Rossi vs. Darden developments [CASE CLOSED]

    Quote from Alan Fletcher

    Changed my mind: I thought that A2 was behind the tree (in old shots) north of the window I now think is A2.


    Edit : this is the gmap I'm using : https://www.google.com/maps/@2…6,73m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en


    I figured it out by looking at Wong's A1 picture. You can see the workmen working on the window that Wong shows in A1. Notice that the window just to the left juts out a little from the wall. That is because it is over the entrance, which also juts out from the wall. So the venting window was the one next to the entrance, not the the one behind the tree:



    ERV Final report starts Feb 23 .... but there are earlier emails about bringing the system up. So at MOST a 10-day window to instal the "heat exchanger"?


    Edit : 214-31 http://coldfusioncommunity.net…01/0214.31_Exhibit_31.pdf Jan 16 2015 ... "we are well in schedule to start the plant in the first week of February".


    Edit 2 : email Feb 19 "Today we have started the energy production of the plant. IH's plant has produced the first MWh of thermal power".


    I just found the Rossi description of the heat exchangers and fans, in 194-08 pacer p 14. http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0194.07_Exhibit_7.pdf

    The fans are made by MultiFan ... but they've been "repurposed" in some proprietary way that he won't reveal!


    He confirms that it's the middle window (Wong A2, as seen with 2 workmen in Wong A1)

    Quote from Alan Fletcher

    ERV Final report starts Feb 23 .... but there are earlier emails about bringing the system up. So at MOST a 10-day window to instal the "heat exchanger"?


    They could have installed the heat exchanger in the weeks prior but waited to remove the glass until just before starting the test. So I don't think the BING pictures are close enough to the date to count as evidence of reflection during the test. But there are now at least two from Google that do show a reflection.

    Darden's strategy is clear: taking money from investors in order to keep them!

    We're not talking about a risky investment, to which surely Woodford is accustomed. We're talking about an investment where Darden no longer believed. Rather than stop the test and ask Rossi for clarification, Darden has called Woodford and has scraped together a substantial sum of money. Certainly he did not speak of his concerns about the test, otherwise it would never have got that amount. Having already decided that the Doral test could not be the GPT, it was already clear to him that he should have not given to Rossi the agreed money. But even so Darden asked for money, obviously to keep them for himself.

    Quote from SSC

    Darden's strategy is clear: taking money from investors in order to keep them!


    Yes, thank you for digging up some of the deposition statements that led me to the same conclusion. I was too lazy to go back through them. We know from the depositions that May/June of 2015 (after they got the Woodford money AFAIK) is when they hired Murray to assemble an engineering team to test all the technologies they had acquired. So if you wanted to give Darden the benefit of the doubt, you could say that he took Woodford's money to use towards testing other LENR tech, even if he knew that Rossi was totally bogus. He still lied through his teeth to get their money, though.


    And we must wonder why he waited so long to hire better engineers. JedRothwell tells us that IH already had good people working there, but from the depositions it seems the best they had was Dameron, and Murray doesn't hold Dameron in high regard. In other testimony we even get the impression that JT himself was in charge of testing some of the dogbone reactors. So as far as I can tell, the people working at IH prior to that were not up to snuff. Unless Jed is referring to somebody I/we haven't heard about.

    This is fascinating. As one of the premier OCD sufferers here (though on tech matters more than glass) I appreciate the thoroughness with which windows, reflections and steam have been considered.


    Perhaps because I suffer this interest in details I've learnt over years that it is important also to keep track of the big picture. The mind tends to seize on specific details that point in a given direction and give them too much work. And it just does not properly do logical relationships - you need actually to lay out argument and think about it for that.


    Let us put to one side the other (extraordinarily strong) evidence of Rossi malfeasance and cheating, and the undisputed (because admitted by Rossi and others in deposition) evidence that the test data is totally dependent on Rossi's figures and that Rossi changed the steam setup from that agreed, specifically to one in which the steam output was much less carefully monitored.


    Let us also put to one side the fact that IH (and Rossi) will have access to physical evidence not yet disclosed.


    The physical evidence that has been disclosed is frustrating because it is incomplete. Why? Because Rossi and others have together deleted or removed much of the detailed evidence - the spoliation hearing on this is due for 20th April, so watch shortly after that for the result! Also because Rossi has a test setup in which some components are run outside of normal specification and therefore have behaviour that cannot easily be predicted. That is a special kind of spoliation: not deliberate, but equally destructive of getting reliable results. The lack of good engineering practice in the design of this system makes things less predictable. Finally, even without spoliation and out of specification components the system is under-instrumented (contrary to the initial spec).


