Steven B. Krivit is "Solving the mystery of the Energy Catalyzer"

The headline is not mine, but Steven B. Krivit´s at New Energy Times. 

Today he mentions that Rossi agreed to grant him an interview, and a demonstration of the E-Cat. He will also have an appointment with Sergio Focardi, and Guiseppe Levi. The interview with Rossi is taking place tomorrow, 15th of June, in Bologna.
You can find Steven´s short blogpost here

E-mail conversation with Bologna-researchers about R&D-program

Today the following notes were published at this Facebook-page, concerning the R&D program at Bologna University;

Rats Gautam:
"I sent emails to all the individuals mentioned in Loris Ferrari's article but only received responses from Mauro Villa and Loris Ferrari himself.
My question:
"Am I right in saying the University of Bologna is now in possession of an E-Cat and is doing tests to understand the physics behind how the device works?"

Mauro Villa:
"the answer is no, or more precisely not yet. We're looking forward to see that happen (sooner than later). Probably we'll start a measurement campaign on an E-Cat device not before september."

Loris Ferrari:
"I am glad to answer to your kind message. First of all, the title of my article is ironic: "foolish energy", in every-day Italian, means also "a lot of energy". I think that this double meaning was not clear to the translator. Second: the sentence you report in your message should be corrected as follows: "... we have moved from Event to Fact, from "they say" to "it's measured" ..." Third and more importantly, the Department of Physics of Bologna and dr Andrea Rossi are going to sign a contract according to which the people indicated in my article will be allowed to make any "external" measurements on the E-cat, without access to the internal content, in order to certify the emitted power exactly, the radiation (if any) and any other possible feature of interest. The people indicated will be free to publish their results, except those interfering with industrial secretness. For example, should we find that the emitted power is an illusion, or much less than claimed, we will be free to publish. In a sense, we will be forced, since the Department of Physics has explicitly required a periodical report on the state of the art of the experiments. So, what you suppose in the conclusive sentence of your message is not still effective, but is incoming in few days, presumably. Thanks for your attention and interest"

Ny Teknik: "Greek investors remain secret"

Mats Lewan continues to cover the E-Cat in Ny Teknik.

This time he has investigated the Greek company that supposedly will be the first in Europe to produce the ‘energy catalyzer’, invented by Andrea Rossi.

The plan is to start production in 2012, but the investors are still secret.

E-cat business: Greek investors remain secret - NyTeknik

www.socialnews.it: University of Bologna evaluates the E-Cat

The 4th of June there was an interesting post at Wikipedia Talk:Energy Catalyzer
"According to Loris Ferrari, Associate Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at UNIBO, a team of researchers at the Dipartimento di Fisica (UNIBO) formed by Sergio Focardi, Ennio Bonetti, Enrico Campari, Giuseppe Levi, Mauro Villa, and Ferrari himself, have been studying the Energy Catalyzer since May 2011.
Therefore it seems that this team is going to perform university tests and measurements concerning the Energy Catalyzer."
You find the original article here (italian, translated via Google)

The 8th of June, Rossi commented on his blog as follows

"Roger Barker

June 8th, 2011 at 5:00 PM

Dear Andrea Rossi,

Loris Ferrari (University of Bologna) stated in an article that you will be giving his team an opportunity to test the E-Cat. I have some questions about this:

1) When will testing on the E-Cat begin at the University of Bologna begin?
2) What type of tests are you allowing Loris Ferrari and his team to conduct?

Thanks
Roger

Andrea Rossi

June 8th, 2011 at 8:23 PM

Dear Roger Barker:
1- It will not be a test, but a R&D program, to implement our technology, financed by us. It will not be public and most of the data will be confidential
2- The particulars of the R&D program are not supposed to be disclosed to the public
Warm regards,
A.R."

Possible replication of excess-heat production in LENR-system

There has been an e-mail circulating in the blogosphere recent days, that indicates that there has been a successful attempt to replicate an excess heat-production in a LENR system.
It was first posted here , Mon, 30 May 

"From: Brian Ahern, Boxborough MA
Re: Zr-Ni-Cu alloy performance

Ames National Laboratory processed metal alloy foils via arc melting
followed by melt spinning. This is the Yamaura process employed by Arata
and others. The foils were baked in ordinary air at 445C for 28 hours.

