Fulvio Fabiani Discusses Rossi and the E-Cat with Mats Lewan

Well... I guess given that explanation the matter would turn on why "biodiesel" was reclassified.

Well i don't feel motivated to wade through all the contemporaneous material, and will let MY do that if she wishes to make her point more clearly.

As it stands i'd say:

(1) Rossi's enterprize (as I understand it) was to turn polluted industrial oils into biodiesel. If he did this in a way that did not work there are two issues:
(a) Was the fuel generated out of spec because it was still polluted ion ways unacceptable?
(b) Was the fuel generated out of spec because it did not reliably work as fuel?

The point is that biodiesel does not typically have heavy metal contaminants etc. There is just no way for those to get into it. So what could have happened is that Rossi generated something that did work as fuel but still had unacceptable contamination. This was realised by the Itailian authorities who tightened up biodiesel regs to make sure stuff with major industrial contamination could not be passed off as biodiesel.

Also, the fact that Rossi's output remained unnacceptably contaminated meant that no-one serious would take it and therefore he ended up storing a whole load of the stuff (which would still be contaminated industrial waste whether processed or not).

It seems plausible to me that somone with Rossi's rather loose idea of what constitutes excess heat could be similar cavalier with toxic waste pollution. He might, for example, successfully deal with cracking the oils to a suitable level for use in diesel engines, and perhaps removing some organic pollutants, but completely ignore (for example) heavy metal pollution. Just as he (we must presume) completely ignored the plentiful evidence of his hot-cat reactors not working...

This is all speculation. But the alternative - that Rossi had a successful and cheap way to turn toxic waste into unpolluted fuel which was never actually used and resulted in a prison sentence for him due to events out of his control or conspiracies - seems even more speculative given the historical facts presented so far.

Well, for those who don't trust Italians due to some belief that they are inherently corrupt whatever the mayor of Milan says must be treated with great caution. And what Rossi says similarly. And, of course, anyone can say things that are untrue. Still, what is said here (Krivit's transcription of an Italian tv program - I've no reason to doubt accuracy) strikes a real chord of familiarity:

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In the years when he was working here,” Acerbi said, “[Rossi] didn't produce a single drop of oil, as far as we know. What he did was just create a media event. He was able to persuade — in a way that I cannot explain — a good portion of public opinion, and that's exactly what is hard for me to explain. He persuaded technicians in the field, scientists and important institutions, [inaudible] the region of Lombardia that he was able to do magic.

- Luigi Acerbi, mayor of Lacchiarelli, Milan, Italy, in a broadcast on Italian national television, RAI News 24, on May 5, 2011, in the program "The Magic of Mr. Rossi."

The difference I guess is that a non-working process to change industrial toxic waste into diesel ends up with a lot of untreated (or badly treated) industrial toxic waste. Whereas a non-working ecat is not nearly as problematic.

Thomas, where does it say he was using polluted industrial oil as an input? I thought it was based on decomposition of solid garbage/refuse.

Quote from The Great Confabulator

Still waiting for any evidence that Brillouin sold boilers in China! Anyone know where that evidence disappeared to? Or did someone simply make it up?

Mary, I'm still waiting for the evidence Rossi deliberately polluted drainage channels. Anyone know where that evidence disappeared to? Was it just another one of your lies, stated as fact?

I may easily be wrong. All this stuff is highly speculative for me.

Wikipedia ("Petroldragon" translated from italian)

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The alleged process invented by Andrea Rossi , called the Sheikh of the Brianza [3] due to this its invention, it would be a variant of the process of depolymerization , which allows to obtain thecracking of large organic molecules, originating from plastics , compounds of plant, animal , tires etc. reducing them in the form of coal-petrolio- gas . The process occurs in the absence of oxygen , initially at a low temperature (250 ° C), but elevated pressure (4 MPa ) for a time of about 15 minutes, at this stage the organic compounds will be transformed into compounds rich inhydrocarbons , but physically Similar to an ash black high in carbonaceous, this ash is subsequently passed into a transformation process at medium temperature (500 ° C) which would break the long chains aromatic (cracking), making it become in a certain percentage of oil , according to what stated the inventor.

Before the alleged invention of Andrea Rossi (October 1977 ) this type of process was quite expensive because the energy produced was less than that consumed to support the process.The Petroldragon instead declared conversion efficiency by weight of waste fuel products because 80%.

That Wikipedia article tallies with my understanding of the process.

Sorry to link to your least favourite website (and the 'Rossi says' factor is pretty high on this one), but this may or may not be of interest to you:

http://www.e-catworld.com/2014…-on-old-rossi-technology/

The basic idea at least seems to work, with no need for 'magic' as an explanation...

Quote from Mary Yugo

Your summary is the most likely explanation, Thomas

Which one? The first summary that involved a bit a of guess work, or the second summary based on the Italian Wikipedia article?

