Andrea Rossi on 3rd-Party Report, Industrial Heat, & 1MW Plant — New Interview

Intro: You are listening to the Q-Niverse podcast. Let me just say, before we get started, that today’s episode is being brought to you in part by ColdFusionNow.org who helped facilitate the dialogue you are about to listen to. Today I have with me Andrea Rossi. Mr. Rossi is an inventor and entrepreneur who, for many years, has worked to develop the Energy Catalyzer, also known as the E-Cat – a reactor fueled by nickel and hydrogen that allegedly harnesses “cold fusion”, or low-energy nuclear reactions, on an industrial scale. Mr. Rossi has been working on this technology for well over a decade and has recently partnered with a highly-credible commercial investor to take the technology to the “next level”. A recent third-party analysis of the E-Cat, carried out by a coalition of European professors and engineers over the course of the past year, reports that the technology is in fact producing energy well in excess of any known chemical reaction. Andrea Rossi, thank you for being with me today.

Andrea Rossi: Thank you.

John Maguire: Starting off, can you explain your thoughts and feelings over the past year waiting for the new analysis of the E-Cat? Has this been a tense time for you, or have you been too busy refining the reactor to worry much about it?

Rossi: Basically I am focused on my work which is Research and Development, and direction of the manufacturing of the E-Cat and plant. This has been, as always, a period just of work. For what concerns the report – it is for sure an important report. [It] has been made by a third, independent party. The results are interesting, [and] very problematic, and we are studying these results.

JM: Now, were you worried at all that [analysis/report] might come up with negative results? Did you have any indication over the course of the year? Or were you pretty much in the dark like everyone else?

Rossi: This report is in the hands of the professors that made it.

JM: Sure…fair enough. What do you think the ultimate impact of the report will be? Can it possibly persuade the larger scientific community or other major industrial players beside ELFORSK to get interested in LENR generally speaking, in your opinion?

Rossi: This is difficult to say…this is difficult to say. Honestly, I do not know. But our target is not to convince anybody. Our target is to make a plant that works properly. Now we have finished [with all the tests] and we are focusing exclusively on the market and on the production that we have to set up. This report is no doubt very interesting and we are studying it because, as you probably know, there is a surprising result regarding the Nickel-62 in particular, and we are studying it because we are strongly directed, under a theoretical point of view, to understand these kinds of results that was unexpected. But our main focus remains the operation of industrial plant.

JM: Now you mentioned theory there real quick, so maybe we can talk about that really quick. Do you think that the reaction can be explained within the Standard Model or do you think we’re gonna have to go well beyond that to account for what’s going on, because as you noted there were some strange changes in the powder – which we don’t really have time to get into too much – but can you put it in a theoretical context, or do you any ideas theory wise that you’re able to share?

Rossi: No, we are starting on it. It will take time because the reconciliation is not an easy task. And we are studying with specialists.

JM: You’re working with a team to develop the theory, is that the idea?

Rossi: Yes.

JM: Now getting back to the report. In regards to excess heat, the measured coefficient-of-performance, or COP, came out to be around 3.2-3.6 over a very prolonged period of time. Some experts argue the calorimetry was suitable, while others remain unsatisfied for various reasons. So first, what did you make of the review group’s methodology and excess heat measurements?

Rossi: Well the calculations have been made by the professors. I know that some of them are very well [experienced with] that kind of measurement. They have also [made a core] with manufacturer of thermal chambers. I suppose they know what they did. I want not to enter into this question because I just accept the results [I have been given]. I have nothing to comment about that. About the various opinions [out there] we do not consider them real [objections] because what’s of interest to us, again, is that the plant we have in operation works properly. Honestly we have no more time to lose in this discussion. [Concerning] the COP – you have seen in the report the COP has been calculated in a very conservative way. Every number has been calculated [within] the most conservative margin. Actually, I think [the COP] could be maybe increased but again, this is not a theoretical issue, this is a technological issue that can be seen only at a fixed point in an industrial, operational plant — no more theoretical suppositions.

JM: The new version of the E-Cat that was tested this time had an alumina casing on it. Now this as far as my understanding goes acted as an insulator…

Rossi: It has been described in the report. I don’t want to say anything about that. The report has been very well described [elsewhere] – the casing of the reactor.

