There have been all kinds of opinions set forward on the Internet regarding Andrea Rossi’e E-Cat. Many thoughtful and reasonable comments have been made here and elsewhere expressing doubt about Andrea Rossi’s claims. There have also been less tactful ones. I think I understand people’s wariness and doubtfulness. There are many good reasons not to trust people just because they make an extraordinary claim, and history teaches us that many of the most exciting and tantalizing pronouncements about miraculous breakthroughs have turned out to be empty words intended to deceive and defraud.
So it is no wonder that there is for some skepticism about Rossi and his claims. I was quite skeptical too when I first heard about Rossi and the E-Cat, but over time I have climbed off the fence and stepped firmly on to the believer’s side, and here are some of the reasons why.
1. Sergio Focardi. His statements about what he learned and witnessed during his work with Rossi are very forthright and unequivocal. He has stated that he believes that we are a the dawn of a new age of energy production based on Rossi’s invention.
2. Guiseppe Levi. His statements about what he has measured in testing done on the E-Cat are similar to Focardi’s.
3. Sven Kullander and Hanno Essen. These respected Swedish scientists were able to participate in testing of the E-Cat and both have gone on record stating they could find no other explanation for the energy production they witnessed other than a new kind of nuclear reaction.
I am sure that all of these established academics are not part of any grand conspiracy to trick the world into thinking that Rossi has come up with a new form of energy when they know he hasn’t — and based on the closeness of their work with Rossi (especially Focardi, who worked with Rossi over a long period of time) I don’t see any way that Rossi could have hoodwinked these professors with some kind of rigged machine.
4. The October 6th test in which the E-Cat self sustained for almost 5 hours and heated water a constant temperature without any energy input. Again, I don’t believe that Rossi would have been able to have faked this demonstration.
5. Andrea Rossi himself. I find his words and actions convincing. The way he his going about his business seems rational given the circumstances and, most interesting, there doesn’t seem to be anything going on at the moment that resembles a scam. There has been no appeal for the public to send him money — and no one has come forward and said that Rossi has tried to defraud them. Some people might think that he is simply insane and delusional, but I go back to the involvement of the professors — if Rossi was insane, it would not have taken long for these men to realize it, and they certainly wouldn’t have stepped forward publicly to identify themselves professionally with such a person.
6. National Instruments have verified that Andrea Rossi’s account of their relationship is an accurate one. Rossi said they had worked together and that NI had been very helpful in providing advice, even though Leonardo Corp ultimately decided to work with another company.
7. Professor Roland Pettersson, retired associate professor of chemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden has commented positively on two E-Cat demonstrations he has witnessed. He was present at the October 6th demo in Bologna, and more recently attended a private demonstration on February 20th in Bologna. NyTeknik reports that Pettersson said he saw the recently upgraded 1 MW plant and a prototype of the domestic E-Cat.
I don’t doubt that there are still problems to be overcome with regards to engineering and commercialization. This ‘new fire’ could be hard to tame, and Rossi has set a very ambitious timetable for starting the sale of home-based E-Cats (Autumn of this year). I wouldn’t be surprised if that date was pushed back given all the logistics involved in putting a production network together. I think it’s also possible that political and legal barriers may put in place to slow down a revolution, but it will be very hard to keep a technology as powerful this from breaking through.
I believe that Rossi has made a very important discovery that will eventually lead to far more advanced and cost effective energy production than we now know. Rossi seems to realize this too, and is doing all in his power to bring his invention to light, including keeping the cost as low as possible so everyone will be able to afford it. As he says, “This will be a revolution, and, as I said already, a revolution must be popular to survive.”
Is there a chance that I am wrong in my conclusions? Of course — I’m certainly not infallible. But I have tried to be as logical and reasonable about this case as I can be, and from every way I look at things, I believe that an E-Cat revolution is not far away.
Frank Acland
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When will we be able to build cities with cold fusion powered … architecture we already have
I want to believe in the E-cat but that’s not good enough so I got to settle for hope. I hope Mr Rossi comes through. My biggest skepticism is he seems to be so much of a one man show. If he really has what he claims it can change the world. Shouldn’t he have a PR person to keep us all up to date working out of an office rather than a Miami apartment?
