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- Thread I ask members to join my effort to create a fundamentally new LENR device
Posts by David Nygren
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Safety concerns for LENR replication.
The replication of Parkhomov/Rossi involves sealing an ampoule with dangerous levels of gas. This looks like a bebign experiment that can be accomplished in Grandmother's kitche n. It can be done that way, but I would take out an insurance policy on grandmother and her house.
1. LiAlH4 is:
A. Pyrophoric
B. Explosive
C. Poisonous
Therefore, this effort should be conducted within a hood using protective face shields and non-flammable clothing. Elbow length gloves are recommended. If no hood is available use a box fan and operate outside and upwind with the ampoule inside an explosion-proof chamber. People have died from breathing fumes from LiAlH4. ( hence the need for a fan)
2.REACTING THE LiAlH4 AT HIGH TEMPERATURES RELEASES H2 GAS. With little internal volume the resulting pressure can achieve 3,000 psi! Even after cool down the tube would contain 50 atmospheres of internal pressure, so the ampoule is dangerous until it is cracked open.
3. Weighing the sample - proceed quickly just prior to loading. Warm the upper surface of the scale and use dry paper to contain the powders.
4. Loading the sample - LiAlH4 can spontaneously ignite in moist air or on moist surfaces. The alumina tube should be preheated in an oven at 350F for several hours. A machined funnel must be placed over the end of the alumina tube and the powders poured inside. The bottom has been previously sealed with alumina cement.
5. Sealing the top end of the ampoule require alumina slurries and local bake out. The ampoule is dangerous from this step forward.
6. Heating the ampoule - if the powder is inhomogeneously loaded it can cause hot spots and decomposition. I am using an open ended quartz tube into which the alumina tube is inserted. This outer tube has the nichrome heating wire coiled around the OD and is covered with a roll of Zircar insulation. This is not a protection against explosion. It simply limits the power input needed to get to 1,000C
7. After operation and cool down, the ampoule is still a danger until the pressure is released by breaking open the alumina ampoule. The thermocouple confirm low temperature after the cool down, but the sealed ampoule is like a ticking bomb until cracked open.
8.Analysis of byproducts - There is no need to do this unless significant excess energy is recorded. Little change is anticipated until the sample has been operated for extended periods at high temperature.
9. Be careful with every step!
Brian Ahern
Acton MA -
In this thread we discusses safety
What is important?
What can go really wrong?
What protection do you use?Here are some important thoughts from Axils (vortex forum)
Thanks Axils and @Peter Gluck
AXIL's RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE LENR REACTOR BUILDERS
Safety before you start.
In recent posts on the WEB, I have made some recommendations to the reactor builder in which I identify various “secret sauce” candidates that might be LENR active in various reactor heat ranges. This post explains the theory behind those recommendations.
For example, my recommendation for potassium as appropriate for a LENR reactor in the intermediate operating temperature heat range such as the E-Cat is based on the following thinking. First as background, the alkali metals are the chemical elements found in Group 1 of the periodic table. The alkali metals include: Hydrogen (H),Lithium (Li), Sodium (Na), Potassium (K), Rubidium (RB), Cesium (Cs), and Francium (Fr).Next, the "secret sauce" mechanism of Rossi fame, is based on the production of nano particles from a condensing plasma.
The alkali metals including hydrogen will produce Rydberg matter. This mechanism is one that produces nano particles.
In addition, other theoretical possibilities include the elements like sodium, beryllium, magnesium and calcium as ones that will also produce Rydberg matter as nano particles. I would stay away from beryllium because it is very dangerous when ingested.
For example, Magnesium and Calcium were detected in the fuel load in the TPR2 test.
In short, the secret sauce is any element or chemical compound that will produce nano particles when heated.The reason why this nano particle formation will happen depends on the lone electron in the outer most orbit of the atom. When the atom is highly excited as will occur when the element newly condenses out of a plasma, this electron will tend to orbit at extreme distance from the excited atom. A collection of these atoms will aggregate together and are connected and held together in a solid crystal by these outermost electrons that orbit on the outside of the entire particle as and electron cloud like comets that orbit the sun and planets at the extreme edge of the solar system in the Kuiper belt.
These particles do not replace the nickel micro particles but greatly supplement them in SPP soliton production. The nickel particles are required to produce a coherent quantum mechanical environment to activate activity in the nano particles.The nano particle must be free floating in the gas envelope of the reactor so that they may aggregate freely together in clumps of many nano particles. These clumps come together under the action of mutual electrostatic attraction produced by dipole vibrations on the surface of each particle caused by heat.
Each particle has a plus side and a minus side that align when the particles come together.
Just having a pile of immobile metal(nickel or palladium) nano particles in a large pile are not effective.
The gas envelop need not be pure hydrogen. On the contrary, the envelop gas may be any one of a number of dielectric gases such as oxygen, hydrogen/oxygen(OH), or chlorine or combinations thereof. Nitrogen is a LENR poison, and so is deuterium.Even water condensing out of a plasma will form solid nano particles. Even noble gases like helium and neon form nano particles under certain conditions, but argon is a LENR poison.
