LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions).

from the paper: https://www.scribd.com/doc/24228420...or-device-and-of-isotopic-changes-in-the-fuel


"Another remarkable change in the ash as compared to the unused fuel is the identified change in the isotope composition of Ni. The unused fuel shows the natural isotope composition from both SIMS and ICP-MS, i.e.
58
Ni (68.1%),
60
Ni (26.2%),
61
Ni (1.1%),
62
Ni (3.6%), and
64
Ni (0.9%),


whereas the ash composition from SIMS is:
58
Ni (0.8.%),
60
Ni (0.5%),
61
Ni (0%),
62
Ni (98.7%),
64
Ni (0%), and from ICP-MS:
58
Ni (0.8%),
60
Ni(0.3%),
61
Ni (0%),
62
Ni (99.3%),
64
Ni (0%). We note that the SIMS and ICP-MS give the same values within the estimated 3% error in the given percentages."

...

"The quantity of heat emitted constantly by the reactor and the length of time during which the reactor was operating rule out, beyond any reasonable doubt, a chemical reaction as underlying its operation. This is emphasized by the fact that we stand considerably more than two order of magnitudes from the region of the Ragone plot occupied by conventional energy sources.The fuel generating the excessive heat was analyzed with several methods before and after the experimental run. It was found that the Lithium and Nickel content in the fuel had the natural isotopic composition before the run, but after the 32 days run the isotopic composition has changed dramatically both for Lithium and Nickel. Such a change can only take place via nuclear reactions. It is thus clear that nuclear reactions have taken place in the burning process. This is also what can be suspected from the excessive heat being generated in the process."


Very Mysterious Indeed. Particularly since they ruled out any radiation emission during the process (no neutrons, alpha, beta, gamma), or from the ash afterwards.

 

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i thought the COP[plot8], ragone plot,figure 13 and the fuel analysis was interesting.

 

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Yes Captain, there are some familiar names from Bologna, obviously from your viewpoint they are all involved in this 'SCAM'.
Let me put forward a more plausible explanation... Andrea Rossi is a Master Hypnotist... unbelievable as it sounds, Rossi hypnotized all those stupid professors and lesser men, and with the clap of his hands they fell in to a trance, thus he was able to manipulate the data, and using Randi-like dexterity replace the spent ashes with questionable transmuted material.
If you have read the report in its entirety , then one of the following must be true:
1 Its a scam.
2 It is an unknown nuclear/chemical process.
3 Rossi should pack it all in and open up a Hypnotic show in LA.

At least 'billvon' started with a "Hmm", and questioned the unlikely transmutations... which is in my opinion a correct sceptical stance.

 

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Or -
4 There was an error in the analysis.
5 There was intentional tampering with the results that the report did not detect, and thus reported accurately on an altered result.

 

Lol, given that obvious lie, I'm going to go with option 1: still fraud.

 

Thanks and welcome to sciforums. That is a very interesting link, and as seems to be very carefully done, has made me switch my POV. I think they have shown very definitely more energy gain than chemically possible; however their COP ~3 does not mean there is practical commercial potential as their "energy in" does not include the manufacture of sub-micron Ni dust nor the purification of either their Ni or Li "fuel."

Also the energy input is high quality electric power and the out put energy is lower quality thermal energy, that could be converted back into high quality energy with at most 50% efficiency. The "burnt fuel" is in aggregates much larger than micron size, but in my quick skim of article I did not see any size distribution information.

Some years ago I noted that 1000 micron diameter particles have the same mass or volume as one 10 micron particle but ten times more surface and more than 10 times more surface energy as their radius of curvature is ten times smaller.

Thus part of the "excess energy" is just partial recovery of the grinding energy than made the sub micron metal dust. Grinding is not an efficient process - makes much more heat than surface energy. It may be that much of their excess energy is, as I suggested years ago, just the release of stored surface energy as the "ash" becomes much larger particles than the fuel.

However, their observed isotopic transformations, if real and not error, imply some currently unknown physic is taking place. This alone make continued investigation mandatory. - Who knows how some new nuclear physic process could be exploited.

I am again reminded of some fundament but "useless" university studies of how the Fermi level in some semiconductor shifted with additions of tiny impurities turned out to be the most (or 2nd most if positive feed back neutron fission of U235 is 1st) important experimental physics done in the 20th century. These "useless" results were the concepts that clever physicists at Bell Labs, could toy with in their minds and then invent the transistor!

 

Thanks for looking at the report and your considered reply, I agree that the COP ~3 will not revolutionize the energy industry, however the report does state:

It must be remarked that the COP values quoted here refer only to the performance of the reactor running at the capacity selected by us, not at its maximum potential, any evaluation of which lies beyond the purposes for which this test was designed.

In my opinion the most shocking part of the report is in the analysis of the 'ash', how was the fuel transmuted? What process caused the reaction? Are we seeing "New Physics"?
Questions that I personally find both intriguing and fascinating,

 

Walter, I don't know if you are familiar with this character Rossi,
but I would advise you to not waste your time believing anything he says.
Creating energy through transmutation without radiation is impossible.