Sometimes my faith in Mr Rossi weakens, but since I got wind of all of this back in February I can’t get enough info on the growing field of LENR. Something seems to be happening every week. My faith has shifted to LENR. I do believe it will change the world even if Mr. Rossi doesn’t.
I have mixed feelings…
It looks like you believe in this eCat business mostly by “auctoritas” rather than by “facts”: you trust Focardi, you trust Levi, NI, etc… except for point #4.
I think, this is exactly the game where AR is a master: using others’ authority, hopes, etc… to push his own cause (whatever that is). I don’t think one can base any conclusion on the behaviour of people: people are nice and make our lives worth… but one should also admit they can easily be weak, dihonest, emotional, etc… we all are, given the right conditions. This is why the scientific method exists!
Examples. Focardi is old and surely frustrated by his inability to convince mainstream science that LERNs exist. I have the impression that both Focardi and Levi are looking for fame, to some level. The swedish guys… are swedish, they are not used to italians
and anyway they never really endorsed the eCat, if you look carefully enough… etc… Also I am sure you can easily find a big number of equally authoritative persons believing this is all fake. Do they have an agenda? Maybe, why not. Again, they are people. This is why one should go back to the old and boring scientific method.
Ok. We remain with facts, which are not many. Point 4 is interesting… however devil is in the details, who knows what AR really has in his machine. To me point 4 is curious, but quite insufficient for me to believe. A thought provoking question… you surely know that illusionists exist and that magic, ehm… no, it’s a just trick. Have you ever seen an illusionist show? On TV or, even better, live? It can be pretty impressive… based on the show, would you believe in magic?!
Beyond this, I am convinced there is something in LENRs, but no, I can’t believe in AR claims. If we want to put it on the trust side: I don’t trust him at all… I think his history and his behaviour speak against him.
One addendum… I am convinced too that this LENR business is a very complicated one, with a lot of interests involved.
However, if this was something easy and huge and reproducible as it seems in the case of the eCat… well, we are 7 billions people on this planet which can try this even in their garage if they want (note AR is not even a real engineer, not to talk about science)… if it’s easy I think that absolutely nothing could stop this to come out, not the CIA, the DEO, DARPA, whatever…
My impression is that LENRs exist but they are extremely tricky. I liked the comment of the NASA guy on one of his presentations (can’t remember which one), where he commented that given their present understanding most of past cold fusion experiments were basically fully random and uncontrolled. Having something reproducible or at least statistically predictable is very important, otherwise most of people will never believe you. So I think it is probably a very tricky business… I don’t think that AR, a guy with a fake engineering degree and a good track record as a scammer, is the likely person to have cracked the problem. Very unlikely. To me, at least.
Ni+H heat initiated only reactors are not so much complicated if you gather data from defkalion, Rossi, and Widom-Larsen.
It is a surface effect, hydrogen have to be atomic, and surface have to be complex (like SPAWAR did with co-deposition, like nano-powder)
electrolysis was a dead-end. High pressure hot gaz with nano powder is much moresimple.
the only tricky factors are the catalyst to prepare atomic H to be in the good/best state, and surface condition of the powder (as said piantelli not only surface, but active state density at the surface)…
It seems that defkalion, by large trial, have found many good catalyst, and powder characteristics (micrometric, not nanometric)… visibly not expensive, and not complex. Rossi seems a bit late.
for the rest, just increase temperature and pressure, just before it melt or explode, like Defkalion have done…
Stability is simple engineering, and engineers can master much more complex systems (rockets, industrial furnace, nuclear reactor).
I feel that LENR Ni+H gas phase reactors are simple to build…even if the catalyst and powder recipe is a bit empirical.
Except if you know what is an active site (as piantelli said) and the active ingredients (H+ it seems). in that case, passing from Watt to kW is simple straight engineering.
Power_LENR=Ingredients_quantity*surface*active_sites_density*heat_to_activation_factor*heat_reused_to_activate*good_control
all factors are easy to increase, provided you know what it is…
only “ingredients”, “active sites”, and “heat to activation” are questionable in LENR.
but ingredients seems to be Ni and H+.
