Merged Cold Fusion Claims

[Crawdaddy]

Whatroughbeast,

Given your own statement, there is considerable irony here. Not only "Any argument about patents is pointless.", but apparently "any argument based on patents is pointless." At least when it comes to the Rossi Energy Amplifier.

Perhaps you failed to understand what I wrote. What I said was that the fact that the patent office policy is that no patent for a device that claims cold fusion can be granted, even one that describes a device that works. Thus any claim that the e-cat is a fraud because the patent was rejected is pointless. Surely you can agree with that. Can you? Please do me the courtesy of acknowledging that point as correct. Unless you are just here to push your point of view without examining the evidence dispassionately.

"This new model of E-Cat consists of a stainless steel reactor vessel which is placed inside of a copper pipe. Water flows between the copper pipe and the steel reactor vessel... The reactor is activated by current flowing through a resistor which is wrapped around the outside of the copper pipe. "

If you examine the figures in the pdf you quote you will find a suspicious set of wires labelled auxilliary!

In the PDF report (not the BS blogspam page... why not link directly from rossi's website?) the experimenters write:

At the end of the horizontal section there is an auxiliary electric heater to initialize the burning and also to act as a safety if the heat evolution should get out of control.

The articles referenced in the pdf document provide even more information about the high temperature heating required initiate the reaction.

Therefore I stand by my original statement with regard to the flawed cooling measurement.


Horatious,

Two things here: he seems to be endorsing the theory that the metal matrix allows the atoms to be compressed, which has been pretty well shown to be impossible, as far as I know.

There are some interesting examples of compressed hydrogen and deuterium in metal oxides. One that recently caught my eye is Rydberg Matter (see wikipedia). Examples of these kinds of condensed matter are gaining significant attention.

If this has been running for over three years at this point, why is he only now trying to market it, and why is he relying on a few really crappy "demonstrations"? After three years, he should have a volume of data that should simply overwhelm any possible objections.

According to Jed Rothwell (a cold fusion enthusiast) Rossi has already secured 200 million euros in funding and demonstrated his invention to the DOE. Rossi claimed to have signed a deal with a large US business in the last few days. If these claims are correct then these demonstrations are not how they are marketing their device. Any large investor would surely sign non-disclosure agreements and investigate the devices thoroughly under controlled conditions before making a financial commitment. The notion that someone in this day and age, with examples like blacklight power, steorn, eestor, and given the reputation of cold fusion, someone would blindly commit 200 million euros to something like this stretches common sense to breaking.

Having followed the skeptic movement for many years, I was under the impression that skeptics should examine the evidence before pronouncing judgement on an unexplained phenomenon. Instead I find a forum filled with the very Rhetorical devices and logical fallacies and lack of factual accuracy that are the hallmarks of woosters.

 

[Horatius]

Whatroughbeast,



Perhaps you failed to understand what I wrote. What I said was that the fact that the patent office policy is that no patent for a device that claims cold fusion can be granted, even one that describes a device that works.

And right there, you're just flat out wrong. Cold fusion devices are denied patents because, so far, none of them have actually worked. If an applicant could provide sufficient evidence that his device works, then a patent would be granted on the device.

As I've said before, there is no requirement for you to understand why it works, so long as you can show that it does.

And even if the patent examiner were to reject the device in the face of such evidence, all such decisions can be appealed, both within the patent office, and, if that fails, to the court system. A sincere applicant is given ample opportunity to show his device works.

According to Jed Rothwell (a cold fusion enthusiast) Rossi has already secured 200 million euros in funding and demonstrated his invention to the DOE. Rossi claimed to have signed a deal with a large US business in the last few days. If these claims are correct then these demonstrations are not how they are marketing their device. Any large investor would surely sign non-disclosure agreements and investigate the devices thoroughly under controlled conditions before making a financial commitment. The notion that someone in this day and age, with examples like blacklight power, steorn, eestor, and given the reputation of cold fusion, someone would blindly commit 200 million euros to something like this stretches common sense to breaking.