The brittle, oxidized foils were placed in a tumble mill for 24 hours.

This resulted in 30 grams of black powder with a median grain size of about
40 microns.Presumably, each grain has about one million nanoscale islands of
NiCu inside.

The 30 grams occupies about 7 ml inside the 50 ml dewar. The system was
vacuum baked at 220C for 24 hours and cooled to room temperature.

H2 gas was added at 200psi. The pressure dropped only to about 185 psi over
twenty minutes. In these replication experiments the exothermic reactions
have had peak temperatures above 220C with substantial loading above 3.0 H/M
ratios. This time the temperature only rose by 2 degrees C.

The system was heated with a band heater to high temperature. There was no
controller. A rheostat was set at an arbitrary position and the system comes
to a an arbitrary temperature.The average power input was 90 watts.

After several hours the hydrated system was evacuated overnight at a
constant high temperature at 530C. The next day H2 gas was again added at
100psi and the temperature rose by 40C to 570C and came back down to 530C
after two hours. At the end of the day the dewar was again evacuated while
still at 530C overnight.

The third day repeated the same procedure. H2 gas was added at 100psi and
the temperature rose by 44C to 574C. However, this time it did not come back
to the initial temperature. It remained at the elevated temperature
overnight.

On the fourth day H2 gas was again added at 100psi and the system rose by
50C to 580C and again stayed at the elevated temperature indefinitely.

A rough calibration suggests that the 30 grams of hydrated nanopowder is
putting out 5 watts of excess power.

Yesterday Peter Gluck suggested that the relationship between loading and
excess power may be a myth. This seemed to be true for electrolysis with Pd
and heavy water where loading levels exceeding 0.9 D/M were a prerequisite
for observing excess power.

My loading level with this nanopowder sample as less than 0.1 H/M.

This 5 watt excess is very much less than Rossi, but it is a real and
repeatable experiment There was no radiation above the background level.

Other alloys from Ames NL are expected within ten days"

The author of the e-mail is Brian Ahern
He has been involved in LENR-experiments with the company Vibronic Energy technologies Corp. 


Andrea Rossi comments the e-mail as follows on his blog

"Andrea Rossi

June 2nd, 2011 at 8:11 AM

Dear Mr Paul Esteban,
I never comment the work of my competitors.
When they will produce kWh?h we will compete on the market. Before or later it will happen.
Warm Regards,
A.R."

NASA’s Bushnell: LENR Most Promising Energy Alternative, and It’s Not Fusion

Source: EV World
EV World Podcast
Broadcast Date:
Interview of: Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist of NASA Langley
Host: J. William Moore
Transcribed by: Steven B. Krivit

[Partial Transcript of Podcast, Excerpts on Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions]

[This transcript is Copyleft 2011 New Energy Times. Permission is granted to reproduce this text as long as the text, this notice and the publication information are included in their entirety and no changes are made to this text.]

"J. William Moore: I’d like to [look at] some of the [energy alternatives] that you think look most promising from your perspective.

Dennis Bushnell: The most interesting, and promising, at this point, in the farther term, but maybe not so far, is low-energy nuclear reactions. This has come out of [22] years of people producing energy but not knowing what it is — and we think we have a theory on it. It’s producing beta decay and heat without radiation. The research on this is very promising and it alone, if it comes to pass, would literally solve both [the] climate and energy [problems.]

MOORE: I find it extremely exciting that there might be something here, so what is it that you think is going on at the atomic level here?

BUSHNELL: Let me back up a little. [Stanley] Pons and [Martin] Fleischmann came out with an experiment that they labeled “cold fusion” about 22 years ago which had replication issues at the time. Also, all of the fusion theorists came out and said absolutely “This is not fusion.” And, of course, they were exactly correct, this is not fusion.

They’ve gone through 20 years of massive experimentation worldwide, in almost every country, where they’ve been able to produce this effect. But all of the energy produced by these “cold fusion” experiments over the last 22 years didn’t produce enough heat to boil water for tea. So people didn’t get too interested in it and nobody knew what it was.