There may be many chemical compounds that will form LENR active nano particles. I believe that Randel Mills has done extensive work over many years to identify these nano particle active compounds that he calls catalysts. A LENR reactor builder will be well served to read and become familiar with the list of catalysts identified by Mills.
http://www.blacklightpower.com…s/ThermallyReversible.pdf
Here, skip the theory and only use the experimental data.Any chemical compound that when heated produce nano particles (dusty plasma) will be LENR active to some extent.
Even an electric arc as in Mizuno's experiment will produce free floating nano particles from pure elements like nickel.
Exploding metal foils in water will produce metal nano particles which generate LENR activity.
A laser blasting a metal will produce LENR activity in water is the Laser frequency and the metal are matched based on reflectivity.
Cavitation produces LENR activity when collapsing cavitation bubbles produce solid water nano particles from plasma.
Each element or chemical compound has an optimal heat range that will best produce abundant nano particles. Lithium, for example, requires a high temperature to vaporize. Therefore Lithium is effective in a high temperature LENR reactor configuration. Potassium has a lower optimum heat range and is more suited for intermediate temperature reactor operation. Cesium has the lowest vaporization temperature, so cesium will be well suited for a low temperature reactor. Cesium will not work in a high temperature reactor because cesium will never produce nano particles from condensation from plasma in that high temperature situation.
Aluminum might work as a LENR catalyst producing nano particles from condensing vapor in a reactor at 2000C as in a reactor meltdown. -
Videography Workshop on LENR (Russian) - seminar in Moscow - No English subtitles.
Cold fusion VNIIAES organizer of the seminar (Scientific Secretary VNIIAES) probably is no longer working! Jaroslav Starukhin not know what video banned and removed, but only starting with a discussion of the first report (for some reason Parkhomov AG reversed) and all is not well heard (cheap microphones, all the money went to the conference hall gigantism)
Enable subtitles.
Select English settings.
Does not work too well, but you understand some parts.1-6 The study of low-energy nuclear reactions - VNIIAES 01/27/2015 - Global Wave
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Will LENR plunge the world in a global recession?
“If oil drops below $30 a barrel (now it’s around $44), a global recession is inevitable”, according to a recent survey of investment professionals, performed by ConvergEx Group. More than half those surveyed represented buy-side firms such as asset managers and hedge funds, and about a quarter of them were from sell-side firms such as banks or broker dealers.
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SN Andreev, academic secretary of the Institute of General Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, doctor of sciences. "The study of low-energy nuclear reactions - a new direction in science." Reviewed the results achieved in the study LENR and outlined the priorities for future research.
News from Russia.
No translation yet.How to read ?
Google translate files
1.Choose your downloaded file
2.Select Russian
3.Choose your language -
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Absolutely amazing video, thanks @Peter Gluck, I dont understand many words, but picture says a lot.
Check 1.14.05, Here we are talking Russian power
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Not fancy, but an automatic translation.
Google translate!The study analogue high-temperature heat generator Rossi
Parkhomov Alexander G.High-temperature reactor Rossi
The internal structure of the reactor The author does not disclose.
Appearance - cylinder Al based ceramics
2 cm diameter, length 20 cmprotrusions improvers
convective heat transfer.
On both sides of this cylinder ends with two Round tip of the same diameter ceramic 4 cm 4 cm.
On the tip are the conclusions of the three heaters heat-resistant alloy "Inconel".In one of the ferrules has a hole diameter of 4 mm. Through this hole being downloaded fuel.
Once loaded into the ceramic plug is inserted into the hole in which mounted thermocouple probe hole is sealed aluminous cementIncreasing the power to the heating continued until the average surface temperature of the reactor is not reached in 1260 about C in heater power consumption of 810 watts. Operation in this mode lasted almost 10 days. After that, the power was raised up to 900 watts. As a result, within a few minutes the reactor temperature increased to 1400 about C.
Further work took place at about the power of electric heating 900 W up to a pre-scheduled time off (32 days after the reactor fuel).
Increasing the power to the heating continued until the average surface temperature of the reactor is not reached in 1260 about From when the heater power consumption of 810 watts. Work in this regime lasted almost 10 days. Thereafter, power was raised to 900 watts. As a result, for several minutes, the temperature reactor increased up to 1400 about C.In the first stage for 23 hours the reactor was operated without fuel, which made calibration measurements. After This fuel was loaded weight of about 1 g, which has the form fine powder, and incorporated gradually rising heat.
Rossi reactor during the test On each side are three ceramic tube with wires on which brings the power required for the preliminary heating the reactor.
Determination of the heat capacity, produced by the reactor Detailed description of the ways to solve this problem of determining of the heat produced in the statement given special attention.
Produced power was determined by measuring the temperature surface using a thermal reactor, and based on this base energy loss due to radiation and convection. To achieve this method had special calibration measurements reactor without fuel heated by electric current.
Calculations are made for 16 annular zones for consecutive two-second slotsThe results of measurements and calculations of experts, Observe the operation of the reactor Rossi Averaged over 2 day power consumed reactor electricity (Top) power heat reactor over consumed electricity (in middle) power ratio total heat to capacities consumed electricity (Bottom).