Yes, except that Rossi himself has said:

“I am assuming all the risks. No one is risking any money except me,”

“I get paid (by Defkalion) only when the installation is delivered and if it works. I do not want people to spend any money until I have started and tested my one-megawatt plant,” said Rossi.

So far he says he has invested 500,000 Euros in developing and building 100 reactors, of ten kilowatts each, that comprise the Athens plant. He also claims that more than a thousand reactors have been built and destroyed during the development.

According to Rossi, the capital used on the project derives from the sale of the Italian company Eon, which he founded in 2003. Eon sold electric generators ('gensets') fueled by biodiesel produced from organic waste – a process Rossi developed in the 1980s that formed the basis for his company Petroldragon.

Having followed the skeptic movement for many years, I was under the impression that skeptics should examine the evidence before pronouncing judgement on an unexplained phenomenon. Instead I find a forum filled with the very Rhetorical devices and logical fallacies and lack of factual accuracy that are the hallmarks of woosters.

Given the above, you'd best be careful about pointing out "lack of factual accuracy".


But, please, show us the "evidence" we haven't examined. All the evidence we've seen has either been of poor quality, self-contradictory, or has actually pointed away from the claims Rossi et al. have been making.

If there's better evidence available, we haven't seen it. And we haven't seen it because Rossi et al. have chosen not to show it to us, even though we've been asking for months now.

 

[Aepervius]

"given how little the skeptic guy bothered to check I have to wonder why he bothered turning up at all."

A cursory examination of the topic of cold fusion will inform you of the fact that it is impossible to patent cold fusion based devices. The patent office rejects them without examination (similar to perpetual motion machines).

The fact is that even if the device worked a patent would not be granted for it under the rules of the patent office. Any argument about patents is pointless. This is basic information about the topic.

The calculation of reactor cooling under 30L/hr flow rate is deeply flawed. A cursory examination of the published data and patent application shows that resistive heating is applied directly to the nickel reactor core. The temperature of the core is much higher than 60 or 100C when resistive heating is applied. It is fully possible to cool the reactor with 30L/hr.

It takes 5 minutes to come up with this information....

Wrong. We had the discussion already. You can even patent a PMM, PROVIDED that you give a working device.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Whatroughbeast,



Perhaps you failed to understand what I wrote. What I said was that the fact that the patent office policy is that no patent for a device that claims cold fusion can be granted, even one that describes a device that works. Thus any claim that the e-cat is a fraud because the patent was rejected is pointless. Surely you can agree with that. Can you? Please do me the courtesy of acknowledging that point as correct. Unless you are just here to push your point of view without examining the evidence dispassionately.

Crawdaddy, I will note that various folk (Aepervius and Horatio, to start) disagree violently with you, and I'm not an expert on patents, so I will only say that you may be right. As I understand it, though, you are wrong. As I understand it, PMMs and CFDs can be patented in the US, but a rigorously tested model is required (unlike "regular", less contentious devices, which only need to be described). As I say, I'm not an expert, and it might help me agree with you if you can produce a link to the source of your assertion, rather than asking me to just accept your expertise about the patent office.

And, just for the record, I never suggested in any way that the rejection of the patent indicated fraud on Rossi's part. Others did, but not me. My own suspicions of fraud have an entirely different basis.

That said, you have entirely missed my point. You criticised my cooling calculation by referring me to Rossi's patent application. Unfortunately, according to the article I referred to and quoted, the demonstration unit DOES NOT CONFORM TO THE PATENT APPLICATION. In the application the nickel coats the inside of the tube (in which case your criticism would be possibly valid - heater power would be applied more or less directly to the nickel, and its temperature could indeed be much higher than the cooling water). In the demonstration unit, the nickel is contained in a stainless steel capsule suspended within the tube. Now the heater heats the pipe, the pipe heats the water, and THEN the water heats the nickel. The article is clear about the construction, and the section I quoted is clear about the thermal path. The nickel is NOT heated directly by the heater.

