Just when you thought that Andrea Rossi could not provide too much more surprising information about his work on the E-Cat comes something new.
Joseph Fine
August 28th, 2012 at 8:17 PM
Andrea Rossi,
For the listed Hot-Cat (“Cattus calidi”) dimensions, with an outer diameter of 90 mm and length of 330 mm, I calculated a volume of 0.0021 cubic meters. With a 10 kW power output, that means power per unit volume is 4763.33 kW / cubic meter.
Of course, other equipment is also needed. But even allowing for a factor of at least 20 brings this down to 238 kW/ cu. meter. “Cattus calidi, indeedi.” (Hot cat, indeed.)Joseph
Dear Dr Joseph Fine:
You are perfectly right: in fact we are designing the new 1 MW plants, for hot temperature, and the dimensions will be those of a cylinder with a diameter of 1.2 m and a lencth od 0.4 m.
Is shocking, I myself are surprised, but it is so.Warmest Regards,
A.R.
Joseph fine is basing his calculation on the size of the reactor in the famous Cures photograph which Andrea Rossi provided, which is not much larger in length than a standard ruler, with a diameter smaller than a 1 liter soft drink bottle. I suppose that by arranging these units in a compact manner it is not inconceivable to reach the dimensions that Rossi mentions here. There will of course need to be plumbing involved if the plant is producing steam, but with the tube design of these reactors you could perhaps simply thread piping through the hole of each reactor.
I must add that I’m no engineer (if you can’t already tell!) — so others may have better ideas about what might be involved here. Going from a large shipping container to something the size of a medium size barrel which produced perhaps 10 times the energy as the low temperature plant would be no mean feat. I guess the other question that is bound to come up is whether Rossi is lying about this. You must use your own judgment about that.
UPDATE: This comment from Rossi clarifies the design:
Dear Franco:
Attention: the dimensions 1.2 x 0.4 is not the surface of the surface of the reactors! Inside this drum of 1.2 x 0.4 m there are 100 reactors , each of one having about 1 200 cm^2 of surface !
I talked of the dimensions of the external container, not of the heat exchange surface !
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There are nowadays quite flexible robots for manufacturing today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/new-wave-of-adept-robots-is-changing-global-industry.html?_r=1
One additional interesting remark for sceptics:
http://youtu.be/N3N3dWlIPUQ?t=3m54s
Whether some like it or not,Leonardo corp. and Rossi seem
to be on the fast track,in a very short time ,in developing and advancing
the Cold Fusion powered devices called E-cats at a rapid rate.
Wikipedia on the other hands who knows,maybe pays for negative information ,and try to
built a case against Cold Fusion and LENR,but just by shear neglect have not updated the facts since Jan 2012 and are stuck in reverse with a blown engine .
Wikipedia will soon have to update their side,since it serves more to keep people in the dark.
Wikipedia will have to suck it up,and get tuned in to reality,quoting septics seems high on their agenda.
Well, I’m not sure how much it has to do with Zawodny, but NASA already has a reply to Rossi’s Hot CAT:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/pia15815.html
Nasa’s version of the E-cat hot dog hot air theory.
Proper Fleischmann obit here: http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/Fleischmannobit.pdf
Thanks Methusela. “Fortunately, Martin lived to see the beginning of the “phase change” of social awareness to cold fusion…” -Mitchell Swartz
I’ve tried to put myself in a marketing position of the container 1MW E-Cat. In doing so I’ve think it is not so easy to identify possible customer segments for the current 1MW container. With all respect to what the container is and what it deliver, it’s certainly appears to be a prototype built up by multiple prototypes and a fairly bulky device.
Any serious energy investment (of this size > $1M) for example that aim to replace any traditional energy solution should normally be considered a long term investment. Let’s say at least > 10 years. With the pace the E-cat is developed, it is likely that there might be a rapid introduction of new successively more compact, efficient and lower price level on E-Cat and alike devices.
Thus, at present it could be difficult to identify and persuade someone to buy at least the container type of device. However, on the whole for a serious energy operator or large industrial player may buy it for re-engineering purposes this type of investment is peanuts but these may be unwanted customers?
The pace which Rossi seem to develop (LENR) the E-Cat is certainly impressive. It appears to me that it’s necessary to make the high energy products (type 1MW) more compact and at a reduced price to broaden the applications and ease introduction on the market.
To make usable products of LENR as a whole is still in a very early phase. A considerable amount of development and refinement is needed for a long time it seems. In spite of this, Rossis last announcement is very impressive but it is kind of paradoxical as he risks to preventing market introduction of some of his early products by the announcement of successive improvement.
To my mind it’s a pity if a “low temperature” home E-Cat would be delayed because of certification, prevent competitors to reveal secrets or that the early home cats are delayed by the last development or combinations. Identify customers for the industrial plants today may not easy in its present shape but start selling a reasonable effective certified home heater would be no brainier which the amount of pre-orders already show.
With all my respect.
Where you write: “The pace which Rossi seem to develop (LENR) the E-Cat is certainly impressive”.
I would instead: The pace which Rossi does really and effectively produce something useful is to cry with abundant tears.
I’m not sure a lot of people realize how long the process of development to market can take. As a self employed person with a lot of wacky ideas, I can relate. I’ve learned to estimate a project, then when I’m done I multiply it by three.
Barry,i agree with you,also self employed,custom built units,can certainly triple expected time estimates.
95 % of my income comes from established products and services ,the rest is from tinkering and toying with new innovations,but wherein I put a lot of thought.
Suppose if Rossi did go on with the demonstrations and making his work public, do you think that:
a) This would have changed the way the MSM looked at LENR?
b) The development of the e-cat would have been faster?
On a: We all know that the LENR effect is real and that in itself should be world news, yet almost no reaction at all in the media. So it may not have done anything.
