Rossi: “Steam Was Superheated” in 1MW Plant Test

    Quote from Shane


    Are you saying Rossi was adamant about the 1 year test, because he felt doing it that way would satisfy IH's need for proof, while also advancing the tech towards commercialization? "Kill two birds with one stone" as they say.


    If so, that sounds pretty reasonable on his part to me. One could even argue he was passing up a quick, easy $89 million pay out, for the heroic purpose of getting his Ecat to market.


    I think you'd need to explain this. The long-term test, as implemented by Rossi, appears to have no relevance to e-cat commercialisation.

    About the October 6, 2011, test.


    Lewan, who was there and reported the measured data, considers this test “The most convincing demonstration” of the Ecat (1). But looking carefully at the data, it can only convince that the Ecat is unable to produce any excess heat.


    In fact, he provided recently a new version of the energy balance of that test. He wrote (2):
    “I had a new look at the calculations of the October 6, 2011, test, which was recently disputed. A total of about 31 MJ of electric energy was input. At 0,9 g/s, a total of about 26 kg of water was input during the test from 11 am until 7 pm. Heating this water from 25 to 116 degrees centigrade requires about 10 MJ. During the last 5 hours, 16 kg of this water was also evaporated, which required about 36 MJ. An estimated 100W was radiated from the E-Cat for at least 5h, making about 2MJ. The E-Cat was leaking a significant amount of hot water during large parts of the test. Even without taking this lost thermal energy into account, about 48MJ was released and 31MJ input, which gives a rough COP of 1.5."


    But Lewan made a wrong assumption about the mass of water evaporated, it couldn’t have been 16 kg. On the basis of the other numbers he lists, the total mass of water pumped inside the Ecat was 26 kg, but the internal volume of a fat-cat was 20 liters at minimum, and at the end of the test it was full of water, therefore the evaporated water could have been 6 kg at maximum (probably much less). So, the 36 MJ he calculated for the vaporization of the water become 13.5 MJ, and the total heat release decreases from 48 to 25.5 MJ, becoming less than the 31 MJ of electric energy input, and giving a COP<1.


    As well known, the fat-cat tested on October 6 was one of the modules of 1 MW plant tested on October 28, 2011, in Bologna, which substantially is equal to the 1 MW plant tested for one year in Florida. Therefore, the data from the October 6 test are also the most complete and meaningful ones for guessing the actual energy performances of both the 1 MW plants.


    (1) https://animpossibleinvention.…s-on-the-rossi-ih-affair/
    (2) https://animpossibleinvention.…ilding-plus-more-updates/

    Quote from Thomas Clarke

    I think you'd need to explain this. The long-term test, as implemented by Rossi, appears to have no relevance to e-cat commercialisation.


    It would have been useful. Before commercializing a product, you need some burn-in. You need to refine the safe operating parameters. You need to assess its overall durability and reliability. And now, the 1MW plants are apparently available for purchase in non-IH territories, to the suitable industrial-type players, who have the gumption and wherewithal to place the order. I would suggest that the year long test was quite useful to a commercialization effort.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Thomas Clarke

    The long-term test, as implemented by Rossi, appears to have no relevance to e-cat commercialisation.



    Tom,


    We don't know yet if the 1 year trial is irrelevant. You even admit as such by saying it: "appears to have no relevance". The more I read, the more it appears we are taking sides based on very, very limited information. Yes, I agree with you and most others, that from what we do know, what has been fed to us, so far points against Rossi.


    But then again, there are others with inside information who still think this may go Rossi's way. You never allowed me to copy to here Mat's Lewan's email to you the other day. He makes it very clear in that email that he has information you, and we, are not privy to. Information that makes him believe that, not only are you wrong about this test, but also the others you have reviewed (6 Oct. /Lugano), and concluded they were not overunity....although for the record, you did conclude, as your best guess estimate, that Lugano was COP1.07.

    Quote from Ascoli65

    But looking carefully at the data, it can only convince that the Ecat is unable to produce any excess heat.


    It is, of course, a function of how long you run the test, if you use total energy in versus total energy out (i.e., power integrated over time).


    Now, if you consider the fact that the unit ran in SSM mode for hours, in view of many witnesses of renowned character, then this contradicts your conclusion. After opening up and showing the internals of the unit, it doesn't surprise me that it drew a sustained applause from those in attendance. One of the proudest moments of Rossi's life, as he later explained his thoughts about the demonstration.

