An extended study of a Rossi type reactor device (see posts here and here) has been carried out by a team of Italian and Swedish researchers. The results again shows high energy output for which a nuclear reaction is the only explanation.
Mats Lewan, who has written extensively about the Rossi story for the technical magazine Ny Teknik, writes about the new paper: New scientific report on the E-Cat shows excess heat and nuclear process – An Impossible Invention
In order to avoid doubts that were presented with regard to their earlier report, several things have been changed: The measurement was performed during 32 days in a neutral laboratory in Switzerland, electric measurement on the input power has been improved, a 23-hour test of the reactor without charge was done in order to calibrate the measurement set-up, and chemical analysis of the fuel before and after the run has been performed with five different methods.
He includes some comments from one of the authors, Professor Bo Höistad of Uppsala University:
Mats: What have you done differently this time, based on the experiences from your last measurement and report?
Höistad: An accurate measurement, particularly the control of energy balance without fuel in the reactor, and a isotopic analysis of the fuel.
Mats: What reactions do you expect on the report?
Höistad: Hopefully that the interest in the possibility of achieving LENR reactors get a decent boost, and that critical overtones in the debate are downplayed in favor of scientific discussions.
Mats: What do you personally feel facing the inexplicable observations you have made?
Höistad: As pointed out in our paper, we face a phenomenon without explanation. However, we can not categorically reject the clear experimental results just because a credible theory is currently lacking. We need to relate to the actual experimental results and continue the investigations to gain more knowledge about the LENR phenomenon.
The paper has been submitted to Physics Review D and was available on the preprint site arXiv.org but was removed, no doubt because of the usual controversy that surrounds any cold fusion type paper. The report, however, is available on line:
Observation of abundant heat production from a reactor device and of isotopic changes in the fuel (pdf)
Giuseppe Levi – Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
Evelyn Foschi – Bologna, Italy
Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson and Lars Tegnér – Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Hanno Essén – Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract:
New results are presented from an extended experimental investigation of anomalous heat production in a special type of reactor tube operating at high temperatures. The reactor, named E-Cat, is charged with a small amount of hydrogen-loaded nickel powder plus some additives, mainly Lithium. The reaction is primarily initiated by heat from resistor coils around the reactor tube. Measurements of the radiated power from the reactor were performed with high-resolution thermal imaging cameras. The measurements of electrical power input were performed with a large bandwidth three-phase power analyzer.
Data were collected during 32 days of running in March 2014. The reactor operating point was set to about 1260 ºC in the first half of the run, and at about 1400 °C in the second half. The measured energy balance between input and output heat yielded a COP factor of about 3.2 and 3.6 for the 1260 ºC and 1400 ºC runs, respectively. The total net energy obtained during the 32 days run was about 1.5 MWh. This amount of energy is far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume.
A sample of the fuel was carefully examined with respect to its isotopic composition before the run and after the run, using several standard methods: XPS, EDS, SIMS, ICP-MS and ICP-AES. The isotope composition in Lithium and Nickel was found to agree with the natural composition before the run, while after the run it was found to have changed substantially. Nuclear reactions are therefore indicated to be present in the run process, which however is hard to reconcile with the fact that no radioactivity was detected outside the reactor during the run.
Update: The CEO of Elforsk, the organization that runs the electric power plants in Sweden, responds to the report and announces the formation of a program to study the phenomenon. Here’s an English translation of his statement: CEO Elforsk Magnus Olofsson – LENR Forum. (Elforsk has been monitoring the work of the Italian-Swedish group for some time now.)
Update 2: Here’s an interview with prominent investor Tom Darden who is CEO of Cherokee Investment Partners, which in turn owns the company Industrial Heat that acquired the rights to Rossi’s eCat technology (see post here) : Raleigh investor Darden still bullish on controversial nuclear technology – Triangle Business Journal
Would love for this to be real, but it needs more scientists to take the issue seriously from an investigational standpoint before anything can be definitely established one way or the other. As the apocryphal Zen master said, “We shall see…”
I thought after last year’s report the chance the excess energy was an instrument artifact or other mistake was 1 in 100. Now I think it is 1 in 10000.