On b: I think you can argue that Rossi’s way may be the better and faster way to get LENR introduced in the world. The man tried to do demos of his invention, but got a lot of trouble and unbelieve in return with a lot of people doubting his claims. He would have to go on and do still more demo’s and testing until some people were satisfied but then there would be more people who would not believe so more testing ad nausea.
Even in publishing his findings and make it reproduceable, it would take time as there is a demonstrated resistance in de scientific world against Cold Fusion and related LENR.
Add to that the problem of protecting his intellectual property and you can see how he may have come to the conclusion that working in secrecy may be the more beneficial to him.
So even if I regret that he did not make all his findings available to the public, I can understand why he does what he does. It may be the fastest way possible.
How would you have solved the conundrum Rossi is in?
I hope not to be banned.
I hope not to be left aside “awaiting moderation”.
I hope not to hurt anyone’s feelings, if so please excuse me.
I am convinced of LENR overunit effect.
I am skeptic (without prefix) about Mr. Rossi’s E-Cat. If prefix should be patho-, pseudo-, yatro-, psico-… I let to each one judgement.
I would like to remind you all of the first marketed(?)E-Cats.
50 units (or so) were located in a container to be sold to an unknown customer (remember: “sale done”). A huge robotized factory was being constructed to produce hundreds of thousands units.
Circa 1 year passed and those E-Cats have evoluted to a wonderful device reaching 1200ºC, smaller than the original one. Certifications have been made. Mr. Rossi is not only a reputated engineer but also a philanthropic man (see some comments below) taking care of inventions, productions and poor people. From time to time, if anyone asks a question at his site, Mr. Rossi answers shortly and misleading.
With these sole materials plus serious reflexions about energy scarce, conspirations, bad documented books and little engineering knowledge builds up an enormous circle of persons populating this and other sites.
But the crude and cruel reality is that up to day no one has the minimal evidence of a working E-Cat. I mean working for days, weeks, months…
As I stated months earlier Mr. Rossi should not be blamed because E-Cat does not work but for the bigotry and unrespect he shows.
Please, take it easy, forget the irony in my precedent posts in this thread. It is only the opinion of a single individual.
I am a neutrosceptic! LOL
With regard to one of your statements, where did Rossi ever say he was in the process of “constructing” a factory. It would be odd to construct a factory for such a small assembly item I think. More likely you buy in the “shells” from outside, maybe manufacture the fuel cartridges on site and then assemble. The most likely scenario is that Rossi would lease a factory building for several years and fit it out. I don’t recall him ever saying he was constructing a factory.
I cannot assure when and how. I remember only something said about robotized production whikch implies a big effort and investement. Thanks for your humour sense, it is not common here.
Million sounds a big number, but 24/7 production of million devices per year is only two devices per minute. Export and import of the goods and materials is not more than a few truckloads per day. When he speaks about robotic factory, he probably means only the final assembly phase which is clean and dry. Component molding, milling etc. is probably done elsewhere (outsourced). If the device is simple to make, it is possible that the million E-cat factory is basically only one room with assembly line and robots.
I agree with you Pekka. Furthermore, there is no reason why you have to start production at two per minute. You might have five assembly lines in your factory space and you might just start assembling on one line = 1 every five minutes, wait and see how the market receives your product.
I think people are imagining a huge car assembly plant whereas in reality the E Cat heater would be a much simpler device than a car – probably less than 100 parts (though I am guessing here), compared with 5,000-10,000 for a car.
daniel maris & Pekka
It’s hard to get this across to most people. Most of us live in a society where few have real life experience at the manufacturing level.
For the home E-cats, A single Assembly line wouldn’t have to be any bigger then about 12`x60`. 5 assembly lines would probably be about right. Material storage would take up more space then the assembly area.
If Rossi has a building prepped & ready for setup, the Robots could be brought in, setup & running within 90 days. The Building prep is the time consumer. Up to a year getting thru the bureaucracy.
I almost fully agree with you, let’s wait and see what happens in the next two months, for my own opinion they will be very important. I really want to see that 3rd party validation, more than a demo. So Zurich, although many disagree, will be a turning point.
The positive side is that: I now 100% believe that in the near future there will be a working commercial LENR device.
Rossi claims astonishing and hard to believe, he reminds me of Scotty Montgomery
I give Rossi a couple of months now to come up with some convincing evidence of progress – otherwise he will lose a great deal of credibility.
alexvs, great comment and very fair.
The people that have a problem are only those who have an opinion and irrationally believe that their opinion magically becomes fact just because they give it.
We all wait for Evidence that Rossi is legit, but abusing or denying him before the fat lady sings is not good science.
Absolutely True georgehants. “Not until the fat lady sings!” Counts for believers aswell as skeptics. All the rest are patho- skeptics or patho-believers.
I am optimistic thou. For me the glass is half-full
For the sake of curiosity, although I get the meaning, where comes “the fat lady sings” from?
I first picked it up in the movie Independence Day, at the end Smith and Goldblum smoke a victory cigar, but after they have done the job, not before, not until victory hence, until the fat…
But it’s probably an old expression
I have a beautiful fat sigar ready for the MOMENT
Thanks.
The exact origins of the fat lady singing is unknown but was popularized by a sports announcer and was a reference to an opera singer that was “plump” singing at the end. There was also references to southern African Americans using a saying “church ain’t over tip the fat lady sings”. A reference to the often large lady’s in the choir .
During the second world war there were ongoing “War Bond” drives that were presented by famous Actors/Singers. One of the mainstays was a heavyweight female singer called something Smith, who invariably closed the show. She was particularly beloved and had a magnificent voice. I’m embarrassed that I can’t recall her first name, but since I remember the shows clearly, you can imagine how old I am.
It was considered bad form to leave these very long shows “before the Fat Lady sings.”
I remembered.. Kate Smith was the original Fat Lady. Just shows you what going through the alphabet can do!
It comes from the cartoon stereotype of Operas where the final act is typically an overweight woman with a viking hat singing at a high pitch (sometimes breaking a glass with her voice).
