In the wake of Saturday’s cold fusion conference in Viareggio, Italy, Roy Virgilio has released more details on the Piantelli group’s research on the Italian renewable energy forum EnergeticAmbiente. Virgilio is an administrator on the forum with the username eroyka. Akira Shirakawa has provided an English translation on the Vortex mailing list here and here. To summarize:
Experiments are being performed in a lab near Siena, Italy.
Older units worked continuously for months and produced 2× to 4× energy gain, but the actual energy balance was higher, as the cells reached self-sustaining mode.
Several unnamed third parties have confirmed that the older units worked in self-sustaining mode for long periods of time.
Several of these older units were recently reactivated. After some maintenance they turned on easily and produced 2× to 3× energy gain, but they haven’t yet been pushed to high excess energy levels.
New units with new fuel should be completed in about two months, and are expected to produce 200× energy gain.
The new units will be tested gradually in several steps of increasing power, beginning from a few hundred watts up to high levels of power on the order of kilowatts.
The scale-up will take as long as is necessary. Smaller devices will be ready for sale first.
No catalyst is necessary. The trick is in the preparation of the nickel.
Piantelli has a theory that doesn’t require exotic reactions, but can be explained using known physics and mathematics. A semi-complete theory has been provided to the University of Siena and will be published shortly. The complete theory will probably be disclosed after the first commercial units have been sold.
No Italian public institutions are involved in the current research, but a US government agency that has had the opportunity to review the research will probably validate and certify the reactor, as well as contribute to its development.
Piantelli’s group is also in talks with several large industrial corporations to develop generators operating at certain power levels.
The research is protected by three pending patents, the latest of which was filed last week.
Piantelli’s group will create a supporters’ trust. In two to four months the public will be able to buy shares in the trust to support the research, to prevent the technology from suddenly disappearing, and to share in any future revenues. Piantelli’s group doesn’t need money: the aim is protect the technology by putting it under the control of a multitude of stakeholders and enthusiasts, but there is no guarantee the shares will make a profit. [Emphasis added. —Ivy Matt]
Thanks, Akira!
The three patents mentioned above probably do not include Piantelli’s 1995 patent application. The Piantelli group filed an Italian patent application, “Method for Producing Energy and Apparatus Therefor”, on November 24, 2008, which was published on May 25, 2010. More recently, on April 26, 2011 they filed an Italian patent application, “Method and Apparatus for Generating Energy through Nuclear Reactions of Hydrogen Adsorbed by Orbital Capture to a Metal Crystalline Nanostructure”, which is due to be published on October 27, 2012. And then last week they filed a third patent application, the title of which is not yet known, and which should be published in January of 2013.
It looks like 2011 will be the year cold fusion attempts to make it on the commercial stage, and with at least two competitors. Piantelli’s group appears to be starting off at a disadvantage to Rossi and Defkalion, as Defkalion claims to have already achieved a 6× to 30× energy gain. (See Section 3: “Product Status” in the white paper.) However, Piantelli professes to have a comprehensive theory of the hydrogen-nickel reaction, which may speed up his group’s research. Cold fusion is not exactly suffering from a lack of explanatory hypotheses, but if Piantelli’s hypothesis fits well with the available evidence and, more importantly, if it makes predictions that can be tested experimentally, it will be worthy of the notice even of detractors of cold fusion research.
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Viareggio Cold Fusion conference: science, politics, and an Italian competitor — Ivy Matt July 23, 2011
The early days of the space race between cold war foes the United States and Soviet Union were set in a world of plenty for the victors of World War II.
After the centrally-planned, collective effort to retool industry for war, an attitude prevailed among American citizens that the most important new technologies would not result from work in the private sector, but would derive from federal initiatives.[1,177]
President Kennedy’s decision committing the nation to sending a man to the Moon before the decade was over was made in a milieu of broadening federal engagement with technology.
This is the thesis put forth by author T.A. Heppenheimer in his book Countdown: The History of Space Flight who noted federal involvement in new technology had been ongoing in the US since President Lincoln built the first transcontinental railroad in the United States “by awarding generous land grants to the builders of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific.” The Panama Canal, Depression-era dams and water projects, and later, President Eisenhower‘s interstate highway system of the mid-50s are all mentioned as historical precedents for federal support of new technologies that serve the public interest.