JM: You brought up the 1MW plant – how is progress going on that? And to be more specific how is the new design superior to the old version, and how long do you think it will take to get to market or, at the very least, be demonstrated publically for people?

Rossi: Well, yes, the new 1MW plant has gotten a strong evolution with [regard] to the older one — mainly under the reliability point of view; under the industrial point of view. The control system is enormously more sophisticated. Basically the plant is governed by a robot. Nevertheless it will take at least one year of operation in the factory of the customer of Industrial Heat, to whom the plant has been supplied…it will take at least one year before they complete the analysis [and] all possible errors have been adjusted. After this year with the permission of the customer, because industry is not a showroom or a theatre, so we cannot just open access to the public and say, “Alright guys, come and see!” It will not be that simple, but selected visits for a person who has title to that will be open – [but] not before we consider the plant absolutely [finished] under an industrial point of view. I suppose it will take about one year…about one year from now I suppose. But when you are in this field you cannot be sure about the scheduling because you can be sure of one thing now today, and tomorrow discover you were wrong and have to change something. This is the first time – and this is important to underline – this is the first time we had the possibility to see in operation 24-hours-a-day continuously the plant because before we could only operate on it for a couple of days or three before [we encountered] a lot of problems. The [past manufacturing facilities that we installed the old 1MW plant were not in full operations]. There was not a load to supply all the energy to. So now in the real industrial operation/situation we can see all the problems that are generated from this real operation.

JM: Now you say you’ve seen it running longer than a few days can you give some idea of how long one has been running, or how long one has been tested for? Are we talking weeks?

Rossi: You know in our factory the one megawatt plant that had been presented in October 2012 — it worked at that time.  Then, we could work with it for some [amount of time], but you cannot put in exercise for long a plant like that if you don’t have a real load and if you do not have a real operation going on.

JM: Can you give us an idea of how many people are working to develop the E-Cat? Obviously you have your hands on it in some capacity, but is this a rather large team or just a small group of engineers?

Rossi: We are working with a complex team where there are specialists for any issue.

JM: Can you give an idea of how many scientists are working on [the project]?

Rossi: I prefer to not answer in detail, but what I can say is that for any single matter, we have a specialist to take care of [that].

JMGetting a bit more personal, I’m sure people are wondering what exactly has driven you all these years, and what do you hope to ultimately achieve by bringing this technology to the world? How do you hope to be remembered?

Rossi: The first stone has been put in the building so, you know, the first industrial plant, not working in an experimental warehouse, but working in the factory of a customer to produce a profit is already in operation. So this process of industrialization has begun already.

JM: What do you hope to accomplish personally?  What drives you to keep pushing this forward?

Rossi:  Well, you know, I just go one step at a time. My biggest aspiration now is to make the 1 MW plant perfect, absolutely and totally reliable, with all the defects corrected.  This is my aspiration now. After this, I do not know.

JM: Briefly, can you speak on your past work with the now-deceased Professor Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna. I think he might be one of the unsung heroes after the story is told, along with many others of course, but he was one of the pioneers in the nickel-hydrogen work, along with [Francesco] Piantelli and others, most notably Italians. How significant in your opinion were his contributions to the genesis of the E-Cat, your work, and just your general thoughts on him?

Rossi: Focardi has been a strong collaborator with me, mainly in the period between 2007 and 2010. I have been lucky to be helped by him with his strong theoretical preparation.  For sure, he has contributed to the development of this work, and we absolutely have to be grateful forever for his precious contribution and he is always present in our memory.

JM: I know he was in a special situation in one sense because he was retired, and though his career wasn’t behind him, he could come out and support controversial work that he might not have been able to do while he was still a teaching professor, and that’s the kind of pressure many academics face in dealing with these new technologies or this new science.  And so, we need people like Sergio Focardi, we need people like Hano Essen, like Sven Kullander, who are willing to stick their necks out for new science to discover something new. Without pioneers, without people taking these kind of risks, both economic on your end, and sociologically, say in the scientific community, on the professors’ end. So I wish people were more open-minded [and] would follow their example. I think a lot of the barriers to people understanding this new technology, this new science, is again the academic pushback, so I am always encouraged by these men of integrity, whether they are sure or unsure of what’s going on, they say, “let’s look”, “let’s investigate”.  That’s why I’m always in inspired by those kinds of people, and that’s why I brought him up.