One question is how much one requires before saying that his device “works”. It is one thing to require that his device must surpass the chemical limit and hence include a nuclear or “anomalous” process (the 2 liter 10 kW Hot-Cat should do it in 2-3 hours). It is a much taller order to require that his device works for 6 months as claimed (requiring a 6 months endurance test).
I could be wrong, but I think that still for most people to say that his device “works” it is enough if it exceeds the chemical limit, not necessarily works for full 6 months.
It has been demonstrated that the overunity effect is real. My reserves regard only the E-Cat of Mr. Rossi. For that, the efficiency must be, not only overunit but around 6.
U’re a real CAMOskeptic, non need of your explanations.
I am not explaining anything. My writing expresses an opinion.
By the way, what does prefix CAMO- means?
camouflage
sorry, double!
Nothing wrong with being a skeptic Alexvs. Unfortunately, there is a lot of deception and manipulation in our society. It’s when people sound close-minded (and I’m not refering to you) or enjoy interference, that I have a hard time.
I actually enjoy talking to open-minded skeptics. They can give food for thought and we are often end with “time will tell”.
Although past performance is no guarantee of future performance, given the inability of all previous coldfusion machine creators to produce anything that works I’ve long since concluded Rossi’s wondrous machine will fare no better than all his previous inventions.
btw, alexvs’s post really hurt my feelings moderator please ban his post.
Mr.Rossi at least answers questions,which I for one appreciate very much,and based on that I built an opinion.
I learned with Mr.Rossi one has to read between the lines,I disregard anything that I don’t understand and I focus on what I can, to built a complete picture,staying creative and understanding of the current happenings.
I built on the positive ,I don’t believe the accusers,accusers and finger pointers serve a negative destructive force,and the force is not with them,and creativity will not be found with them.
That much power density is dangerous no matter how you slice it. It will change a lot of things that won’t make our world a better place too.
In the url above, I had to replace the (.) with (dot), to outfox the spam guard. The url was for a nonprofit education site.
If the 1 MW Plants are 1.2 x 0.4 m …
then the Domestic e-Cats must be half the size 0.6 x 0.2m …No?
I though the 1mw would be placed in a shipping container. This is better then I though.
This is incredible power density. Seems unbelievable how you can pack 1MW output from these dimensions. * If true, this is more revolutionary than we thought.
I did some rough calculations. With diameter of the cylinder at 1.2 m, the area is 1.13 m2. Assuming that the coolant pipes take up about 50% if this area, and fitting remaining area with 100 reactors. Each reactor would have a diameter of 4.2 cm. Each 4.2 cm dia. – reactor would be producing 10KW.
Jojo
In my view the energy density is a paramount goal for Rossi since he has been talking about e-cat applications on trains and ships in the future where the space is valuable and scarce. On the opposite for industrial applications I think that beyond a certain threshold (abd he has certainly ecomapped it) further energy density isn’t very important or valuable.
At this scale, you could now do drop in replacement steam turbines in ships.
On Board Fuel tanks no longer needed. New Space available for use or scale down ship size in new builds.
It’s impressive, but it’s at a scale comparable to existing heat domestic sources (i.e. ovens, ranges, and furnaces).
For example, a typical stove top gas burner yields 15,000 btu/hour or 4.396 Kilowatts. A typical stove top electric heating element runs at 2.5 KW.
So if each reactor is a tube 4.2cm x 40cm (~ 1.5 inches x 15 inches) that is a comparable size to a stove top heating element.
It would indeed be amazing if LENR could produce this much energy is so small a space, but we are not talking about such a huge amount of heat that it would be dangerous or unmanageable. An acetylene torch or arc welder, for example, runs at much higher power than this.
As a point of comparison, the power density of burning a raw fossil fuel (say, lighting a bucket of gasoline on fire) is far, FAR higher than the hot cat.
to put it in perspective,the volume of a kitchen stove could produce 6 million btu’s if filled with 140 or so 10 kilowatts hot cat units.
SIX million btu’s equal about 60 oil furnaces running full blast.
Old rockefeller just turned around in his grave.
Not yet seen skeptics’ comments, thus Rossi’s energy cylinder should be really working and credible.
What sort of logic is this? we must be skeptic until you have solid evidence, otherwise your just having faith. and faith is very useful in Religion. (No that I think Religion is bad)
I was just kidding but I firmly believe that Rossi is an honest and credible man.
Listen the ecat may be true but that doesn’t make Rossi fair nor honest.
bingo
U don’t absolutely know nothing right of what happened to Rossi in Italy (southern Italy) and why he couldn’t do there what he’s actually making in the states with his Corp.
So, unless U keep U well informed, even transgogling Italian news concerning him, please shut up!
Do U know something about the ‘waste business’ in southern Italy? If not, plz shut up!
I agree
So on the one hand you are a skeptic until you have solid proof and on the other hand you believe? According to your logic you cannot believe because there is no solid proof of religion.
So on the one hand you are a skeptic until you have solid proof and on the other hand you believe?
According to your logic you cannot believe because there is no solid proof of religion.
Even if a skeptic has the solid proof,he or she will still have doubt ,after all it is not suppost to work according to Wikipedia .
Since the output of ecats is thermal, has anyone looked into conversion kits to make the output electric, or mechanical? I can’t find small turbines (at reasonable cost), closest thing are Schoell cycle engines (Cyclone Technologies). This has got to be the next step, assuming a thermal generator is on the way in the short term. Any ideas? A set of turbines, to generate power for a power plant will easily exceed the cost of an ecat mw plant.
There has been quite a bit of discussion about thermal/electricity conversion in some earlier threads here, mostly concerning steam turbines and Cyclone type engines, and also solid state converters of various types. Stirling type engines have also been discussed, but clearly the new ‘dry’ hot cat core in particular could easily be used as the ‘hot end’ of a small and relatively simple stirling engine generator. In theory, anyway. In practice any such devices are likely to trigger all sorts of problems for the inventor.
