Success for Andrea Rossi's E-Cat cold fusion system, but mysteries remain

[bananas]

Source: Wired

Against all the odds, Andrea Rossi's E-Cat cold fusion power plant passed its biggest test yesterday, producing an average of 470 kilowatts for more than five hours. (A technical glitch prevented it from achieving a megawatt as originally planned). The demonstration was monitored closely by engineers from Rossi's mysterious US customer, which was evidently satisfied and paid up.

The energy was output in the form of heat, measured by the quantity of water boiled off. The results are reported in NyTeknik and Pure Energy Systems News, who both had reporters present for the test. Associated Press also sent a correspondent who should be filing a story in the next few days (one suspects his editors might have some questions).

<snip>

The successful test should pave the way for further work at the University of Bologna, and more contracts with the enigmatic customer. NyTeknik did discover one possible clue to their identity. The customer's controller, one Domenico Fioravanti, apparently reports to a man whose title is "Colonel". This suggests that the mystery customer might be DARPA, the Pentagon's extreme science wing which, as Wired.co.uk has previously noted, has expressed interestin Rossi's work -- but which might not be quite ready to explain to its political masters why it spent millions on a cold fusion device.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success

[Arctic Dave]

1. Amazing.

I can't wait to see the reports.

[phantom power]

2. I thought it was supposed to produce a megawatt for 30 hours. 5 hours seems a lot shorter.

[bananas]

4. SNAFU - things always go wrong during customer tests.

I was just going to post in another thread that customer tests often go wrong for a variety of reasons unrelated to whether the technology actually works, so that even if the test failed, the customer might want a second test. I decided to check the news to see if the results were in, and saw this story.

[nilram]

11. yeah, thanks for checking and posting it.

I was interested, too.

[MjolnirTime]

6. That it produces anything is what is amazing.

[krispos42]

3. This seems very unlikely, but hell, if it works, then it works.

Science is no stranger to reverse-engineering why things work the way they do rather than they way a theory says it should.

[Odin2005]

5. Bullshit.

[DetlefK]

7. I bet, the customer was a hired actor and the whole test was a PR-stunt for the reporters.

See? See? We have a mysterious military-style customer, which means that we are for real!

Why hasn't Rossi contacted anyone from Science, Nature or Physical Review to take a look at his reactor?
Why hasn't he invited any other scientist to take a look?
Why is he obviously more interested in money than in understanding how his machine works?

And if he is so sure that he has developed a cold-fusion reactor, why not just hold a Geiger-counter next to it and prove it?

[WheelWalker]

8. If we understand,

things are just as they are. If we do not understand, things are just as they are.

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Again? Seriously?

Please read the link and the articles it links to. Consider statements like this:

"Secondly, observers apart from the customer were only allowed to view the test for a few minutes at a time and during the entire test the E-Cat remained connected to a power supply by a cable. The external power was supposedly turned off; as a demonstration it would have been more impressive for the reactor in its shipping container to be visibly disconnected while operating."

This shit cycles through here every few months. Until publicly demonstrated in an independently verifiable fashion, the Rossi scam is just that.

[clayton72]

10. Another cold fusion scam?

Every few months these things pop up to cheat the gullible out of their savings.

[pnwmom]

12. But they didn't allow observers to see the ongoing measurements. Why?

[Posteritatis]

19. Because they are lying liars who lie, typically. (nt)

[sakabatou]

13. Cold fusion was debunked decades ago

Why bring it back now?

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. Seemingly, not

Peter Ekström, lecturer at the Department of Nuclear Physics at Lund University in Sweden, concluded, "I am convinced that the whole story is one big scam, and that it will be revealed in less than one year."<34><24> He cites the unlikelihood of a chemical reaction being strong enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier, the lack of gamma rays, the lack of explanation for the origin of the extra energy, the lack of the expected radioactivity after fusing a proton with 58Ni, the unexplained occurrence of 11% iron in the spent fuel, the 10% copper in the spent fuel strangely having the same isotopic ratios as natural copper, and the lack of any unstable copper isotope in the spent fuel as if the reactor only produced stable isotopes.<34> He later added in New Energy Times that the steam velocity in a videotaped test appears to be way too low for the reported energy production, and that some liquid water might be exiting the system via the drainage tube.<35>

Kjell Aleklett, physics professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, summarized in his blog: "What shall we do as scientists? Shall we say madness as many do today, or should we try to understand what is happening? I myself have nothing against to reveal a scam, or join in and verify something that no one could imagine. Both extremes belong to that which makes life as a researcher incredibly interesting." According to Aleklett, in a sample of spent fuel provided by the inventor, the percentage of copper was too high for any known reaction of nickel, and the copper had the same isotopic ratio as natural copper.<36><24>

More here.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

15. The customer's controller, one Domenico Fioravanti, apparently reports to

a man whose title is "Colonel".

[jmowreader]

16. This is going to sound ridiculous...

but how many pounds of sodium hydroxide would you need to dissolve in water to get 470 thermal kilowatts for five hours? His "reactor" looks a hell of a lot like a shipping container, and it's full of racks that are full of dishpan-looking things...

[PoliticAverse]

18. It is a shipping container... The 1 Megawatt generator consists of...

about 125 of Rossi's 10 kilowatt cells connected in series/parallel mounted in racks in the shipping container.

And during the whole time of the 'test' there was a very large electrical generator running that was hooked up to the
shipping container.

[PoliticAverse]

17. The demo might have been more convincing if Rossi didn't keep a large electric generator running...

during the entire test, as the generator's size seems to be in the same ballpark as the
energy output measured during the test of Rossi's device.

[bananas]

21. Yeah, I'm just reading about that. nt

[struggle4progress]

20. These results are all supposedly reported by Rossi's entirely anonymous customer

[PoliticAverse]

22. Forbes article on the test...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/30/believing-in-cold-fusion-and-the-e-cat/

[cherokeeprogressive]

23. The University of Baloney? Hmmmm. n/t

[PoliticAverse]

24. CNN 'ireport' article on the event...

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-696792