Ask questions to the Working Group - ECAT long-term test

Dear authors,
1.
How does your relationship with Industrial Heat look? Is there anything you're not allowed to do according to your eventual agreements that could impede your scientific work?

2.
What did Industrial Heat/Rossi know about the measurement setup and equipment to be used before the testing took place?

Dear authors,

Your summary states that the reaction was primed by heating and some electro-magnetic stimulation. It appears that the electro-magnetic stimulation mentioned was due to the current flow supplied to the system and not induced separately. Is that correct?

Secondly, what do you surmise is the suggested role (if any) that electro-magnetic stimulation alone might play in this process?

Have there been any tests performed to determine the energy requirements to create the fuel? It is certainly not "free" to grind the nickel to appropriate sized powder and infuse it with the essential mix of catalysts. While I'm sure this is less than the energy surplus of the reaction, it should be factored into the COP

Three sets of questions:

1. Many people are concerned that Rossi himself was the one to turn the reactor on and off and also to insert and remove the charge. Can you explain why his intervention at each of these steps was necessary? What is involved in turning the reactor on and off? Also, can you tell us what steps were taken by the researchers to ensure that the extracted charge (ash) was not somehow switched by Rossi after he extracted it from the reactor?

2.Figure 5 of the report shows a picture of the PCE-830 device "downstream from the control unit." On the screen it appears that the unit is reporting overload ("OL") on numerous parameters, indicating that the unit is being used outside its range, which would presumably render it unreliable or simply inaccurate. What can you tell us about the OL parameters and the reliability/accuracy of the device under these conditions? Did the upstream device also show "OL" for the same parameters?

3. Is it possible that the device drew high frequency power from the mains that was undetectable by the power meters due to being outside the measurement range of the device?

The report says, "A thermocouple probe, inserted into one of the caps, allows the control system to manage power supply to the resistors by measuring the internal temperature of the reactor."

Did you view and record the readings from this thermocouple?

Was the whole experiment recorded on video including the loading of fuel and extraction of the ash? If yes, for what purpose and where is the video now?

Following the report:
"All the instruments used during the test are property of the authors of the present paper, and were calibrated
in their respective manufacturers’ laboratories. Moreover, once in Lugano, a further check was made to
ensure that the PCEs and the IR cameras were not yielding anomalous readings. For this purpose, before the
official commencement of the test, both PCEs were individually connected to the power mains selected for
powering the reactor. For each of the three phases, readings returned a value of 230 ± 2V, which is
appropriate for an industrial establishment power network."
So we learn:
Input is 230 V AC for one phase of three!
Page 5 / Figure 4:
Input is 380 V AC (for 3 phase?) ->should be 400 V AC for three phases!)

Mains power source is:
a: 1 phase -> 230 V AC?
b: 3 phase -> 400 V AC?
Please make a statement on the mains power input!

Please also explain:
SW (Switch between the XXX V AC mains and the PCE 830 A)
What is (SW) in detail?

THX!

During the test, is the cell filled with hydrogen, or air?

A group of four scientists has suggested that Eng. Rossi somehow spiked the "ash" with nickel and lithium isotopes. Is there any possibility that they are correct? Did you, or did Eng. Rossi remove the ash from the reactor core? Was Eng. Rossi ever alone with the reactor core after it had been run for 32 days?

Can you provide information about the accuracy of the ToF-SIMS and ICP-MS analysis results? According to the exact results, there appears to be an isotope fraction gradient between the surface and bulk contents of the ash sample for both Lithium and Nickel. Surface Li-6 reads as 92.1% enriched (appendix 3 table 1) but the bulk analysis with ICP-MS shows Li-6 enriched to 57.5%, while Ni-62 inversely varies from 98.7% in the surface to 99.3% in the bulk. Are these results within accuracy limits of the instruments? Do you think these implied isotope fraction gradients between surface and bulk could be real? I note that the ICP-AES results show only 0.03% of the sample mass was lithium - could this affect the results?

If this inverse isotope fraction gradient does exist for both the lithium and nickel ash grains, do you think this could indicate something about the different reactants that are present during steady-state reactor operation versus reactor shut-down conditions?

Would you please explain the significance of the variability of a mass 69 signal in the ToF-SIMS results? Is this certain to be entirely instrumentation artifact, or could there also be a mass 69 species from the samples present in some of these spectra?

Were there other tests than the one described in the report during the 6 month period ?

Figures 12a and b show the reactor was incandescent at times. Dark portions towards the end of the reactor and at the caps were at a lower temperature, and were not incandescent. Figure 10 shows that the IR camera reading were split into 10 zones for the cylinder, and additional zone for the caps.

