Well if radioactive material was found it would be interesting. But IH has not filed such a suit, so I suppose that has answered that question. Anyway, if they did it would indicate two things:
All serious LENR Tests doing MS showed a broad ( on surface of nanopowder) spectrum of Nuclids. The finer the powder the more You get, I guess. Even Americum (243) has been found...
Wyttenbach
Not sure how this potential for radioactive material works, its not my branch of expertise. I suppose Robert-J-Honders-Sr was talking about radioactivity which might have posed a problem with licences etc.
Robert
Do you have any more information on this? Why do you think radioactive material might be a problem?
Best regards
Frank
IMO, if Jed is going to be IH's pipeline to us, he might want to stop referring to Penon as an "certified idiot", and be careful with his legal opinions about the case. Unless, that is what his IH source is telling him, and he is just passing it on?
If those are solely his opinions, not IH's, then perhaps tone it down a bit? Reading the blogs today, some are finding it difficult to take him seriously when he says he has been talking with IH, after exaggerating these other things. I think they may have a point.
It would also be nice if Jed told us how close to IH's inner circle his source, or sources are, so that we can judge for ourselves the quality of what he is telling us? Maybe even clarify what he considers "talking with IH"?
Going forward we will no doubt be "fed" a lot of information as the suit progresses. We already have in fact, from Lewan's, Guest's, and now Rothwell's sources. We have to trust their info is legitimate, and the source well enough placed so that they are not merely passing on their own speculation, or purposeful misdirection. Otherwise we will all just be useful idiots fed a mix of truth and lies for whomever's purpose. Tools to be used. We don't want that.
QuoteI think the part about there being a second ERV was a misunderstanding
Yes. I comes from Jed's comments - at one point he said there was another ERV, but then rowed back. Basically the contract provides for monitoring by IH in addition to the ERV. Although the IH monitors are not bound to make a report, as the ERV is, they can certainly do so and Zed says they have an internal report at least, and it is different from the ERV report. Although not formally or legally the same as the ERV they are there to monitor the test (and presumably check that what the ERV does is good).
As I understand it this is the case Jeb puts.
In reply to the following points raised:
The legal case does not hinge on whether the device works. As the agreement is worded, IH pays IF and WHEN the ERV signs a document that the device performed to certain specifications. IH does not have an option to bail if they don't agree with the report.
Jeb said apparently in response to this: "There is more than one ERV".
This I think to make the case that IH is within their rights not to pay Rossi the $89 million as the contract apparently ties down IH to pay on a positive report from the ERV, but which ERV? Can that be disputed successfully in court.
I can see it now - Oh by the way Judge, we had another ERV, No, no one knew about it, no Mr Rossi did not know about it, no he didn't agree to it, we kept it secret, but that's the one we are going with now, grateful if you could replace Mr Penons report with our 'secret' one.
Might have a chance???
Best regards
Frank
Unfortunately, Rossi has never done the ONE simple thing that could have unambiguously demonstrated the output power of ANY of his devices.
Heat a pool of water.
The output of a 1 MW plant ought to heat a relatively large backyard swimming pool by 20 C in an hour. Larger pool, longer. Doesn't matter what the COP is: if 1 MW is coming out, then the pool WILL heat that much. The specific heat of water is huge. The signal will be seen.
The problem with the 1 MW “thing” is that there are 3 assumptions in play none of which are actually instrumented. First, the great big forced air radiator is as non-quantitative as you can get. But all the estimates of heat production are based on the idea that 100% of the effluent captured in the large vats passes through said ventillator. For condensation. Since it is supposedly in gas phase. Which is assumed because of the temperature.
But none of that actually need be true. Air in the system (if one recalls the patent provisional application) can easily mask heat production. The only 'net heat' observed was a 24 C rise in temperature of the 5,300 liters of end-point water. The big “ventillators” could easily have picked up 10+ C of that from ambient warm air.
When I run the numbers with the assumption that it's all trickery, and that only the 22 C water to start and the 48 C water at the end is meaningful, Voilá… COP = 0.72
And yet 'observers' could observe all that they wanted, and with trickery involved in the reflux and reflow paths of hot air, hot water, feed-thru water and reservoir water … it'd all look fine and dandy.
Doesn't ANYONE wonder why the easiest confirmation of all - heating a pool at 1 MW - wasn't done? And that the same bulk calorimetry wasn't done on individual E-Cat sub-units? Its not like its hard, folks. Just catch the bulk heat WHILE doing the rest of the experiment(s) as ordained. Suspender AND belt. They both should cobble up nearly identical results if neither is systematically abaft.