 

Yes, I do think it's a scam,
but my objection in that instance was for the use of the words "Third Party Report"

It couldn't be less "Third Party" if he had got his mum to do it.

 

If it were real, which it isn't, a COP of 3 at a high delta-T would revolutionize the heating industry.

 

"Carefully done"? You do realize you are being fed this information by Rossi himself, right? There could not possibly be a worse source and the fact that he's lying to you in his very first breath should set-off the alarm bells in your head.

The article makes it very clear that this is just a repeat of the same test that nobody important believed last year, performed by the same Rossi team, with the same basic flaws:
1. It doesn't use a reliable method for measuring heat output.
2. The test setup is not verifiable.

 

With our current understanding of Physics your statement in entirely correct, however, as stated in the report:


In summary, the performance of the E-Cat reactor is remarkable. We have a device giving heat energy compatible with nuclear transformations, but it operates at low energy and gives neither nuclear radioactive waste nor emits radiation. From basic general knowledge in nuclear physics this should not be possible. Nevertheless we have to relate to the fact that the experimental results from our test show heat production beyond chemical burning, and that the E-Cat fuel undergoes nuclear transformations. It is certainly most unsatisfying that these results so far have no convincing theoretical explanation, but the experimental results cannot be dismissed or ignored just because of lack of theoretical understanding.

You are very clear in your assessment of Andrea Rossi, but can you give a plausible reason for the involvement of the many Professors in this scam, what would they gain? Why would they risk years of academic achievement on an obvious fraud?

 

Good question.
I don't know why they would do that.

 

While not actually relevant to the main issue, crackpot philosophy is interesting...

There are a few possibilities:
1. They are being scammed too.
2. Money.
3. Fame.
4. Delusion.

Or some mixture thereof, such as in the original Cold Fusion debacle.

However, I'm not sure there is really much risk. Academia is a very safe place to be a poor performer.

 

Yes that is the obvious application, but that does not necessarily show it is the most economical way to make hot water or a house warm in winter. Need to add in the cost the grinding energy that made the sub micron metal particles and the cost of making pure Li & Ni. When that is done, their COP will fall and be less than that of a heat pump, especially one with water as the heat source.

Both house heating and hot water needs the pump's output temperature less than 100C and can run mainly on cheap "time of day" metered base load power. In new houses, the cold source could be just some meters of pipe in bottom surface of a concrete basement slab. One near perimeter loop should be more than adequate. It may be worth the cost of a "flow switch" that reverses the direction of flow once per day. That, with the heat pump itself, needs to be above the concrete floor, as may need replacement or repair every decade or so. The standard steel re-enforcing rods in the concrete slab will keep all of it nearly "isothermal."

Until that cost accounting is honestly done, I hold the same POV as I do about controlled fusion - Very interesting physics, but very unlikely to ever be competitive with fossil fuels (or perhaps fast growing trees, etc. if you want or need to be "CO2 neutral.") for making heat. Here is more why I doubt it is a scam:

Here is start of the “independent report” entitled:
" Observation of abundant heat production from a reactor device and of isotopic changes in the fuel "
By authors:
Giuseppe Levi - Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
Evelyn Foschi - Bologna, Italy
Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson and Lars Tegnér - Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Hanno Essén - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Also from page 6 of main link: “ David Bianchini, MSc and expert in radiation detection, was in charge of assessing possible ionizing radiation and neutrons emitted by the reactor charge, before, during and after operation. … Bianchini evaluated the possible presence of alpha, beta and gamma radiation by applying his instruments directly to the powder that was subsequently inserted into the reactor. The same operation was repeated after the end of the test on the powder extracted from the reactor. In both cases, no signs of activity were found.”
Presumably a young man with long career in science ahead of him so he would not want to have it ended early by an exposed fraud, assuming there was no “slight of hand” trick played on him and he only believed his second sample was the material that that had been in the reactor.

That makes an improbable conspiracy of at least seven scientists.

Also there are many photographs in the report. Granted Photo- Shop could have made them from “scratch,” but photo 12 is quite impressive to me, if it is all fraud. Note that their results indicate greater COP for higher temperature. I. e. higher temperature increases energy production rate. This is a positive feed-back system instability. Where it is hotter, it will get hotter – as clearly seen in Figure 12a&b. I doubt they were smart enough to photo shop that effect if they had never seen it.

Also fabrication of the data in the four appendices so carefully that no obvious trace of its fabricated nature seems impossible to me. Too many graphs with spectral resolution and relative amplitudes shown.

Even figure 11, requires great understanding of the angular dependence of emissivity - it is higher in the normal direction than at lower "quasi-grazing" directions - If fraud via Photo shop they did not forget any real detail I can find.

 

My guess is the people who were previously involved in evaluating it were approached again and could not find compelling reasons to refuse.

