Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”

  • Yes Jed, that is the one I mean't


    Oh. Which one did you mean?


    Your theory of IH's behavior is a reasonable one of many.


    More of a guess than a theory.


    They were in fact disillusioned with Rossi well before that 1 year test as you say. First indicator of that was when Gary Wright ("ShutRossiDown") reported Rossi to the North Carolina State Radiation Agency for operating an unlicensed nuclear reactor. Regulators paid IH a visit and talked with Vaughn in response. Took a lot of measurements. In their post visit report dated Dec 2014, they quoted Vaughn as saying "Rossi is not credible". The GPT (1 year test) started Feb 2015.


    That is interesting. I was not aware of that. Thanks for the info.


    This is what they told several people. I expect this is also what they told the investor from the U.K. Apparently they were not hiding their opinion that "Rossi is not credible."

  • The answer is simple and contains only three letters...


    Do you mean "NDA"? A sort of agreement, for which JR could, or should, publish and support all the positive claims about the Ecat tests, but with the prohibition to highlight any errors, even the most evident? And, moreover, with a mandate to contradict and oppose anyone who highlighted them?


    If this is what you mean, why he should have signed such an agreement? And with whom?


  • You still have not checked the Lugano setup. There was never a full three phase set up, as one phase was reserved for the "superwave" induction current.
    Using a common ground (prerequisite) this would have lead to a great mess.....



    Quote from andrea.s: “your comment on 3 phase input is pure fantasy. And "superwave" is a laughable term:”


    Did You ever follow LENR? On p.6 Fig.5 You can see the frequency decomposition. They posted it just for Your fun...


    Wyttenbach you had said something intelligent on the rods heat transfer, now you are are instead back to a discouraging standard.


    Figure 5 is called a chopped AC. It is one of the industry standard ways to efficiently control power on a resistive load, by controlling the AC duty cycle via thyristor switches.
    You are free to think that the narrow current peaks also have the function of triggering LENR.
    But phases are not "reserved", ask your electricIan. The I3 current peaks you see in fig.5 on each half period flow from V1 to V3 and V2 to V3, or viceversa.
    I1 and I2 will look exactly the same though shifted in time by one sixth and one third of a period.


    The plot posted for my fun is very telling because it reveals a 3kW electrical input.


    Of course you can believe that it is not a plot related to the active run. But then what is it? Aren't you curious to know?

  • JedRothwell

    Quote

    These people, to start with


    Who among them has been able to set up a reactor like E-Cat? Does Nanor really exist? Has somebody among them tested it?
    Who among them has got his paper archived in exfor?
    You have been bitterly disappointed by Rossi; other disappointments may be just around the corner.
    In less than a minute I can offer you the cross section of the Preparata reaction. Can I find the same in your library made by cold fusionists ?

  • @Wyttenbach,
    What do you think? Is the Lugano Report Figure 7 showing the Active Run, part 1? Below is a first pass estimate. I just eyeballed the heat curve in for the 237°C Figure 7. I bet I could fine tune it to 308°C without too much fuss. (I used an ε of 0.69 across the whole range for simplicity)


    I get slightly lower radiation and convection values than Lugano for the rods, using the Convection Wizard calculator, but not by much. 9.84 W for Area 1, upper versus 10.55 W from the report. Not enough to make much difference. I have a (hellish) spreadsheet that uses the report formulas and values. But since guesses are being fed in, I don't see the need for "precision" just yet.


    EDIT: I mucked that up slightly. I had 21°C in for some reason for the calculations. Might have to change that by a couple of watts..
    Oh well. It's just a first pass anyways...

  • @andrea.s
    I'm not certain how to that. I suppose it could be done.
    I just plotted the Lugano dummy rod figures, as a baseline, then a purely guessed slope starting at 237 C, that essentially matched the dummy profile, and ending at room temperature, which I then used to plug in the temperature into the convection-radiation calculator to get the total heat watts. Presumably any starting temperature could be used. And the entire coil could be plotted the same way, using the data in the report.


    I based the other comparison on heating the rods soley by the short wire leads that exit the reactor, but which isn't including any heat from the reactor body or caps. Which isn't truly representative.