Registered excess heat on electricity consumption by 3.2 times at 1250 about C and 3.6 times in at 1400 about S.Page 7
Analyses led to the following conclusion.
Initial fuel mainly composed of nickel powder as a granule size of several microns, having a natural isotopic composition. In addition to nickel, an admixture of the fuel is detected Li, Al, Fe, and H. The ratio of content of Al and Li corresponds lithium aluminum hydride molecule Li [AlH4].
Detect the presence of O and C. The analysis showed the presence of mind, but did not notice the presence of deuterium. Number of most of the elements essential differs in different granules.
Spent fuel pellets has a different type than fuel original. Elemental and isotopic composition of the granules is different, so do not However, it is obvious that the isotopic composition of Li and Ni in the exhaust fuel is radically different from the measured isotopic composition starting fuel.Page 8
The isotopic composition of lithium and nickel in the source and spent fuel (%), Measured by ToF-SIMS and ICP-MS, as well as natural isotope ratio of these elements.1. The ratio of the isotopes of lithium and nickel in the fuel source is practically differs from the natural.
2. In the spent fuel has significantly increased the relative content 6Li and decreased content 7Li.
3. In the spent fuel greatly reduce the content of all the isotopes nickel, except 62Ni. The content of the isotope increased from 3.6% to 99%.Page 9
What's inside the reactor at high Rossi temperature.
When heated, the decomposition of lithium aluminum hydride.
At temperatures characteristic of the working reactor Rossi Nickel mixed with molten aluminum and lithium is in medium hydrogen and lithium vapor. Balance air reacts with hydrogen, lithium and aluminum, forms a small impurity nitrogen and ammonia, and oxides and nitrides of lithium and aluminum.Page 10
Based on the foregoing, it can be assumed that high-temperature reactor Rossi, in fact, just sealed heat-resistant ceramic cement tube in which the nickel powder LAH addition of about 10% by weight. To initiation of the process tube to be heated to temperature 1200 - 1400 about S.
If this assumption is true, to create analogue Rossi reactor, it is necessary to create a device withstand high pressures at high temperature inside the powder mixture comprising nickel and lithium aluminum hydride. This problem Rossi decided ingeniously simple, without the traditional bolts flanges and seals.Page 11
The design of the reactor For the manufacture of reactors used tubes
Al ceramics length 120 mm an outer diameter of 10 mm and an inner diameter of 5 mm.
Wound on the tube electric heaters. Inside the tube is 1 g Powder Ni + 10% Li [Al H4].
On the outer surface tube contacts thermocouple.
The ends of the tube are sealed heat-resistant cement.
Likewise coated cement the entire surface of the reactor.
Photo of the reactor, prepared for the experimentPage 12
Measurement of heat releasedThe reactor is closed metal vessel.
This vessel is immersed.
When the water boils part of its leaves as a vapor.
By measuring the decrease of water, the well-known the value of the heat of vaporization it is easy to calculate the separated heat.
Correction for heat loss through the insulation can be calculated as cooling rate after shutdown reactor.
Used by experts at verification technique for reactor Rossi based on thermal readings too complex.
In this experiment used technique based on the number of boiled out of water. This technique worked out and repeatedly tested in various experimentsPage 13
View of the calorimeter with the cover removed The inner vessel with reactor covered massive cover.
He is immersed in water,
poured into the outer
vessel.
Cylindrical
thermal insulation
covered
The foam cap
where
set counter
Geiger.
Page 14
During operation of the reactor
Remove the cover from the thermal insulation and the vessel reactor
Page 15
Reactor thermal insulation of corundum
powder
The reactor was buried in corundum powder is poured into a metal
trough. This allows 2-3 times to reduce power
necessary to heat the reactor. But work in this mode
less stable than in the case of the "bare" reactor.
Page 16
Complex equipment
From left to right top: thermocouple amplifier with a power regulator,
Computer recorder, a computer to record the temperature and speed
account Geiger counter, a device measuring the counting rate Geiger counter.
From left to right below: ammeter, power supply reactor, voltmeter,
electronic meters "Mercury", switch power supply.
Page 17
Supply and control system
power consumption.
In the first experiments the electricity to heat the reactor was taken
directly from the mains using thyristor
regulator.
Later used changing transformer
windings. Switching both manual and automatic with
using the controller, the control signals of the thermocouple.
This allows you to provide continuous operation of the reactor at
given temperatures, which increases stability of
reactor.
To measure the electricity consumption used
electrometer "Mercury -201", allowing you to transfer
information on the computer, as well as a voltmeter and an ammeter.
Page 18
Control the level of radiation
To measure the activity of indium
used two Geiger counter.
The pulses from the counter register
special computer. Furthermore,
the computer registers the pulses
from the counter to the reactor and
meter.
Top - Geiger C-8B
Side - DC-02 dosimeter
For the detection of neutrons
plate used indium
immersed in water calorimeter.
Page 19
Temperature change in the heating process.
Experiment 20/12/2014
The power supplied to the heater stepwise varied from 25 to 500 watts.
