Cold fusion reactor verified by third-party researchers

[qube_TA]

Will probably turn out to be nonsense again but fingers crossed

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fus...

[MrBrightSi]

Already posted over in news and received only scepticism.

Im no scientist, but all the things i've read have said it's impossible to break through the coulomb barrier. However, i remember being told that quantum tunnelling is how the sun which itself isn't hot enough to do the kind of thing it is doing, then surely it has to play a part.


That is, however, that this is all legit.

http://ecat.com/ecat-products/ecat-1-mw

Supposedly there is one of these plants undergoing testing in an industrial setting. The internet has made finding anything about it hard, only websites with direct interest too it, no 3rd party media has touched it, but the whole deep scepticism of this would mean even the most thorough test would still get slated.

I just hope it's a step that opens our eyes to new realms of nuclear physics, if it's all a scam, i'm only guilty of hoping for a cleaner more efficient power source.

[Dogwatch]

If it does pan out it will make Hinckley even more of a white elephant for the UK taxpayer. I'm not anti-nuclear, but rather less enthusiastic than I used to be for the fission technology on both cost and environmental grounds.

[hairykrishna]

It's nonsense. Rossi has been touting his e-cat for about a decade.

[Flibble]

Pretty much knew this would be e-cat before opening the thread. It's bks.

[anonymous-user]

Absolute Sloblocks! You can tell from the "experimental" setup, ie, a test rig that consists of a couple of bits of angle iron from an old shelving unit, all being run in what looks to be a broom cupboard!



It looks to me like this device takes electrical energy in and gives out heat. In which case, you need to measure the heat flux very carefully with a accurate calorimeter.

Here's what one of those looks like:





So it's quite clear that the "results" of this new "study" are simply not valid, whatever they are being used to suggest........

[anonymous-user]

Also:

The researchers observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, or “far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume.”


Er, it's connected to the power grid! So the volume of the device is irrelevant. For example, my gas boiler at home is only about 12" square, and yet in the same 32 days could easily output 53 MWhrs!! (7kw rating x 25hrs x 32days)

1.5MWhrs is around 2Kw heat output for 32days, about that of a typical kettle element, which is almost exactly the same size as the unit under test. Hardly magic or "fusion" now is it.........

[Jabbah]

The team that did this second "independent" report are the exact same team that did the first one that was pretty much ridiculed. You would also expect an independent test to not have the scammer inventor there interfering with the experiment turning switches on and off and handling the device.

[Jabbah]

Some people are asking why bother with this test? How is it a scam? What does Rossi benefit from it?

Well, he tried to get international patents on this device but was rejected everywhere but Italy for various reasons. Having patents on this device may make his company more attractive to investors or other energy companies. One way to overcome these rejections would be to include independent experimental evidence in the applications...

[XM5ER]

Max_Torque said:

Also:

The researchers observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, or “far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume.”


Er, it's connected to the power grid! So the volume of the device is irrelevant. For example, my gas boiler at home is only about 12" square, and yet in the same 32 days could easily output 53 MWhrs!! (7kw rating x 25hrs x 32days)

1.5MWhrs is around 2Kw heat output for 32days, about that of a typical kettle element, which is almost exactly the same size as the unit under test. Hardly magic or "fusion" now is it.........

But it does say "net" energy produced, not gross. Ie roughly 2.5 time energy in. Your kettle element doesn't do that.

[hairykrishna]

Their measurement of power out is terrible though. They essentially measure the surface temperature of the "reactor" with an IR camera then use a calculation to arrive at the power. Take it from someone who's used an IR camera in a physics lab, there are numerous ways that measurement could be fooling them. They don't calibrate at the measurement temperature so if the emissivity changes a lot with temperature they will be way off. If the cladding is partially transparent to IR then they may not be measuring what they think they're measuring.

Even if the temperature is correct they're relying on a calculation with assumptions that may be shaky. Why not just load it into a calorimeter?

The isotope ratio thing might be intriguing if they hadn't let Rossi handle the fuel at multiple points in between the "before" and "after" assays.

[XM5ER]

hairykrishna said:

Their measurement of power out is terrible though. They essentially measure the surface temperature of the "reactor" with an IR camera then use a calculation to arrive at the power. Take it from someone who's used an IR camera in a physics lab, there are numerous ways that measurement could be fooling them. They don't calibrate at the measurement temperature so if the emissivity changes a lot with temperature they will be way off. If the cladding is partially transparent to IR then they may not be measuring what they think they're measuring.

Even if the temperature is correct they're relying on a calculation with assumptions that may be shaky. Why not just load it into a calorimeter?

The isotope ratio thing might be intriguing if they hadn't let Rossi handle the fuel at multiple points in between the "before" and "after" assays.

Can't disagree with any of that, good job they didn't use a pyrometer or they might have come up some other weird warming theory.

[MrBrightSi]

Rossi could be a scam artist.

Lockhead martin, not so much.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releas...

[hairykrishna]

MrBrightSi said:

Rossi could be a scam artist.

Lockhead martin, not so much.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releas...

That's hot fusion and, unlike Rossi's nonsense, doesn't require violation of any known laws of physics.

[MrBrightSi]

True, the more i read the more im put off by rossi's versions of things, however other companies have caught my eye, as well as the other alternative nuclear energy stuff. Thorium, hot fusion and the like, all of it has potential hopefully.

There was a TED talk by some guy who studied trends in technology and it's development, if anything he has found is true and something to go on, these things develop exponentially, we might be at the knee of the curve, or we could be part of the shallow gradient towards it, still years from the explosion that brings the next level.

Edited by MrBrightSi on Thursday 16th October 21:37

[2fast748]

Who was that (American?) bloke who touted a contraption around years ago that looked like a fan on a shaft that he claimed produced more energy than it consumed?

He said it only failed a test because they forced him to earth it?

ETA: http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Edited by 2fast748 on Friday 17th October 14:24

[anonymous-user]

hairykrishna said:

MrBrightSi said:

Rossi could be a scam artist.

Lockhead martin, not so much.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releas...

That's hot fusion and, unlike Rossi's nonsense, doesn't require violation of any known laws of physics.

Indeed, but it's still so full of holes it's not funny. For example, there device that can output Megawatts of power and is claimed to fit inside a 20foot square box. It's Megawatts of HEAT, not of Electricity, so have a look how big a boiler, turbine and generator are that can convert MW of heat to MW of electricity..........