He mentions jet airliners and commercial nuclear power [the dirty radioactive kind] as technologies created by transforming “major military systems into products that would create new industries in the civilian market”. All of these projects “demonstrated dramatically the scale of activity that Washington was now prepared to pursue.”
Whether for the public good, or, prestige and technological superiority among nations of the world, the services and disservices of these industries are directly related to the systematic mobilization of diverse resources towards a common end.
President Kennedy To The Moon SpeechPeople in the mid-20th century saw government as “the formation from which new technologies would flow”, and generally trusted what their government said. If the push to appropriate taxpayer dollars in support of new technology was so apparent in the space program, the absence of sustained and coordinated federal involvement for a new, clean-energy technology is all too evident today. The fossil fuels that built the large public works projects of the last hundred years are depleted and manufacturing industries have been exiting North America for decades. In “the long, slow afternoon” [2] of American might, the consumption economy uses arcane financial instruments to glue together the remnants its petro-dollar past.
We march backwards into the future.
—Marshall McLuhanThe Medium is the Massage
The public and private collaborations that have generated and delivered energy for over a hundred years have done so at a high cost, environmentally, financially and socially. The patchwork scheme of multiple generations of technology that has provided power thus far, sputtering with age and neglect, is neither efficient or sustainable for our future.
Given the fundamental nature of energy in our lives, federal engagement in the development of clean, safe and efficient energy seems appropriate. But the national undertaking that characterized the Apollo project in the 1960s will not occur in the current climate of segregated interests. Even in a time of crisis, there is no call from the President to participate in a renaissance of invention, for either the public good or the prestige among nations, and there are no contracts forthcoming. Even were that to occur, our population has lost trust in a governing class that has forgotten the integrity of mission and succumbed to compromises with large donors.
President Carter put solar panels on the Whitehouse in 1979.The last effort to redirect energy policy on a national scale was in 1979 when only the image of confidence in federal initiatives remained and President Carter put solar panels atop the Whitehouse in a symbolic gesture meant to redirect attention on renewable energy. They were subsequently eliminated by his successor President Reagan who moved the country back into an even deeper reliance on fossil fuels, and whose legacy we live with today.
The age of Chemical Energy ends with Peak Oil. We have a future with new-energy, or we will have no technological future at all. The inability of federal institutions to move quickly to develop LENR energy technology means private investment bears the burden. Though projects that posses technical risks are “unattractive to Wall Street”,[1] eventually, demand will insist upon it.
But the Rossi Effect, the heightened interest of venture capital in LENR devices since the demonstration of the E-Cat earlier this year, is certain to grow and recent news of one private company’s plans to work with a national lab on reproducing their results as a pre-requisite to funding is a positive sign of cooperation between public and private enterprise.
The ‘expert’ is the man who stays put.
—Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore The Medium is the Massage
Lauded aeronautical engineer and designer of Spaceship 1 and 2, Burt Rutan headed his own spaceship company with a small band of dedicated individuals in the scrubby deserts of Mojave, California and succeeded in creating a new industry of space tourism with the private partnership of Paul Allen, the X-prize Foundation, and Sir Richard Branson. A critic of NASA’s budgetary choices, he saw the future of space in private enterprise.
“Manned space flight is not only for governments to do,” says Rutan. “We proved it can be done by a small company operating with limited resources and a few dozen dedicated employees. The next 25 years will be a wild ride; one that history will note was done for everyone’s benefit.”[3]
We say the same about cold fusion energy. Small, independent companies are right now sacrificing sweat and tears to follow a dream that takes humankind to the next phase of development for all the world’s benefit.
A new energy technology that uses a fuel of water can save the Earth from further degradation and reap rewards beyond our present imagination, but encouragement for these intrepid inventors is needed from the public, both morally and financially, to simulate the “federal involvement” that succeeded so well in landing humans on the Moon.
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.
—Marshall McLuhan [5]
Apollo 9 tumbles above planet Earth.
Supporting Links:
[1] Countdown A History of Space Flight by T.A. Heppenheimer publisher’s Wiley website.