“Cyclone” type engines – cyclonepower.com have been around for YEARS and have YET to show a product, this PUBLIC company in Pompano Beach, Florida that sells stock and has no product. they have a great website but never produced product .. years latter.
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Siemens has a wide variety of steam turbines starting at 100kW. The also have a micro-CHP Stirling engine for generating about 1kWe from NG. That’s a little too small – but with higher temps could scale up to 2.5-3.0kW. A nice entry level home-cat.
Peter
I spent some time looking into possibilities.
What I found has made me conservative on how fast E-cats could evolve into the real world. The Costs & maintenance takes some of the steam out of the optimism. That’s partly why I conclude that we’ll see a less centralized grid system instead mass in home use initially.
I have come across a couple technologies that look interesting in the future. But there not ready for mainstream yet. On the other hand, If E-cats come to market, these technologies may come about Sooner & Cheaper. Slow & Gradual.
Omega. I agree that the process will probably be much slower than some seem to anticipate, for all sorts of reasons, both technical and political. Rossi does seem to be taking care to go with the flow, and that would probably mean that the first use is replacement of the heat sources in existing generator plant and similar equipment, so as to minimise investment losses on the part of the ‘utilities’ (although massive losses to the nuclear industry are probably inevitable).
One of the main technical problems with the new boiler design, which may add considerably to maintenance costs as you suggest, would seem to be the difficulty of replacing the 100 cores in a boiler unit every 6 months or whatever. I think the only feasible method would be unit replacement, i.e., removal of a complete boiler assembly for overhaul/renewal, while a fresh one is put in its place. This would necessarily have to be performed while a whole ‘bank’ of boilers is shut down simultaneously, perhaps by mounting 8 or 10 boilers in a subframe and replacing them together.
For this, a system of cranes and traversers would be necessary in addition to support framework. None of this is likely to come particularly cheap and it is unlikely that the consumer would see much benefit, other than a cleaner environment. It could also take several years to design and install such systems even on a ‘pilot’ basis.
It seems unlikely that any small scale (domestic/vehicle) units could be certified until there have been several years of proven safe use in an industrial environment, and of course there will be great opposition to this from the various vested interests who will lose out. It will only take one serious accident (deliberate or otherwise, in the West or in the ’3rd world’) to put back the process by a decade or more. All in all I suspect that TPTB have little to fear, unless the introduction of CF slips out of their grasp and becomes a free for all, which seems fairly unlikely.
Because of the maintenance requirement for moving parts, I like the idea of a solid state converter better. Typically motors are built to run for about 2000 to 5000 hours before overhaul / replacement or rebuild. That is going to be the challenge for this system. An engine would have to be built to withstand operation in excess of 20000 hours for feasibility. Assuming a good battery design and 50% duty cycle on time, this implies a window of just under five years for replacement. Not great, but current technology is about a tenth of that. A converter might last less time, but it would be straightforward to change every year or so.
I predicted just such a development in my book, “POWER: A Story of Cold Fusion”! I see minitaurization and an increase in power as a natural consequence of any truly new innovation in energy. One day, I imagine, there will be E-Cats the size of cellphone with more power than the present 1mW devices.
Not a very hard.prediction though. Here is another one. Long lasting batteries
I predicted just such a development in my book! I imagine one day we’ll see – or at least be capable of – 1mW devices the size of a cell phone.
Joe, you haven’t written a book by any chance, have you?
I already have a much more powerfull battery in my phone. You mention 1 milliwatt (mW), but you’re probably meaning 1 megawatt (MW).
Don’t know why I would need a 1 MW battery in my cell phone though…
I remembered.. Kate Smith was the original Fat Lady.
What about Stirling engines?
From PhysOrg.
The world has changed dramatically in recent decades but many argue that the university system has not kept pace. As another academic year begins, if you peek into any introductory college science course you’re likely to find the same scene as you would have twenty years ago: An instructor writing equations on the blackboard while a lecture hall full of students take notes. Why is college science instruction so slow to change when we know that there are better methods?
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-physics-faculty-methods.html#jCp
Professors spending all of there time looking for money, it’s all talk and no work. Colleges backstabbing each other over funds, university research have really become an ugly place.
Automation is better at almost everything; production, education, transportation. Problem is we are stuck with eight billion humans.
Problem is people have no constructive leadership worthy of the definition. What does exist not only lacks vision, but often seeks goals inimical to the well being of the people.
Many years ago a device called the flotation tank was modified with a controlled audio and video input displaying college course text books for studying, a liquid proof tablet one could write on while submerged, displayed on a screen, and audio input for concurrent voice and image overlays on the study material. The invention was called an education cell, and like a teaching machine, but greatly advanced, helped learn faster, with deep memory insertion of the learned material. The acceleration rate for learning was over a factor of 20 in preliminary tests. That is, 20 times faster than the conventional classroom environment. In other words, a 4 year college education, ordinarily about 32 months long, could be acquired in about one and one half months. Then the courses for the college degree could be taken, and passed, by exam. In fact, the limiting variable in the acceleration process was the intrinsic limitation of neural construct processing in the human brain. Simply, the human brain could not function faster while processing the insertion of long term memories, limited by its organic structure. The technology was never developed, indeed few people have imagined it was possible, even today.
On another subject over 20 years ago computer software was available for processing the data produced by input-output experiments, and then using other software packages in the CACE (Computer Aided Control Engineering) category to design automatic feedback control systems which can be implemented by means of a controller or control computer that converts the system into a closed-loop system by means of processing the output signals to generate appropriate input signals which will regulate the state of the process at a given set-point, or drive it toward a varying state in response to dynamic commands. (quoted from a Bass article, an early cold fusion researcher).
The controller circuits for devices like, for example, the E-Cat or the Papp engine, can be implemented today with little more difficulty than using a word processor, without researcher analysis of input/output system variable values, because acquiring data, processing it, and developing control to optimize energy generation, can be computerized.