Tysyachegradusny level was overcome after 5 hours of heating.
On the same diagram shows the count rate Geiger counter SI-8B. This counter
responsive to alpha, beta, gamma and X-rays. It is seen that all
During heating, the radiation situation is not very different from the background.
Dosimeter DK-02 is not found during the experiment set dose
within the measurement error (5 MP)
A marked activation of indium is not detected
Page 20
There is shown in more detail in the temperature change of the heating power
300, 400 and 500 watts. It can be noted that for the same heat output
there is a gradual increase in temperature, particularly strong in the last
site.
At the end of the site with the highest temperature is the temperature
oscillations. This section ends with the termination of electric heating as a result of
Heater burnout. Thereafter, at the temperature for 8 minutes
kept at nearly 1,200
about
C, and then begins to fall sharply. Is This
indicates that in the reactor at this time heat is produced at
kilowatt without any electric heating.
Thus, heat generated from the already seen that the reactor is capable of generating
a lot of heat in excess of electric heating.
Page 21
Determination of the extracted heat
and coefficient of thermal
by the experiment 12/20/2014
At temperatures of 1150
about
C and 1200 -1300
about
With the heat of the reactor
greatly exceeds the energy consumed. During his time at
These conditions (90 minutes) of electricity consumed in excess
produced about 3 MJ or 0.83 kilowatt-hours of energy.
Settlements
made for
three modes
with
temperature
about 1000
about
C
about 1150
about
And C
1200 - 1300
about
From
Page 22
The tables show
results in
the experiments.
In addition to the experiments with
reactors loaded
a mixture of Ni + Li [AlH
4
], Carried out
experiments with models of the reactor
without fuel.
In cases with models
reactor, as well as with
reactors with fuel
a temperature below 1000
about
C
the ratio of the released
heat to
absorbed power
close to 1.
Significant excess heat evolved over
absorbed power was observed only in reactors
fuel at temperatures of about 1100
about
C and above.
Page 23
Local overheating resulting in destruction
reactor.
The main problem -
short-term work
reactors associated with
destruction
cause local
overheating.
The problem of uncontrolled local overheating
Page 24
Page 25
Findings
Experiments with the analog high-
heat generator Rossi, loaded with a mixture of
lithium aluminum hydride and nickel, showed that
temperatures of about 1100
about
C or higher
This device does produce
more energy than it consumes.
The level of ionizing radiation during
the reactor is not significantly higher than background
indicators. Neutron flux density not higher
0.2 neutrons / cm
2
wi -
If you understand Russian language, please let us know.
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Here is a new updated report by Alexander Parkhomov (in russian!):
2015.01.31 official link at yandex.sk
This report shows more details about his expriment.Update: Human English Translation from @Peter Gluck
Until we have an complete English translated version of the report, you can try to translate with google translate:
1. goto https://translate.google.com/?tr=f&hl=de
2. Choose your downloaded pdf
3. Select Russian on the left side
4. Choose your language on the right side -
Very good insiativ @nickec, you have many good ideas.
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a new video
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Bill Gates foundation - open letter - 22 Jan 2015It is fair to ask whether the progress we're predicting will be stifled by climate change. The most dramatic problems caused by climate change are more than 15 years away, but the long-term threat is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively — right now — to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide. The next 15 years are a pivotal time when these energy sources need to be developed so they'll be ready to deploy before the effects of climate change become severe. Bill is investing time in this work personally (not through our foundation) and will continue to speak out about it.
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The Resolution
Pappers from the 19-th Russian Conference on Cold Nuclear Transmutation & Ball Lightning (RCCNT&BL-19) and of Moscow RPFU Seminar Reports,
joined in the RCCNT&BL-19 ProceedingsMost of it is in Russian! Do we have any Russian public?
Check page 21 and 22 for Eng -
Have received an email with this question.
Intro lenr forum
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Thank you for an exciting book
We say happy birthday @Mats Lewanhave you missed Mats book? read it now!
An Impossible Invention — Chapter 1
1 – The start of an unlikely journeyI had tried for weeks to create a mental picture of the man, this strange Italian who seemed to have invented, or perhaps one should say discovered, an unparalleled source of energy with the potential to change the world. Literally the whole world. I had not met him, only heard his energetic voice on the phone a few times and seen a couple of short video clips from a presentation of his invention in Bologna on January 14, 2011—the presentation that led me to this remarkable story. Without deep thought I had imagined him as a typical clichéd inventor. You recall the movie ‘Back to the Future?’ Something of that sort, aside from Christopher Lloyd’s bushy white hair: a little manic and on edge, with an intense but somewhat distracted look in his eyes. Obviously this had little or nothing to do with the man standing before me on that cold and snowy afternoon, February 3, 2011. We stood at the entrance to the editorial offices of the newspaper Ny Teknik in central Stockholm, where I had worked as a journalist for more than ten years. No evasive look. On the contrary, facing me was a relaxed man in his 60s with lively eyes and a friendly smile, dressed in a gray jacket and a dark overcoat.