[2] John F. Kennedy “That is what we have to overcome, that psychological feeling in the world that the United States has reached maturity, that maybe our high noon has passed and that now we are going into the long slow afternoon.” 1960 campaign speech.
Defkalion Green Technologies S.A. has recently released the following advisory on its website:
It has come to the attention of our company that unauthorized persons have initiated contact with third parties for financial and development matters.
Defkalion Green Technologies publically announces that only its Board of Directors are commissioned to speak on behalf of the company. Any and all attempts to mislead third parties are seen as a legal infringement and shall be pursued by law accordingly.
Defkalion Green Technologies takes very seriously its communication to third parties and maintains transparency in all its actions.
The BoD hereby issues a public apology for any misleading information that has already made its way through the grape vine. For all afflicted individuals / entities, please communicate directly with our Head Office for clarification.
New energy is a high-risk field and Defkalion GT is a new player on that field. Anyone who wishes to engage in a financial relationship with Defkalion GT would do well to research the company and its technology thoroughly, and to do all other due diligence before any money changes hands. Anyone who wishes to engage in a financial relationship with Defkalion GT would also do well to be aware of what channels of communication the company uses for official communication and to be suspicious of anyone who tries to contact them by another channel, claiming to represent the company.
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The Defkalion website is live — Ivy Matt June 23, 2011
You know, sometimes dreams are more important than actuality.
—Andrea A. RossiEVWorld interview
C’ mon baby, light my fire.
—Jim Morrison
Wildfires dot the mountains surrounding the McDonald Observatory in West Texas, US
Our planet is heating up.
Whether its rising temperatures, or the limits of human tolerance, we’ve reached a bifurcation point, and a phase change is in progress: the age of Chemical Energy is ending.
The degradation of the physical environment mirrors the perversions of human perception that have reduced our bodies and souls to numbered sacks of biomass starved by our own virtual fantasies of infinite growth upon a finite Earth.
But as the world burns, a discovery of such magnitude that it guarantees humanity another chance at life is coming to light, literally, an opportunity to heal the wounds of industrial expansion and allow Earth’s biosphere to emerge as the greatest work of art ever shaped by man.
This newly developing energy technology is based on the discovery announced 22 years ago by Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, and after two decades of assiduous research, a simple hot-water boiler called the Energy Catalyzer will be the first model of breakthrough engineering based on that discovery with a planned commercial release for industrial applications in the last quarter of this year.
The heat-energy reactor is the invention of Andrea A. Rossi and he calls it the New Fire. The New Fire is described by it’s developers as a nickel-hydrogen exothermic reaction for it uses a fuel of hydrogen gas and a powder made of nickel. Infused into the nickel powder at high-pressure, the hydrogen reacts with the metallic nuclei creating a huge amount of heat well beyond that of any chemical interaction.
A test of the early proto-type of the E-Cat. photo: Mats Lewan
One early test of the Energy Catalyzer E-Cat reportedly produced over 15 kilowatts of heat energy over 18 hours. In Low Energy Nuclear Revolution a documentary video from PhiZero,[1] one of Mr. Rossi’s collaborators Sergio Focardi, himself a longtime researcher in these types of nickel-hydrogen systems, said of the early E-Cat tests, “On average the relationship between thermal energy gained and input electrical energy was on the order of around 200 times.”
Another collaborator of Mr. Rossi’s, Giuseppe Levi, described an early test of the E-Cat where an astounding 120 kilowatts of power was produced, at which point it was turned off. “We restarted it, and the system ran for one hour at 40 kilowatts,” said Mr. Levi. “I saw that it was capable of being self-sustaining.”
You cannot step into the same water twice.
—Heraclitus
The Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect FPHE was first studied in a glass beaker using a heavy-water solution and a small, solid piece of the metal palladium, but with that initial system, the effect of excess heat was difficult to reproduce. Today, nano-sized particles of metal such as nickel, platinum, titanium, and others, are the medium that support reproducibility. The plethora of metals that create the nuclear active environment where the reaction occurs is further diversified by the fuel of hydrogen, which can be either in gas or liquid form and even in the form of water.