Back in 2005, 2006, [Allen] Widom [and Lewis] Larsen came out with a theory that said, no it’s not “cold fusion,” it’s weak interactions using the Standard Model of quantum mechanics, only the weak interaction part. It says that if you set up one of the cells, and you don’t have to use deuterium, hydrogen works fine, nickel works fine and you don’t need palladium.

If you set this up you produce an electron – proton connection producing ultra-weak neutrons and if you have the right targets out there you produce beta-decay which produces heat.

At that point, in 2006, 2007 we became interested and started setting up a set of experiments that we’re just about ready to start finally, where we’re trying to experimentally validate this Widom-Larsen theory to find out whether or not it explains what’s going on. And in the process, we used quantum theory to optimize the particular surface morphologies to do this.

Then, as you mentioned, in January of this year [Andrea] Rossi, backed by [Sergio] Focardi, who had been working on this for many years, and in fact doing some of the best work worldwide, came out and did a demonstration first in January, they re-did it in February, re-did it in March, where for days they had one of these cells, a small cell, producing in the 10 to 15 kW range which is far more than enough to boil water for tea. And they say this is weak interaction, it’s not fusion.

So I think were almost over the “We don’t understanding it” problem. I think we’re almost over the “This doesn’t produce anything useful” problem. And so I think this will go forward fairly rapidly now. And if it does, this is capable of, by itself, completely changing geo-economics, geopolitics of solving quite a bit of [the] energy [problem.]

MOORE: I think this was either last week or the week before last, I ran a story on this. I went and took a look at it – they were using hydrogen and nickel, I believe, using hydrogen gas and putting that into this device. In looking at the video and photographs, it looks to be about the size of a fist and that thing was running from about 10:45 in the morning till about 4:30 when they finally turned it off — and generating, I forget exactly what it was — but it was a significant amount of energy in the form of steam.

BUSHNELL: It produces heat and did so for days and was in the 12 or 14 kW range and they [will be] producing, with a large number of these devices, a 1 MW power plant.

MOORE: That’s a pretty exciting thing. Do you think that this theory that was developed — are these NASA scientists that were working on that theory?

BUSHNELL: No, the theory was developed by Widom and Larsen. Widom is a faculty member and teacher at Northeastern and Larsen has a company in Chicago.

MOORE: So that looks promising and so you can take and generate steam, and of course, that’s what a nuclear reactor or coal-fired power plant is all about. They’re just there to produce steam and turn a turbine and produce power.

BUSHNELL: Once you’ve got heat, you can do everything. We looked at using LENR to power a space-access rocket and it had better performance conceptually than a conventional nuclear thermal rocket.

MOORE: Wow! Exciting."


The full audio interview can be listened to here

Peter Ekström: "Kall fusion åter i hetluften"

The Swedish Physical Society unites Swedish physicists, physics teachers and other practitioners, supporters and friends of the physical sciences.
In their publication called Fysikaktuellt, there is an article by Peter Ekström about E-Cat. He summarize the tests of the E-Cat, and points out the way Andrea Rossi´s claims conflicts with common nuclear-science. Peter Ekström once again notice similarities with Randell Mills Blacklight Power.
You can read the short article at page 24-25 in this PDF (Swedish only, sorry)

Eso Watch "Focardi-Rossi Energy-Catalyzer"

"Q: Why EsoWatch?

A: The internet has room for many ideas. This is a good thing. But on the other hand, you can find a lot of outright bullshit there. We try to correct this a little."

Are you intrested in the E-Cat-story, but feel you're getting lost in the jungle of "free-magic-energy-truth-revolution" websites that seems to believe in anything but self-critisicm?
Eso-watch has compiled a good description of the tests done so far. You find it here.

Alan Fletcher: "How to Prove that the Rossi/Focardi eCAT LENR is Real"

As far as I am aware, Alan Fletcher has written the most comprehensive collecton of information regarding the tests of the E-Cat that is to be found on the net. It was updated May 16th.
You can find the quite massive blogpost here

Peter Ekström discuss the fuel analysis after meeting with Sven Kullander

On Swedish E-Cat-discussionforum  Peter Ekström has been one of the most active participants, and he has brought an interesting voice to the discussions with his critical thoughts and deep knowledge.
Today he wrote that he actually had a meeting with professor Sven Kullander the 18th of May, where they discussed the E-Cat.