Rossi:  Yes, I agree with you.

JM: I know you don’t have a lot of time today. We appreciate all the time you afforded to us. I know there are things you can talk about, and things you cannot talk about. So before we go our separate ways, do you have any parting thoughts? Any words of wisdom or anything you think is appropriate?

Rossi: What I can say is that, at this point, we have to focus on the industrial plant in operation, because at this point in the story we are in a situation similar to the one at the dawn of the computers.  At the very beginning it was important to have the theoretical discussion on microchips, etcetera, but at a certain point, the development, and the importance of the computer, has been determined by the market, not by the scientific community.

JM: Absolutely. Thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to speak to us.

Rossi: Thank you very much.  It has been a pleasure and an honor to be with you today.

Conclusion: That does it for today’s episode. Thanks again to Andrea Rossi, Ruby Carat at Cold Fusion Now.org, and thanks to you for listening. Take care, and stay tuned for more episodes in the near future.

* More of Interviews/Essays on Cold Fusion/LENR & other topics can be found at Q-Niverse.

 

New E-Cat Report Positive, 1400C+ and Isotopic Changes in Ni+Li

New E-Cat Report Download Here

Observation of abundant heat production from a reactor device
and of isotopic changes in the fuel

This test was performed by the same group as the previous test with the following names on the paper:

Giuseppe Levi
Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
Evelyn Foschi
Bologna, Italy
Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson and Lars Tegnér
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Hanno Essén
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

This 760 hour test is the longest running example of controllable LENR/Cold Fusion and at an excess of 5825MJ it is also the most powerful.

The Temperature peaked at above 1400C, hot enough to be extremely practical as an energy source.  The measured COP was between 3.2 and 3.6 with the authors hinting they could have pushed the device further but were cautious due to the huge energy gains when they initially turned it up a bit.

The fuel was analyzed before and after the test and showed significant changes in the elemental profile including shifts to Ni62 and depletion of other Ni isotopes as well as a shift in Lithium isotopes.

Listen to Andrea Rossi discuss the results with John Maguire here.

 

Q&A with Ugo Abundo on newly forming Open Power Association

Ugo Abundo is one of the teacher’s at Leopoldo Pirelli Instruction Institute in Roma, Italia that initiated an investigation with students on cold fusion. Watch their activity at http://www.hydrobetatron.org/

This release came in about a new Association that group is forming to fund research.

1) What are the current projects and activities of the Open Power Association ?

The two readings of the name, “free energy” and “shared control”, are complementary.

No freedom is possible without available energy.
Aim of the Association is therefore to offer mankind the free results of research in new energy field.

Its activities cover the range from simply develop the Hydrobetatron Project (the heir of “Leopoldo Pirelli” Instruction Institute’s Athanor) to reach a synergy with the efforts of all LENR researchers aimed by our same targets.

2) What kind of testing is going on, and what results are being seen ?

We want to proof the reality of “heat excess” by doubtless calorimetric direct measurements. Actually, important results were obtained by comparison methods, and a suitable calorimetric reactor was assembled to reach the final target, direct determination.

We work on two instrumented lines, the first for screening, the second for C.O.P. recording.

Our revolutionary “fluidized bed powder cathode” was asked for Patent on April 2012.

3) What kind of attention and interest is being shown by outside individuals and organizations ?

A large attention is actually growing about us. Since we have designed and assembled the “F-pulsator” (a device to push high frequency pulses into a specially designed reactor), some reserved organizations and a lot of international-level scientists had a contact with us, to analyze their theories or experimentations by our device, according with the “modus operandi” of Open Power Association.

4) What is the funding situation for the Association ?

The Association is basically self-financed by the membership fees, and gets free funds from sustainers and investors.

5) How can interested people get involved in the association ?

We hope to involve more and more people, at first by sustaining our efforts by joining us as a member, then by sharing our results, so involving new interested people.

6) Are you interested in expanding the reach of the Association beyond Italy, and if so, what are your plans to do this ?

We are going to establish a new office in London, from where will organize meetings about the subject, using such a location as a pole for radial diffusion of world-wide free sharing of “science for mankind”.

We thanks for your kind attention to our project, and hope to offer an useful contribution.