There are three forms of hydrogen: protium, deuterium, and tritium, and possibly even more in the form of hydrinos, hydrogen purported to exist in fractional ground-states. Both protium and deuterium have been used to initiate energy-producing reactions, while tritium is a sometime by-product of the reaction whose presence reveals the nuclear nature of the reaction.
The red visibile light of hydrogen in the southern sky.
Hydrogen makes up about 75% of the chemical mass of the universe and is the most abundant material that exists. Indeed, three-fourths the mass of our Sun is hydrogen, and the reactions that keep our Sun alive begin with the fusion of hydrogen nuclei deep in the interior. On Earth, hydrogen makes up the bulk of water.
Chemically, water is H2O, meaning two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom together make up a water molecule. Continually replenished on Earth by the solar wind and cosmic particles from interstellar space, hydrogen is “the ultimate renewable energy resource”.[2]
Hydrogen can be burned just like oil or gas, and this is what many alternative energy advocates are proposing when they discuss hydrogen technologies, but that is not what the New Fire does. Chemical burning of fuel is a process that involves the outer electrons of atoms as they mix and match, forming new compounds as well as energy. Wood and oil burn, but the New Fire is a reaction of nuclear dimension whereby protons, the nuclei of the hydrogen atoms, interact with electrons and other nuclei to liberate energy many times greater than any chemically-induced process.
Neither is the excess heat of the New Fire the process of fusion that occurs in the Sun’s plasma. While the theory behind the reaction is unknown at this time, scientists piece together scraps of 20th century modern physics in an attempt to describe a 21rst century phenomenon: clean, dense energy from the most plentiful material in the universe.
Not having a definitive theory won’t stop this technology from materializing out of the Mystery Landscape, nor will it be stopped by the virtual silence of the mainstream scientific community and media which has been deliberately hostile to this research in the past. Historically, just about every new technology ever introduced was brought into existence without a theory first. Humans discovered fire hundreds of thousands years ago, and it’s possible that as far back as 800,000 years, our ancestors made opportune use of natural fire in the environment.
They did not have to know how it worked, only that it did.
It was Marshall McLuhan who noticed that “the biggest secrets are kept by public incredulity”. We the public are surviving in the after-image of 20th century myopia with little knowledge of this epoch-making advancement in energy technology. But when the mass of men realize that a solution to scarcity exists, and this solution is available to all, power will re-distribute around the globe “at the speed of thought”.[3]
The New Fire will be able to replace radioactive fuel assemblies one-for-one, generating ultra-clean steam heat for today’s power plants, but an off-grid, clean technology that uses a fuel of water decentralizes power allowing individuals and local communities to better control their own energy choices.
The New Fire is not an incremental change in existing energy technology introduced by multi-national corporations. The New Fire does not recognize the hierarchy of centralized authority, and will not be stopped by parochial notions such as “reputation”. The New Fire burns through satellite links sparking the minds of young people who haven’t the prejudices of their parents, and who will not wait patiently while their future is mortgaged by distant incorporated entities.
The New Fire comes from the curious tinkerings of those who believe they really can change the world, and aren’t afraid to succeed.
In their book Breakthrough Power, authors Jeane Manning and Joel Garbon describe some of the opportunities that exist with a green and plentiful energy like the New Fire. The list included:
“rewarding, life-affirming work that enhances human dignity and contributes to the planetary clean-up and advancement of global society. Low-cost energy permits recycling on an unprecedented scale, and the unsightly gigantic heaps of trash that previously blighted the landscape are transformed into valuable mines of recovered resources.”
“The world’s thirsty families are supplied abundant and pure drinking water extracted from the atmosphere itself or by desalination of ocean water. Depleted farmland is restored to productive agriculture. Stream, rivers, and aquifers are no longer exhausted by damaging diversion and over-pumping, but are restored to their natural balance, permitting fish stocks and streamside ecosystems to thrive once again…”
“Food can be grown anywhere – even in the desert or arctic conditions – in compact, multi-level greenhouses whose natural heating and lighting are augmented by energy easily and cleanly extracted from space itself.” –Breakthrough Power
And
“…imagine how both the environment and and the forest industry would benefit if new energy technology resulted in a fuel-less helicopter. Suddenly selective harvesting of trees from the air would be economical. No logging roads would be needed. Instead of clear-cutting swaths of forest, heli-loggers could selectively thin the weakest tress. Forest could be restored to pristine “old growth” status.”