“Buongiorno!” Andrea Rossi said, extending a friendly right hand, easy and relaxed. In his left hand he held a copy of Ny Teknik in which we had published, the day before, a major feature interview of him and his scientific advisor Professor Sergio Focardi, with a photo of both men. Almost a comical pair: Rossi’s slightly lanky but vigorous frame and steady gaze, his arm around Focardi, a head shorter and a bit chubby. Focardi’s wondering eyes looked out from behind dark brown, horn-rimmed glasses with classic ‘50s cut and thick lenses. Rossi seemed delighted by the article. His gratitude was easy to understand. I knew that his invention—the ‘energy catalyzer’ or E-Cat—touched an area that had been stigmatized in the scientific community and the media for over 20 years: cold fusion. After the presentation in Bologna a couple of Italian newspapers had covered the event with brief reports. Otherwise the silence was almost total worldwide, both in the media and in the scientific community. So it would remain for a couple of years.
Thorough reporting in a serious, established technology newspaper such as Ny Teknik, with its 300,000 readers, represented an important confirmation of Rossi, something for him to celebrate. But Rossi’s unreserved delight worried me and made me suspicious. What had I missed? Was Rossi’s positive reaction a sigh of relief, satisfaction that I had failed to detect something about his work that I should have noticed? Had I helped support something questionable?
Indeed, when it came to Rossi I had been warned, on reasonable grounds. Within the physics community the concept of cold fusion was questioned strongly. There was no broad scientific acceptance that it was even possible. The delicate question of Rossi’s proprietary intellectual property made the situation even more complex: he did not explain in detail how the device was constructed, referring to ‘industrial secrets,’ intellectual property he had to protect. Moreover, he had a couple of failed but quite famous inventions in his past. One was to produce oil from organic waste, another to create energy from the difference between cold and heat via a thermocouple—a small metal structure normally adequate for measuring temperatures or at most for supplying power to electronics. But Rossi had claimed that he could make it produce significantly more energy. On top of that, the demonstration in Bologna created suspicion. It was performed for invited scientists and media representatives, like a news conference—usually a bad sign when it comes to scientific breakthroughs. It often leaves a disturbing aftertaste, the suggestion that the whole picture was not disclosed. Scientific news usually comes in professional, peer-reviewed papers in which all the details are included so that other researchers can replicate any experiment and confirm that the new work is indeed valid. The goal is to share knowledge, rarely the case when scientific news is presented at a news conference, often held to attract investment.
Here it was not a question of presenting a scientific novelty, even if it was revolutionary and epoch-making—if Rossi’s device could be shown to work. The presentation in Bologna was more about showcasing an upcoming commercial apparatus. Rossi did not mince words. He promised a pilot installation for a customer in Greece in October 2011, an installation that would produce one megawatt of thermal power. A megawatt is a lot—a well-chosen and moderately impressive power output. It’s negligible compared to, say, a nuclear power plant, perhaps a thousandth of such a plant’s power output. But it is significant, comparable to a thousand electric radiators at full power, simultaneously, or equivalent to the average consumption of about 300 Western households, including electricity, space heating, water heating and air conditioning. Reference to industrial secrets and IP was therefore justifiable. Rossi’s focus was not to convince the world about a new physical process. His plan was to show the world that he had created a new energy source that worked and could be commercialized. He had to convince customers and potential funders. Thus there was no reason to reveal exactly how the device was designed. The important thing was to show that it worked. That the presentation a few weeks earlier in Bologna had been made at all was, according to Rossi, because Sergio Focardi had asked him to demonstrate the technology. Rossi explained that he had wanted to wait for a public announcement until October, when he had something more substantial to show, but that Focardi had been impatient.
“I would have preferred to do it earlier. You see, when you achieve results, it is satisfying to spread them. Besides, I’m 78 years old and cannot wait that long,” Focardi explained when I called him.
Rossi didn’t seem immediately to be fishing for money. On the contrary, he stated clearly that no one would owe him anything before the plant in Greece was completed, up and running. He said that he was paying for all development himself, out of his own pocket, with money from his previous activities. So the old business and earlier inventions had to be considered. But even before I reviewed his background he had explained the situation to me and told me his own version of why his company—Petroldragon, with its invention of oil from waste—closed abruptly and led to his being arrested for environmental crimes and tax fraud, charges of which he was subsequently acquitted in most respects. His explanation, if not self-evident and easy to confirm, was at least plausible, I thought, though Rossi had paid a stiff personal price. In brief, he explained, you do not go unpunished when moving into an area where you fight two powerful interests simultaneously: the oil industry, selling oil, and organized crime, seeking to control waste management in many countries. I perceived acceptable explanations for all the warning bells that the skeptics observed—the failed inventions, the trade secrets, the news conference and the problems with his old business.