    A team of investigators looking into a crime does not forgo discussion of different possibilities on the basis that not enough is known. Nor does a group of physicists trying to understand some interesting experimental results limit discussion only to what is known with certainty. Discussions of a more speculative nature, but grounded in real facts, do not seem to me to be equivalent to theological debates about the existence of God, which forgo empiricism entirely. The analyses in this thread are useful and fruitful, even if we haven't seen the ERV's report yet. For sure, that document will settle a lot of questions that we don't have insight into at this point. Hopefully it and other documents will become available before too long.

    Quote from IH Fanboy

    And now, the 1MW plants are apparently available for purchase in non-IH territories, to the suitable industrial-type players, who have the gumption and wherewithal to place the order.


    The world saving technology of the century is "available for purchase" yet all we hear is that of yet ANOTHER secret customer. Evidently no one in the world other than the new secret customer has the "gumption" or rather in my opinion the gravely bad judgement of spending a million dollars on a plant that has never been proven to do what it claims. If you step back a minute I would think you would see how absurd this is. Plus if the QuarkX is truly real (which I believe to the tune of about .000234% probability), why on earth would anyone consider the ECat rather than wait "just-ah few-ah more-ah month-sah" for the magic QuarkX that will provide heat, light and electricity itself!! Common sense.......

    Quote from Dewey Weaver

    IHFB - Rossi insisted on a 1MW long term test. He was adamant that all other test options were a waste of his time. At the time, IH concluded that he must know what he was doing and decided that if he was successful then $89M would be a reasonable fee in exchange for an accelerated path to commercialization.

    This is consistent with other information we have, as to the Rossi side of this. However, I would suspect that the IH conclusion here was somewhat forced. It was the Rossi way or the highway.


    That stand was face-palm crazy. Before commercialization, it would be necessary to have fully detailed and extensive testing of the reactor units, providing full reliability data, MTBF, etc. Running a 1 MW test first would not provide that data, unless the test fully characterized each reactor within the 1 MW unit, in which case the summary result (overall production) would be irrelevant. One would want to make many reactors, many more than contained in the 1 MW reactor, and test some of them to destruction.


    If the megawatt test postponed that, it was delaying commercialization, not accelerating it. The megawatt test itself was totally unnecessary for commercial purpose. If one has reliable reactors with lower power, each, it's then easy to make reactor assemblies as large as one wants. But the market for smaller reactors would be much larger! To get to market ASAP, what was needed was to test individual reactor units, freezing the design as soon as it was adequate, and then fully testing a stable design.


    The 1 MW test was obviously grandstanding, and as to some sort of public test, it could make some sense, because it's impossible to fake a megawatt. Or is it? Basically, the idea that it's impossible to fake it requires seeing the effect of a megawatt of power, not just some calculation. But the test as set up, apparently by Rossi, concealed the effect. It was behind a locked door.


    And I can think of possible ways to be fooled about what's happening between inlet pipe and outlet, what's happening in the outlet pipe, and then even more ways to actually fake a megawatt (which is different from being fooled, oneself, and which allows deliberate ingenuity to come into play). In this field I would always want multiple measures, confirmations, ultimately independent, until one is completely confident of results (and then a single measure, proven to be accurate, may be enough.)


    And a proof of performance test would, I'd think, need to be fully independent. Once IH had paid Rossi for complete IP, which happened with the $10 million, there was no longer any excuse for not allowing fully independent testing, Rossi hands off. Yes, if something breaks, he'd be consulted. But if he cannot communicate how to fix it, the IP has not been transferred.


    There would also be the issue of Rossi, perhaps, not trusting his partner (IH) to fairly test the device. That could be handled by allowing Rossi to observe, probably through a representative, a portion of the tests. Certainly not all!


    Dewey, I suspect you are not telling us everything. That would not be at all surprising and is not reprehensible. I would actually assume that IH did attempt to run individual reactor tests. So what were the results? Total failure, no XP? Partial failure, XP but under expectations? Or full performance?


    With full performance, IH would have disregarded the 1 MW test and would have raised the money and paid Rossi the $89 million, for obvious reasons, and if they had trouble raising it, they would still have found a way. So, at least, assuming that my expectation about independent testing is accurate, they did not fully confirm Rossi's claims or reasonable expectations from them. (Rossi has never released, to my knowledge, reliability data, which is crucial.)


    What the rest of the planet wants to know is if the Rossi effect is real. I hope that IH understands that this is a larger question than "Rossi this" or "Rossi that." And then there is an even larger question, NiH reactions. IH is involved with other researchers, but these are narrow initiatives. If NiH is real, this could justify billions in yearly investment, once that finding is validated and confirmed. The lost opportunity cost from delay is enormous, which includes consideration of the environmental impact of relying on possibly more-polluting technologies. I have often said it is $1 trillion per year.