These are subjects that are still not widely taught in university courses. 10 years ago I sat in on advanced system analysis courses and NOTHING about computer aided control engineering was mentioned, even though it was in use 20 years previously.
Our “education” system is not just poor quality, it is criminally poor quality. And it gets worse every year.
Our colleges are the best in the world.
But still lots of room for improvement.
From Vortex
[Vo]:Titles of full papers on ICCF17 flash memory card added to index
Jed Rothwell
Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:32:25 -0700
The organizers at ICCF17 distributed a flash memory card with preprint
versions of the papers on it. I went through the card and entered all of
the titles into the endnote database. It is now available in the usual
LENR-CANR.org indices.
Summary index:
http://lenr-canr.org/index/Summary/Summary.php
In the quick search box enter the search term: 17th International
You might want to change the “View” selection box to “100″ so you can see
all of the papers without using the next arrows.
You can see from the list that I uploaded only 10 of the papers. I am
waiting for permission to upload the others.
Some papers were not ready in time for the preprint collection.
- Jed
I wrote:
I have the paper, not the slides.
Maybe I should add the slides.
Okay, I added the slides too.
Jed
Just made some quick calculations. If you squeeze the 1 MW power plant with 780 other devices of the same kind in a box (or container) of 12m x 5.2m x 7.2m you basically substitute the power output of a nuclear power plant of the Fukushima type (784 MW).
Of course you need some pipes so lets say we have 12 x 5.5 x 7.2. This means a container the size of a domestic swimming pool can substitute a nuclear power plant.
The US, according to Wikipedia, has 104 nuclear power plants with an average of 775 MW output (similar to the Japanese model)
If we take 110 plants (with future increase of consumption) we can arrange them by 10 x 11
So all the nuclear energy could be produced from a field of Ecats which measures 120m x 78.2m x 5.2 (5.5m).
This is less then a hectare!!!!
Just to show, the Ecats substituting the nuclear energy needed for the United states and more could be squeezed onto a football field with a height of less than 6 meters.
Just hope I did my maths correct
The quoted nuclear plant output means probably electric while E-cat is thermal. That will give a factor 2-3 difference, not more.
Yes. Lets say there is an effciency of 30% we just need a roughly 16.5 – 18m meter high Ecat tower with the same width and length as before to substitute the heat energy loss.
I calculated that the cost for all Ecats is 128.7 billion USD (1MW = 1.5 Mio. USD) in my previous thoughts. with an efficiency of 30 (33) percent, the cost would be 402.6 billion USD, so quite some hefty price tag, but I thing Rossi would give a quantity discount
In 2006(I could not find other figures) the world energy consumption was 15.8 TW (according to Wikipedia). This means to substitute all energy requirements of this planet at that date you need a field of E-cats measuring 3000m x 300m x 10m.
If the efficiency is one third (33 %) then the field is 3000m x 300m x 33m to substitute all world energy requirements of 2006.
This would be larger than any current building on earth, but still feasible.
Nickel annual consumption would be 312,500 tons for the entire planet. (15.8 Mio. 1MW Ecats using 20 kg each per year). In 2011 about 1.572 million tonnes were produced. The demand for all Ecats would make up less then 20 percent extra. (19.9 %)
But you can also recycle the nickel used by e-cats
Source:http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/nickel/mcs-2012-nicke.pdf
Julian Becker
A 1Mw E-cat will use 300 grams per year. 90% of which will be recycled.
Based on 1.5 grams used in the Hot Cat refilled every 6 months x 100 cores.
According to a “Cures” Statement, this may be less yet to be determined.
According to another source (Don’t remember the name) the process may develop to zero loss of Nickel.
According to Rossi, the reason for the 6 month refill is because the Catalyst he adds is used up, Not the Nickel. We don’t know what that Catalyst is.
It is correct that the output from e-cat is thermal and that the electrical output would be much less. On the other hand a lot (most?) electricity is used for heating and could be replaced by e-cat directly, leaving the nuclear plants to supply the power for anything that doesn’t convert the electricity to heat.
In my country (Sweden) our hydropower would be more than enough to supply all electricity the country neeeds if we didn’t use it to heat houses during cold season. E-cat would let us close down a couple of nuclear plants as well as a lot of heat plants running fossil fuels.
Well the fuel source itself is not whats taking up space in a power plant. Its the stuff that moves the energy away. Just look at Nuclear plants. The fuel rods are only filling up a tiny space in the plant compared to the rest which moves all that energy from the rods out into the power grid.
Packing the ecats together like you suggest would probably make them melt very quicky.
Compare this to taking all the fuel rods in all the power plants in the US and stacking them next to eachother. Sure they wont fill up much space but i doubt it would end well.
Dear Ing Rossi (and friends,) speaking of reactor designs:
“The basic questions of design, material and shielding, in combining a nuclear reactor with a home boiler and cooling unit, no longer are problems… The system would heat and cool a home, provide unlimited household hot water, and melt the snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a single charge of fissionable material costing about $300.”
Robert Ferry, executive of the U.S. Institute of Boiler and Radiator Manufacturers, 1955.
Here we are 57 years later and we need only add a prefix: NON-fissionable material.
There are some issues not being considered here. The main one is that the steam generated by a 1 MW hot e-cat is not 1 MW of electrical output, but 1 MW thermal energy. Small steam turbo generators are not not very efficient at that level of power and temperature. Probably only about 150 kW electrical output would be obtained from a single system. Use of multiple systems in larger generators could allow better efficiency, but still only about 300 KW per MW steam input for a moderate sized system. While there would be many uses for these levels (especially if the low grade output steam is used for additional jobs like heating), it is not nearly as much dollar value as some quote. At $1 M per MW system, and a comparable additional cost per decade when including cooling condensers and operational costs, it would take closer to a decade (depending on details) to recover cost compared to present electrical from other sources.