Active sites are to be better understood, or cooked and tested…
The catalyst seems to be either only the H+ generator, or maybe the activator (heat to activation)… have to be either chosen among H+ catalyst, or guessed if different from H+ generator…
If you know what are the active site and the activator target, enhancing it is simple engineering, otherwise it is trial and error.
all the rest is classic engineering (surface enhancing, heat reuse, stabilization).
the breakthrough in LENR is abandoning electrolysis to go to gas-phase and nano-powder.
there have bee a discussion about the importance of gaz phase heat activated Ni+H reactors, saying that this kind of reactor if real, leads naturally to mass energy production, after predictable engineering work.
http://www.lenrforum.eu/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=48
I agree with you that the electrolisys => gas-phase/nanopowder step was a very important one in cracking the problem. I have the same impression.
Regarding the basic underlying effect, I personally found very fascinating and convincing the codeposition experiments at SPAWAR (nicely done) and transmutation in D2 permeation in Pd (Iwamura I think, very neat and controlled experiment, in my opinion)… Finally I almost fell off the chair when I learnt about the five peaks in the transmutation spectrum observed in different experiments and the fit using neutron capture by W-L. This is when I really thought “WTF… this is real”: too many coincidences (in the facts, not in the opinions of people, etc). But ok, these details are not very useful for energy production, probably.
My main source of skepticism is the following. True, once one knows the basic ingredients engineers can be very effective in scaling everything to whatever power you might need. What I wonder is: eCat and Hyperion are an example of this possibility… or are they just an example of people exploiting some real frindge effect to create a smart and complicate scam? Given the declared power levels it would be very easy to show their machine work for real, without disclosing any secret. I don’t see any “minus” in performing a satisfactory demonstration. Differently, if they have real working generators, I see many “minuses” in their present behavior. Instead if it is a scam I would say their behaviour normal. This is why I have a hard time in believing.
“Given the declared power levels it would be very easy to show their machine work for real, without disclosing any secret. ”
right. this is why defkalion proposed his simple and hard to fake bare reactor test.
for me the blackout is because of the “panicked” testers who ask for time because they cannot believe their eyes, and cannot admit the reality… they need time to make a joint report and save their butt.
@Alain…
let’s hope so…
“Oh yee of little faith” I remember when Robert Fulton first proposed to put a Steam Engine in a boat for propulsion instead of customary sails of that era. He was jeered where ever He went with taunts of “Fultons’ Folly”. When he fired up the steam engine that he had installed in a sailing ship that was docked on the hudson river; all the detractors were there. When Robert opened the throttle and that ship chugged away from the dock, the crowd grew strangely silent. I remember also standing on “Kill Devils’ Hill” in North Carolina when the Wright Brothers gave the first exhibition flight of their heavier than air “aeroplane”. And Enrico Fermis’ graphite pile atomic reactor..The 21st Century will produce more new inovations in Science, Literature, Medicine, Psycholgy, Energy, and many other discipines, and if I’m lucky I will be here to witness those events as well.
A. Rossi struggles with all world Academic science.
I wish Rossi very much health.
Dr. Shadrin A.A. 17/03/12.
I believe in Catalyzed Fusion – have since I became a Nuclear Engineer in the ’80s…
I also believe in Ponzi schemes and false-starts…
Finally, I believe in the common thievery exhibited by the scientific community especially by G-Funded Labs & Universities. This trait forces honest folks to be extremely secretive – it’s a cost-of-doing-business that prevents a lab from stealing an idea by “sneaking a patent”. It goes beyond someone competing with you – these folks will actually patent your idea and simply make it illegal for you to pursue it. The entertainment industry protects intellectual property better protected than the scientific community!
UNFORTUNATELY the necessity to act secretly forces an honest endeavor to appear exactly the same as a Scam!
I’ll BELIEVE in E-Cat when I’ve got one and get to play with it.
— Until then, I hope Mr. Rossi is honest and successful, and that a smart research lab doesn’t find a way to steal his effort.