At the time the photos in Fig. 12 were taken, what temperatures were recorded by the IR camera for the 10 zones and the caps? Was there a very large difference between these temperatures?

I ask this because questions have been raised about the source of the incandescence, and the transmissivity of alumina. It seems to me that if the incandescent light is coming from inside the reactor, and the temperature reading on the surface is an instrument error, then the real temperature must be roughly 750 deg C, and the false temperature reading in the incandescent portion must be on the order of 1300 to 1500 deg C. Such large temperature differences are not possible, because alumina is a good thermal conductor.

By the way, a correspondent wrote to me with another reason to doubt this hypothesis. This is not an exact quote, but he wrote:

A quick look a the literature shows transmissivity of alumina quickly drops to zero past ~7 micron wavelength. Much of the data seems to be in relation to the crystalline variant (e.g sapphire) vs non-crystalline.

http://www.janis.com/Libraries…nCurveDataSheet.sflb.ashx

Notice the Ecat report clearly states on page 4 “The spectral range for both cameras is from 7.5 to 13 μm.” That seems to indicate that any transmitted IR through the alumina wouldn’t be detected by the IR cameras.

It has been said the Rossi switched the fuel core to cheat the test, what kind substitute fuel could have provided the results you measured if he switched the reactor core before and after the testing to fool you?

Did your team do further research to determine the nature of the physical process generating the heat?

Will there be further papers coming out based upon the research you have already done?

Will you be doing further research, into the nature of the process, and how do you plan to approach that?

Do you know enough to speculate on whether the process could be modified to directly produce electricity?

Is this in your opinion a unique area of conventional physics, or is there new physics involved which will require new theory outside standard conventions?

Is there a potential for this to be implemented in highly dangerous ways by backyard replicators, aside from the potential to detonate small quantities of pressurized hydrogen? IE: radiation, large rapid energy releases.

Are you free to continue research with the devices supplied by Industrial Heat?

Do you still have possession of any working Industrial Heat devices?

Do you have any projection for what the maximum COP for a single stage device will ultimately be?

Do you think the process can be modified to transmute rare elements from common ones?

If you consider the energy released as coming from only the materials transmuted what might the energy density look like compared to fission fuels?

Might the value of the fuel to energy ratio be beyond what conventional nuclear reactions can provide; Is there potentially a greater quantum potential being tapped?

Do you sense that you are receiving a reasonable treatment from the physics community as a whole?

Will you be ostracized for looking at the work of an outsider?

How far do you think the technology is from having optimized efficiency?

Do you have any concepts for better approaches to implement the process: Higher temperatures, meta material, manufactured reaction sites, solid state cores, larger scale?

Why do you think your work is already being attacked as savagely as it has been?

Dear Testers,

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to the power of 10 for all of your hard work, courage, integrity, and sacrifices.

Could you be so kind as to answer us this question each individually, if possible. How have things been socially and professionally since May 2013 and now after this latest test report. Have you lost friends? Have you gained new friends? Have people been abusive? Have you been fired? Have you tossed and turned at night. My question is all of that and anything else of a social, emotional, and professional nature.

Sincerely,

Roger Bird
Colorado Springs

Figures 12a and 12b show the reactor is incandescent. It looks to me like the wrong color for a surface temperature as high as claimed. I would say this is about 900°C. See this color chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I…e:Incandescence_Color.jpg

If this reactor surface is at 1400°C it should be white. Are there other photos of the reactor showing white incandescence?

From Barry Kort on the extremetech.com Forum

- Analysis of the Assumption of an Ideal Isothermal Black Body Radiation Model -

In the iconic photo of the device under test, one can see the apparatus with the red-hot glowing wires visible through the translucent 3mm thick alumina casing.
This is a significant observation, because it's the principle source of evidence that the thin alumina shell is translucent and not 100% opaque.

Why does that matter? It matters because the IR camera equipment that is used to reckon the heat coming out of the device assumes that the alumina shell is an isothermal black body radiator operating at the emissivity of alumina at a specific temperature. But that conveniently simple energy budget model breaks down if the alumina casing is not 100% opaque. As can be seen in the photograph, some of the photons from the interior apparatus are being transmitted through the translucent shell, rather than being absorbed by it. When those directly transmitted photons impinge upon the IR camera, which is calibrated for the emissivity of alumina, the calculation model incorrectly assumes the alumina shell itself is glowing red hot in accordance with a black body radiation model. This results in a sizable systematic error in reckoning the heat being produced by the device.