A Physicist’s Formula

tsyganov alghero 2012Update 01/2013 —Registration of Energy Discharge in D+D→4He* Reaction in Conducting Crystals (Simulation of Experiment) [.pdf] by Edward Tsyganov from Proceedings of Channeling 2012 Conference in Alghero, Sardinia, Italy.

Cube3x3x3In my point of view, series of the experiments in Gran Sasso Laboratory under leadership of Dr. Claus Rolfs and similar experiments in Berlin by Dr. K. Czerski and colleagues during 2002-2009 show unusually high electron screening potential in metallic crystals. These experimental facts give a good mechanism how the Coulomb barrier overcame with low energy (thermal) deuterons.



[latexpage]
“The circumstances of hot fusion are not the circumstances of cold fusion”, wrote Julian Schwinger, co-Nobel-prize winner with Richard Feynmann and Shinichiro Tomonaga in 1965 for their work on quantum electro-dynamics (QED).

But there is no shortage of hot fusion analysis of cold fusion. Might some ideas be applicable?

Edward Tsyganov believes so.

Dr. Tsyganov is a professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who specializes in nuclear detectors, but in 1975, Tsyganov was part of an international group working on the Tevatron proton accelerator at Fermilab, just after successfully completing the first Russian-American scientific collaboration on the Serpukhov 70 GeV proton accelerator in Russia.

Muon catalysis had been discovered by Professor Luis Alvarez, whom he met at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in 1976. Although exciting, muon catalytic fusion did not look very promising to Tsyganov due to the short life time span of the muon.

Later, in December 1989, he was sitting in the audience of a seminar with Martin Fleischmann at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, having participated in the DELPHI experiment at the Large Electron Positron collider. [visit] He was very excited with Fleischmann’s presentation but, at the time, he had just introduced bent crystals for beam deflection, now used in high-energy physics. The study of crystalline structures drew him away from cold fusion research, which he had heard was “a false observation” anyway.

Gran Sasso
Inspired by experimental work performed with the Gran Sasso Laboratory Underground Nuclear Physics (LUNA) facility in Italy, Tsyganov recently returned to the topic of cold fusion. [visit]

Scientists there have shown that when a deuterium atom is embedded in a metallic crystal, the cross section, which gives a measure of the probability that a fusion reaction will occur, increases in comparison with that of free atoms.

In the 2002-2008 series of international low-energy accelerator experiments, low-energy deuterium beams directed at embedded deuterium atoms showed that, in this environment, the screening potential for the orbital electrons of the embedded atoms is substantially increased. This means that in such conditions, any supplemental embedded nuclei in a single host crystal cell could sit much closer than they normally would due to the Coulomb repulsion.

Can this idea be applied to the low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) in a solid?

The problem of overcoming the Coulomb barrier, the powerful force that keeps positively-charged protons away from each other, is the central issue for developing clean cold fusion energy. The force that holds nuclei together is called the strong nuclear force. Though it is an extremely powerful force, it only extends for a small distance. Unless nuclei can get close enough for the strong force to take effect, positively-charged nuclei remain too far away from each other to fuse. Elements other than hydrogen have an even bigger Coulomb barrier, since they have many more protons, and a stronger positive-charge. This is true for both free particles, and those housed in a solid metal.

JET Energy model of palladium metallic lattice infused with deuterium.
But inside a metallic lattice, the negatively-charged conducting electrons are free to move about, creating a negatively-charged screen. As a result, a positively-charged proton (or deuteron) inside the lattice sees mostly negative charges. But at some point, the bare nucleus could find itself suddenly close to another of its kind, the other’s positive-charge being “hidden”, or screened, by all the surrounding negative charges.

In this environment, deuterons or other nuclei may sit closer together in one host crystalline cell than they normally would. In a paper Cold Nuclear Fusion [1], Tsyganov cites data obtained by Francesco Raiola et al, for the screening Assenbaum potential for deuterium embedded in platinum as 675 +/- 50 eV, which is around 25 times larger than for free atoms of deuterium.

“The so-called screening Assenbaum potential is usually considered as an additional energy of interaction in a fusion process, and this effective energy should be used for calculations,” writes Tsyganov.

“This means that atoms of deuterium embedded in a metallic crystal do not feel the Coulomb repulsion down to distances of 25 times smaller than the size of the free deuterium atoms, increasing the probability of barrier penetration.”