“Without the need for hydroelectric power, there is no need to dam rivers. With certain dams dismantled, salmon in the northwest would be able to easily return upriver to spawning grounds. The vitality of cool, clear, unimpeded flowing waters could be restored.” [4] –Breakthrough Power
The ideas and dreams of new-energy researchers have imagined some of the possibilities that the New Fire may bring. Jed Rothwell‘s Cold Fusion and the Future describes many more solutions to be derived from this technology. But all these fantastic possibilities are not guaranteed.
We as citizens have to be ready to participate in co-creating our society and demand the tools to do so. We cannot expect others to create the reality we want to live in if we’re not willing to put any effort in that.
—Birgitta Jonsdottir Icelandic Parliment July 5, 2011 Ca$h Flow
Humans may never appreciate the beautiful and delicate world we inhabit until other worlds are explored, for as exotic and amazing as they are, toxic gases and the severe cold vacuum of space will not support our life without layers of artificiality. The pleasant air, the sweet water, the elegant variety of life that complements beautiful formations of forest, plain and desert are unique in our corner of the universe, with not another living sphere in sight.
Earth, our home – it is this world we must care for. It is this world we must preserve, this time, with our eyes wide open, and the New Fire to light the way.
Thin, delicate atmosphere of Earth protects all life on the planet.
Supporting links:
1. Low Energy Nuclear Revolution from PhiZero by Ivy Matt June 23, 2001
2. Robert E. Godes Funding dam (almost) breaks for Brillouin boiler that uses – water! –Ruby Carat July 7, 2011
3. “Now, we’re living at the speed of thought.” Bob Neverit Ca$h Flow July 6, 2011
4. Breakthrough Power by Jeane Manning & Joel Garbon www.breakthroughpower.net
5. Cold Fusion and the Future Part 1: Revolutionary Technology Jed Rothwell Infinite-Energy
He’s young, brilliant, and the designer and engineer of a hot water boiler based on LENR technology in – Berkeley. His name is Robert E. Godes, the Chief Technical Officer at Brillouin Energy, a company he founded that’s now hosting visits from venture capital groups finally ready to partake in “the greatest investment opportunity of the 21rst century”.
In December 2006, Mr. Godes’ first test cell was an open beaker using palladium wire and ordinary distilled water, yet this simple system achieved an excess heat up to 45%.
The newest device began operating in October of last year and is a pressurized nickel-hydrogen system that has allowed superior calorimetry measurements. According to the Early Phase 2 Data Report, this cell generated excess heat output greater than 100% in February of this year. (You can read the Phase 1 and Phase 2 Data Report on the Brillouin Energy website).
With steady progress meeting each company milestone, the lab runs with a skeleton staff, including volunteers. Negative perceptions about the field of LENR research have discouraged potential investors. One possible private donor seeking a technical evaluation was informed by a National Science Foundation member (whose review entailed “a quick scan” of the Brillouin Energy website) that it was “quite possible they had created the ‘instant death’ version of cold fusion”.
Sigh.
The very much alive Mr. Godes does believe this is a nuclear reaction, but to quote Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger, whose 1991 A Progress Report paper you can down-load from the Brillouin Energy website, ”The circumstances of cold fusion are not those of hot fusion.”
Robert E. Godes uses proprietary electronic "Q-pulses" to stimulate the reaction. Q-pulses are a central feature of his Quantum Fusion Hypothesis which attempts to explain LENR reactions theoretically.
The reaction is not only safe, but clean, and the fuel is abundant. According to Mr. Godes:
“Fusing the Hydrogen out of H2O results in 355,000 times more energy than is contained in the same volume of gasoline. The Hydrogen used in the fusion process is continually replaced by solar wind and interstellar space: the ultimate renewable energy source.”
Thanks to recent demonstrations of Andrea Rossi‘s Energy Catalyzer and the plans to commercialize this technology, venture capital has finally taken notice of the potential. Brillouin Energy is fielding calls from new investors and will now be working with Los Alamos National LabLANL to replicate Brillouin’s work. First, a confirmation report from a nationally recognized lab, and then the funds.