The crucial issue was the device itself. It may not have increased Rossi’s credibility that it looked like a sloppily built home-distilling apparatus wrapped in aluminum foil. The biggest problem was different: most physicists and scientists agreed that it absolutely could not function the way Rossi and Focardi claimed. Yet it seemed to sit there and simmer and produce much more heat than was supplied through electricity, and not small amounts, either. The device was boiling water to steam with a net power of ten kilowatts, roughly comparable to an electric stove with four burners at maximum heat. The scientist who testified that the device actually produced that much heat was Giuseppe Levi, an experimental physicist and researcher at the University of Bologna, widely considered to be the world’s oldest such institution. Levi had been a colleague of Professor Focardi for many years and had been engaged to monitor the demonstration in Bologna from a scientific point of view, with an eye on the instruments and on how the measurements were made. He stressed that the results were preliminary, but obviously the apparatus had made a strong impression on him.
“I saw this object for the first time in December 2010 and I am very impressed by the high power output,” he said, when I talked to him on the phone. “What impressed me and what sets this work apart from everything I’ve ever seen is that we have 10 kW of measured power output and this output is completely repeatable,” he continued.
It’s not particularly difficult to measure heat energy, especially such large amounts. You simply let the energy source heat water and then use straightforward formulas to calculate how much energy is required to heat that water from a certain temperature to another. If the water boils into steam, there is a simple formula for that, too. For physicists, either process is usually a breeze. But in this case the result was so controversial that everyone involved looked anxiously for all potential sources of error. What could possibly have been missed?
As for me, I stood there at my offices, that day in February, wondering if the man with the lively eyes, gentle smile and friendly handshake was perhaps an accomplished con artist. I realized that it would be difficult to uncover such a fraudster but I imagined that I could at least apply my journalistic experience and engineering education. My questions lined up one after the other, spanning a broad spectrum. What data were presented? How reliable were the sources? How credible were the theories according to which the apparatus could not work? How much of the scientific skepticism was pure sociology—resistance to the new? Who were the people involved? What were their scientific backgrounds and credentials? How did they behave? What were their motives? What risks did they take? How would a scam be implemented? How many people had to be involved in a possible scam? And who was Andrea Rossi?
“Rossi is behaving as a serious scientist. Anyone who tries to execute forgery behaves differently and does not go into a physics department, does not accept that you put up measuring instruments and does not confront scientists,” Levi had told me. I had never met Levi but I had no reason to doubt his judgment. On the other hand, the whole story was so controversial that I felt that basically I should not trust anyone. All these thoughts had passed through my mind as I stood there before Rossi. I took his outstretched hand and greeted him—his was a firm handshake, without hesitation.
He immediately held up the newspaper article. “This is lovely, bellissimo—many thanks!” he said. I mumbled that there was nothing to thank me for. We chatted, while I continued to think about who he really was, then asked if he’d like a cup of coffee. Rossi got a couple of copies of the newspaper and we went around the corner to my little watering hole, an Italian coffee bar that I used to sneak down to every morning for a seconda colazione or second breakfast: cappuccino and cornetto, plus a chat in Italian and time for reflection. Behind the bar the coffee machine gleamed, managed by Alessandro and Vincenzo, two young Italians from Puglia who ran the place. Their establishment was one of the few sources of really good quality Italian coffee I knew in Stockholm.
§
I had acquired a bad habit with la seconda colazione when living for a couple of years in Italy, obviously influential in this story. My wife is Italian and I learned to speak the language with relative ease. Added to my physics knowledge as an engineer, this seemed to have been crucial in contacting Rossi. After his previous experiences he was reserved towards journalists. Indeed, my Italian language skill had made me aware of Rossi’s device. A few days after his semi-public presentation in Bologna one of our readers had tipped the newsroom with a link to a blog in Italian. Looking at it, an informal report on Rossi’s work, I had realized quickly that the results were unique, if they were genuine. I thought also that with my skills in Italian I could perhaps examine the sources properly. I was skeptical, however, and in no great hurry.
Only the day after, I wrote a summary of the news, published on the newspaper’s website, entitled “Cold Fusion: now supposedly ready for production.” Then I thought no more about it. After a few hours I had to change my mind. The response was tremendous. Readers pounced on the news. From experience we knew that our readers—mostly engineers—were keenly interested in the topic of energy. While the general public was concerned about how energy consumption and carbon emissions affected the environment, most engineers’ approach was ravenous interest in every possible technical solution to the problem. Solving the energy issue had recently become many technicians’ ultimate dream—the Holy Grail—and the primary goal of many entrepreneurs, large and small, particularly those with a history of success in other areas who now had money to invest in new projects. A new energy source that promised cheap, clean and virtually limitless energy was an irresistible morsel for readers, especially if they could discuss whether it worked or not. The article exceeded all other stories on our website in number of readings and soon surpassed 100,000, well beyond any prior story. In absolute terms, this was also a high figure for a technical article in Swedish—Sweden is a small country with a population of nine million. Readers entered immediately into a lively discussion about the technology, based on their engineering expertise in various areas. Comments rapidly reached several hundred and soon the same polarization crystallized, as it had earlier with other observers: on one hand it couldn’t work based on established physics; on the other hand it seemed to be working. Then the readers’ questions arose: who was Rossi and what did he really want? They wanted to know more.