30% heat to electrical conversion is standard. Difference is the cost of fuel is negligible and 700KW of steam will run chillers, radiant heat and hot water efficiently – e.g. in an office building. This is already demonstrated at One Bryant Park in New York City where a 5.0MW co-generator provides heat, cooling and 70% electric for the entire Bank of America office tower.
Science News
… from universities, journals, and other research organizations
Success in Growth of Regularly-Ordered Nanometer-Scale Crystalline Thin Film Using 3-D Porous Material.
A joint research group consisting of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI located at the SPring-8 site), Kyoto University, and the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) succeeded in fabricating a crystalline thin film with a film thickness of nanometer order, in which molecules of a 3-dimensionally strong porous coordination polymer (hereinafter, PCP) are arranged (oriented) in a designated direction, and demonstrated that this thin film has a reversible gas adsorption/desorption reaction function.
A variety of functions can be expected with PCP, which possesses high gas adsorption characteristics and high regularity (crystallinity), including high efficiency separation and concentration of gas molecules, reaction in the interiors of the pores, etc. For this reason, it is possible to fabricate various types of energy related devices, such as high efficiency fuel cells, etc.
Read at —-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120829112228.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
Should not be “catus calidus” instead of “cattus calidi”? Adjective and noun must be casus consistent.
Thanks. I’m using the Google translate widget (to Latin) and it is not very good. How about Cattus calidus et callidus? Hot and smart cat!
Joseph
Besides, there must be a lot of 100ºC E-Cats already built which will not have market demand after releasing of Hot E-Cat. They could be supplied freely to eskimos, nomads and other people living in underdeveloped could countries.
The 100c e-cat will be perfect for home heating.
Hot E-Cat is coming. Congratulations to eveyone.
But I have noticed that most of the posters are already thinking of making business with these marvellous devices instead of planning actions to improve the poverty status now affecting the major part of mankind.
Dear fellows, I propose the creation of a commitee to convince Mr. Rossi to give free the 27% (percentage reckoned after recent UNO data) of Hot E-Cat production units to the third world.
Not so greed, just a bit solidarity.
alexvs, we might well find that Mr. Rossi already has something of the kind planned if all goes well.
Fair to give him time to see where he is heading before pressurising him to something he may already have in mind.
Might be as you say. I had not thought it.
It is as George suggests.
Why? Let a thousand businesses flourish and electricity be produced inexpensively. Poverty will always be here. Jobs from the retooling of the planet to use this new form of heating and electricity generation will provide for millions. The poverty you speak of in Africa and elsewhere has more to do with religious, political and Trade. Solving those problems solves the poverty issues. The e-cats just produce heat.
If the E-cat happens, it will be one more step to global freedom.
Simple: extreme dense 87 pieces of 9 cm diameter small e-cats side by side in one block
Andrea Rossi
August 29th, 2012 at 9:45 AM
Dear Franco:
Attention: the dimensions 1.2 x 0.4 is not the surface of the surface of the reactors! Inside this drum of 1.2 x 0.4 m there are 100 reactors , each of one having about 1 200 cm^2 of surface !
I talked of the dimensions of the external container, not of the heat exchange surface !
Warm Regards,
A.R.
—–
Ecco Liberation
August 29th, 2012 at 9:14 AM
Dott. Rossi,
Could you tell how much does each cylindrical Hot-Cat weight in grams?
Ecco
Andrea Rossi
August 29th, 2012 at 9:41 AM
Dear Ecco Liberation:
The final version will weight about 4 500 grams
Warm Regards,
A.R.
About 1500 pounds for a 1
megawatt unit. (Approx. with the extra hardware)
Respect
Kim
Hang on… 4.5kg = 9.9 pounds. Don’t know how many Watts at this point.
Andrea Rossi
August 28th, 2012 at 6:04 PM
Dear Scott Hansen:
The home unit will yield about 40 000 kJ/h.
Warm Regards,
A.R.
…11.11kW
A Cylinder of Steel 3.5 x 13 inches = 10 Kilowatt.
100 cylinders in a nest= 1000 Kilowatt = 1 megawatt.
100 10 pound cylinders = 1000 pounds.
(These are ball park figures)
Respect
Kim
4500 grams = 4.5Kg = about 10 pounds. This is very light. Any electric generator it is coupled to would weigh much more but still produce a very compact unit for the power.
Wow, I go out for a couple of hours and we are two new topics moved on.
I have just put links to this report on the video topic.
Lets hope the release E-Cat itself starts moving this fast.
George… got my laptop charging off a 10kW e-cat APU under the desk
7/13/2013
GreenWin, If one searches hard enough one can still find some sense from scientists.
——
Los Angeles Times
It’s not what science knows, but what it doesn’t, that really matters.
http://www.latimes.com/
George, the link is to the front page. What’s the article??
GreenWin, sorry try this one. Ha.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-barash-science-unknowns-teaching-20120816,0,7243204.story
University circulum should be changed. The first thing every student should learn is “we don’t know what we don’t know”. Because this is where true innovation comes from….
Andrew, most of science is clearly out of it’s depth trying to practice science.
It does not even follow the most obvious and basic of principles, follow Evidence and good Theory and do the bloody research.
It needs a new organisation to take over science, I would suggest that possibly the Darby & Joan clubs may make a better job of things.
I agree 100% George. There are mexi’cans and mexi’cants. Rossi although Italian is a mexi’can.
george
I’m fast coming to the Opinion that Higher Education is becoming a Bottomless Money Pit of Corruption & politics.
U.S Projections of $150K per year. A 4 year degree which takes 5 to 6 to complete for most students. Throw in financing & a Million dollars plus looks like the coming norm for an education.
Omega Z, I have replied but gone to moderation for some reason, I promise I did not swear at you. Ha.
What kind of courses did you take, if you think they focus only on what we do know? I must guess they weren’t courses aimed at making new researchers.
