In Support of the Open E-Cat Project

I’ve written on this topic before, and in the light of the draft proposal from the MFMP I think it’s appropriate to do it here again. I am in favor of the idea of trying to fund a public E-Cat plant for a number of reasons.

We have seen the confusion that can occur when for whatever reason people don’t accept as valid a thorough third party test of an E-Cat plant by competent and qualified professionals. Personally I’m satisfied that they found what they said they did — but I know that many reasons have been put forward why we shouldn’t take the report at face value, and many people are persuaded by that.

Having an E-Cat in a neutral location (i.e. not Rossi’s premises) which is open for an extended period of time for visiting, testing, providing live data, would allow for further verification of the technology in a more open manner than has been done so far. There are certain restrictions that Andrea Rossi has said customers must abide by — such as dismantling the plant — but open testing is not one of those restrictions. He has said clearly that a customer can do whatever they want with a plant once they have purchased it.

A publicly operating E-Cat plant could play an important role in bringing this technology to the attention of the public. I think it could capture the imagination of the public more than a written report. Certainly members of the press who have been following the story would want to visit a plant in operation — as well as people in business, science and government and members of the public.

The the purpose here is not to make a business decision. I see this more like being involved in an awareness campaign to provide clear and unmistakable evidence that a New Fire has been discovered and that it can provide useful energy for the world. The low temperature E-Cat plant is an early model which will certainly be improved upon, but currently there is no technology like it available on the market anywhere in the world. It doesn’t produce electricity, but there many settings where the heat it produces by the 1 MW plant is vitally important and very desirable at lower costs than are currently available.

I believe that the The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project has the credentials, the desire and connections to carry out the task. They have a team of skilled members from around the world dedicated to bringing knowledge of the New Fire to the world. I think the team has shown that they are committed to carrying out ‘open science’, and this project would fit into that approach.

Finally, clearly the most difficult part of this campaign is raising the funds. I don’t think it will be easy to meet the fundraising goal with small donations from individuals when there seems to be relatively little awareness of this technology. The base of interested and supportive people is certainly not in the hundreds of thousands at the moment. For a relatively small base of average individuals coming up with the funds would seem to be a heavy lift — so maybe it’s time to get creative.

Perhaps there are individuals or organizations with means who could help with such an effort — if so, how do we interest them? Someone suggested grant writing, which is a possibility. Surely there are businesses out there who want to find out if this is a technology they should be planning for — for some companies funding this project may be a way to fund cheap R & D. I would guess that among the readership here there are people with various connections who might have some ideas on good ways to go about this effort.

So I’m in favor of this idea and I hope there is a way to make it happen. I think it’s important to get this technology into the light of public awareness and I think this is a good way to make this happen. The proposal posted here yesterday is a draft — I am sure the that MFMP are open to ideas on creative ways to meet the goal.

Frank Acland