The trouble with the whole setup is that is not a scientific investigation. We have an inventor, trying to keep secret some "proprietary" technology and expecting scientists to pronounce the phenomenon on which is is allegedly based to be genuine, when they do not have free access to the process. As such, the exercise is doomed, it seems to me.

If Rossi is serious (which he may of course not be), he has to make his mind up. Either he is a commercial inventor with a commercial product, in which case he must let its commercial success prove its credentials, or he is a scientist, in which case he must give full access to his process and allow other scientists to study it as they wish. On the former front, there have promises and rumours of commercial units being on the point of sale or installation for about two years now, with fuck-all result. On the latter front, he still hides what he is doing from inspection by science.

I suspect he is an obsessive who can't acknowledge failure, a bit like one of these bank traders that tries to hide ever-increasing errors, by layer upon layer of subterfuge, or like Bernie Madoff. It may go on like this, inconclusively, until he drops dead. But there is just no way this is a real breakthrough - the whole approach stinks.

 

Yes, I am aware of Rossi's interest. What I find unusual is how many people, who are capable of writing a detailed paper, are doing so in support of him.

It's difficult to believe it is all a scam. But then too, the results are very strange.

It is not possible to create a sample of Nickel that varies from normal isotopic abundances by normal processes. If one had a mass-spectrograph and sorted out the various isotopes, one could conceivably generate such a sample. But that would be an enormously difficult undertaking. I have not examined in detail their analysis of the 'ash', but it appears they've made an analysis of both the 'before' and 'after' material showing a change in relative isotopic abundances.

How that occurred is the mystery. Scam, or some unknown process.

Here's a link suggesting not a scam: http://www.e-catworld.com/why-i-believe-in-the-e-cat/

This should go to another group having no Rossi connection, without any possibility of 'sleight of hand', to verify the result. If it shows to be a scam, prosecution would be warranted.

 

Here is slick, well done, commercial ad for 1Mw unit e-Cat: http://e-cataustralia.com/files/pdf/E-cat-Brochure.pdf
(nice photos of unit will not post here for me as is a PDF file.)
Only a "down deposits" gets you promised delivery in 4 months. - That should tell us something if it does not come.

Here are the specifications:
Industrial Unit (now available)
• Conventional 1 MW thermal heat boiler
• Purchase and install average = $160,000
• Running costs:
• 4500 MJ Natural Gas (NG) = 4.5 Gj per hour
• Electricity: 20 amps max draw= 8 x 415 volts- 3320 / 1000 = 3 kw
• 3 Kwh = 60 cents per hr electricity
• Price of NG : 22.2 Mj = $1.35
• Approx. $30 per Gj industrial (50 % industrial rate-$60.8 per Gj domestic rate)
• 30 x 4.5 Gj per hr. = $135 per hr.
• 135 x 24 hr.= $3240 per day x 365 days
• Costs approx. $1.2 M per year to run with conventional energy

Compare the E-cat savings:
Cost to run 1 MW e-cat per year = $168,580. Save 1 Million per year in energy costs.

E-Cat Australia has exclusive rights for marketing and sales in Australia, New Zealand, PNG, Pacific Islands and Indonesia for the world’s first working fusion energy catalyzer.

California should be buying dozens of the 1Mw E-cat units to solve its water shortage problem (if they work) as E-cat has:
" incredible potential for DESALINATION and water purification.
The 1 MW produces saturated steam – which easily turns to water!" (Quote from site of link above.)

But for greatest economy, that should only be a "bottoming" unit to high temperate "topping" production of electric power.

 

That could be done without revealing any of his proprietary secrets
It should have been the format of this test, not revisiting his much criticised previous "independent test".

It won't happen.

I have looked at a number of these experiments, by other scientists, and some of their results are difficult to explain.
For example, huge boosts in energy output.
But as for Rossi, I would give him no credibility whatsoever.
If you are interested in this technology, I would look elsewhere.

 

Clearly. But just for a ballpark energy number:
Assuming 2000 hours of use per year for a 1500 watt heater at $.15 / kWh, that's
$450 / yr of energy use or a savings of $300 per year for an E-Cat. If the lifespan is 20 years, that's a savings of $6,000 over its lifetime.

Yes, any individual researcher, picked at random, is unlikely to be a scammer/spectacularly gullible/delusional.

That's exactly the same logic used by UFO advocates to claim that some alien spacecraft sightings must be real.

You're missing the flaw in that logic: selection bias. It is precisely the scammer/spectacularly gullible/delusional ones that would gravitate toward this sort of thing.

You are also missing the other half of the equation. You have to weigh the naked (without other considerations) odds of a those being bad scientists against the odds that the've made a discovery that overturns conservation of energy or QM (like the Drake Equation):

Odds they are bad or faudulent scientists: 1%.
Odds they are onto something groundbreaking: 0.00001%
Odds that thee Rossi Reactor actually works: 0.00001% / 1% = .00001%