Sci-Tech: Independent tests of Rossi E-Cat LENR systems show “anomalous heat energy production”

An independent team of well respected [scientists, including physicists and chemists] from Italy and Sweden have released the results of extensive tests they made of the LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) systems developed by Andrea Rossi in partnership with Prof.  Sergio Focardi at the University of Bologna. The team found that the excess energy produced by the systems to be at least an “order of magnitude greater than conventional energy sources”.

Rossi previously did demonstrations and some tests with outside scientists but his direct involvement was held by some to bias the results. These new tests were done without Rossi’s presence and the team had access to the “E-Cat” systems for long periods and could set up the tests as they saw fit.

Here is the abstract of their report:

An experimental investigation of possible anomalous heat production in a special type of reactor tube named E-Cat HT is carried out. The reactor tube is charged with a small amount of hydrogen loaded nickel powder plus some additives. The reaction is primarily initiated by heat from resistor coils inside the reactor tube. Measurement of the produced heat was performed with high-resolution thermal imaging cameras, recording data every second from the hot reactor tube. The measurements of electrical power input were performed with a large bandwidth three-phase power analyzer. Data were collected in two experimental runs lasting 96 and 116 hours, respectively. An anomalous heat production was indicated in both experiments. The 116-hour experiment also included a calibration of the experimental set-up without the active charge present in the E-Cat HT. In this case, no extra heat was generated beyond the expected heat from the electric input. Computed volumetric and gravimetric energy densities were found to be far above those of any known chemical source. Even by the most conservative assumptions as to the errors in the measurements, the result is still one order of magnitude greater than conventional energy sources.

Update: Here are a couple of items from Mats Lewan of the Swedish tech magazine NyTeknik. He has been reporting on the Rossi system for the past couple of years:

Update 2: More response and info about the tests:

28 thoughts on “Sci-Tech: Independent tests of Rossi E-Cat LENR systems show “anomalous heat energy production””

  1. Maybe I just have an unrealistic impression of how hard it is to break into the energy production business, but why isn’t this on the grid yet? Surely, raising the necessary funding to build a “test reactor” is not that much of a tall ask.

  2. Don’t pretend to understand Rossi and all that has been going on with his biz partners. I’ll note that their first device just produces moderate temp (~100 C) hot water/steam and so is not suitable for efficient production of electricity. They have a new “Hot-Cat” that does look promising for electricity production but it is at an earlier stage in development.

  3. Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    so how much water (medium) was heated to what temperature?
    How much energy as observed by heating a mass of any subtance was observed?
    Why was the Ecat not simply tested for a month?
    By simply tested i mean by a customer?
    Or an INDEPENDANT testing lab?
    HYPERGOLIC?
    maybe!
    Why was there a need for Ross’s acknowledged supporters to conduct this test?
    Why NOT an independant lab?
    Reply

    1. A common-sense explanation: Rossi is not content to merely publish scientific results. He intends to make a fortune. There are a lot of smart people out there; if he releases too much information, an organization with deep pockets and a large legal team will roll over him like an Abrams MBT over a quadriplegic gerbil. So he must balance the need for independent confirmation with the need to keep his cards close to the vest.

      Or, somebody’s being fooled. If so, it’s a pretty good con.

      1. Keeping every detail secret and raising capital privately to get a test reactor onto the grid seems like a better way to make money to me. Ya know, if it works.

        1. But there are practical considerations. As I mentioned, the initial devices have temperatures tool low for electricity production. He cannot sell them to consumers for water/home heating until a long certification process is done. Certification for industrial apps is a lot faster and so he needs to attract industrial customers who need heat and/or steam. To do that he has to show that it works. Most firms will not want to fund this testing themselves (they can’t fund tests of every wild new energy device) and would much rather see independent groups like the above do the testing.

          The industrial guys will also want systems that are big enough to be useful to them. Going from prototypes to production systems is always hard (e.g. see SpaceShipOne to SpaceShipTwo) and going from prototypes to big production systems is even harder.

          Rossi seems to be mostly self funded but he still needs to attract good people to work for him. That is another reason to do public demos to entice such people.

        2. Problem 1 is, it’s closer to a lab experiment than a marketable device. Problem 2 is, all the potential players got burned big time back in the day with CF, and damned if they’ll go through that again.

