Year: 2011

Posted on

E-Cat test: One-half a megawatt — self-sustained

The testing of a proto-type 1 Megawatt nickel-hydrogen reactor today appears to be a success. The Energy Catalyzer, or E-Cat, a thermal energy device that runs on a fuel of hydrogen and hosts the reaction in a nickel powder generated 479 kilowatts of power over 5.5 hours in self-sustain mode.

Sterling Allan of Pure Energy Systems was in attendance and wrote the positive report here. He took this video of inventor Andrea A. Rossi making a statement in response to a Radio Citta del Capo reporter’s query “if the test today was a breakthrough”:

Self-sustain mode means that there is no input power to continue the reaction. In this state, when the input energy is zero, the energy-out over energy-in ratio becomes infinite. The energy was computed by measuring the difference in temperature of coolant water flowing through the reactor as it turned into steam.

Why the unit performed at 479 kilowatts and not 1 Megawatt is unclear and may be due to “a glitch”. In the late-night report released by Mr. Rossi, Domenico Fioravanti, the lead engineer testing the unit and representing the Customer, indicated the system of gaskets will need to be upgraded as there are some “leaks”. [Download .pdf report formatted by Mats Lewan here along with temperature data here.]

The decision was made earlier in the day to test the unit at a lower power in self-sustain mode, rather than the full 1 Megawatt capacity. Nevertheless, generating almost one-half megawatt of power with no input over five hours is a huge accomplishment.

According to the report, the 1 Megawatt unit is composed of 107 smaller 10 kilowatt units connected in parallel and housed in a shipping container. Each 10 kW unit comprises three 3.3 kilowatt units together in parallel.

University of Bologna’s Dr. David Bianchini detected no measurable radiation above the background level being emitted from the device.

Fascinating video by Mr. Allan shows the set-up:

In attendance along with Mr. Allan was New York Associated Press reporter Peter Svensson who had exclusive story rights through midnight, but since it will be days before his story makes it to the wire, Sterling Allan and Mats Lewan were able to release their articles this evening. NYTeknik science journalist Mats Lewan has covered the E-Cat demonstrations regularly and wrote this article here. Rounding out the media were also Focus.it.

Scientists, engineers and specialists in nuclear physics from France, Sweden, Russia, China, and Italy were also present, indicating the strong interest from around the world in this revolutionary energy technology.

The still unknown Customer for the E-Cat reactor is reportedly “happy” with the test, and ready to make the sale. Wherever the unit ends up, we are looking forward to the first commercial cold fusion energy reactor on the market, and the many more to come.

Related Links

Bologna 28 ottobre: primo resoconto del test dell’impianto da 1 MW di Andrea Rossi by Daniele Passorini 22passi Blogspot October 29, 2011

First commercial cold fusion reactor tested in Bologna by Ruby Carat October 6, 2011

Posted on

Edmund Storms on “Federal Support and the ‘Rossi Effect’

The testing of Andrea A. Rossi’s 1 Megawatt proto-type nickel-hydrogen reactor is underway in Bologna, Italy. Reportedly conducted for a customer from the US, there is limited access to the private event, although Sterling D. Allan from Pure Energy Systems is attending and will be posting his impressions here on E-Day: Tracking the 1MW Test.

What is 1 Megawatt? This article from Hank Mills and Mr. Allan describes it in easy to understand language. Given an average electrical usage of between 1 and 1.5 kiloWatts per home, a 1 MegaWatt unit producing electricity could power between 750 and 1000 homes.

It should be noted that Mr. Rossi’s reactor is a thermal energy device that produces steam heat and not electricity. However, as a first step in a revolutionary new energy technology, this is the beginning of an era for the development of ultra-clean power from hydrogen.

While negative press continue to prejudice this science, the effect of Mr. Rossi’s demonstrations technology has increased the level of awareness in the public about cold fusion research.

Here Edmund Storms talks about how a commercially available device will affect the attitudes in the political class.

Mitchell Swartz of Jet Energy, a cold fusion research company that has developed the Phusor and Nanor reactor, has put together some quotes made by accomplished individuals that reveal bias towards the new, the unfamiliar, the revolutionary, for even the smartest people can’t always imagine what’s possible.

Consider this statement:

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Ken Olson Chairman and founder Digital Equipment Corporation from 1977


Cold Fusion Now!

*************************************************************************

Related Links

How much is One (1) Megawatt? by Hank Mills and Sterling D. Allan from PESN

Skeptic Quotes Through History collected by Dr. Mitchell Swartz Cold Fusion Times

Posted on

Edmund Storms on “Biological Transmutation”

Dr. Edmund Storms describes an application of the cold fusion effect transmutation.

A Periodic Table
A Periodic Table organizes all the matter known to humans.
Transmutation is a process of one element turning into another element which, by definition, is a reaction involving nuclear particles called protons.

Elements describe the types of matter that exist in the physical world and are organized in charts like the Periodic Table.

An atom is the smallest piece of matter that can still be called an element. Elements combine to form molecules and the matter we see around us.

The research of Ukrainian scientists, including Professors Vladimir Vysotskii and A. Kornikova, has revealed biological organisms, such as various forms of bacteria, that have the ability to initiate nuclear reactions with their environment, including radioactive materials like cesium, which they transmute to stable, non-radioactive elements.

This application may offer an avenue for ridding the planet of the thousands of tons of radioactive waste that presently pollute the planet.