GoatGuy
The legal case does not hinge on whether the device works. As the agreement is worded, IH pays IF and WHEN the ERV signs a document that the device performed to certain specifications. IH does not have an option to bail if they don't agree with the report.
This is you interpreting the contract. The courts will interpret it as well, and they may disagree with you. They may decide that whether the ERV report is factual and sound is a material consideration in determining whether this provision of the license agreement is in force. Or they may not. US courts are strange places.
Eric
Not my interpretation but an interpretation put by a blogger to Jeb which prompted his reply "There is more than one ERV".
Best regards
Frank
Eric, would it also be bad faith on the part of IH to have a 'second ERV' in addition to Penon without the knowledge of Rossi
Frank,
As already answered, the contract allows IH to have their representatives, or observers there. "Trust but verify" is the old Russian saying that is as much a necessity in politics, as it is in business, and applies here. I could not imagine IH, or anyone with this much money, and reputation, on the line, to have it any other way. Pile as many qualified observers in that control room as you can fit. Sounds from Rossi too, that they did in fact, do that.
And come on...would anyone here, in all honesty, no matter how much a believer, trust Rossi? Seriously, would you? I have followed Rossi since he first made a splash on the scene. I can easily fill two pages of "Rossisays", which in many cases are outright lies. Yes, everyone has to get over it...Rossi lies his arse off. It is simply undeniable.
His JONP comments are so contradictory; fuels, factories, customers, colonels, Ecat quarks that do everything! you name it, that try as they may, no one has been able to put all his comments (Rossisays) together in a sensible way...In 5 years! The reason is that he makes stuff up. No way when someone does that as often as he does, that you can make sense of it.
This is not to say he doesn't have something, as I for one have been arguing now for 3 years that he just might. But I haven't argued that against the likes of Joshua and Thomas, because I believe what Rossi tells me. I don't, and I haven't believed a word he said after he did the Oct 26th 2011 "customer acceptance test". It was laughable how cheesy and fake that whole production was. Then followed his steady progress reports of the 1MW plant container being at sea enroute to the customer, etc., only to see 5 months later the same container photographed in his brothers garage...having gone nowhere!
But I have argued for him nonetheless, based on others around him believing in him. The adults in the room. IH in particular, but some from Mats Lewan too, and lately Fulvio Fabiani. That is why I believe IH now, and not Rossi, until he proves otherwise. IH has never lied to me like Rossi has, so naturally in a "he said/he said", I am going to lean towards them.
Unfortunately, Rossi has never done the ONE simple thing that could have unambiguously demonstrated the output power of ANY of his devices.
Heat a pool of water.
Maybe the customer produced pools?...Hey you never know. 
Shane
But we don't know what Industrial Heat believes, we only know what Jeb thinks they believe. And if you believe Tom??, then Tom believes, Jeb doesn't really believe what he says he believes because he 'rowed back'. Presumably now Jeb doesn't believe there is a second ERV just observers, I don't believe we can believe any of that, its beyond belief!!
Best regards
Frank
Frank,
I agree. This is what I posted a little while ago that addresses that:
Display MoreIMO, if Jed is going to be IH's pipeline to us, he might want to stop referring to Penon as an "certified idiot", and be careful with his legal opinions about the case. Unless, that is what his IH source is telling him, and he is just passing it on?
If those are solely his opinions, not IH's, then perhaps tone it down a bit? Reading the blogs today, some are finding it difficult to take him seriously when he says he has been talking with IH, after exaggerating these other things. I think they may have a point.
It would also be nice if Jed told us how close to IH's inner circle his source, or sources are, so that we can judge for ourselves the quality of what he is telling us? Maybe even clarify what he considers "talking with IH"?
Going forward we will no doubt be "fed" a lot of information as the suit progresses. We already have in fact, from Lewan's, Guest's, and now Rothwell's sources. We have to trust their info is legitimate, and the source well enough placed so that they are not merely passing on their own speculation, or purposeful misdirection. Otherwise we will all just be useful idiots fed a mix of truth and lies for whomever's purpose. Tools to be used. We don't want that.
Shane
Yes, I noticed that earlier.
Best regards
Frank
I did the math on heating an Olympic-sized pool with a 1MW heater a long time ago.
What surprised me most was how small 1MW was in comparison to the job.
Sorry I scrapped the calculations, so I can't show my work.
If I remember correctly, I think that I worked out that 3MW would be better unless there is no hurry, to go from 20C to 80C.