I was fortunate enough to go to collage. I say fortunate because I am working and have been for 10 years. If I was a university grad I would still be looking for a job.
So in essence you are not addressing the point and you don’t actually know how students are taught to become researchers.
BTW after graduating in physics from university, even I managed to find a job or two, despite that I made no attempt to get into research.
Heh heh!
It’s not so shocking when compared with ordinary pressurized-water reactor with power density in core of about 100 MW/m3, but it makes the eCats interesting for stationary plants and ship propulsion, possibly even for pushing locomotives and long-haul trucks. However, it’s only the first generation. Improvement of up to several orders of magnitude is probably possible.
Don’t forget, about 4000 of such moduls would be needed to replace a single AP1000. So there is some way to go.
We have passed the Rubicon.
Respect
Kim
Yep.
No until we have hard evidence!!!!
4000 hot cats would be cheaper, safer and take less space then a ap1000, it would also be more effeicient because you can spread out the 4000 all over the country instead of having one huge plant. Hot ecats would also propably be safer then an ap1000.
Hampus! Yes! DISTRIBUTED energy is the future. Far safer, less prone to malfunction, attack, weather, little rodents. We need to take a clue from massively parallel systems – and rebuild our energy matrix.
From what I see and know at this point.
I would buy a 1 megawatt unit, but would
sell the energy back to the utility company.
Im sure the profit would be adequate and
income adequate to justify.
May even get a bank to loan the money base on
sound business plan.
Good home business in the few years before
they become domestic.
No coffee yet, still A.M.
Respect
Kim
That would be approx. $500,000
a year to sell back to the electric
company.
The first year would pay for the unit
After that….! profit
Respect
Kim
I would also like to add that if
Andrea Rossi has reached these energy
densities and dynamics, then every
one can sit back and relax, because
we are talking about energy densities
that will blow every thing out of the
water…!
Cures Knows, and the photo is the
harbinger of great things to come.
My instincts say we have passed into
a new age.
We just have to have the courage to
claim what is rightfully ours.
Respect
Kim
Kim, I’m shocked that you’d consider dealing in filthy lucre. :>)
I’ll BE shocked if old school utilities agree to buy excess CF energy. They will invoke the “not invented here” rule. Meaning if WE didn’t invent it – it don’t exist. And even if it exists, we won’t pay for it!
Hundreds of utility companies produce none of their own power. Why would they not buy cheaper power?
Stubborn?? Stuck on stupid??
What’s stopping the Electricity company from purchasing Rossi’s 1MW unit themselves.
Utility companies could easily install these in sub-stations to provide a more robust and redundent decentralized power system.
That does seem very likely eventually, but in the short term I think they would be more attracted to ‘drop in’ boiler replacements for existing gas and older coal power stations (especially the latter which are being driven out of existence by ‘green’ legislation).
Makes sense. I guess it’s more dependent on where you live though. I myself being in Canada we have mostly nuclear and hydro electric. I don’t imagine that this could be used as a drop in replacment for either.
Not a drop in. But industrial parks building a local “ecat Utility” would take these parks off the grid. I could see a municipality building their own ecat utility to run in conjunction with what they already have.
Out and out heresy! “Off the grid??” Obstinate subversion! 10kW DIY e-cat clone??? Insubordinate piracy!! Community CF micro-grid??? Usurpation of priesthood!!
/sarc
I think LENR replacement boilers of up to about 200MW might be feasible, given that a typical coal fired boiler room might be well over a couple of thousand cubic metres (gas boilers are normally rather smaller of course).
Even with the dimensions Rossi is currently proposing (c. 0.5m3 per MW) it should be easily possible to fit a couple of hundred units plus pipework, support framing, pumps and valves etc. into a typical boiler room. If the individual cores can be made longer and proportionately more powerful, it should become even easier to match the outputs of large fossil fuel boilers with bespoke CF units.
As power generation becomes more local, the relative cost of transmission may go up, accelerating the advantages of local generation. I’m thinking though that households may still prefer to have it brought in over the wire, though, for a good long time. Neighborhood PowerCo Inc?
Jim, a reasonable analogy: until the introduction of the first home refrigerator in 1928 – every home had an ice box. The iceman delivered 2-3 times a week. But once we could make our own ice at home – well, the iceman was out of a job, (smart icemen went into refrig manufacturing, install and service.)
More likely is a Neighborhood Micro-Grid. A communal small grid providing backup and UPS services to a neighborhood. Each subscriber has a guarantee of uninterrupted power supplied by his fellow subscribers should a CF appliance crap out. This brings blackout potential to near-zero at minimal added cost.
A socialist electricity grid? USA would never come on board!
Sure they will. We name it, “The MinuteMan Grid.”
Nothing socialist about it. Such an installation would be absolutely typical of the way things were done in early frontier America. See “barn raising” and similar activities.
You’ll be blocked by monumental regulations. Regulations purportedly are for public safety but we all know they are for the protection of special interests.
Did Mr Rossi reverse the dimensions?
Supposedly the hot cat cores are only 300cm long or so, so the given dimensions would be OK for a vertical boiler containing c. 100 cores mounted between two horizontal perforated plates, with 5cm spaces above and below for water and steam respectively.
Alternatively he may just be looking at a water heater with very fast throughput, but a boiler seems more likely.
I personally wonder if it’s just taking the dimensions of the current hot cat and scaling it up. The benefit of the tube within a tube design. But could be multiple units in one, like the current 1 MW plants.
I think your interpretation is probably the most likely though, as that fits the math and engineering perfectly, and past practices.
Oh wait, haha, just saw Rossi’s response were he says exactly that, more or less!
Thanks Peter, I now have a better picture in my mind.
Does anyone want to take a “swag” at how the natural gas version could be incorporated? Is there any chance the natural gas is providing the hydrogen for the reaction as in fuel cell reformers?