    It was also a first pass, based on a totally independent look at how long those leads are based on the patent application, how much they stick out of the caps, and how much Joule heat power they would make at the amperages that are reported (dummy) and previously calculated for the active run. No thermodynamics was used at all. It is strictly a Joule heat calculation.


    I simply took the reasonable guess of length of the leads sticking out of the caps, and their calculated resistance. What was neat was how well it matched the other power figures for the active run. What didn't work is using the same method for the entire coil. I think. I would either have force 3 times the current through the short leads in a delta to get the right Joule heat, or the delta had to make 2880 Watts Joule heat with the whole coil assembly, when using the same math.


    But it falls very short for the Joule heat required to get the power correct for the dummy rods using the same method.
    Almost exactly 1/2. About 61 W instead of 129.


    The twisted 15 Ga wire leads have a resistance of 0.00055 ohms/mm.


    I would have built the whole thing by now, and tested it, if I could figure out how to power it....

  • @andrea.s,
    I can do one with a 1410 C reactor, but what T would be the start of the rods?
    I might have to plot out the whole coil to see what might be reasonable.
    The main reason I started the above plot was to see if there is a good cap to rod heat relationship, but I hadn't gotten to the caps yet.


  • Ascoli I tend to think simple.


    Rossi started working on trying to reproduce patents on CF. Focardi was intrigued and hungry for vindication over his research efforts, but in his late years was probably unable to check accuracy of the setups. He trusted Rossi.
    Levi worked with Focardi and hoped for recognition as one of the guys who found the new fire.
    Jed was and is the recognized LENR librarian, obviously welcoming extraordinary results in cold fusion, and useful in their quick diffusion whereas mainstream science journals would be skeptical and slow. Jed is not a scientist, and of course was positively biased.


    So it is straightforward why Levi released the news of extraordinary results to Jed even before consulting his colleagues in Bologna. Many of his colleagues would be criticizing and demanding, and an endorsement coming from overseas would help in rejecting objections.


    Now the question is, were the alleged mistakes intentional, and if so who are the intentional deceivers?


    I think this is a mix of
    1.initial delusion due to flawed measurements, followed by
    2. the desperate attempt to reproduce results, only happening at times (when the flaws were reproduced), and
    3. the setting up of demos (to state a priority of invention and to raise funding) where failure was not an option and leading to "backup strategies" so to speak.


    Even the 1 MW plant makes sense for a deluded inventor who thinks his reactors work "at times" but in an uncontrolled manner. If the COP obtained is 200 once every twenty failed runs, one may think that the one good test is flawed, or one may cherry-pick the good result and attribute the failures to the random nature of the phenomenon. Without a grasp on the phenomenon, and relying on statistics, one may assemble 100 reactors in series and parallel and hope to get an average COP of 10.


    Then if you have had success with backup strategies for three times, you may be tempted to try again. And the obsession for success once you have invested your life in a delusion may lead to weird behaviours.

  • Ascoli65

    Quote

    Have you understood the historical importance of the demo held in Bologna, on January 14, 2011, at the presence of a dozen of members (or ex-members) of the local Department of Physics? They took publicly the responsibility to measure the possible excess heat produced by a presumed revolutionary device and to properly report it to the public opinion.


    What are worrying about? It is only a gloomy story of "incompetence and delusion" as always happens with cold fusion. Do you think those "members" were aware that the odd tin-foiled object didn't work? A too baroque hypothesis. Cold fusion is full of proff, beginning from Fleischmann and Pons.

  • Quote from "Shane D"

    They were in fact disillusioned with Rossi well before that


    Not according to Darden in the Macy interview of May 2015. He was pretty exstatic (or do you mean he did only put on that show to raise money?)

  • "Shane D" wrote:
    They were in fact disillusioned with Rossi well before that


    Not according to Darden in the Macy interview of May 2015. He was pretty exstatic (or do you mean he did only put on that show to raise money?)

    Ecstatic.