    The effect of all these things is to generate uncertainty. We cannot be sure what the measurements we have mean, even if they are genuine. There are levels of genuineness - they may be (broadly) correctly transcribed by Rossi, but from instruments incorrectly sited or set up. They may be extrapolated by Rossi from what he thinks should happen and therefore not in any real sense related to the instruments. Or, they many be correct but wrongly interpreted, for example without a working steam (more accurately condensate) trap we have no confidence that flow from the reactors is steam.


    Into this ocean of uncertainty we have minutiae of details that may - if the stars are in the right position - contribute insight into the system. Or, if the stars are wrong, tell us nothing. So here goes.


    The clear and easy to explain evidence that the test was bad, coming from the discrepancy between pump rating and flowmeter, is currently not available, because the pumps were possibly operated so far out of specification. A pity, and a sign of Rossi's ability to fool others (and perhaps himself) by having such an under-determined system. The more unknowns you have in any engineering setup the easier it is for things to go wrong and not be picked up. By using metering pumps under conditions where they have undefined output Rossi adds an unknown. If a backflow valve is fitted (and IH will be able to check this) we are back to the discrepancy because the pump output will be known and too low when compared with the flowmeter. Otherwise no discrepancy proven. You would need to test those pumps flowrate at low back pressure to know whether in fact they grossly over-read.


    • The evidence from the combined pressure, temperature, flowrate, and system plumbing is difficult to analyse because 1. we do not know whether the additional pump was used, or if so how it was used. 2. That weird always 1.0 atmosphere pressure that forced E48 to suppose weird gravity feed bypassing the pumps. 3. That oh so constant temperature just above 1 atmosphere boiling point that indicates liquid and vapour together so that vaporisation stabilises the temperature. These errors combined show we cannot conclude any positive result from this test. Equally they do not prove a negative result. They make these test results equivalent to no test. Eric's A,B,C classification is relevant here. B type observers will conclude from this that Rossi's device works, A that it does not, C that it is unlikely to do so but let us reserve judgement.


    • The evidence of inability to dissipate 1MW. This has now morphed into a discussion about Rossi's newly claimed heat exchanger. I think it is pretty well accepted that 1MW dissipated in that warehouse without active venting would be impossible - endothermic reactions a no go. Rossi himself, who would know, has under oath said that he had a heat exchanger on the second floor. Rossi's expert, Wong, has filled in the details about this, gained from Rossi. If these are correct it is indeed a big heat exchanger, one Wong estimates to be capable of dissipating 1MW, which actually (hard and individually checkable by any reader with a little physics and the internet) can dissipate no more than 100kW.


    Heat Exchanger Facts


    The discussion of this heat exchanger is complicated (as any discussion about Rossi's claims) by uncertainty. There is doubt that such a heat exchanger ever existed. Rossi claims to have removed all evidence of it, and has no independent evidence except the remarkable coincidence of glass panes being replaced one year after the heat exchanger was removed on the very day that his expert performs a site visit.


    Rossi may have lied directly about this, under pressure because the problem dissipating 1MW could not otherwise be resolved. Or, this maybe a typical Rossi half-truth. He could very possibly have used the claimed window for cooling in some way (not unusual in Florida), and morphed this in his mind into a big heat exchanger with the correct calculated characteristics - but on more careful analysis actually the wrong characteristics. Or, if the physical evidence can be discounted, maybe he really had a heat exchanger as specified. Maybe he even used it as claimed - it would happily dissipate the 20kW of heat that he certainly did have running.


    Rossi will be difficult to hook with deliberate fraud here. Civil fraud does not depend on attempt to deceive, merely on the other party being deceived, so may stick. The details of this claim have been put in the mouth of Wong, who had a clear idea of the heat exchnager design. But, maybe he misunderstood Rossi, or maybe he assumed things. Rossi has a good deal of plausible deniability here. His statements on oath are also vague, but may be enough to hook him.


    The physical evidence about the heat exchanger seems to be:

    • The transparent fiction of the panes of glass being replaced when Rossi's expert was present. How could this have been left for one year exposing the building to weather for that period? And google says panes of glass existed between the test end and the Wong inspection, which at least nullifies this fiction.
    • Lack of evidence of piping, electricity, fixings, marks on floor. This evidence is likely strong but difficult for us armchair internet sleuths to evaluate. You need to go round the whole site asking where were the pipes. If Rossi can show no holes, his story is busted. But an expert looking around and not finding such holes is not quite as convincing: people can make mistakes and the absence of something is much more difficult to validate than its presence.
    • Google/Bing/etc photos during the test that show reflections from panes of glass.

    Let us consider the glass photos.