The article I quoted describes the Rossi reactor as it exists, not as is described in the patent application, and its information must take precedence. And I will note that the Rossi site does not criticise the article as inaccurate. As long as the article stands, so does my calculation.

When I wrote "Not only "Any argument about patents is pointless.", but apparently "any argument based on patents is pointless." " I was being clever, and obviously I went entirely over your head. I apologise. In the future I'll try to remember your limitations.

A minor point - why didn't I link to the report on Rossi's website? Because I came across it first on the site I linked to, saved the link, and it was easier to retrieve.

 

[Horatius]

For the record:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/0600_608_03.htm

Models or exhibits are generally not admitted as part of an application or patent unless the requirements of 37 CFR 1.91 are satisfied.

With the exception of cases involving perpetual motion, a model is not ordinarily required by the Office to demonstrate the operability of a device. If operability of a device is questioned, the applicant must establish it to the satisfaction of the examiner, but he or she may choose his or her own way of so doing.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/menu/utility.pdf

“Credible utility” – Where an applicant has specifically asserted that an
invention has a particular utility, that assertion cannot simply be dismissed
by Office personnel as being “wrong”. Rather, Office personnel must
determine if the assertion of utility is credible (i.e., whether the assertion of
utility is believable to a person of ordinary skill in the art based on the
totality of evidence and reasoning provided). An assertion is credible unless
(A) the logic underlying the assertion is seriously flawed, or (B) the facts
upon which the assertion is based are inconsistent with the logic underlying
the assertion. Credibility as used in this context refers to the reliability of the
statement based on the logic and facts that are offered by the applicant to
support the assertion of utility. A credible utility is assessed from the
standpoint of whether a person of ordinary skill in the art would accept that
the recited or disclosed invention is currently available for such use. For
example, no perpetual motion machines would be considered to be currently
available.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr02221.html

In simplest terms, the requirement that an invention be operable is simply an indication that it needs to work for its intended purpose.

The Supreme Court affirmed in Consolboard Inc. v. MacMillan Bloedel (Saskatchewan) Ltd. that, for the purposes of Canadian law, a lack of utility exists if "the invention will not work, either in the sense that it will not operate at all or, more broadly, that it will not do what the specification promises that it will do"45 and that "f and when used in accordance with the directions contained in the specification, the promised results are obtained, the invention is useful in the sense in which that term is used in the patent law".46 This was merely the reiteration of a long-accepted47 and extant48 standard.

Where the utility of an invention is self-evident to the person skilled in the art, and no particular promise has been made in regard to any advantages of the invention (e.g. if the invention was to simplify a known invention), the self-evident utility is sufficient to meet the required standard.

Where, however, the inventors promise that their invention will provide particular advantages (e.g. will do something better or more efficiently or will be useful for a previously unrecognized purpose) it is this utility that the invention must in fact have.

The Supreme Court noted in Apotex Inc. v. Wellcome Foundation Ltd. (Apotex hereafter) that

Utility is an essential part of the definition of an invention (Patent Act, s. 2). A policy of patent first and litigate later unfairly puts the onus of proof on the attackers to prove invalidity, without the patent owner's ever being put in a position to establish validity. Unless the inventor is in a position to establish utility as of the time the patent is applied for, on the basis of either demonstration or sound prediction, the Commissioner "by law" is required to refuse the patent (Patent Act, s. 40).52

The utility to which the court is referring, of course, is that promised by the inventors (see 12.08.02).

Demonstrated utility pertains to embodiments of the invention that have been shown to actually work for the ends promised by the inventors. Utility can be demonstrated, for example, by the provision of working examples.

Soundly predicted utility pertains to embodiments of the invention which have not themselves been demonstrated to work for the ends promised by the inventors, but for which an appropriate basis exists upon which this utility can be predicted.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr02224.html

On occasion, an examiner may be presented with an alleged invention that is contrary to known scientific principles. Unless the proper operation of such an invention can be established by demonstration, the claims defining it are rejected for lack of utility and the description for lack of proper disclosure.66 Depending on the nature of the invention, it may be helpful to request the provision of a working model of the invention in accordance with section 38 of the Patent Act.