          So, extraordinary evidence, squared, must be produced just to overcome the fear factor. But extraordinary evidence lets the cat out of the bag. It’s one of those Joseph Heller thingumabobs.

      2. Yes, Rossi clearly has been in no hurry to see the technology proven beyond any doubt before his company and allied firms have it ready for the market. Once there is widespread acceptance of its reality, there is going to be a tsunami of efforts around the world to figure out how it works and to reproduce it. No way that patents and trade secrets will protect it.

    2. Read the paper. It explains how the measurements were made.

      Hypergolics are chemicals and they cannot produce more than the max energy that chemicals can produce. This team measured the device as a black box and showed that the energy produced within that box was at least an order of magnitude more than is possible with chemicals.

      These are first rate scientists at world class institutions who have taken huge risks with their careers and reputations by getting involved in this. The idea that they are “supporters” of Rossi is silly.

      Hanno Essén, for example, is a theoretical physicist at Stockholm Univ. with a mile long publication list. He is a former chairman of the The Swedish Skeptics’ Association. A primary goal of that organization is to root out false science claims.

      The suggestion that Essén and the others have not made their best efforts to test the Rossi system in as stringent and thorough a manner as possible is totally absurd.

      There is still some non-zero chance there has been some mistake but with each round of testing, that chance is becoming vanishingly small.

    1. Most of that is wrong or irrelevant. E.g. there’s a long complicated story behind Rossi’s battle with some Italian authorities over the waste to energy project but the bottom line is that his court conviction was later overturned and he was exonerated. He has had successful energy related businesses since then.

      As mentioned above, the internal workings of the reactor are irrelevant. It is a black box for which they measure the total input energy and output energy. The total excess energy measured is far larger than what chemical reactions can produce.

      With excess energy differences of this scale, there is no need for hyper-precise calorimetry. In all the measurements and calculations the team takes basic first principle, conservative approaches that lead to underestimates of the total excess energy.

      Krivit has been trashing Rossi for a couple of years. The fact that he refuses to alter his opinion in any way after this report says a lot more about him than about the tests.

  4. The problems with these tests have been discussed extensively elsewhere. In summary, they were run almost entirely by Levi who is a close friend and associate of Rossi’s so they were certainly not “independent”.

    In addition, questions have been raised about the integrity of the mains supply. It was provided by Rossi in his lab. The experimenters used clamp on ammeters which do not see power outside a narrow band of frequencies around 50-60Hz. There was no effort made to look at the mains power with an oscilloscope and a DC meter. This test was neither independent nor adequate to rule out cheating and sleight of hand. Scientists are notoriously poor at detecting misdirection and deception. This was no exception.

    1. First of all, to trash Levi while hiding under an alias is utterly repugnant. He and the other authors are putting their reputations on the line and you are not even willing to put your true name on your blog comments. You have no standing whatsoever to question anyone else’s integrity

      Secondly, all the “problems” discussed extensively elsewhere require bizarre conspiracies that make no sense whatsoever. The only way there will be any money made on these devices is if they produce net power for their customers. To claim that Rossi, Prof. Focardi, Levi, etc. are going through a staggeringly elaborate ruse that will produce no ultimate result other than to ruin their reputations (and to put them in jail if any devices were sold under false pretenses) is absurd.

      Thirdly, scientists who work for weeks and months on a system are notoriously good at understanding what is really going on and at doing reliable measurements. To keep talking as if this is a brief stage trick is ridiculous.

      Finally, as others have noted, the primary rational concern for the Rossi-Focardi system was that they were making some fundamental error and had fooled themselves that there was net energy. This study drastically reduces that concern.

  5. George Hodi alias MaryYugo, forever the pathological skeptic.

    As in all scientific pre-prints entering into arXiv. there may be things to question. The paper show clearly that some went in, much more went out, conservatively speaking. You are like Gary Wright in many ways. He can’t wrap his mind around the fact that the cylinder, in the very first failing test in the paper, were glowing in colors of bright orange to white and melted inside. This is in itself is a clear cut evidence that a huge amount of energy is produced very rapidly.

    Wrap your head around this: LENR is a reality (check http:\\lenr-canr.org for proper references), and there are now very compelling evidence that there is atleast one entreprenour/inventor with a product about to hit the market.