    This is common on Planet Rossi. Personal conclusions are presented as if they were fact, references to sources with no links, and then there is an information cascade, if the writer is trusted.


    http://www.infinite-energy.com…/pdfs/DardenInterview.pdf


    The interview took place on April 13, 2015, in Padua, at ICCF-19. Darden gave a speech, and many noticed how little he said about Rossi. This was the speech:


    http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…speech-on-lenr-at-iccf19/


    And then there is Acland's personal hit, back then:
    http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…dardens-approach-to-lenr/


    Put this together with what we know about Rossi's world view. This is what I imagine he thought: "They are working with my competitors! The snakes!" However, he did not say that then.


    Acland on the Macy interview:


    http://www.e-catworld.com/2015…n-some-really-good-stuff/


    Not "ecstatic." It is worth reading Acland and the comments on his post, at that time.


    Darden and IH have not attacked Rossi. Dewey Weaver, an investor in IH and an advisor has made statements without official color, and has given us, then, rumors, but IH's very brief comments have been defensive in nature, and far from comprehensive. The basic story from them is that IH was unable to confirm Rossi claims. It is very clear that


    1. IH was willing to invest in Rossi without comprehensive, independent verification, and was willing to spin this positively.
    2. Rossi continued to avoid such verification even after IH had invested and promised more.
    3. IH was "pleased with their investment." It seems they continue to be so, just not in the way that many expect.


    From the Macy interview:

    Quote

    Darden: We have always, in almost everything we've been involved with in more than 100 or more deals, embraced a timeframe that is not consistent with the typical way of doings with venture deals. There used to be historical venture capital and some of those people had really long time horizons, like a decade or so. I am telling you, if you get into the tech world...that stuff is fast. It’s really, really inexpensive to build. I’m totally sympathetic. They have investors. They have to manage expectations. They have to respond to the expectation of investors. If you’re going to invest a very small amount of money, not much capital, not many people, you create. If you can invest a small amount of capital, look at it and say, “I’m not sure if it’s going to move the needle. But it’s worth $40 billion to somebody so that’s what they have to do.” You go to them about LENR and say, “All right, we're not really sure about the picture of the market. And we don’t know what it’s going to cost. And it’s going to take a really long time. Come on in, the water’s fine.” This takes a different mentality.
    [...]
    I’d rather be the first one to lose money, not the last one to lose money.
    Macy: So...Your money is in this?
    Darden: Oh, yeah. I’ve been the primary funder. I think there probably are a lot of people out there like me.


    Someone who describes Darden as ecstatic in this interview, meaning totally positive on Rossi Reality, isn't reading Darden correctly. Darden is ecstatic all right, but it's about his approach to life and reality. He is not attached to specific outcomes, to "being right." He knows that to win a few, one must lose a few. In fact, he is operating outside the realm of personal win and loss. He is leading humanity, and $11.5 million was a small investment. Cherokee typically starts a limited partnership with about $25 million of their own money, and then the LP may raise hundreds of millions. In the case of IH, it was not Cherokee investing at all, it was Darden and others, personally.


    Sifferkoll has "or do you mean he did only put on that show to raise money?"


    Well, did he? Maybe. Something wrong with that? He is talking about a field that could absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and it might not be enough to "move the needle." At this point, Darden was probably talking with Woodford. By this time, April 2015, from what we have heard, IH was unable to make devices that worked when tested independently -- by IH or their consultants. If they misrepresented the situation to Woodford, they would be committing investment fraud. What we know is that Woodford did invest, $50 million (exactly!). So IH multiplied their original investment by maybe four. And even though the Rossi IP did not pan out for them -- yet! -- they now have a hedge, protecting their other LENR investments. These people do not put all their eggs in one basket.


    Rossi was, in the end, incredibly naive. Did he really believe that they would give him another $89 million without him showing them how to make working devices? Just because Penon said the 1 MW plant worked? The same expert who certified the Validation Test in 2013 that triggered the $10 million payment for the License and full IP disclosure? Rossi set that up. And IH allowed it, because they knew full well that if they did not agree, Rossi would take his marbles elsewhere. And then the market uncertainty would continue. To them, to counter the risk of an "October surprise" as some on Planet Rossi are calling it, $11.5 million was a cheap hedge, protecting what could be hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, or more, before they are done.