As was said, the patent office will tend to reject perpetual motion, free energy, or cold fusion devices on the basis of a presumed lack of utility, but this presumption can be rebutted by the provision of evidence of practical utility. That no one has yet been able to provide such evidence doesn't mean it will never be found, but that's the way to bet.




And while I'm here:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr02222.html

12.08.04c Proper disclosure

The requirement for proper disclosure means that the person skilled in the art has to, through the specification alone, be provided with sufficient information to understand the basis of the sound prediction and to practice the entire scope of the claimed invention. Elements of either the factual basis or the sound line of reasoning that form part of the common general knowledge will not, as a general rule, need to be disclosed. Elements that form part of the state of the art could (depending on the specific circumstances) be properly disclosed merely by referring to the document in which they are contained. Elements known only to the inventors, however, need to be included in the description itself.

As I said before, even if he's been completely honest, his failure to identify the catalysts he uses is fatal to his application, at least here in Canada.

 

[Crawdaddy]

Horatius,

As I said before, even if he's been completely honest, his failure to identify the catalysts he uses is fatal to his application, at least here in Canada.

I think the rest of your post establishes that the reason the patent has been rejected is that it is classed as a perpetual motion machine and therefore is rejected unless demonstrated with a working model. The rejection notice actually states that it offends against the generally accepted laws of physics and doesn't include experimental or theoretical evidence. The patent would not have been granted even if it included the material used as a catalyst.

I accept based on your research that a patent would be granted if a working device was demonstrated and thank you for the information.

Having worked as a research scientist in industry for about a decade I have had the opportunity to work on patents and the misfortune to try and file them without spending the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to write a rock solid patent and file it worldwide. In my experience many patents are filed in stages where an initial effort is generated without too much input from lawyers or the extensive prior art search that is eventually required. If the idea continues to show promise further resources are devoted to the writing of a patent.

Furthermore patent applications are not published immediately, and provisional patents can be kept confidential for 1 year before they must enter the application process to become a full patent. It is very likely that, if the device actually works, further patent work has already been done and we just can't access it yet. As and example of this: I am currently sitting on pins and needles hoping that the provisional patent we filed at my company retains precedence over our competitors efforts. I have several months to wait because we filed our provisional patent 6 months ago.

With regard to your previous post...

“I get paid (by Defkalion) only when the installation is delivered and if it works. I do not want people to spend any money until I have started and tested my one-megawatt plant,” said Rossi.

So far he says he has invested 500,000 Euros in developing and building 100 reactors, of ten kilowatts each, that comprise the Athens plant. He also claims that more than a thousand reactors have been built and destroyed during the development.

According to Rossi, the capital used on the project derives from the sale of the Italian company Eon, which he founded in 2003. Eon sold electric generators ('gensets') fueled by biodiesel produced from organic waste – a process Rossi developed in the 1980s that formed the basis for his company Petroldragon.

The 200 million euro investment is supposedly in Defkalion, who will purchase an exclusive licence to the technology everywhere but the united states upon delivery of a working 1 MW reactor. Supposedly, upon delivery they will pay Rossi 100million euros. This is of course hearsay, but this is what I was referring to when I said that Rossi is not marketing his device using these demonstrations, he has already convinced someone to pay him 100million euros (and probably an large ongoing royalty) for licensing the tech (cash on delivery). If Rossi has already sold the exclusive license to his device then how can he attract further investment (except in the US of course)?