The focus right now is on the used fuel that prof. Kullander got from Rossi, when they met earlier in Bologna. According to Rossi this fuel has been used in an E-Cat. Ekström writes that Kullander soon will present a detailed report, that describes the analysis and the results in depth.
According to Ekström, the data he was shown correlates with the results described earlier in Ny Teknik.
That means;
Unused fuel: 100% Ni
Used fuel: c:a 11% Fe, 10% Cu, the rest is Ni

Both Ekström and Kullander agrees that Andrea Rossi´s explanation of the process, where Ni is said to absorb protons probably is wrong.
According to Ekström, Uppsala University will not get an E-Cat for validation before the end of June.
The conditions to be met from Rossi is that the Uppsala lab will be free to perform whatever evaluations that they want to in their lab.
Ekström further mentions that Kullander has proposed an alternative explanation of the energyproduction, that not includes Ni. 

Hopefully Kullander soon will present this alternative theory, as Ekström doesn´t want to reveal anything more than the fact that it includes an reaction that could be classified as LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction)

Peter Ekström is still highly critical of Andrea Rossi´s claims, though, and he is convinced that the E-Cat is a fraud.

You can find the post from Ekström here. (Swedish only)

Ny Teknik: E-Cat gets U.S. partner

Ny Teknik reports that Andrea Rossi has reached an agreement with a new company in the United States. The agreement builds on several years of contacts with people linked to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Read article in Ny Teknik here
Pure Energy Systems covers the story here

Kjell Aleklett:"The sun", Rossi’s ”energy catalyzer” and the “neutron barometer”

Kjell Aleklett writes in his blog about coldfusion and the E-Cat:
"My experience above leads me to point out once again that Rossi’s experiment must be reproduced by other independent researchers and that, ultimately, a physical explanation must exist."

Ny Teknik:Patent granted for the E-Cat

Swedish Ny Teknik reports that the E-Cat is now patented in Italy. The examination continues regarding protection in the rest of the world.
Read article in Ny Teknik here.
Read the patent here.

New Energy Times: NASA Working on LENR Replication and Theory Confirmation

Dr Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA’s Langley research center told New Energy Times today that NASA is attempting a low-energy nuclear reaction replication.
Bushnell wrote that, “we are trying to core down on the theory, as well as utilize it for system optimization. We are not trying to do a net energy demo at all, we are simply trying to make sure there is a valid theoretical understanding . . . We do not have enough details, by far, to even start to think of a replication of Rossi.”

Read blogpost here

Bye bye, for now!

There are now so many blogs and websites dedicated to discuss the E-Cat and Andrea Rossi. While it perhaps made sense to have a blog to collect links during the first weeks after the Bologna-demonstration, there are now others that do the similar thing better.

So I will for now stop putting up links here, and instead just follow the discussions on
http://www.e-catworld.com/

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/RossiECatPortal.shtml

http://www.freeenergytimes.com/

http://22passi.blogspot.com/

http://www.nyteknik.se/

Swedish discussion forum

http://www.energikatalysatorn.se/forum/

There will be much speculation going on about the E-Cat and Andrea Rossi, at least until October when the promised power-plant, and Defkalion Green Technologies is to be introduced to the market. Soon we all will see whether this really is a scam or a revolution! 

I really feel that I can´t wait.

On the one hand,  it seems highly unlikely that it is a scam. 
As said before, there are several prominent scientists who seem to trust that the device works and there seems to be no reason for all of them to risk their careers. 
The board registration of Defkalion seems to be real, although I don´t read Greek very well...or not at all, to be honest.

Andrea Rossi himself claims that he will "first deliver and then get paid. The customers are the only judge I need." He pays a his own money for the experiments that the university of Bologna will conduct. 

Before Mats Lewan decided to write about the E-Cat in Swedish Ny Teknik, he contacted the most trustworthy physicists in Sweden that he could think of regarding this issue, Hanno Essén and Sven Kullander.
He was really surprised that their response were curiously positive. After visiting Andrea Rossis lab, Sven Kullander and Hanno Essén remarkably claimed that "It is a nuclear reaction", going on. 
After visiting the Andrea Rossi lab, in purpose to execute more refined testing of the E-Cat, Mats Lewan came to the same conclusion.