Quote from Mary Yugo

To address the specific claim of finding a tube from Rossi's toxic waste tanks to an irrigation channel, I remember reading it when I was looking at Krivit's collection of articles but I am not going to plow through that list now to find it again.

No, it was clearly a lie, started by yourself, but now you have decided it is a fact, you have no need for evidence to back it up. Your 'memory' is notoriously unreliable.

Watch how this lie will now be repeated, by yourself, in various forms, across the Internet... All without any proof whatsoever.

Quote from Mary Yugo

What is indisputable is that Rossi's activities "never sold a drop of oil"

So what was it that Petroldragon customers had to clean up, after the biofuel was reclassified as industrial waste?...Fresh air? ...Your fragrant BS?

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So what was it that Petroldragon customers had to clean up, after the biofuel was reclassified as industrial waste?...Fresh air? ...Your fragrant BS?

Well, at the risk of being highly speculative, it may be that customers who got real product did not exist, because real product did not exist. The issue about cleaning up would be the toxic material Rossi was given (by customers?) and that was just stored, or cracked but not detoxified and then stored.

Wasn't it "garbage" into biodiesel, with perhaps some petroleum waste thrown in?

And certainly adding the crankcase or industrial oil or Aroclor (PCB) contaminated transformer oils would make the whole thing very difficult from the standpoint of microbial growth.

Doesn't Rossi claim that he began to see the promise of LENR using iron containing wastes in the presence of hydrogen in some of his earlier, and ultimately abandoned efforts?

Quote from Mary Yugo

Colwyn, your diatribes aren't worth the trouble of a reply. That's how far your nose is up Rossi's posterior. Oh wait, you're the genius who has known the secrets of cold fusion/LENR for decades only you can't be bothered to make anything and get it properly tested.

How utterly ridiculous!

Basically, your near-religious certainty gets up my nose. I think that the opposing view should be aired, and your strange foibles pointed out - myself, I am agnostic on Rossi. I just read what you write, check it, and point out where you go wrong... In a way, I am trying to help you. And amuse myself, of course.

Maybe your time would be better spent finding a reference for your latest slander, rather than producing even more conspiracy theories regarding my apparent mastery of the secrets of cold fusion. How's your replication coming along?

So, I would like to share my new findings for to the "lightbulb" question that we discussed briefly before the pollution entered the thread. This is related to the Lugano test, but maybe replicators could also find it interesting. Maybe this is obvious for someone trained in the field but it news to me.

Question: Can an internal heat source in e.g. an alumina tube produce more energy than what is actually estimated by using a thermal camera?

I said earlier that a light bulb was an example of such a device, and given that alumina is rather transparent in the visible and in the near infared region it could very well be so for an alumina tube also. Actually I got the opportunity to test a FLIR heat camera on Friday evening, and I used it to look at a halogene larg size (r=3cm) light bulb. My impression was that you could see nothing of the filament inside the lamp on the display of the camera because the glass of the light bulb was not transparent for the wavelengths the camera used. Instead what you could see was the surface temperature of the light bulb and the temperature ranged from 80C to 100C (this was a lamp had been on for a long time).

To make a crude (over) estimation of the power radiated from the lamp we can assume a sphere with r=3cm, T=373K, sigma=5.67e-8, emissivity=1,

Radiated power = 4*pi*0.03^2*(373)^4*5.67e-8W = 12.4W

The lamp had a specified power of 46W

The conclusion is that it is indeed possible to underestimate the internally generated power if there is a partially transmittive shell and a heat camera is used to estimate the radiated power.

It makes me wonder even more why this device configuration and measurement method was chosen for the Lugano test.

@Urban Eriksson
The surface temperature of an object being heated by a radiant source is related to how poorly it transmits the radiated heat, not directly how powerful the source of heat is. Your test demonstrates this very well. Consider the surface temperature of a quartz IR heat bulb. If the quartz tube was poor at transmitting the heat, then the surface temperature would quickly approach that of the filament inside. It would melt. Most of the heat made by the bulb must pass through the quartz unimpeded, and not heat the surface of the bulb. Therefore the temperature of the bulb, if measured at an IR band that is opaque, is not directly representative of the total power output. If the temperature reading is proportional, then the emissivity epsilon can be lowered fix up the power calculation.

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The conclusion is that it is indeed possible to underestimate the internally generated power if there is a partially transmittive shell and a heat camera is used to estimate the radiated power. It makes me wonder even more why this device configuration and measurement method was chosen for the Lugano test.

You will remember that the previous similar test had a reactor painted black (with paint, though I may be misremembering this, stated good up to 1200C).

That still leaves some uncertainty as to how "black" the black paint is. But it is at least trying to use this method properly.

More importantly, the previous test (the first part, anyway) calibrated the black surface against thermocouples at temperature.