Whatroughbeast

That said, you have entirely missed my point. You criticised my cooling calculation by referring me to Rossi's patent application. Unfortunately, according to the article I referred to and quoted, the demonstration unit DOES NOT CONFORM TO THE PATENT APPLICATION. In the application the nickel coats the inside of the tube (in which case your criticism would be possibly valid - heater power would be applied more or less directly to the nickel, and its temperature could indeed be much higher than the cooling water). In the demonstration unit, the nickel is contained in a stainless steel capsule suspended within the tube. Now the heater heats the pipe, the pipe heats the water, and THEN the water heats the nickel. The article is clear about the construction, and the section I quoted is clear about the thermal path. The nickel is NOT heated directly by the heater.

If you examine the pdf document, linked in the incomplete blog site post, the pdf is the actual document written by the swedish skeptics, you will find the quote that I originally posted.

here is the link to the pdf

xxx.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3144960.ece/BINARY/Download+the+report+by+Kullander+and+Ess%C3%83%C2%A9n+(pdf

I think that in order to fully debunk this device it is necessary to use all available data including patent data, data published about other tests of the devices. Focusing on details of a single test, asking questions and pointing out flaws that are addressed elsewhere is not useful.

You can't debunk this test without at least carefully reading the original documentation and ensuring that the flaws you perceive have not already been addressed by other tests. Observations like your flow calculation are interesting in the context of the information in the incomplete blog post but do not stand up to a full review of available data.

My personal approach is to start with all available data, including the fact that several professors of physics, including one who is well versed in skepticism (probably more so than anyone posting on this thread) have been convinced by the demonstrations so far, and simple explanations are no longer sufficient to explain it away.

I am a naturally skeptical person and do not subscribe to obviously flawed ideas like perpetual motion. After this announcement I began to research this topic in my capacity as a materials chemist and found a wealth of data in the published literature which rises well beyond the level of some crackpot in a garage. Many serious people have published very well done research in the area of anomalous nuclear reactions, the quality of the research is improving not declining. This device in particular may be a fraud but it is not in the same league as Steorn or Blacklight power, there is a lot of very credible research associated with cold fusion and if you take the time to read it you might find that dismissing Rossi's claims becomes more difficult.

 

[Horatius]

Furthermore patent applications are not published immediately, and provisional patents can be kept confidential for 1 year before they must enter the application process to become a full patent. It is very likely that, if the device actually works, further patent work has already been done and we just can't access it yet. As and example of this: I am currently sitting on pins and needles hoping that the provisional patent we filed at my company retains precedence over our competitors efforts. I have several months to wait because we filed our provisional patent 6 months ago.

Well, then, you should also realize that his claims that he can't disclose the catalyst "because his patents are still pending" is bogus. If he's filed any sort of patent application that cover that subject matter, he's established his priority date for the purposes of patent protection. The bit about keeping it confidential applies to the Patent Office, not to the applicant.

He very well may have a follow up application on file, that has not yet been published, but that in no way obligates him to continue to keep it secret. If he wants people to validate his work, he needs to tell them what he's using, and allow them to reproduce his work completely independently.

And if he's not interested in such validation, then why has he gone out of his way to seek publicity?

No matter how you look at it, he's being inconsistent in his claims, and that's the hallmark of someone trying to put one over on people.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Crawdaddy -

I note that you quote my justification for my cooling analysis. Thanks for paying attention. Then you refuse to address it. I say it again: The patent application does not conform to the demonstration unit, so my cooling analysis is not flawed.

You keep referring to "the incomplete blog site post". I don't know what you mean. Please be more specific.

The link does not work. Try again. Until you get it right, I cannot respond.

You were clearly not persuaded by my remarks about scientists trying to analyze fraud.

 

[Crawdaddy]

Whatroughbeast

The link does not work. Try again. Until you get it right, I cannot respond.

If you go to the PESN website that you originally linked and look about half way down the article you will see a link to a report highlighted in blue. This is the document written by the swedes. In it you will find they reference an auxiliary heater as per my original quote, which was not from the patent but from the primary document describing the demonstration.

Horatius,

Well, then, you should also realize that his claims that he can't disclose the catalyst "because his patents are still pending" is bogus. If he's filed any sort of patent application that cover that subject matter, he's established his priority date for the purposes of patent protection. The bit about keeping it confidential applies to the Patent Office, not to the applicant.