Rossi has promised to bring the E-Cat to prominent Swedish universities for further tests. If it all turn out to be a well-conducted scam, he will have a hard time to come back, and it would seem as a highly stupid tactic to attract venture capitalists by using the kind of self-assured statements as he has done. 

I also regard a lot of criticism against his way of acting from the established science community, as a critique from a methodological point of view. But Andrea Rossi is no scientist, he is first and foremost an entrepreneur and a businessman, and acts and thinks as such.
The false claims of Fleischmann and Pons in 1989, also seems to have injected most of the science community with fear rather than curiosity about the possibilities of coldfusion. 

On the other hand, there is the majority of the science community that is dismissing the test results as impossible. And because Science has been my Religion since childhood days, I personally have a hard time to believe that the common Knowledge of nuclear physics-that has evolved during the past 100 years- would be that flawed and incomplete, as would be necessary in order to get the E-Cat sing.  But I also choose to listen to Nobelprize-winner Brian Josephson; "If scientists as a whole denounce an idea, this should not necessarily be taken as proof that the said idea is absurd; rather, one should examine carefully the alleged grounds for such opinions and judge how well these stand up to detailed scrutiny."

I really have a hard time to understand the whole thing. And perhaps that is why I look forward so much to follow the development of Andrea Rossi´s remarkable claims. There is so much I just don´t understand, and for me it is one of the most creative, enjoyable states to be in.

However (no matter how much I doubt this spectacle), until October, I will live in a hope that the dream of an almost infinite energy source finally is about to become true. And if it is, I hope that the inhabitants of Spaceship Earth are wise enough to handle that with care.  

/dl

New tests of the E-Cat performed by Ny Teknik!

Photo: Mats Lewan

Ny Teknik recently participated in two new tests of the Italian ‘energy catalyzer’, providing more accurate measurements to reduce possible error sources. The new tests with the energy catalyzer, which seems to generate heat by an unknown nuclear reaction, took place in Bologna on 19 and 28 April, 2011.
READ ARTICLE HERE

Andrea Rossi Energy Catalyzer The Story So Far Part 2

To report or not report?

The media coverage (outside Italy) of the E-CAT has  been mainly done by the blogosphere, and radio-stations with UFO:s as their logos. A few prominent scientists - Nobel Prize winner and believer in paranormal activities BRIAN JOSEPHSON  is among them - has strongly criticized the mainstream-media as being to narrow in their reporting, but as a whole the established science community has been highly skeptical about writing about new, sensational claims of coldfusion-research since the dubious claims of FLEISCHMANN AND PONS in 1989
One of the exceptions, this far, has been Swedish NY TEKNIK, one of Sweden’s leading news site covering technological development, with the reporter Mats Lewan as a driving force. As a consequence Ny Teknik in general and Mats in particular has been criticized for being to generous with exposure for the E-Cat and Andrea Rossi. 
As Wikipedia articles started to show up, it generated interesting discussions regarding the issue of  "Reporting or Not Reporting"
Brain Josephson is one of the contributors to THIS HIGHLY ENTERTAINING POST.
------

Swedish E-Cat discussion-forum started

The Swedish magazine NY TEKNIK has been somehow over-flooded with comments on their articles about Andrea Rossi and his E-Cat, and therefore a new Swedish discussion-forum on this issue has started, with a better interface! Peter Ekström is already a member, and soon hopefully many more! Get involved, Swedes! 
You find it HERE

60-Minutes Piece on Cold Fusion

This video is not about Andrea Rossi or the E-Cat technology, but it is from a 60 MINUTES coverage on coldfusion in general. It includes an fascinating interview with ROB DUNCAN, where he seems positive after a visit to an Israeli lab that reported positive results in their coldfusion research. "I found that the work done, was carefully done. And that the excess heat, as I see it now, is quite real!"
It seems though that Duncan is in a similar position as Hanno Essén and Sven Kullander, in that sense that they are all merely observers to an experiment conducted by others, with limited possibility to control the measurement-tools used.