    IH is funding real science, that I know, and it's not only risky, some of it is "blue sky" research, unlikely to produce specific and focused profit. Investment in rising the tide to lift all boats. And that's what Darden talked about in 2015, and IH has been putting its money where his mouth was. It is now more "other people's money" than his. He seeded it, got the ball rolling, he and his friends, including Dewey Weaver, but also Ampenergo (Rossi's first licensee in the Americas), which is an investor in IH Holdings International, Ltd, which is where Woodford put the $50 million.


    These people are not attacking Rossi, but neither are they allowing him to dominate a field of massive importance to humanity, with his extravagant claims, empty promises, failed commitments, and now, claims he was defrauded. It has all become totally obvious.

  • Ascoli I tend to think simple.


    I too, but for me it means to think as simple as possible. If the simplest hypothesis doesn't match the evidences, it should be replaced by the next simpler one.


    Quote

    Rossi started working on trying to reproduce patents on CF.


    Who said this, Rossi? Only a few people in the world know how and why he has been involved in this field. I guess one of these is Marianne Macy, the wife of Michael Melich, a physics PhD, professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, who appears since the beginning in the Advisory Board of JoNP, as a member of DoD-USA.


    A few months ago, she wrote a long article (1), which, among many other things, provided very interesting information about the first contacts among them three. In particular she wrote: "Rossi not only didn’t wait for the ICCFs; he didn’t attend them. He gave demonstrations of his technology, put videos on the internet, ran his own website, and worked ceaselessly to get what he was doing out there. He knew PR. At one point when he was just starting to get up a head of steam and his ECat technology had not yet been named, I attended a meeting with him in the offices of a major public relations firm in offices above Grand Central Station."


    Could you provide, for example, a simple explanation why they met in a PR office, and not in a scientific lab? And why she stressed his PR abilities, much more than the scientific ones?


    Further in the article: "I heard how Mike became involved in starting to explore what he was doing. Rossi claimed to be closing in on producing a working LENR technology. He had American partners who had worked with the U.S. Navy and were familiar with the continuing interest of the Navy in energy technology. In late 2007 the company requested someone with technical interest and competence to view a demonstration."


    So we know that in the same period when Rossi was approaching Focardi, his company, which was close to the US Navy, asked a professor of the US Navy to view a demonstration of his devices.


    Another quote: "Michael Melich and I probably spent more time with Andrea Rossi than most people in the LENR field, certainly in the U.S. He stayed at our home. We traveled with him. We got to know his inner circle, wife, even his mother-in-law (adorable.) We were with him in Rome, Washington, Greece, New York, and many other places. If Andrea Rossi had a working LENR technology, a lot of people were trying to help him get it out there."


    Here we have a DoD functionary which knows perfectly Rossi, having spent a lot of time with him, and accompanying him around the world in searching for help to his technology.


    And finally the last excerpt: "Michael Melich is on record in two public tutorials saying that Rossi’s 2009 demonstrations seemed to show that he was producing about 10 KW for a period of 4-5 hours."


    Do you really believe that an experienced PhD in physics, which followed the CF/LENR field since the beginning, could have been fooled on this subject by a philosopher with a well known controversial past?


    Quote

    Levi worked with Focardi and hoped for recognition as one of the guys who found the new fire.


    For what concerns UniBo, it's not a matter of Levi and Focardi, but of the whole Department of Physics. The January 2011 demo has been conducted in front of both the directors of the 2 major physics institutes in Bologna. Levi publicly recognized their support during the presentation (see the first video (2) at 5:32). After 3 months, a biannual research program on the Ecat, a device which apparently behaves like a normal electric heater, has been approved by the Council of Department (3), on behalf of all its members. Why they allowed such an affront to the physics, to the credibility of their university and to the common sense? Why, till now, nobody of that Department has corrected the numerous categorical assessments, made by many of their members, in which they undoubtedly confirmed the generation of a lot of kW in the tests they witnessed?


    Quote

    Jed was and is the recognized LENR librarian, [...]. Jed is not a scientist, and of course was positively biased. So it is straightforward why Levi released the news of extraordinary results to Jed even before consulting his colleagues in Bologna. Many of his colleagues would be criticizing and demanding, and an endorsement coming from overseas would help in rejecting objections.