I agree that he can disclose his catalyst if he chooses if he has already filed a second patent. I imagine, if he has filed a second patent then the catalyst is likely disclosed using language that obfuscates the true nature of the catalyst. I read patents all the time that disclose things without disclosing them.

Even if Rossi was not a fraud would it be in his interest to disclose the catalyst, if he already has an offer to license the tech? Personally, I would never disclose even patent protected information about a product I have worked on, why encourage people to steal your IP?

If they do disclose their catalyst and make it easy for others to verify then practically every lab in the world will start crash research projects to replicate and improve on the device and immediately patent and market their own products. If this isn't fraud, the first reactor sold a company like GE will likely be the beginning of the end for Rossi. In this day and age it is impossible for a small group of people to build a device that cannot be improved upon. It is definitely not in Rossi's financial interest, or in the interest of the licensees of his IP to disclose the catalyst. Both explanations are consistent with the facts and therefore the fact that he is not giving away the details of his invention is not proof that he is a fraud.

Using the fact that he is not giving away the details of his invention is very poor evidence of fraud.

And if he's not interested in such validation, then why has he gone out of his way to seek publicity?

I agree that the whole thing is kind of a circus. I can only speculate about why he is seeking publicity. Fame maybe?.

One thing I do know though is that if the device is actually real, it will validate the initial experiments of Pons & Fleischmann and show how a very unscientific debunking process that placed theory above experiment and held back the development of a technology that could have saved millions of lives over the last 20 years. A great many high profile scientists will be embarrassed and the skeptic movement will have a very big black eye.

 

[Horatius]

I agree that the whole thing is kind of a circus. I can only speculate about why he is seeking publicity. Fame maybe?.

So, after having this device running in his own facility for over three years, he just couldn't wait until October, when he'll allegedly be pulling in millions of Euros on this system? He had to get famous now?

One thing I do know though is that if the device is actually real, it will validate the initial experiments of Pons & Fleischmann and show how a very unscientific debunking process that placed theory above experiment and held back the development of a technology that could have saved millions of lives over the last 20 years. A great many high profile scientists will be embarrassed and the skeptic movement will have a very big black eye.

And this alone shows your bias. There were people all over the world trying to replicate their results. I worked in one lab that summer that used simiar materials, and they spent weeks trying to figure out what P&F were doing to produce their results. The annual Canadian Association of Physicists conference had a special session for people to present their findings from their efforts to repeat P&F's work. It wasn't a case of placing "theory above experiment", it was case of every experiment failing.

And in the intervening years, despite still having millions of dollars in funding from various sources that didn't accept the evidence of those failed experiments, the proponents of cold fusion still don't have anything useful that stands up to independent scrutiny. All they have are the sorts of "demonstrations" we're seeing from Rossi et al., which are so poorly performed and documented that they shouldn't convince anyone that "there's something there".

Again, this is something that Rossi claims he's had running in his own facility for three years. An apparatus that he alleges "provides an amount of heat sufficient to heat the factory". If that's true, it should be trivially easy for him to produce evidence that he has something, and yet, all we get are these dog-and-pony shows that prove nothing.

Heck, he could provide before and after utilities bills to show that he's not spending as much on heating his factory over the last three years, and that would be better evidence than what we've seen.

 

[ben m]

Again, this is something that Rossi claims he's had running in his own facility for three years. An apparatus that he alleges "provides an amount of heat sufficient to heat the factory". If that's true, it should be trivially easy for him to produce evidence that he has something, and yet, all we get are these dog-and-pony shows that prove nothing.

On this particular detail, the thing that I think is most telling is the lack of actual *analyzed data*. You *know*, when building such a device, that your predecessors either:

• failed, but took crappy data and fooled themselves, OR
• secretly succeeded, but took crappy data and thus were unable to convince anyone.

