More on E-Cat Validations (Updated: Rossi on Potential for Sabotage)

I’ve been trying to get a more clear picture of the ongoing E-Cat validation, and what the purpose is behind them. Today Andrea Rossi made a comment which gives a little firmer idea about the timetable of these tests:

Safety is an absolute priority. An E-Cat cannot be put for sale if it has not been certified for the safety. This is the reason for which the domestic E-Cat cannot be put for sale. To sell a product that has not been certified for the safety is a risk that no serious manufacturer can accept. The sole products that have been certified for the safety, so far, are the 1 MW low temperature E-Cat and the Hot Cat reactor, whose validation is still in course and will continue probably until the first quarter of the year 2014 before the results of the validation tests will be communicated.

I followed up this comment with some questions of my own and got the following responses:

1. Is the current long-term validation for the purpose of getting safety certification for the hot cat?

No, the validation and R&D long- term- activity have different purposes: for us, as manufacturers, the purpose is to make good products, for the third indipendent party is to confirm the validation made for a week, verifying in a long term which are the consequences. Obviously, the Ragone number, after a 6 months period, will give more clear indications.

2. Will the hot cat validation help with safety certification for domestic e-cat systems?

Unfortunately, no. This is an issue totally indipendent from what we can do and is very difficult any forecast

3. Is the domestic e-cat still a priority for your team?

Priorities are the products we can do and sell.

If I had read a bit more carefully, I would have asked the first question differently, because Rossi says in the first comment that the hot cat reactors have received safety certification along with the low temperature plant. I think from this answer it is fairly obvious that there is not much effort being put into the domestic ecat at the moment, because for whatever reason, certification is not going to be issued — and also, I expect, they don’t really have a desire to put E-Cats out into the public at this point where they are liable to be dismantled and reverse engineered.

Rossi here says that he expects the testing to conclude in the first quarter of next year. This is a similar schedule to the testing done by Levi and his team earlier this year. The last testing concluded in March, and it was May before the report was published. It seems from what Rossi says here, that main purpose of the independent testing being done by the independent team (Levi again?) is to confirm the results of this year’s test over a longer time period.

So it looks to me like things are setting up for a repeat of this year, with an ETA of new reports in spring/summer of 2014.

UPDATE: Here’s another new comment by Rossi on the domestic e-cat issue in which he expresses concern about the potential for his enemies to interfere with his work by sabotage.

Hank Mills:
Safety certification is necessary and must be made by a major certification company. Laws are the same in all the world. The E-Cat poses relevant problems in domestic applications, where not qualified Customers can use it. We should be exposed to enormous risks, also for voluntary sabotages.
Can you imagine what our enemies could do in a “friendly” apartment with an E-Cat they could buy for 1,000 $ in a shop ? This is why, realistically, domestic application cannot be a priority. It is a matter of good sense. It is not a matter of product failure to get a certification, it is a matter of a situation that makes impossible to get a certification in these conditions. Safety remains an absolute priority, wherever we put the E-Cats in the world.
Warm Regards,
A.R.