  6. Right here is the perfect site for anyone who hopes to understand
    this topic. You know a whole lot its almost hard to argue with you (not that I personally will need to…HaHa).
    You certainly put a brand new spin on a topic
    that’s been discussed for many years. Great stuff, just excellent!

  7. What is happening around LENR/cold Fusion is not new. This report in only the 3rd from a 3rd company by a 3rd tester…
    This is the most formal papers, but all 3 test let the testers play as he like with the reactor…fraud would be too risky for the companies, because tester can test what they want…

    It works, I choose Occam razor.

    There is a group of various companies on the ramp, big, startup, inventors… I have made an executive summary for the newcomer:

    http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/
    there is another article on scientific evidences linked inside.

    About why “normal science” reject it, one should read Thomas Kuhn.
    http://fr.slideshare.net/sandhyajohnson/the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions-thomas-kuhn-book-summary#
    and then my article on evidences (cited in the summary)

    — AlainCo the techwatcher of lenr-forum.

      1. Ther is many alse claims that circulate.
        fact is that it is a blackbox test, which is not a problem.
        testing inside the reactor, the control box, or between the two was forbidden to avoid retro engineering. same for gamma spectrography, which is fear to allow guess composition.

        from one tester it is clear today that they reject the only possible tricks, injecting DC from the main.
        Many reason beside the claim of the scientists to find this hypothesis hard to swallow, because it could have been tested easily, and instruments were on the same plug…

        many other claims are simply incompetence and lack of reading of the report.

        Maky skeptics looks like a condemned in the death row checking his last-meal and always finding that it is not OK, just to get few minute more before the cooking.

        hard to swallow the crow.

        anyway that is not the only events, and today for more and more businessmen, the time of chatting is gone… I’m surprised because the opposition is more and more hysterical, but it is the swan song.

      2. ” the investigators have been prevented from doing many tests that they’d like to.”

        Only with the device, which for the paper they treated as a black box. Claims in blogs that they were significantly restricted on measurements outside that box are not supported by the paper or by statements released subsequently from the authors. They did in fact check for hidden wires, DC voltages on inputs, etc.

        The paper explains their straight-forward measurement method and with that method they found more energy was produced in that box than is possible by chemical reactions. So far, no one has show any flaw in the measurement setup. Thus the only explanation is some sort of deliberate hidden work-around to fool that setup. Not only do critics have to strain right up to the point of absurdity to come up with a way to carry out such a fraud, they have no explanation as for what motivation there would be for such a fraud. There is no possible benefit from the Rossi system unless it provides a payoff from satisfied customers. Any fraud would be less a conspiracy than a joint career suicide pact. There is no window of opportunity for great riches and glory between a lab test that says it works and a customer finding out that it does not work.

        1. I don’t think it’s up to investigators to come up with motives for possible fraud.

          Last I heard, they’ve been prevented from disconnecting the plug from the wall, but have been allowed to measure the power in the cable externally. I think that’s incredibly suspect.

          Finally, I’m not sure I even see who the potential customer for this is. Converting nickel into copper is a good way to lose money in the commodities market 🙂 The device will have to produce more than 1 kWh per lb to break even, assuming the copper is suitable for resale.

  8. “I don’t think it’s up to investigators to come up with motives for possible fraud.”

    Firstly, publicly accusing someone or some group of fraud usually requires more evidence than simply not believing their experimental finding.

    Secondly, this is not about the investigators but about logic. Regardless of what one believes about Rossi, there is no logical motivation for fraud by Levi and Focardi or by the other groups that have also seen net energy production in similar types of nickel based setups.

    “Last I heard, they’ve been prevented from disconnecting the plug from the wall,…’

    Sounds like another of those internet rumors that one of the authors will eventually say is untrue or that it just never occurred to them to unplug it.

    “The device will have to produce more than 1 kWh per lb to break even”

    Your number is off a bit. The March test measured 61MWh/kg and the Dec test 680kWh/kg. (See the Conclusions for why these values differed.) And these were the numbers just for the time the device was turned on. It did not run out of power, it was turned off. They are planning a 6 month test and the total energy density found should be much greater.

    The first system going on the market will produce 1MW of hot water at around 100C with a COP of 6. There will be many customers for such a system.