4.186 joules = 1 calorie
1 calorie heats 1 g of H₂O 1° C
2,500,000 liters in a full Olympic pool
2,500,000,000 grams × 4.186 = 10.5 GJ per degree
10.5 GJ = 2.9 MWh per degree
+20° × 2.9 MWh/° = 58 hours to heat 20°
So, yes … you're right. For an Olympic sized pool, a 1 MW heater ain't much. More like 10 MW needed.
But for a large residential swimming pool? Only 72,000 liters!
72,000 × 1000 × 4.186 = 300 MJ/°
+20° × 300 MJ/° = 6,000 MJ.
6,000 MJ ÷ 3.6 MJ/kWh = 1,600 kWh for 20 deg.
Equals … 1.6 MWh.
So, in 1.6 hours, one could heat that home pool SIGNIFICANTLY.
Hard to divert that heat!
GoatGuy
Shane
But we don't know what Industrial Heat believes, we only know what Jeb thinks they believe. And if you believe Tom??, then Tom believes, Jeb doesn't really believe what he says he believes because he 'rowed back'. Presumably now Jeb doesn't believe there is a second ERV just observers, I don't believe we can believe any of that, its beyond belief!!
Frank,
Today Jed seems to be saying his conclusions about IH are based on his reading of the same stuff we read; their response to the lawsuit and cryptic public statement, along with a whole lot of assumptions. That makes me wonder about his supposed relationship with IH. Maybe I misread him earlier, but I got the impression he was in touch with them NOW, and they told him the plant didn't work. It didn't produce heat. Test was a failure. Apparently though, he deduced that from the press release, along with other things.
Unless he clarifies this, I think I will go back to treating his comments as speculation, and no better sourced than ours.
""Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer." - Voltaire
I am absolutely addicted to the drama. In the last few days, @me356 raised his head to say "Remember me? I have been busy for the last few months. And now I can light up me356Cats at will". And seems quite happy to discuss all aspects of lighting one up except one: the secret trigger that ignites the reaction. Is that the same secret that Rossi failed to divulge to IH?
Pass the popcorn, please.
If LENR does exist, that's great and we can fit a few billion more souls on our planet (and probably use it to terraform Mars and Venus while we are at it.) It's just too bad that everybody on low lying islands will suffer the consequences until the IP drama plays itself out.
Please do not ascribe this view to me. I did not depend on any inside sources. I.H. made it clear they do not agree with Rossi's ERV report in their March 10 announcement and in their response to his lawsuit. Look at the two press releases:
Rossi claimed the machine "often generat[ed] energy exceeding fifty (50) times the amount of energy consumed during the same period."
I.H. came back and said, "Industrial Heat has worked for over three years to substantiate the results claimed by Mr. Rossi from the E-Cat technology – all without success."
Whatever meaning you ascribe to "substantiate," surely that sentence rules out a machine that produces 50 times input!
Either Rossi is making a big mistake, or I.H. is. You cannot judge who is right until you read their reports. But you can guess. I suppose Rossi is mistaken, because he has made big mistakes in the past, whereas the people at I.H. seem competent to me.
That's all there is to it.
@GoatGuy
Thanks.
I think I can see where I came up with the 3 MW. I probably figured that at least 1°C per hour would be a minimum useful heater for such a big pool, especially in consideration of possible losses that might be working against it.
(Also people turning up a thermostat will want to see something happen within a couple hours, or they might start calling repairpersons or worse, fiddling with the heater to try and make it go faster.)
Thomas, you wrote some cogent comments about fact vs. interpretation, and, then, levels of interpretation, effectively calling on Bayesian statistics.
Bayesian arguments are never proof and are highly susceptible to bias in estimating prior probabilities. But we all rely on this, routinely. It's fascinating to see so many make a pile of assumptions and then demand "proof" for anything contrary to the assumptions. And, of course, they are quick to say that plausible arguments to the contrary of their position are not "proof," as if this means "Shut up!"
I've seen this kind of argument for thirty years on-line. It used to amaze me.
Quote from Abd:
That is true, and I'm not saying it is unlikely for Rossi, who responds emotionally to what he considers betrayal - look at his reaction to Krivit - might do this.
On the Vortex list, I think it was, someone mentioned Flash of Genius.
This is about the inventor of windshield wiper delay. He sued Ford and Chrysler for patent infringement. He won, but .... he had been offered $30 million by Ford, if I have the story right. He thought that wasn't enough and what he actually wanted was to manufacture the devices himself. He fired his attorneys and represented himself. He ended up winning $10 million from Ford. Later, he won with Chrysler, also, $20 million. So he did end up with $30 million, but with all the stress, his wife divorced him, and it's likely he would have ended up with about $60 million if he had taken the settlement from Ford and then went for the like of it with Chrysler.