I believe in The E-CAT A.Rossi and LENR.Read theory about LENR in my book “Vihrony”, 2011, Moscow, Shadrin A.A.in Russian.
Dr. Shadrin A.A. 07.03.12
Twenty first centure give birth to two direction of science:
1. books based on theory mathematics
2. patents
First leads to Hot energy nucleosynthesis (HENS), second – LENR. Time and E-Cat choose one from two candidates. Springer printed in LENR book “Controlled Nucleosynthesis”,2007,S.Adamenko and others, 780p.- new physics.
Dr. Shadrin, 19.03.12
It would be great if the website owner creates a “faq” section that answers specific math questions of what Rossi has done in the recent past and who has verified. Please boil it down (lol) to a math equation that almost anyone can understand. (input energy + processes = output energy) other variables would be quantity of all materials consumed, time/duration, temperature, how much initial energy used, and how much energy made over a period of time without initial energy supplied for startup.
Facts. Math.
Thanks!
Twenty first centure gives birth to two directions of science: 1-books,2-patents. First leards to Hot energy nucleosynthesis (HENS), second – to LENR. Time chooses one between two candidates. I choose LENR and E-CAT A.Rossi.
Dr. Shadrin A.A. 17.03.12
I believe that the US govt is strongly backing Rossi. I’ve read that the US govt bought his first reactor and have ordered 13 more for 34 million. They see this as the replacement for the Auto Industry. Rossi plans to flood the world market with his device at a price no one will be able to beat. His factories will be totally automated but the spinoff for the US economy will be enormous. Jobs, jobs, jobs supplying the world with energy. The US will control the worlds energy supply. These units need refueling twice a year so some country gets uppity then energy sanctions can and will be applied.
Back in November, Sven Kullander said that there would be a detailed isotopic analysis of the “ash” from Rossi’s E-Cat “by Christmas” (http://ecatnews.com/?p=1416).
As far as I can tell, the analysis has not been released, and no one seems to be following up on it.
I wish Kullander would either release the report, or explain why he isn’t doing so.
I just wish you hadn’t used the expression: “I believe in ….. “. You are getting into tricky territory there.
Hi Rodney — I understand what you mean, I think — just can’t think of a better way to express my confidence that this is a real technology without having seen one in operation. I guess it is all based on trust in what Rossi is saying combined with the evidence that has been presented so far.
That’s Rossi’s trick. By talking about mass-production, it feels like the discussion about how it works has been put to rest.
But it hasn’t.
The e-cat has not been properly demoed.
It would not take much to demo it: Just run it for a week with some people measuring in- and output.
The only ‘evidence’ you have seen are video’s orchestrated by Rossi. You should demand some independent observer at a serious experiment.
One should question why a self-funded project is attacked by (foreign) government-paid Academics (who work for the same industry which competes with E-Cat):
(a) this technology would benefit to CONSUMERS if it works;
(b) this technology would threaten BigOil/Nuclear companies.
Just let it come to market. Adn then let the market be judge of Andrea Rossi’s (hard) work value.
So this boils down to you believing in it because you don’t understand how it works? My prediction is the E-Cat will never actually be sold.
I concur. I am basically sceptical about the whole thing but if it is a scam I can’t quite see how it would work. At some point a unit will be sold and when it is it will either work or it will not and I imagine the purchasers will be well qualified to decide which it is. At that point presumably they will want their money back and the E-cat dream will crash and burn. Some scam!
Some people just crave attention. Maybe thats why he is doing it. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit failure, Maybe he is just a bad decision maker. I certainly hope that Rossi is for real but I have seen him make very poor decisions, such as faking the flow rate of steam in the interview with S. Krivit http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/Failure-of-Rossis-Energy-Catalyzer-Caught-on-Video.shtml
He should never have intentionally played down the steam flow rate. He talked about steam visibility but the actual flow rate was the problem. It should have been much higher if he was producing 11.2 cubic metres of steam per hour. It makes him look like a fraud.
Home Depot? So he is actually talking to them. I dare say someone at Home Depot could confirm this. In the sale business, you always assume the the order. That is all Rossi is doing. But there is no order. It is unfortunate but the hole thing does not look good.