    1. I’m sorry, but there’s no point investigating a blackbox device unless your assumption is that fraud is a possibility. That doesn’t mean you’re accusing anyone of fraud, it’s simply demanding the most stringent analysis of the evidence.

      One doesn’t have to “believe” anything of anyone to do a proper skeptical analysis of the device. Similarly, one should not rule out fraud because one believes anyone to be truthful.

      “Sounds like another of those internet rumors that one of the authors will eventually say is untrue or that it just never occurred to them to unplug it.”

      Perhaps it is.

      “The March test measured 61MWh/kg and the Dec test 680kWh/kg.”

      Wholesale electricity is $34/MWh, nickel is about $14.84/kg. You talk about logical motivations.. If I had a device that could turn $1 into $140 I’d be running it day and night and not letting a soul near it.

  9. ” Similarly, one should not rule out fraud because one believes anyone to be truthful.”

    It’s not about ruling it out a priori but for an outsider looking at the facts of the whole situation, the possibility of fraud is becoming vanishingly small.

    This paper is not as if someone won a race and is jumping up and down with the trophy while brave bloggers reveal that the runner might have taken the subway. The paper is just one step, albeit a large one, toward showing that the effect is real. Everyone involved knows the race will not be won until customers obtain the devices and confirm that they are getting the performance promised.

    “If I had a device that could turn $1 into $140 I’d be running it day and night and not letting a soul near it.”

    As I said several comments earlier, the initial devices cannot produce electricity efficiently at only 100C. These newer “Hot Cats” used in this paper can reach the few hundred degrees but are still at the prototype stage. (As described in the paper, in the first test last fall the device melted.) Generating electricity from one’s own power station is one approach to making money on them eventually but it doesn’t rule out selling generators for other people’s power stations either.

    1. Fair enough. I wonder if the problem is that many patent offices around the world reject this sort of thing these days because there’s no scientific basis for the invention. That would explain the interest in getting third party confirmation before filing.

      1. this was required to Rossi’s patent by the examiners, beside description of the catalyst…

        Rossi’s patent is awful today (no value), but with some inclusion of more detail it may become a real one… but a patent mean you publish your secrets.

        1. I’ve also heard the Italian patent isn’t terribly informative. However, I was just making the point that it’s been unusual to get any sort of CF related patent anywhere and it still seems to be prohibited at the USPTO.

  10. Rossi has an Italian patent but the US Patent Office has had a prohibition on any CF type patent since the 1990s. One must get into the history of CF, the Pons & Fleishmann announcement, the reaction or over-reaction, by some in the physics community, etc, to explain how the USPTO came to do this.

    I suggest watching this video of a panel at the 2012 National Instruments conference (the guys who make LabView)- http://youtu.be/iS4qNbMCBL0

    It starts with a review of CF history by Robert Duncan. He is a distinguished physicist who knew nothing about the field when he was asked by the CBS 60 Minutes program to review work of some groups they were going to do a story on. He became intrigued by what he saw and subsequently he has pursued his own research into it. He is now head of a program at the Univ. of Missouri dedicated to the field.

    The claim that there is no scientific basis for fusion in materials at low energy is an assertion, not a fact. E.g., one often sees the claim that fusion can only happen at super high energies but that is not true. Muon-catalyzed fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion) has been studied since the 1950s and it occurs at room temp or lower. When sent into a mixture of deterium-tritium, a muon can bump out an electron to create a deuterium-tritium-muon molecule. The muon is big and heavy and this brings the nuclei closer together. Through the magic of quantum tunneling, they have a much increased likelihood of fusing and leaving the muon to repeat with another d-t pair. A single muon can produce a few hundred fusions. However, there is a 1% chance it will stick to an alpha particle produced in a fusion event and go shooting out of the system. That, and the accelerator energy needed to create the muon, is why we are not getting our electricity from muon catalyzed fusion power plants. If the sticking factor was just 2 or 3 times lower we would be.

    It is not unscientific to wonder if similar conditions conducive to nuclear reactions can be set up within the wildly complex and diverse structures of solid state materials. It took decades to develop a theory to explain low temp superconductors and the BCS theory is anything but intuitive. And that theory did not predict the high-temp superconductors discovered in the 1980s. There are still battles over the theory to explain that. This sort of thing should make people more modest in claiming they know what is and is not possible within condensed matter.

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