He had a good case! But he was high-functioning insane. He made decisions out of his paranoia and demand for control.
QuoteIt is also possible that he would calculate that it would be so embarrassing for IH to contest his action that they are likely to settle. Personally I don't see this as Rossi's way, but we none of us can know, and it is a possible motive.
He may calculate many things. Many observers attempt to understand Rossi by assuming he is rational. For years, I maintained a story as a possibility that Rossi was deliberately maintaining an appearance of being a con artist, in order to discourage imitation, explaining why he created tantalizing appearances (to attract possible investors, and it worked), but never allowed independent replication (because then competitors would be sure he had something and might then start pouring money into finding what he found). And then I noted that it was impossible to distinguish this strategy from actually being a con artist.
However, all this assumes sane self-interest. What if he isn't sane? Yes. Maybe he imagines he can bully IH into coughing up the money. However, alleging fraud would make this far less likely, my opinion.
It doesn't actually matter if IH was trying to defraud him (though I very much doubt that). The issue is the effect of the suit. For starters, until and unless Rossi prevails, his ability to gain substantial funding probably went to about zero. Who is going to fund him if he sues those who invest, instead of doing what a sane inventor would do if there was a delay in payment?
I find it extremely unlikely that any reasonably competent attorney would advise him to sue the way he did, unless he absolutely insisted. And now Rossi is claiming that he can't release the ERV report because his attorney won't let him. Supposedly this would invalidate it as evidence.
Jed Rothwell has pointed out that this is preposterous, and, of course, he was attacked as not being an attorney. I don't have to be an attorney to know that evidence does not become not-evidence by being published. Someone is massively confused. Massive confusion is characteristic of insanity.
I still hope that Rossi actually has something. Just because he is crazy doesn't mean he is wrong about everything. However, my sense of the odds is that they have flipped.
QuoteYes. I can be pretty confident what some of those facts are, as I've articulated here. But how they affect this case I have no idea. Also how willing IH will be to use them I've no idea. The more they contest Rossi's own tests the more they look foolish. I'm not saying that a high risk high reward gamble is foolish, but the way it appears is bad PR.
It's crucial to notice that we have very, very little from IH. We have some rumors about things. Nothing that IH has done seriously harms their credibility so far, and this is why:
What they have said, defending the lawsuit, is that IH has been unable to confirm Rossi's claims. They also claim that Rossi has violated his agreements. Among his agreements was to be, with the payment of the $10 million, a complete disclosure of IP, so that IH could, completely independently, build and operate a 1 MW plant of Rossi's design, and so that they could also modify the designs. The full provision of IP was essential to the agreement, and if Rossi has failed to provide that, not only does IH not owe him the $89 million, he owes them a refund of the $10 million, unless they insist on specific performance. They did buy the 100 MW plant for $1.5 million, his price.
That is not a claim that there was no excess heat. It is not even a claim that the ERV report was wrong. They haven't mentioned the ERV report.
But hundreds of people rush to comment as if X and Y happened that have not happened. People do not know how to distinguish what actually happened from what they make it mean.
I'll say this again: IH has not lost credibility at all. Rossi has. I see the private conversations of LENR researchers. It has turned drastically negative, and some stories are being told that were not disclosed until now. I cannot give specifics, but .... many serious LENR researchers are angry. Rossi's claims, they alleged, caused funding for other approaches to LENR to largely disappear. After all, if you are working on something, maybe you can get 10 watts reliably (which would be a good result in LENR), a megawatt power plant in operation makes that look silly. In fact, if Rossi were to disappear, there is little strong evidence for NiH reactions, and only scattered reports, with little independent confirmation.
So the claim of damage to LENR research is quite plausible, in spite of Peter Gluck's sputtering. Peter has been part of the damage, deprecating Palladium Deuteride, when the only independent, widely confirmed, reproducible work has been with Palladium Deuteride.
I have been referring to Plan A for a LENR breakthrough. Plan A was that Rossi -- or someone -- releases a commercial device that anyone can purpose and test, and it works. Plan B was to pursue normal science, probably with PdD (though not being limited to that).
I think I need to switch the lables. Plan A is now to do the science and get it published, hang practical applications yet, that's premature. Plan B is that some entrepreneur gets lucky -- or does good work.
We never could do anything to promote the old Plan A, anyway. We can do plenty on the new Plan A. Public opinion can make a difference with it.