Thermography would be a decent technique for this measurement if a less problematic surface were used - alumina is one of the few that is really bad - and if calibration at temperature with thermocouples were done.

I believe that Rossi works very hard, with considerable ingenuity, to generate tests that show high COP. Whether he thinks this is optimising his e-cat, or optimising an (erroneous) test is a matter for psychologists and God. People, perhaps especially scientists, are not much good at resisting a charismatic individual with a good story. Rossi is that. The fact that technically Rossi makes big clangers does not matter to most people. When they notice, I guess it is put down to naivety from an anti-establishment figure whose natural untaught brilliance can do what trillions of dollars put into hot fusion cannot. A good story.

Rossi may be untaught, but he has been doing the same sort of thing for very many years - specifically convincing people to give him money for energy-related inventions that don't work. That is factual, and some labelling him a fraud is entirely unhelpful to the debate. It introduces elements that are speculative and mask the genuine facts. [ I realise that sentence will have MY repeating that only a blind mouse could fail to see the obviousness of Rossi's fraudulent behaviour - past and present - nevertheless I stand behind what I have said ].

Of one thing I am certain, it is easy for charismatic individuals to believe weird contrafactual things and get selected others to follow them. Free energy, with "cargo-cult" like science beliefs, is relatively benificent as such things go, and the contrafactual beliefs mostly relate to experimental results and are much less obviously contrafactual than typical cargo-cult belief systems.

As a separate matter from the Rossi affair I can see how those who from other evidence reckon that Ni-H LENR is inherently plausible would want to keep an open mind about Rossi. However flakey, he seems to be heating up Ni-H systems and perhaps these show anomalous excess energy (if you believe a priori that such a thing is likely). [ I'm not myself somone so inclined, but that is a separate, and well-rehearsed, argument. ]

What I'd resist is any idea that Rossi's behaviour is caused by such observations. His experimental practice is just not good enough to distinguish between even large anomalous heat from Ni-H and experimental error. That is putting it kindly.

I'd also resist the idea that the Rossi affair makes LENR look less likely. For different reasons both I and those here convinced LENR exists would agree with that.

Quote

My impression was that you could see nothing of the filament inside the lamp on the display of the camera because the glass of the light bulb was not transparent for the wavelengths the camera used. Instead what you could see was the surface temperature of the light bulb and the temperature ranged from 80C to 100C (this was a lamp had been on for a long time).

Just some elaboration on this. A typical halogen bulb radiated power spectrum is shown below:

(hope that works)

The halogen bulb temperature is 3300K, peaking at around 0.9um:
http://zeiss-campus.magnet.fsu…rces/tungstenhalogen.html

At these near infra-red and visible wavelengths the envelope is transparent (I guess somone else has a spectral analysis) of how transparent.

If the glass is frosted what happens is interesting. There are two separate effects.
(1) refraction at the boundary causes light from an inner source to bend so giving the illusion that the entire envelope is radiating when in fact it is just refracting an inner source.

(2) A corrugated boundary means that light travels multiple times on average through the envelope. This is the well understood view factor and means that at any wavelength the effective emmissivity will be higher, and the bulb therefore less transparent, than would other wise be the case.

To get a uniform illusion of light over the envelope we need a surface corrugated at a high spatial frequency - I'm not sure whether this means the view factor must also be very high. Even if it is quite high, if the glass is transparent enough the effective temperature of the light coming out is that of the inner source, not that of the envelope.

There will I expect be a bimodal distribution of radiation - with the inner source 3300K temperature and the envelope 370K temperature separately identifiable.

Quote from the interview:

“Over the years we realized that the reaction needs more stimuli than only heating. Everyone thinks that thermal stimulus is enough but that’s just the beginning. It’s not enough for maximum efficiency. It’s the base, the synthesis of the reaction. But the reaction has almost behaviors as of living matter, and it has responses as a function of the stimuli. They can be of many types other than thermal. And these are the ones that trigger, let’s call it the most fun part of it, allowing excellent gains in terms of response to the stimuli.”

What are those other types of stimuli Fulvio Fabiani is referring to?

Could they be:
- temperature variation
- static or variable magnetic field
- mechanical vibrations

Following quotes are from http://www.google.com/patents/US20150162104

"Original source of the electric field is preferably a dielectric material that can be polarized comprising piezoelectric material (electric polarization is induced by mechanical vibration, e.g. by an ultrasonic source), pyroelectric material (electric polarization is induced by variable temperature) and/or multiferroic material (electric polarization is induced by a magnetic field). Polarization of a material creates the electric field near the material."

"The material possessing electric polarizability is preferably in the form of powder or nanoporous material. Electric polarization of the polarizable dielectric material is induced by a controlled polarization factor comprising temperature variation, static or variable magnetic field and/or mechanical vibrations."