First I contacted Hanno Essén, a Swedish theoretical physicist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. His profession as a physicist was in itself significant but he was also president of The Swedish Skeptics Society[2]—with its sister organizations around the world it persistently debunked pseudoscience, i.e. things presented as science but that according to the association were folklore or outright lies dressed up to instill scientific confidence. I asked him to review Rossi’s work and its documentation, including a somewhat scientific paper that Rossi and Focardi had published a year earlier, in February 2010. The paper carried little weight. It had not been accepted by established scientific media—a small world of specialist publications containing articles based on peer review, in which submitted papers are reviewed and critiqued by independent experts and researchers in the same discipline before being approved for publication. Rossi’s and Focardi’s paper could not be accepted in that world, partly because there was no scientifically acceptable explanation for the process within the unit, but above all because its design was not described in detail—Rossi’s famous ‘industrial secrets’ were precisely that, secret—and other researchers thus could not repeat the process based on the paper. Instead it was published on a website that Rossi started and named The Journal of Nuclear Physics, immediately evoking scientific journals, though it was Rossi’s own website.
Hanno Essén reviewed the material. To my surprise his first comment was: “This looks interesting.” I was immediately curious and asked him to explain. Like Levi, Essén noted that it revealed a hefty amount of energy and experimental data. “The fact that it’s reproducible, that they actually built a stable unit, that’s new,” he noted. A lengthy discussion ensued.
“But the objections regarding physics?” His response was that much of our knowledge of nuclear physics had been established for many years but areas remained where our understanding was poor. “There is no need to be dogmatic,” he said. He mentioned a paper of his own that he, like Rossi and Focardi, had posted on an open website without peer review. It could possibly concern the physics in Rossi’s device but had been met with silence when he published it. The paper described a phenomenon that occurred when you heated metals. Among other things, electrons were generated that orbited at speeds approaching the speed of light, creating a state of so-called plasma that was one area where scientific knowledge was still limited.
I recalled history’s great scientists and explorers, visionaries with subversive ideas such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin. Some clashed with contemporaries when presenting ideas contrary to established views and threatening a prevailing worldview. Others risked death or were—as with Bruno—even executed. Galilei, often cited as the father of science, focused his telescope—the invention he had himself refined—towards Jupiter. He discovered four moons circling the planet and realized that he not only had good reason to agree with Copernicus that the earth could not be the center of the Universe, with heavenly bodies attached to large globes of glass rotating inside each other, but that he, Galilei, had evidence. That he later observed the phases of the planet Venus through his telescope was icing on his astronomical cake. He could not with impunity question a view that had existed for millennia. The earth as the center of the Universe was a concept fundamental to the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. If one could not trust the Church in that, how much more could one not question? What might people start to believe, or disbelieve? The Church had realized those dangers from the start. Galilei had ended up in front of the Inquisition, forced to renounce his ideas and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. But he continued to write in secret anyway.
New knowledge could indeed be that frightening, both to those representing the current knowledge and to those with powerful interests based on the current world order. Though our scientific methods may seem modern, a similar situation could occur even today. It was not hard to understand, though in this case it was about knowledge—nuclear physics—that was only about 100 years old, not 2,000 years. It was also obvious that enormous power interests were at stake, if a cheap, clean and virtually inexhaustible energy source emerged, but I had difficulty believing that this would be significant already in assessing the physics of the device. Instead, it was a threat waiting just around the corner, if the apparatus worked.
I thanked Hanno Essén for his comments, hung up and gathered my thoughts. A device that should not work but seemed to work anyway. A skeptical physicist who thought it ‘interesting.’ An overwhelming response from readers. This was an intriguing combination. I had to talk to Rossi, I thought, and sent an email in Italian to him and Focardi, formulated with the usual Italian courtesy phrases, noting that interest in Sweden was huge. Could I interview him? I apparently intrigued him and received a reply the same day. “Great, I’ll call you at 1400 tomorrow,” Rossi wrote.
The interview with Rossi and Focardi was the feature we published on Ny Teknik’s cover—the one Rossi had seen, stepping through our office door in Stockholm that day in February when we first met. As is our custom, we also published it on our website in Swedish in slightly different form. Since I began to understand that there was significant international interest and that no major media had picked up the news, I did a self-translation into English that we published on the website simultaneously. Later, it seemed that the English version had not only acquired a large international audience, it also seemed to influence events in this story.
On our website, the article was headlined: “Cold fusion may provide one megawatt in Athens.” In the newspaper, it said instead, on the front page: “We deserve the Nobel Prize.” It was not Rossi but Focardi who, politely cautious, expressed his views on the technology and the possibilities of the Nobel Prize when I interviewed him.
“You know, rewards are something I usually give to myself,” he first said, modestly. Then he added: “I believe—forgive me if I say it—that this is the greatest discovery in human history. So let’s say that if they were to award us the Nobel Prize, I think it would be well deserved.”
When I later saw the headline on the front page, mentioning the Nobel Prize, I thought that if it all turned out to be a well-executed hoax or misunderstanding, or if the apparatus simply did not work, the critics would take every opportunity to mock us for that title even if we had been quoting something Focardi had said. If it worked, it would be almost an obvious Nobel candidate, though it was not clear to whom it would be awarded. The front page of the print version would then be easier to defend, I said to myself, and thought of my editor Jan Huss who had made the decision to publish it as big news despite his skepticism.