Normal people would respond to this situation by breaking their backs to get the best data possible. When circumstantial evidence wasn't enough to convince people of his ulcer theory, Barry Marshall swallowed a vial of Heliobacter pylori. The Kepler telescope team, aware that many past exoplanet detections have turned out false, has some of the most absurdly conservative data-quality standards I've ever seen. The PVLAS experiment team busted their butts looking for errors before publishing a tentative dark-matter detection in 2005, then spent two years looking even harder before finding the error (and withdrawing the "detection" claim) in 2007. That's how it works.

Rossi, on the other hand, supposing that he indeed had a "working" device for three years, never once:

• took a series of runs of increasing length, sampled the "catalyst" after each one, and graphed Ni/Cu ratio vs. energy?
• took out the lead "shielding" (or not, I don't care), borrowed a gamma-ray spectrometer and took a series of spectra during a "run"?
• Calibrated his thermometers?
• Read the manual on the "humidity meter"?
• Systematically performed a series of runs with different water and hydrogen flow rates?

Of course he didn't. When you don't have a working device, "collecting more data" is how people *find out* it's not working. When you don't have a working device, the dog-and-pony show is about as good as you can do.

 

[Crawdaddy]

And this alone shows your bias. There were people all over the world trying to replicate their results. I worked in one lab that summer that used simiar materials, and they spent weeks trying to figure out what P&F were doing to produce their results. The annual Canadian Association of Physicists conference had a special session for people to present their findings from their efforts to repeat P&F's work. It wasn't a case of placing "theory above experiment", it was case of every experiment failing.

I don't think this shows bias. I have spent the last two months trying to convince myself that this announcement was a fraud. Since the Pons & Fleischmann experiment was news when I was just starting high school it barely even entered my consciousness until 2 months ago. But in just that time I have read enough of the published literature to recognize that the story is more complicated than you pretend. P&F conducted experiments that took weeks of deuterium loading to observe any effects and tried for years to observe cold fusion before they did. Very few of the replications were done faithfully. Nevertheless, many positive results were reported. One that caught my eye immediately is the work of the SPAWAR group who used an electrodeposition technique to generate anomalous ionizing radiation and heat. They are still publishing results to this day and their experiments are extremely well documented. A recent review of the cold fusion literature by Ed Storms published in 2010 is a great leading reference to a long list of amazingly well done papers on many aspects of the topic. These experiments are ignored and rejected by almost all reputable journals but more than meet the standard of good science.

I reject your assertion that I am biased. You are jumping to conclusions based on little or no information. Your statement that all the experiments failed is not supported by the available literature. I recommend you take the time to gather more data on a topic of such importance before dismissing it based on arguments about the psychology of those involved. This isn't in the same category as homeopathy or UFO's it takes a bit of elbow grease to understand and evaluate.

 

[pedrone]

I don't think this shows bias. I have spent the last two months trying to convince myself that this announcement was a fraud. Since the Pons & Fleischmann experiment was news when I was just starting high school it barely even entered my consciousness until 2 months ago.

Crawdaddy,
Andrea Rossi inaugurated a New Era in cold fusion research. Earlier Rossi, cold fusion was based on palladium and deuteron (heavy water).

Rossi's technology is new. He uses niquel-hidrogen.
He discovered it accidentally. He was not trying to get cold fusion. His research was concerning the improvement of some oil fossils. But accidentally he noticed the production of excess heat in his experiences.

What is also new in this technology is its big amount of excess energy, which enables it to be market.

At once he starts to sell his E-Cat reactor, and it starts to work in many countries, any theoretical controversy will be over.

 

[Crawdaddy]

Pedrone,

I don't think that your claim is entirely accurate.

In his 1994 paper Anomalous heat production in Ni-H systems Focardi reports his observations of cold fusion in Ni-H systems. His later papers show transmutation of elements using EDS analysis.

The first paragraph of this early paper references P&F.

This discovery is far from an accident, it is the result of continued cold fusion funding provided by the Italian government since the first reports by P&F.