The system will probably be commercialized and on the market before other researchers obtain samples to work with. Industrial Heat, LLC in NC (see http://hobbyspace.com/Blog/?p=6208) already has a 1MW heater in a factory for independent evaluation.
This will likely leave a huge black mark on the science community. In my time in physics, I could name probably a dozen cases of highly controversial experimental findings. There were, for example, fractional charged particles and a magnetic monopole “discovered” in the basement of the Stanford physics dept. There was a press conference in Hamburg for a new particle discovered at the Hera ep accelerator but it later disappeared when all the data was analyzed. Anomalons were “discovered” in the Bevatron. There were several false reports of neutrino mass. Etc. etc. However, in none of those cases were the researchers vilified, disgraced and marched out of the scientific ranks. Instead the results were treated skeptically but respectfully and researchers continued to obtain funding to work in these areas. Expts at new accelerators, for example, still look for signs of fractional particles. Monopole searches continue. In the case of neutrinos, later experiments did show they had mass.
If it had not been for the deliberate efforts by some influential sorts in the physics community to demonize and smear cold fusion (or low energy nuclear reactions – LENR), it would have continued as perfectly reasonable area to work in. In fact, a review panel at DOE about a decade ago said that Cold Fusion research was legitimate and should be able to compete for grants like any other research.
A lot of research has gone on since the original P-F announcement. McCubre at SRI, for example, said they have put several hundred person-years into their work, mostly with the P-F type electrolysis approach. Italy seemed to provide some resources since a number of projects like Rossi-Focardi went on there. However, most everyone else in the field has had to work on shoe-string budgets or with personal funding.
Commercialization of a working system is at this point the only thing that will finally change views of all this. Just hope it moves along at a fast pace.
I agree, the wholesale prejudice with absolutely no willingness to look at it objectively is a disgrace for the scientific community.
To understand these claims, it helps to have followed the history of Andrea Rossi as a convicted felon who caused an environmental disaster in Italy called Petroldragon. Rossi’s next project was a $9 million project to make thermoelectric modules for the US DOD. It failed miserably and it is highly likely that the original proposal by Rossi constituted fraud.
The current gadget has been claimed to have heated a factory in 2007! Really? And a crummy piece of tubing which can barely make toast when powered from the mains is all it’s grown to since?
The scientists who conducted the pair of recent tests botched the input power measurement. They used the wrong kind of meters. Rossi could easily have used three times more electric power than they measured. It’s called the cheese trick and you can see it done here:
Everyone of Rossi’s tests has been defective. The whole thing looks exactly like investor fraud and nothing more.
The only fraud here is you. What kind of contemptible jerk goes around under such a stupid pseudonym making accusations like that?
I know Rossi’s history very well. Rossi was in fact exonerated of those charges and his conviction thrown out. It was typical big Italian political mess that says nothing whatsoever about this technology.
Yes, silly me, of course an internet troll knows more than a half dozen physicists (including one who was chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society), who have spent at least two years studying Rossi’s systems, on how to measure energy in versus energy out.
Your charge of investor fraud is as stupid as your claims of poor measurements. No one, not Rossi nor anyone else, can make a dime on any of this until customers have working systems that they are satisfied with. There is no positive side of any kind for anyone involved in any of this unless it works.
Don’t bother responding. I will delete any further trolling from you.
WITNESSING A CRIME AGAINST THE PLANET:
TopSpacer, I agree with you tough comment on “MaryYugo.
I’ve observed “MaryYugo”, whoever they are, trolling several sites with misinformation on Rossi and LENR and Cold Fusion for years now.
Deliberately suppressing the knowleged of LENR is A CRIME AGAINST THE PLANET, far worse than a crime against humanity.
MaryYugo can only know for certain that their comments are inaccurate and biased and therefore could likely be committing the crime of the century or even the millennia (1000 years).
The MaryYugo team better run for the hills and try to cover their tracks before it’s too late or risk getting hunted down like a nazi war criminal.