“It was evident that in such conditions two deuteron atoms could approach each other to the distance of 1/10 – 1/20 of the size of an undistorted atom, without feeling the Coulomb repulsion.”

“Normally at very low energies for the deuterium molecule, the Coulomb barrier permeability for deuterium atoms is of the order of $10^{-84}$, including the Assenbaum screening potential (27 eV). However, in an environment of a single metallic crystalline cell this value jumps by $10^{50}$ – $10^{60}$ times! At the same time the real kinetic energy of the interacting deuterium atoms is still very low, some tiny fraction of an eV. All the enhancement of Coulomb barrier permeability is due to much shorter distance between the interacting deuterium nuclei.”

At low energies, the Coulomb barrier permeability is lowered and nuclei can position closer together.
“As one can see from the graph, in the region of low effective kinetic energies, as in the case of cold fusion, the dependence of the quantum mechanical probability of Coulomb barrier penetration vs energy is very sharp.”

For Tsyganov, this illustrates the difference between hot fusion and cold fusion.

“Hot fusion produces compound nuclei through multiple single encounters of the particles. In cold fusion, particles interact with the same partner through the quantum oscillations in a ‘closed box…'”, he writes. “This oscillation frequency is directly proportional to the screening potential, or box “size”, giving an additional boost to the process.”

Suppose that two deuterium atoms are trapped inside a single crystalline cell of palladium. The electrons associated with the deuterium will have an elongated shape in response to the cloud of conduction electrons, their orbits distorted by the catalytic effect. This is what allows the deuterium nuclei to situate themselves only a fraction of the distance they would normally tolerate.

Together, these two atoms make a “quasi-molecule” that oscillates at a particular frequency. While Tsyganov admits that calculating the particular oscillation frequency of a deuterium quasi-molecule in the midst of so many potential fields inside the crystal is difficult, he uses Planck’s relation as an approximation to give a frequency $\nu = E/h$, where $E$ is the experimentally measured screening potential and $h$ is Planck’s constant.

For deuterium embedded in a platinum metallic crystal, the screening potential was measured by Raiola as about 675 eV. This gives a vibrational frequency for the quasi-molecule as $1.67 \hspace{1 mm}\text{x}\hspace{1 mm} 10^{17}$ per second, and offers an estimate of the number of times the nuclei get close enough to fuse.

Multiplying this value for the oscillation frequency by the barrier permeability, a measure of the ability to overcome the Coulomb repulsion, of $2.52 \hspace{1 mm}\text{x}\hspace{1 mm} 10^{-17}$ yields a rate of 4.21 Deuterium-Dueterium fusion events per second.

Based on the calculation above, this table estimates DD fusion rates for crystals of palladium and platinum.

“I took this observation and applied these enlarged screening potential to the condition of McKubre experiments with deuterated palladium”, says Tsyganov.[1] “Heat release of Michael McKubre and the SRI team is well explained. In fact, this is the first confirmation of the cold fusion process using independent data from accelerators.”

Tsyganov believes experiments of Yoshiaki Arata and similar experiments of Mitchell Swartz could be also explained with this mechanism, if “quantitative data on deuterium contamination in palladium nano-crystals would be available.” He is convinced that the mechanism in McKubre’s experiments and that of Arata and Swartz’ are the same.

“Experiments of Francesco Piantelli and Andrea Rossi are well fitted in the above model. Higher heat release in the Rossi case is probably explainable by the use of platinum catalyst”, writes Tsyganov.
 
Professor S.B. Dabagov, Professor M.D. Bavizhev and I have tried to analyze the nuclear processes occurring in the Ecat installation and provide a possible explanation for the observed results, says Tsyganov. “In addition to the slowing of the nuclear decay processes of the intermediate compound nucleus formed during the cold fusion of elements [2], some modification of the decay process of the intermediate nucleus of the compound (H+Ni)* must be assumed to provide a plausible explanation of the Rossi results. We discuss such possibilities in this paper.”

Tsyganov’s idea pertains to how nuclei might become situated close enough inside a metal to overcome the Coulomb barrier and fuse, an idea derived from hot-fusion experiments. Still, he believes this model can be applied to the cold fusion environment too, claiming predictions agree well with heat energy measured by SRI and extend to the nickel-hydrogen systems as well.

I asked Dr. Tsyganov how his model might explain some other experimental data in cold fusion.