§
We grabbed an espresso at the coffee bar. I had a battery of questions. My own speculations, readers’ different views, ideas on how the device could be made to produce heat with hidden methods, oddities surrounding the Greek client, Professor Focardi’s role and a number of other matters that needed answers. Above all, I wanted to try to understand who Rossi was and what drove him. To all my questions he had direct answers. And I believed that I had understood two things. The first was that Rossi seemed to be a very intuitive person who often took quick and important decisions based on gut instinct. The second was that based on his intuition he already seemed to have decided to trust me. I realized that this could serve his purposes. Having an interested journalist as a friend in the Nobel Prize nation, with a large, curious and knowledgeable readership, was valuable to him even if he could not control what I wrote. Though he could not know what I would publish, he told me details that could harm him if they became public, including his early collaboration with a large American corporation that probably did not want to advertise a link to the suspicious cold-fusion area.
I ended up in a classic journalistic quandary. I had received information that I could not publish freely because I would risk losing the connection with Rossi, my main source. On the other hand, I could not reject the information he was giving me. It helped me to build up an over-all picture that formed the basis of relevant reporting. Moreover, I realized that the technology itself, with its huge potential, was so fascinating that those involved could become virtually spellbound and lose their perspective. I had to count on Rossi, the concerned scientists and my own judgment. I could console myself only because I understood the risks. I realized all too well that I had just begun a journey that could end up . . . anywhere. I knew that as far as possible I should keep in touch with people holding different views on Rossi and his invention, and enter into discussions with them, in person and with an open mind. Then it was just a matter of getting on the train.
© Mats Lewan, 2014
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Brian Ahern taking the time to answer some interesting questions about upcoming replication attempt.
You can write well-formed questions to him in this thread.
He will try to answer as best he can. Thanks for that @brian ahern
Questions
1. What is the particles size of the Ni and LiAlH4 and purity? Ni ?? LiAlH4 = 97%
2. Are you going to use mass ratios of Ni- 0.9 gr and LiAlH4-0.1 gr? yes
3. Where are you going to order the Alumina tubes (who is the supplier?) and what will be you ceramic tube length? I understand that the ceramic tube’s dimensions are in inches?Mcmaster carr. My tube lengths will each be about 8" long
4. What about the pressure developed inside the chamber? We have no idea. As far as H2 gas,It calculates to 2700psi at 900C, but it may all get absorbed by the nickel
5. Are you just mix the powders in fume hood manually? yes
6. What kind of calorimetry are you going to use, is it mass flow with partial water phase change as Parkhomov did? If yes where the water in your system will flow to draw heat from the cell? I will start with simple thermometry. If that shows no gain, I will tyry other sources of nickel
7. Aren’t you afraid from explosion (Oxygen + Hydrogen inside a sealed cell with flammable alkali metal, Li + O2)? Yes, I am setting up inside an armored box.
8. Your ceramic chamber will be slightly smaller than Parkhomov, isn’t it? . The quartz outer tube is 10.4 cm OD
9. What is the quartz cylinder for? Are you going to wind the nichrome wire on the ceramic outside diameter and encapsulate it with the quartz? Why not using another cylinder of ceramic with the same quartz dimensions? Can’t you order ceramic cylinder in which the nichrome wire winded already in, as shown in Parkhomov’s schematic? No.
10. Are you going to handle the LiAlH4 in the fume hood with Argon or other purge of gas to reduce the concentration of air inside the fume hood? And what about the air inside the cell after loading it with the particles mixture? I have no argon to employ at my home. I will use air.
11. 5 time cycling of the Ni-LiAlH4 mixture inside the closed/sealed cell? If yes, for what period of time holding it at 700C, are you cooling in a specific profile or naturally ? I will hold at temperature for one hour and shut off power and let cool for an hour.
Thanks,
Answers -
ee below. I will be glad to answer any and all questions.
1. The LiAlH4 is severely poisonous as well as pyrophoric. People have died from a single breath. You must operate in a hood.
2. I am just beginning. I will order cement paste from Cotronics Durapot 304
2, I will order Ni powder from Hunter Nickel Vale-255
3. I will order LiAlH4 from Alpha Aesar 25 grams, %$55.00
4. I will order alumina tubes 0.250 OD x 0188 ID
5. I will order quartz tubes to go over the alumina 10.4mm OD X 7MM ID
6. I will order 18-gauge nichrome wire from Mcmaster-Carr as the resistance wire.
This system will only go to 1100C as the quartz softens around that temperature.
The system must be cycled up and down to 700C at least 5 times to get H into the powders.
Wrap the tubes with nichrome and then cover that with a tight wrap of Zircar insulation. I will mount thermocouples on the wires with a very thin insulating sheath to avoid short circuiting the heater.
Wear face shield at all times after you have begun loading LiAlH4. -
We are also looking for more people who want to help us seek information about the field.
Please let me know if you are interested.