    • When no sky is reflected by windows, they appear dark and indistinguishable from windows with no glass and perhaps some sort of screen. There can be no dispute here. Also a lot of windows do naturally reflect no sky, because of the camera angle. So: dark window => don't know whether pane is present.
    • When sky is reflected in windows they appear light, but these reflections, shadowed by trees and other objects, are possibly confused with lights inside the window.
    • The key windows have one picture showing either a reflection, or an irregularly shaped object, with branch shadows impinging upon it, inside the window. The meme that this is a picture of steam inside the window is so powerful because steam seems like positive evidence of a heat exchanger. It is not that. The heat exchanger would be an enclosed wooden box on the floor with two ducts for inlet and outlet air leading to the window. These - under the hypothesis explored here of two panes being removed from the window, would have securely fixed inlet and outlet ducts. The inlet could possibly be open to the room air. But the outlet must be enclosed, and go through only one pane, else the hot air is not vented. The claimed "steam" is, to me at least, obviously not steam and obviously a sky reflection framed by trees. But if it were steam it would have to be a leak from the heat exchanger tubing. That could only generate steam in one pane or the other - not in both - since the two panes must be used for physically separated air streams (inlet and outlet). this additional argumnet knocks the steam idea on the head. Actually it is incorrect because steam inside a room is no more visible than other objects. The windows look dark because there is relatively little light in the rooms compared with the daylight outside. that applies as much to steam as to anything else.

    I'm sort of sorry for this. I'd like the key evidence that Wong's estimate was wrong to be the determining factor. After all, anyone with decent technical background - specific expertise not needed - can read the relevant textbook example for validation - use the web calculator - work out the proper heat transfer coefficient value. It is irrelevant because there was the glass in the windows, for at least part of the test period. So no heat exchanger. Rossi himself stated that this was used for times when the JMP box was not using power. Hence no getout (not that any of the getouts work - the JMP box cannot dissipate 1MW away from the factory!).


    No heat exchanger, for even one day of the test => no 1MW, or anything close. Otherwise the factory would heat up on order (very approximately) +100C. See U value calculations above.


    No 1MW or anything close means a massive unknown error in Penon's figures. Therefore we cannot trust those figures at all. Is this increasing our knowledge? Not really, because we could not trust those figures anyway. But it can at least be proven beyond all doubt that 1MW was never generated in that plant.


    THH

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    This is fascinating. As one of the premier OCD sufferers here (though on tech matters more than glass) I appreciate the thoroughness with which windows, reflections and steam have been considered.


    Perhaps because I suffer this interest in details I've learnt over years that it is important also to keep track of the big picture.


    True. And since we can barely say anything about flowrate, pumps or heat exchanger because we don't have all the info necessary, we can just say that so far, quite a bit of FUDding has been debunked (which lends credence to Rossi's claims, and sheds doubt on the impartiality of people pushing said FUD), and wonder why some find necessary to write Lomax-level paragraphs about stuff we can't really say much about, lacking the necessary info.


    What we can say is: either Rossi is a hypnotist mastermind having successfully fooled elements of the military, industrial sector, scientific crowd, and quite a few big investors (through IH/Cherokee) over the course of 10+ years and several continents, or he's having some kind of commercial divorce with IH/Cherokee, quite possibly IP-related.

    Just trying to keep track of the big picture and to see what does seem factually more likely.

    Quote from IH Fanboy

    So I just showed a young child, who is under the age of 8, this image and asked: "which of these has glass and which does not have glass." He quickly pointed out that the two on the left did not have glass and that the two on the right did. Then said: "that was easy."


    To me, it doesn't really matter about whether there were windows or not. However, if you want to ask a question, try not to ask a loaded question. Your question to the young child had an unstated assumption/suggestion "some of the windows have glass and some don't." It's quite different to ask a question of "what do you see in this area?" While running your finger over the window area.

    No factories, no customers, no orders, no partners? Am I understanding correctly here? See excerpts below.


    Source: http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/236-13-Exhibit-13.pdf

    Note that the deposition was made on 2017-02-24


    * * *


    Page 235

    Q. Again, in that context we meaning Leonardo Corporation?

    A. Yes, sir.

    Q. Has the factory in Sweden -- has work on the factory in Sweden begun?

    A. No.

    Q. Has work on the factory in the United States begun?

    A. No.

    [...]


    Page 238


    Q. Sure. I am just going to read you -- I'm not going to give you these blog posts because there is so many pages of them but you were asked a question, you write about pre-orders. "We send a precise offer to them who make the pre-orders, with the price and the sale terms along with an order form. If the potential customer decides to buy, they send the order signed. Leonardo Corporation before accepting the order makes a due diligence about the customer to verify his industrial and financial consistency. If the due diligence is positive, we accept the order, otherwise the order is not accepted." Is that the accurate process, the way that Leonardo Corporation has been handling pre-orders for E-Cat plants?


    MR. ANNESSER: Object to form.

    MR. LEON DE LA BARRA: Join.

    MR. ANNESSER: Are you referring to a specific document?