************************************************************************

Supporting Links

Short Course on Nuclear Transmutation 16th International Conference On Condensed Matter Nuclear Science from [ISCMNS]

Successful Experiments On Utilization Of High-Activity Nuclear Waste In The Process Of Transmutation In Growing Associations Of Microbiological Cultures by V. I. Vysotskii, V. N. Shevel, A. B. Tashirev, A. A. Kornilova 2003 [.pdf from LENR.org]

Advanced transmutation processes and their application for the decontamination of radioactive nuclear wastes by A. Michrowski Proceedings 2nd International LENR Conference [.html 1996]

Biological TransmutationsBiological Transmutations by C. Lewis. Kervran 1980. Reviewed by Eugene Mallove from Infinite Energy

From the Review:
“Kervran’s thesis is that the transmutation of elements, in particular by reactions among the first few dozen of the periodic table, occurs regularly in biological systems—both in microbes and in multicellular organisms such as human beings. Transmutation is inherent to biology.”

Posted on

Past and Future

We like to see ourselves as marching off into the future, heroic in our stance, “going were no one has gone before.”  But the fact is that we go into the future backwards, with at best a dirty, cracked hand mirror to guide us.  We do not directly look into the future, we can only look into the past and get a dirty, clouded reflection of the future.  We know where we have been, but we have an imperfect grasp of where we are going.  We can plan or predict based on the past performance.  That is our rear view mirror.  But we don’t know what is relevant to the future in the present or the past, and our awareness of life, the world and things in general is usually sorely lacking.

Usually, when you look at something chronologically, you look at in the past, present, and then future.  But, the way we really look at things is first in the present with a dim awareness of where we “are,” then the past which is where we have been, and only then into the future, which is where we are going, and which is seen but dimly through the filter of the past.

This cloudy mirror works through reason and rationality, there may be other levels of interaction with the world, such as instinct, intuition, artistry, etc.  With the mirror, we are re-acting to the world, in an imperfect way.  With instinct etc, we may have something more immediate, and at times glimpses of something divine, where true immediacy occurs, the event and the “reaction” are simultaneous.  My point here is, is that this cloudy, dirty mirror is not the only way we participate in the world.  It is though, the way that is important for calculating and guesstimating the future.

Plato believed that a navigator has a particular kind of knowledge, he could get you across a river, what he could not tell you is whether it was a good idea for you to go across the river, or stay on this side. The navigator’s knowledge does not extend that far.  A carpenter uses artistry (techne) to build a house, what he cannot tell you knowledgeably is whether or not buying a house is a good idea.  The government can give us all kinds of incentives for house ownership, but the fact is that we still cannot know it as a good idea.  For some people it worked out, for others it did not, but even for the people for whom it worked out, what they had when they made that decision was not knowledge, but opinion which turned out to be true.  They got it right, but they could not have known all the variables that went into the equation of whether or not it was a good idea. 

It should be understood that for Plato there is false opinion, true opinion and then knowledge.  In Plato, the bar for (true) knowledge as opposed to right opinion is quite high.  Knowledge is something that is rock solid, that will not let you down.  The impressions we get from the dirty, shaking hand mirror giving us the image of the future are not deserving of the certainty that Plato advocates with his term “knowledge.”

In my own rearview mirror, I don’t know if cold fusion will be a good thing.  I also don’t know if it will be a bad thing.  However, while I don’t know whether cold fusion will be good or bad,I do believe that it will happen, it will be a force in our future.  How close that future is, or how far away, I am not sure but it does sound like we are coming to a historical watershed.  It sounds like technologically cold fusion is just around the corner, but societally and culturally there are still obstacles which are obscure but nonetheless there.  

Caution, objects in the mirror may be closer than they seem (or they may farther away).  We have a problem with getting a perspective on cold fusion.  Ultimately, we cannot estimate how big its effect will become.  And when it gets that big, we will have difficulties in imagining how things were ever otherwise. 

We may wish and think of only good things for cold fusion, but the law of unintended consequences will probably in some fashion or another nip us on the backside as it does on all new technologies.  We should expect the unexpected, and not cry when the check comes due.  We will learn how to live with the new costs, as we do with the new benefits.  We have done it before, we have always done it with the introductions of new technologies, and we can do it again.  There are changes that happen in human life, but there are also constants like how we adapt to change, and that is good too.

Posted on

Edmund Storms on “Transition”

The graph of the Oil Age shows a thin blip in geological time with an Era of Cold Fusion for the future – and a “little” space between them.

Oil Age and the Era of Cold Fusion
The Oil Age is a blip. Cold fusion can take humanity beyond what can be foreseen.

The transition from dirty fossil fuels and today’s dangerous nuclear power plants into clean cold fusion will entail the dismantling of an entire infrastructure core to the economy and culture of the world, and particularly for the Western nations.

The scale and reach are staggering.

What would a transition narrative look like? Edmund Storms, LENR researcher and author of The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction has thought about these issues for two decades, and has some compelling scenarios.

We spoke with Dr. Storms this past August and this is what he had to say on “Transition”.

Related Links

Oil Age lasted a century; Era of Cold Fusion to fuel millenia by Ruby Carat from Cold Fusion Now October 19, 2011

The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction by Edmund Storms from World Scientific Books

Edmund Storms Kiva Labs YouTube channel

Edmund Storms on the Rossi device: “There will be a stampede.” portions of James Martinez March 1 interview transcribed by Ruby Carat from Cold Fusion Now March 4, 2011

Top