    If IH paid $11.5 million for a pig in a poke, humanity needs to know how much of a pig and how much of a poke!

    I see Rossi randombit0 has stopped responding to me ever since I called out his real identity. Rossi, randombit0, why are you afraid to answer my questions...especially if you are not who I believe you are? BTW....feel free to use my SteamCat concept, and you really should use Levi as the spokesmodel, it would work brilliantly!

    Quote from stephenrenzz

    yet all we hear is that of yet ANOTHER secret customer.


    There are, apparently, multiple interested parties in purchasing the eCat. Put your feelers out--the information is floating about, albeit admittedly unconfirmed. The eCat is a more mature product, relatively speaking. The QuarkX is still in the very early stages of development. Now, to your question of who would purchase the eCat? Nobody openly. Why? Because of the likes of you and others who would crucify their reputation in public if given the chance. The reputation trap not only applies to those of a scientific pursuit. People and companies are very sensitive to that sort of thing. So, we get secrecy, at least for the foreseeable future.

    Quote from Hank Mills

    Abd,


    To sprint forward again, he had to make another significant leap forward. The combination of direct production of electricity, higher maximum temperatures, and miniaturization of his reactors has provided him with the E-Cat X.


    I personally think it is impossible to imagine that Rossi was able to go from spending every waking hour babysitting the plant, to immediately changing gears to creating the QuarkX which is not only a fraction of the size, but also produces light of any color and produces electricity itself!!!! I am so interested in the magic part that creates controlled light color and more specifically electricity itself as that is my forte in this saga. Adding an electricity component to the device would be a monumental task alone. This is so outlandish to believe that he could so rapidly shrink the device down and then add the magic fun features. This is not said in sarcasm, but I just do not understand how this is sensible to intelligent minds.

    Quote from IH Fanboy

    Eric Walker wrote:


    You make some decent points, and while I could counter on each one, I'll just say this: The 1MW unit test was contractually required, and agreed to by IH from the get-go. That people complain about why Rossi insisted on following through on the 1MW plant test really boggles my mind.


    Indications are that Rossi was insisting on a 1 MW test long before he became involved with IH. If Dewey's comment is accurate, Rossi insisted on the 1 MW test probably when the agreement was being negotiated. He was not actually contractually obligated to run that test. As I read the contract, IH was. If the Rossi legal complaint is correct, IH had difficulty arranging a 1 MW test. I'm sure they would have agreed to lower power tests, because the difficulties in finding a suitable facility would have been greatly ameliorated. But Rossi wanted the 1 MW test, so IH let him perform it. I'm pretty sure they decided, then, that if they were not satisfied, and if their objections were reasonable, they would not accept it, regardless of what the ERV wrote.


    Some are speculating that Rossi wanted to get out of the contract with IH, believing that he'd sold the IP for too little. All this is noise, that covers up what actually happened. As pointed out by some, we haven't seen the ERV, but I will point out two things about that:


    1. We will not necessarily see the ERV. That depends on decisions made by Rossi and IH, and they are not intrinsically required to release it.
    2. If the ERV did what the agreement says, he would not have adequate evidence on which to base conclusions.


    At the risk of being a bit rude, small minds are easily boggled. There are people here who have been studying this affair since early 2011, people who already had relevant expertise.


    It is not a "complaint" about Rossi insisting on the 1 MW test. It's observing fact and reasonable and relatively expert inference about the consequences of this. From my analysis, insisting on a 1 MW test would do nothing but delay commercialization.


    Rossi never released reliability information. One of the claims of Defkalion about Rossi was that his reactors generally only worked for 24 hours. Defkalion was claiming longer operation. Now, we don't trust what Defkalion said, but ... how long did Rossi's devices work? Statistically. This is something to be determined by testing many devices, not just one.


    And not just a single collection with the output all averaged, with Rossi able to pull and replace devices not working. Consider the situation comparing that the assembly runs for 350 days with no replacements, vs Rossi replaces every device every day. And he could do that. I see nothing about the test protocol preventing it.


    In the end, what is convincing is independent testing and confirmation. Original claimant or inventor testing and demonstrations are great, but ... it is far, far too easy for such to hide artifacts, not to mention fraud. Fooling tests where the testers can take everything apart and put it back together, can add their own instrumentation and run their own tests, that is very, very difficult, if not impossible. But putting on a show for experts, even, not difficult. I can and have thought of many ways to do it. and human ingenuity is endless. A really good magician can completely fool an audience of experts, unless they already know the trick and therefore know what to look for. The magician will control what the audience sees. The possibilities are endless.