    Are you kidding? As Levi told Krivit (4), at that time he was already collaborating with his colleagues of the future research group on the Ecat (5 in total), plus he had the support of his 2 directors, plus Focardi and Stremmenos. In total 9 academicians, of the most important Physics Department in Italy, at disposition to evaluate the soundness of a couple of calorimetric measurements, essentially a flow rate and a temperature! Why the hell, Levi, who until then proclaimed himself as a skeptic, should have looked for an endorsement from a biased LENR librarian, which is not even a scientist? Do you really think that his fellow physicists have been convinced by an expert in Japanese literature to give credit that a tabletop device could have produced 12 kW of excess heat?


    In any case, even if you believe at such an absurd hypothesis, how is it possible that JR got the permission to publicly reveal all the calorimetric data, ten days before the issuing of the UniBo report? Wasn't it unfair with respect to the Department, which publicly had taken the responsibility to publish those historical data?


    Quote

    Now the question is, were the alleged mistakes intentional, and if so who are the intentional deceivers?


    Exactly, these are the questions, but if you look carefully to the January 2011 data and setup, the mistakes are not alleged, nor they could be unintentional.


    Quote

    I think this is a mix of
    1.initial delusion due to flawed measurements, ...


    Come on, Andrea. An "initial" delusion lasted for more than 3 years, from October 2007 to January 2011, how could it be?


    Quote

    ... , followed by
    2. the desperate attempt to reproduce results, only happening at times (when the flaws were reproduced), and
    3. the setting up of demos (to state a priority of invention and to raise funding) where failure was not an option and leading to "backup strategies" so to speak.


    Hey, are you speaking about a reputable ancient scientific institution, or a bunch of unscrupulous adventurers?


    Quote

    Even the 1 MW plant makes sense for a deluded inventor who thinks his reactors work "at times" but in an uncontrolled manner.


    The 1 MW plant makes sense only if you want to confuse the ideas and make more difficult to identify with certainty the mundane explanation of the apparent results. Exactly as in the HotCat case.


    Quote

    Then if you have had success with backup strategies for three times, you may be tempted to try again. And the obsession for success once you have invested your life in a delusion may lead to weird behaviours.


    You keep on making the usual error, trying to explain the Ecat saga on the basis of the Rossi's bio. It's wrong. You should find a reason why the Ecat got such an impressive number of endorsements from dozens of experts belonging to so many reputable scientific and technological institutions, in the order of appearance: DoD, UniBo, UniCambridge, UniUppsala, KTH, NASA, Elforsk, and others.


    Do you really think that a philosopher with his controversial past could have convinced so many people that he had been able to find by chance a miraculous substance suitable to extract many kW of heat from a few grams of nickel powder?


    You know, being passionate of some technical details, in your case the HotCat, doesn't mean that you should ignore what is around those details. At least, if you want understand the deep reasons of what you are looking at.


    (1) http://www.infinite-energy.com…ng-a-lawsuit-in-lenr.html
    (2) Poll: Should we ban Rossi-related discussions?
    (3) http://22passi.blogspot.it/2011/06/accadde-il-21-aprile.html
    (4)

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  • So it is straightforward why Levi released the news of extraordinary results to Jed even before consulting his colleagues in Bologna.


    That's absurd. I got the papers the same time everyone else did. I have never met him or spoken to him. I have one or two e-mails from him with a few sentences granting permission to upload files. He probably does not even know who I am.

  • Quote from "besserwisser Abd"

    Ecstatic


    Thank you!!! So nice of you to correct spelling... It's actually "extatisk" in Swedish. I don't know about arab... ;)


    So, again. Darden was "extatisk" about Rossi in May last year, when the test was in progress. Maybe about the time he received the first quarterly report from Penon (equal to later reports)-

  • "besserwisser Abd" wrote:


    Thank you!!! So nice of you to correct spelling...


    You're welcome.


    "Besserwisser" literally means "better knower," but is used as in English with "know-it-all," "wise guy," "smart alec." The Urban Dictionary has "wise ass."