We recently asked Mr. Godes a few questions about his boiler design and what’s next after funding.
Q&A with Robert E. Godes of Brillouin Energy
CFN How did you first get interested in this form of energy production?
REG I was talking with another engineer at work in 1992. He told me about Cold Fusion. When I asked him about the use of palladium for the cathode, he told me that they used palladium to filter hydrogen. Filter hydrogen? I asked. Helium will not pass though it? No!
CFN Which came first, your Hypothesis or the experiments?
REG I knew that the Hydrogen atom was almost twice the size of Helium (corrected!) atom. So when I herd that helium would not pass but hydrogen would, I formed my hypothesis almost instantly. At that point I started studying material science. Once the hypothesis was solid, it was used to drive the design of the control systems to run the experiments.
CFN You are also using nickel-hydrogen system for your reactor. How does your design and process differ from Andrea Rossi’s?
REG The IP [Intellectual Property] I filed in 1995 includes some aspects of what Rossi is doing, but there are problems in trying to move the technology he is developing into production. He may have trouble meeting his deadline for the 1MW reactor as it could be difficult transferring the technology to other licensees for production.
He had a smiler problem with a potentially great technology doing direct thermal to electrical conversion. The manpower needed to produce and tweak Rossi units will limit profit margins. He would have a much easier time doing small units consisting of single devices for consumers, but insurance companies will not allow home use due to safety issues. The safety issues with the Rossi device will not likely have to do with radiation. Brillouin Energy Corp. (BEC) technology will be more reliable making it the market winner. Safety issue #1: we use the hydrogen out of ordinary water (H2O) in the form of water.
The technology BEC is developing will be easier to manufacture and transfer to licensees for market penetration and get approval for commercial and consumer use. I have significant experience in moving products from engineering to production with involvement in some products being produced at more than 100K units / year.
We only started working with the pressurized unit in Q2 2010. However we have already identified a large number of the variables that need to be controlled and how to control them. When we start production I expect it will be a much smoother ramp up than what Rossi is facing right now.
CFN What has your experience with the Patent Office been like?
REG Our first patent was initially rejected just on the basis of being cold fusion. However after some back and forth they said it actually looks like 5 to 7 patents and what would you like to prosecute first. So the application is still in process. My guess is we will not be granted a patent until we produce lots of data at industrially useful levels.
CFN What’s the next step in developing this newest test cell?
REG We have identified several variables that need to be controlled and ways to control them. Once we have access to the capital, we will be able to automate the process refinement and have several units to run the development in parallel. Till then, we are still making progress and figuring out how to best leverage the equipment we have.
CFN We look forward to your progress. Good luck!
REG Thanks, Ruby. What we really need is clean, dense, always available source of energy.
Andrea Rossi has recently visited universities at the modern Swedish capital of Stockholm and the ancient Swedish capital of Uppsala. The purpose of the visit was ostensibly to hammer out research agreements with Stockholm University and Uppsala University similar to that reached with the University of Bologna.
“In Sweden I am working with top scientists from Sweden, USA and Japan from whom I am learning. A lot.” –Andrea A. Rossi
From his recent comments on the site it appears Mr. Rossi is still refining his ideas on the theory behind the functioning of the E-Cat. He mentioned one cold fusion theory as particular interesting: Professor Yeong E. Kim‘s Bose-Einstein condensation theory of nuclear fusion. Professor Kim recently released a paper examining the application of his theory to hydrogen-nickel systems such as Rossi’s and recommending avenues of further research. He will be delivering a talk on the subject at the Fifth Asia Pacific Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics 2011 (APFB2011), August 22-26 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.
“How many years of study it took to get the first working prototype of E-Cat? What was your first thought when you realized it was working? What could be the more beautiful consequence of your invention for mankind?”
1- About 15 years
2- That I was going into an ocean of troubles and an enormous amount of work. I was right.
3- Energy at very low price: better quality of life; maybe less wars, more time for Culture.
Warm Regards,
A.R.
Many of us are looking forward to seeing the fruits of that work.
Related posts:
“Eppur s’accende…”: Professors Levi and Ferrari on Italian radio — Ivy Matt June 29, 2011