Claims of blatant fraud are less credible when facts like one of the principles has been publishing on the Ni-H system since 1994 are taken into consideration.

 

[pedrone]

Pedrone,

I don't think that your claim is entirely accurate.

In his 1994 paper Anomalous heat production in Ni-H systems Focardi reports his observations of cold fusion in Ni-H systems. His later papers show transmutation of elements using EDS analysis.

The first paragraph of this early paper references P&F.

This discovery is far from an accident, it is the result of continued cold fusion funding provided by the Italian government since the first reports by P&F.

Claims of blatant fraud are less credible when facts like one of the principles has been publishing on the Ni-H system since 1994 are taken into consideration.

I have read it in one interview, but I dont remember where. It seems Andrea Rossi discovered a catalyst which improves the Ni-H cold fusion excess heat.

 

[pedrone]

Pedrone,

Claims of blatant fraud are less credible when facts like one of the principles has been publishing on the Ni-H system since 1994 are taken into consideration.

Crawdaddy
what the sketics do not understand is that it's a new revolution in cold fusion field.

Along years I used to ask to myself: by why a hell no cold fusion researcher try to make a reactor capable to yield energy to be market ?

If you look at the Jean Louis Naudin website, there is a lot of cold fusion technologies there. Why did not anybody succeed to make a reactor economically viable to be market?
I suppose because the excess heat was not enough to compensate the waste of material used in the cold fusion reactions.

Now Andrea Rossi got it

 

[Hindmost]

Crawdaddy
what the sketics do not understand is that it's a new revolution in cold fusion field.

Along years I used to ask to myself: by why a hell no cold fusion researcher try to make a reactor capable to yield energy to be market ?

If you look at the Jean Louis Naudin website, there is a lot of cold fusion technologies there. Why did not anybody succeed to make a reactor economically viable to be market?
I suppose because the excess heat was not enough to compensate the waste of material used in the cold fusion reactions.

Now Andrea Rossi got it

And 100 plus years from now, the planet will still be waiting....and too many will waste money...

 

[BenBurch]

And 100 plus years from now, the planet will still be waiting....and too many will waste money...

I wish I were not honest. I could make a fortune off these chumps, and I know enough about how this SHOULD be measured to fool many people who see through Rossi and others.

 

[Horatius]

Pedrone,

I don't think that your claim is entirely accurate.

In his 1994 paper Anomalous heat production in Ni-H systems Focardi reports his observations of cold fusion in Ni-H systems. His later papers show transmutation of elements using EDS analysis.

The first paragraph of this early paper references P&F.

This discovery is far from an accident, it is the result of continued cold fusion funding provided by the Italian government since the first reports by P&F.

Claims of blatant fraud are less credible when facts like one of the principles has been publishing on the Ni-H system since 1994 are taken into consideration.

You also have to compare it to the recent claims of the Blacklight Power guys. They've been claiming success with very similar apparatus for several years now.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/21/b...ible-claims-of-a-new-renewable-energy-source/

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/10/venture-beat-investigates-blacklight.html

http://news.cnet.com/blacklight-power-claims-novel-energy-source/

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/blacklight-says-its-signed-county-coop-as-first-customer/


Notice any similarities? Hydrogen reacting with nickel and a catalyst, producing large amounts of power, and claims that they've contracted with an energy company to install their devices in a working power plant.

They also say things like:

"They're arguing a theoretical argument. We can show experimentally that we can create this new form of energy," he said. "We're not in academic discussions anymore. We've moved beyond that."

And all this was in 2008. And yet, going on three years later, absolutely nothing of significance has come out of them.


What has Rossi done that is qualitatively different from Blacklight Power?

 

[pedrone]

What has Rossi done that is qualitatively different from Blacklight Power?

Andrea Rossi Says He Has Signed “A Contract of Tremendous Importance” in the USA
http://www.freeenergytimes.com/2011...contract-of-tremendous-importance-in-the-usa/