    This is typical of Sifferkoll. Was Darden ecstatic? I showed discussion of the speech and interview from the time. He was not considered anything like ecstatic. People noticed it. He was measured, careful, and positive.


    Ecstatic:
    1.of, relating to, or characterized by ecstasy or a state of sudden,intense, overpowering emotion: an ecstatic frenzy;ecstatic cheering for the winning team.


    2.subject to or in a state of ecstasy; full of joy; rapturous:They are absolutely ecstatic about their new baby.


    Quote

    It's actually "extatisk" in Swedish. I don't know about arab...


    Extatisk does seem to be an exact equivalent for "ecstatic." As for "arab," he probably means Arabic, and what does that have to do with me? Does he think I'm an Arab? Why?


    Quote

    So, again. Darden was "extatisk" about Rossi in May last year, when the test was in progress. Maybe about the time he received the first quarterly report from Penon (equal to later reports)-


    In other words, insult the author, ignore entirely the presented evidence, and just reassert the claim, adding something else irrelevant.


    Sifferkoll is a classic troll and recklessly careless with truth. With, ah, a strong conflict of interest, while so happy to accuse others of it, he is, person-who-lives-in-a-glass-house.


    He is only here to confuse and obstruct and waste time and space, while accusing others of doing that.


    I'd be very happy to see moderators here start enforcing topic focus, moving posts to appropriate places (leaving behind a link). Trolls badly mangle the usefulness of the Forum, though we all participate in this to some degree.

  • What are worrying about? It is only a gloomy story of "incompetence and delusion" as always happens with cold fusion.


    Cold fusion it's only partially a story of "incompetence and delusion", it looks more, at best, like a story of "Tooth Fairy Syndrome", a human behavior explained in a recent article written by Louis Arnoux for the Ugo Bardi's blog (1): "... we are in this situation fundamentally because of what I call the “Tooth Fairy Syndrome”, [...] the prevalence of a fair amount of magical thinking at the heart of decision-making within both the GEI [Global Energy Industry] and the GIW [Globalised Industrialized World], aka economics as a perpetual motion machine fantasy. Unquestioned delusional beliefs lead to wrong conclusions."


    Arnoux also reports the thinking of an anthropologist which fits quite well with what we see: "Nader had observed that prevailing decision-making in the industrialised world she was living in was also the outcome of a weird mix of “Magic, Science, and Religion” with magical and mythical, quasi religious, thinking predominating among people who were viewed and who viewed themselves as rational and making scientifically grounded decisions."

    Maybe, the Cold Fusion saga will be recorded in the future books, which will explain to the survivors (if any) the reasons of the collapse of our civilizations, as the most paradigmatic and incredible example of Tooth Fairy Syndrome, which had affected a large part of the decision makers, and their voters.


    In the third and last part of the article (2), there is also a useful advice, particularly suited for you: "In terms of epistemology and methods, this requires what in anthropology is called the “hermeneutic circle”: moving repeatedly from the particulars, the details, to the whole system, improving our understanding of the whole and from this going back to the particulars, improving our understanding of them, going back to considering the whole, and so on."


    Did you see? In order to understand better what we are looking at, we should repeatedly move from the particular, in your case the nuclear data bases, to the whole system. This article of Arnoux provides you a good occasion to do that.


    (1) http://cassandralegacy.blogspo…ilight-of-oil-age_15.html
    (2) http://cassandralegacy.blogspo…ilight-of-oil-age_88.html

  • Ascoli65

    Quote

    You should find a reason why the Ecat got such an impressive number of endorsements from dozens of experts belonging to so many reputable scientific and technological institutions,...


    The number of endorsements is not impressive at all; much more impressive is the number of the nuclear scientists who do not even consider cold fusion or Ecat.
    Cold fusion and Ecat are only threads for a few blogs; GANS ignores them.
    Scientific American can help you understand:
    'Cold fusion' resembles the alchemy of the middle ages. The allure of fame and wealth and the natural desire to believe in good news have been corrupting influences on scientific skepticism. So researchers working outside their main areas of professional expertise are even more likely to misinterpret experimental errors as positive results. And it is hard not to be skeptical about a revolutionary new discovery that would so conveniently have such tremendous and immediate economic value.

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