    MR. PACE: I am referring to a blog post.

    MR. ANNESSER: Is that something that we have got in discovery?

    MR. PACE: Yes.

    MR. ANNESSER: Can you tell me the Bates

    Page 239

    number?

    MR. PACE: I cannot but it's June 28, 2016 blog post.

    THE WITNESS: That is a procedure, if I recall, because it's -- it's not a new thing but that is the procedure that we intend to follow.

    BY MR. PACE:

    Q. Is it the procedure that Leonardo Corporation has followed?

    A. No, because -- well, so far we got many pre-orders that are just in suspension because we are not in a condition that we can deliver, so basically nothing has been done yet.

    Q. So no one has ever -- no potential customer has ever, quote, sent the order signed?

    A. No.

    Q. And Leonardo has never conducted due diligence on a customer yet?

    A. Not yet.

    MR. ANNESSER: Object to the form.

    BY MR. PACE:

    Q. And Leonardo has not -- if the due diligence is positive, Leonardo has not accepted any orders yet?

    MR. ANNESSER: Object to form.

    Page 240

    THE WITNESS: No.

    BY MR. PACE:

    Q. You have also identified a blog post that you have a new customer. At least different -- well, compared to previous partners and licensees, how important is the development of E-Cat to a new partner? Is there a new partner in developing E-Cats with which Leonardo is working?

    MR. ANNESSER: Object to form. If you are going to refer to a specific document you may want to show it to him.

    BY MR. PACE:

    Q. Let me just ask the question. Does Leonardo Corporation have a new partner in the development of E-Cat units?

    MR. ANNESSER: Object to form.

    THE WITNESS: No.

    • Official Post
    Quote from joshg

    We know from the depositions that May/June of 2015 (after they got the Woodford money AFAIK) is when they hired Murray to assemble an engineering team to test all the technologies they had acquired. So if you wanted to give Darden the benefit of the doubt, you could say that he took Woodford's money to use towards testing other LENR tech, even if he knew that Rossi was totally bogus. He still lied through his teeth to get their money, though


    By the time of ICCF-19 (April 2015) when Darden made his 'trust only us, get funded by us, listen to no-one else but us' speech IH had Dennis Letts onboard. I met him there, and he said so.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    By the time of ICCF-19 (April 2015) when Darden made his 'trust only us, get funded by us, listen to no-one else but us' speech IH had Dennis Letts onboard. I met him there, and he said so.


    Yes, I believe they had already acquired an interest in many technologies by then, including Letts's. What I'm saying is that it wasn't until they hired Murray in May/June 2015 that they started testing those things in earnest (including the Lugano-style reactor). You can read Murray's deposition to get the details.

    • Official Post

    To which I can only add that IH have been very reticent about their research efforts in general. Murray is here presented as 'front man' but then somebody had to be. There is just a slim chance ;) that we are not seeing the full picture of what was (and is now) happening in NC.


    ETA - the biggest danger they face now in terms of fundraising and the continued progress of their business plan is that somebody could develop a nice easy recipe and spray it all over the web. Jed discounts the possibility of any 'amateurs' succeeding in this, but I am not so sure. There is a kind of fringe territory in LENR where academic and lone-wolf researchers meet and swap idea. So even amateurs have access to unexprected resources .

    The parade of astroturfing sock puppets continues.


    http://www.e-catworld.com/2017…ith-report-from-the-jonp/


    Of course he cannot comment on ongoing litigation. ;)


    Fortunately, he has "readers" who can speak for him. I seriously hope IH subpoenaed the raw comment logs from his wordpress blog showing the IP addresses.



    I would expect that with all Rossi's blogging the JONP might well provide a gold mine of interesting Rossi quotes for the jury to hear.

    This whole discussion has veered into cloud cuckoo land. Let me review the facts.


    During the one-year test, many people pointed out to Rossi that 1 MW of heat would make the warehouse so hot it would kill people. I and many others saw this immediately and pointed it out. Rossi was aware of this problem the whole time.


    Not once during the 1-year test did Rossi say: "There is a heat exchanger in the mezzanine. Look at the front windows in the building." Or: "let us go upstairs and look at the heat exchanger."


    There were no pipes going from the pretend customer site to the mezzanine. As noted there is no trace of this equipment.


    Rossi claimed that the equipment in the pretend customer site was secret, but it would be absurd to claim that an ordinary heat exchanger is secret. If the gadget existed he would have shown it to people, or at least taken them out to the front of the building and pointed it out.


    It is obvious that he is lying about this. He made up the story of the heat exchanger for the lawsuit. There is not a scrap of evidence to prove it, and there is a mountain of evidence showing that it could not exist it would not work even if it did exist.


    In view of these facts, all this blather about reflections or screens in windows is ludicrous nonsense.

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.