Why?? NG reformation is tricky and H2 for LENR needs 99.9% purity. H2 from a small hydride solid pellet seems far more reasonable since quantities needed are very very small.
NG ignition system? Maybe, but once the e-cat is up to temp, is it needed? Probably not. But it WILL make the gas utils less schizophrenic.
Agreed. I just was intrigued by Mr Rossi’s excitement when he announced the ability to use nat gas instead of resistive heat to initiate the reaction.
PS The jocosity is appreciated
I guess you would just have a flame burner for each individual module to warm it up.
I think not.
He simply is designing an Hot Cat module for electric power production.
One module will heat the water and vaporize it, another past the first will heat the steam so it is “dry steam” at high temperature.
Larger is the tube less is the resistance to the movement of the steam.
I’m assuming the new 1mw ecat plant is a single reactor. I guess scalability isn’t a problem anymore. I wonder what size you’d need for areospace propulsion.
i’m imagining a honeycomb built up of the hot cats we’ve seen sans insulation betwen calls, of course
Not a novel idea:
http://www.cameco.com/common/images/content/u101/fuel_bundle.gif
Yup. Seems the obvious thing for them to do.
The main reason I’m assuming a single reactor design is the first e cat cores were roughly the size of a d cell battery, the “hot cats” a loaf of bread. They are getting bigger.
The benefit of a honeycomb is vastly increased surface area; which is useful for rapid flow heating of water such as for a power plant.
Agreed I’m just thinking bigger honeycombs for power generation for vast amounts of water flow.
That’s a great point. I bet that could be done. Tube within a tube is a very scalable idea.
Trust Rossi to go for the simplest possible design! (not a bad thing). The short boiler cylinder would most likely be vertically oriented with a water feed/preheat chamber below and a steam chamber above, and the reactors mounted between two perforated plates as per Ivan’s link. The water level would be held constant somewhere along the tube (leaving the top half ‘bare’ would provide superheating of the steam).
Given the dimensions, I would guess that perhaps 100 cores might be inserted between plates of 1.2m dia., or more if the cores can be thinner than the prototype. This would mean an output of maybe 10kW each. On this basis, a smaller version with just 5 or 6 cores would be able to power a new generation of ‘flash steam’ cars (sod steam turbine/electric drive, I want pistons and driveshafts!)
For this type of arrangement to be viable, Rossi would have to have tested his hot cat with water flowing through the inner tube, in order to ensure that the cooling did not quench the reaction, so his answer about equilibrium and conductivity yesterday was probably more smokescreen. Product certification is still going to be a major problem though.
It would be a good competition to see which vehicle had higher useable torque. A reciprocating steam engine (your pistons) or a series hybrid electric motor (steam genset power.) The Tesla Roadster with 56kWh battery pack blows most every gas combustion engine off the line, 0-60 in 3.7 sec. Torque so high is needs a governor.
You’re talking efficiency, GreenWin. I’m talking style!
In fact it is probably inevitable that the most efficient use of high pressure steam would be a small turbine or multi-cylinder rotary design coupled to an alternator and driving wheel motors.
For low pressure steam though (might be preferred for safety reasons), relatively simple double-acting reciprocating engines with direct drive would probably be much cheaper and lighter. The torque developed by ’70s steamer experiments like those listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_car could be enormous c/w IC engines.
Sounds right Peter. Love the 1900 “Locomobile Runabout!”
Were you aware of Bill Lear’s steam engine?? Someone came along and bought it and that was the last ever heard…
http://wizbangblue.com/2009/05/19/the-great-lear-steam-engine-you-never-got-to-own.php
I kinda think a Mills CIHT fuel cell will make a… splash in EV production eventually. Til then there is tons of new fun to be had designing steam direct drives, Stirling gensets, micro-turbines, etc.
“What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.”
Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat.
Thanks for the link. V. interesting – possibly another lost opportunity for doing things better.
Indeed. Check the specs on Lear’s steam bus. The downside was fuel consumption. Imagine today a similar design matched to 30kW of e-cat heat/steam.
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2011/06/07/gettin-steamed-on-the-bus/
Rumor I heard was the Indy race car he built blew everything off the track. Lear suddenly had “money problems” and dropped the project.
Once again: Mr. Rossi, if you have a marketable product – MARKET IT. Let the marketeers and manufacturing engineers deal with it. (Stated as a former Product Engineer for Electronic Guidance Systems (the world’s best incidentally – developed by others in my company).
You can then play engineer and physicist the rest of your life to produce Mark II Mod I.
charles, was your Guidance system built and marketed globally in less than two years?
Point noted Green Win. Thanks for the question.
Big projects with the NATO navies don’t get done in two years. The opening red tape took that long. Sorry, but you can’t compare a million dollar machine with ring laser gyros, GPS initiation, a 3 gimbal pancake motors driven servo system, all tied together with its own micro-computer system replete with MTBF systemazation with a system such as Rossi’s even though his will be be a world changer. I concede that his is based on physics that we cannot yet explain and is infinitely more ground breaking.
The point is, if it is marketable as is, bless the world and set youself up for the Nobel prize in Economics, Peace, Physics and perhaps Chemistry by putting it out for the world to use, now. Rossi and the whole world can then improve it forever.
Charles, actually your system sounds pretty darn whiz-bang compared to a high temp kiln (latest e-cat resembles.) I think the speed with which the LENR team has come together and delivered astonishing results rivals Manhattan. Certainly in its longer term implications it does.
As for prizes – the big one is enlightenment. The trophies are due to a large team of people who typically remain in the b.g. Guys like Rossi can only marvel at their good fortune to have such worldly support.
Relax Charles – that is what Rossi is doing, marketing his hotcats to the Military first, then to the public starting with his reports on Sept 10th. Cheers
Or to put it into other terms, 1,341 horsepower.
I wonder if I can get everything to fit in a mini-van?
Probably not, but a motor home………
Would bring a whole new meaning to the term “boondocking”.