    We do not start with assuming fraud on the part of anyone. It's rude, for starters. As to scientific reports, fraud is way down on the list of possibilities, and a scientist who commits fraud has totally trashed his or her career. And then scientists dealing with inventors may assume a similar culture. But it's not so. Outside of some narrow circumstances, an inventor can stage fake demonstrations all day long, over and over, with no legal harm. Where an inventor will get into trouble is if they raise money based on fraud (and, for years, I pointed out that what was being said in public did not matter, it was what was in disclosures under NDA to investors that would be important). So ... it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out with IH and Rossi. Rossi has claimed fraud, but based on his complaints, a fraud finding against IH seems extremely unlikely, as I've heard legal opinion and I agree.


    I'd be very worried if I were Rossi, because if, for example, IH relied on the Lugano test, and if Rossi knew -- or reasonably could be inferred to know -- that those results were in error, that could be civil fraud. And it could be criminal, though that would probably require a stronger showing of fraudulent intent.


    On the other hand, there is always an insanity defense. What did Rossi know and when did he know it? And mind-reading tends to be quite difficult. Juries will sort it. And can make mistakes.

    @ IH Fanboy, you wrote:


    - "It is, of course, a function of how long you run the test, if you use total energy in versus total energy out (i.e., power integrated over time). Now, if you consider the fact that the unit ran in SSM mode for hours, in view of many witnesses of renowned character, then this contradicts your conclusion."


    The total energy out calculated by Lewan already considers the so-called SSM period, up to 7 p.m.. The same holds for my corrected version.


    The SSM period in reality is simply the cooling period of an hot core contained inside the internal box and heated up to 5-700 °C in the first part of the test, storing in this way a large part of the 31 MJ electric input. The so-called SSM period lasted until when the temperature of this hot core become too low for sustaining the boiling of the water surrounding the internal box. The duration of the cooling depends on the weight of the hot core. The fat-cat tested on October 6, weighted 98 kg (void of water), and we can assume that at least 40 kg was the metallic core, fitted inside the internal box. This mass was able to keep the water at the boiling point for more than 3 hours, after the switch off of the electric heater.


    - "After opening up and showing the internals of the unit,"


    Only the lid of the external reservoir was lifted. The internal box, presumably hosting the steel plates which form the hot core, as well as the electric heater, was not opened.

    Quote from IH Fanboy

    There are, apparently, multiple interested parties in purchasing the eCat. Put your feelers out--the information is floating about, albeit admittedly unconfirmed. The eCat is a more mature product, relatively speaking. The QuarkX is still in the very early stages of development. Now, to your question of who would purchase the eCat? Nobody openly. Why? Because of the likes of you and others who would crucify their reputation in public if given the chance. The reputation trap not only applies to those of a scientific pursuit. People and companies are very sensitive to that sort of thing. So, we get secrecy, at least for the foreseeable future.


    That line of thinking is so flawed. The makers and consumers of "widget X" are completely unaffected by "the likes of (me) and others"...do you understand what a tiny percentage of the population "we" are here on these forums and such. To fathom that Nike or Samsung. Google, or any company in the world would be affected business wise by a few engineers and science geeks is beyond preposterous. Do you really want to stick with that ridiculous notion?


    The reality is that no one is buying them because there is absolutely NO proof that they work...in fact now quite a bit to the contrary...even partially by fault of Rossi.



    There would most likely be numerous inherent issues in shrinking the device from the ECat size to QuarkX that would take substantial R&D time, that Rossi magically came up with in beyond short order...I don't buy it.


    Next he was speaking about any color your wanted when asked specifically about color on JoNP (I don't have the link)...this would be dramatically different than just producing colors we would expect from the operation...and he claimed it is controllable...simply amazing!!!!


    Then we have the electricity issue. The "harvesting somehow" is the elephant in the room on this one. Has he said ANYTHING about his magic conversion to electricity? As this is my field, I am VERY anxious to get my hands on details and data for this part...he must have QUITE the electrical/electronic engineering staff on hand for this part. Shocking you would find all of this perfectly acceptable and at very least not interesting or questionable....that tells me much.

Subscribe to our newsletter

It's sent once a month, you can unsubscribe at anytime!

View archive of previous newsletters

* indicates required

Your email address will be used to send you email newsletters only. See our Privacy Policy for more information.

Our Partners

Supporting researchers for over 20 years
Want to Advertise or Sponsor LENR Forum?
CLICK HERE to contact us.