us to discuss this are not logically obliged to continue fine-tuning things for indefinite human expansion. That would only occur in the tiny subset of the (a) scenario in which the designer-god wished to favor star-trek-like expansion scenarios for a particular kind of life.... which is a pretty darn explicitly-contrived bit of agenda to impute to a hypothetical other-dimensional being outside of space and time. Moreover, if all the designer-god had to work with was laws and physical constants at the universe's inception, it would probably not be self-consistently possible to tweak things much further.
Since there obviously IS a set of universal laws and constants which can produce us as we now exist, what are the odds that those constants could have been tuned BETTER to not only produce the world we have, but also be constructed and tuned so as to guarantee that every answer humans ever seek to satisfy their desires into the indefinite future is "yes"?
What can we draw from this pre-coffee meander on my part? That a universe being fine-tuned enough to generate beings such as ourselves is in no way necessarily fine-tuned to cut us any additional slack. Current human narratives seem to assume that just because there has recently been cheese at the end of every maze, that there always will be. However, over the last billion years of life on earth, we see that no species has ever gotten permanent breaks from the universe. Our brief flirtation with fossil fuels and industry seems likely to drastically reduce the planet's carrying capacity for quite some time, if not wreck it entirely.
All of this is clear example of survivor bias. The things you see living here are the sorts of things that can live here, who then can happily say "what a great place to live".
Miniscule probabilities manifest routinely is a sufficiently large sample set.
I just want to call attention to the intellectual errors and subtext of the parent.
Is it really? Or would a different kind of life evolve in a universe with different characteristics yet still amenable to life?
No. Stars balance their gravitational self-attraction against the heat energy which tends to puff them up into larger sizes. If the strong nuclear force was stronger, stars would begin fusion at lower masses and temperatures. There would be more but smaller stars.
Such claims as yours are almost always used to argue for the creation of the universe by a benevolent deity. I cannot think of anything that's more off-topic for The Oil Drum.
Dr. Brian Josephson would like to see the heat content of the Rossi Reactor demoed in a proper fashion.
Do you have a link please.
NAOM
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=501&cpage=7
Thank you. The following comment is interesting
Couldn't find another comment from Brian in that thread though. It does seem his name was added as an afterthought.
NAOM
New Energy Times issue #37 - devoted entirely to:
Scientific Analysis of Rossi, Focardi and Levi claims
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/NET370.shtml
Having read this piece and all 37 appendixes, I would say it's game over for Mr.Rossi.
Appendix 35 which deconstructs the NY TECHNIK video of the Rossi device in action is particularly damning. I feel reasonably sure that Rossi is a scammer (or there's an outside possibility he is deliberately trying to appear to be one). I have a small bet with myself that the 'last week in October' demonstration of a 1Mw unit in Greece will unfortunately (for some unavoidable reason or other) be delayed. Meanwhile Defkalion will continue to rake the money into it's licensing pyramid. At 40 million euros a pop all they need is one or two rich idiots for the scam to be considered a success. (see my post above for link)
There is a video linked in that article that is a must see. The amount of steam being produced is similar to that in the image at the top of this article
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9uvIhgVz04
Yes, Appendix 35 is very telling.
NAOM
I watched the video. The vapour coming out of the hose could not possibly represent 5 kW. I could produce that on my electric stove on one of the lower levels (or maybe middle levels). The displayed steam could not possibly represent anything near 5 kW. Would it be enough to drive a toy steam engine? Maybe. Rossi says the device consumes/evaporates 7 kg of water per hour. That seems highly unlikely (understatement). Heat losses throught the hose?. Has been discussed elsewhere (Peter Ekström). Anyway if the water does not leave the hose as gas it must leave the hose as liquid. If 7 kg/h it would be 2 ml per second, such a trickel (?) ought to be clearly seen. (Maybe he lifted the hose so the trickle stopped when filmed.)
A very pertinent comment in the New Energy Times is that you can not evaluate a black box based on measurments made inside the black box. In the video you will see the temperature sensor placed inside the "black box", se video.
Furthermore Rossi make some strange statements concerning the visibility of vapour/mist. Of course in the heat of the moment one might express oneself inaccurately, but it makes you wonder.
I would not want to be mistaken on this, but it is very hard to beleive other than that this is a bluff.
Earlier the missing piece of evidence in the bluff scenario seemed to be the absence of a financial gain/part to this, but that piece seems to have fallen into place with the latest reports.
At 7kg/hr, well, just how much does an average sauna or steam room use? Yes, all measurements are made outside the black box otherwise it is not a black box. In my student days, if I had set up a lab experiment like these demonstrations the supervisor would have thrown me out of the lab until I came up with a real version. Real? Fraud? It does not even come up to the standard for considering this question.
NAOM
Kettle v e-cat, an informal comparison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsqSEw6Nti8&feature=player_embedded
The photos had my hopes up.
And just when I had so hoped for a fusion reactor in my home, so I could steam-iron my shirts.
Back to the drawing boards! I'll warm up my orgone accumulator and Electropoise now.
Surprise ,surprise (not!)
http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3310
Scammer playbook 101. Tomorrow never comes.
Really, it doesn't help the true-disbeliever case to misrepresent the statements made by Rossi.
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=501&cpage=10#comment-59887
and
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=501&cpage=10#comment-59964