Dr. Tsyganov attended the 2011 LANR/CF Colloquia at MIT.

Q&A with Edward Tsyganov

CFN Supposing two deuterium can fuse in this way, how would the heat be dissipated through the lattice?

Tsyganov There is the traditional belief among nuclear scientists that nothing in a nucleus could depend on the outside world. It is very true for the fast processes in a nucleus (and these processes usually are very fast due to the very small size of a nucleus) because it is necessary that some time pass to reach the outside world. This time is about $10^{-19}$ seconds and is defined by the size of atom and speed of light.

However, according to the only hypothesis of mine, the intermediate compound nucleus 4He* created in cold DD fusion, as also in other cold fusion cases, presents an absolutely unique situation. After the penetration of main Coulomb barrier (about 200 keV high), deuterons save their identities for some time, due to the residual Coulomb mini-barrier, already inside the strong potential well. This mini-barrier very much reduced and smothered by the strong interaction forces (quark-gluon mechanism) and the finite sizes of the deuterons, but still prevents immediate nucleonic exchange between the two deuterons.

This figure represents the bottom of the potential well of strong interactions of two deuterons.
In my estimations, this mini-barrier is less than 2 keV high (~1% of the main Coulomb barrier), because at this kinetic energy usual nuclear decays of 4He* are still taking place. In fact, the Gran Sasso experiments, where this enhanced screening potential was discovered, used nuclear products to detect fusion processes. However, excitation (thermal) energy at cold fusion is still more than $10^{4}$ times less than 2 keV, or about 0.040 eV. Obviously, one can expect decreasing of nuclear decay rate of 4He* with decreasing of excitation energy.

I would highlight again that the decrease of nuclear decay rate at the very low excitation energy is the only hypothesis in all my consideration.

This situation could be treated as the experimental evidence. High electron screening potentials makes the cold fusion process the must. At the same time there are no neutrons and other nuclear products detected experimentally. An explanation must be provided. The only explanation (and the very reasonable one) that I could think of is the decrease of nuclear decay rate with decreasing of the energy of excitation.

If one adopts this hypothesis, further explanation does not presents real difficulties. Quantum electrodynamics provides the framework, through exchange by the virtual photons. Julian Swinger was very close to this solution but did not make the final step. Energy of discharge 4He* to the ground state 4He is released mostly by several hundreds of low energy electrons, with very short range in the crystal. About 400 60 keV electrons produce the heat.

CFN How might the production of tritium be explained with this process?

Tsyganov Production of tritium in McKubre’s experiments could be explained, if the nuclear decay rate of 4He* in cold fusion is reduced, but still non-negligible. This rate is at least two orders of magnitude less than expected for hot fusion. Perhaps, cracks and defects of the palladium sample could also contribute. I hope this question could soon be answered in future studies.

CFN Thank you Dr. Tsyganov.

Tsyganov My pleasure.

[1] Cold Nuclear Fusion by E.N. Tsyganov published Physics of Atomic Nuclei 2012, Vol. 75, No. 2, pp. 153–159 [.pdf]

[2] Cold Fusion Continues by E.N. Tsyganov, S.B. Dabagov, and M.D. Bavizhev, from the Proceedings of “Solid State Chemistry: Nano-materials and Nanotechnology” Conference, 22-27 April, 2012, Stavropol, Russia Report in Stavropol 4-24-2012 [.pdf]

[3] Cold Nuclear Fusion by E.N. Tsyganov on Journal of Nuclear Physics [visit]

Frank Znidarsic on fossil fuels and next-generation energy: “As one door closes, another opens”

Photo: Frank Znidarsic at George Miley’s lab.

His grandfather was a farmer who immigrated to America claiming to be a coal miner, but grandpa knew nothing about coal. He did know that the growing nation needed miners to extract the newly discovered cache of carbonaceous fuel, so he did what he had to, and settled in Pennsylvania coal country. His grandson Frank Znidarsic still lives there, working in the Pennsylvania energy industry, a third-generation coal miner whose own father left this world with a bad case of black lung.

When Znidarsic writes about coal mining, and the environmental damage it causes, he does so authoritatively. Now an engineer and author, Znidarsic was the first in his family to go to college, but he labored deep underground in the mines before landing a series of jobs above-ground in the power plants that burn fossil-fuels. The second edition of his book Elementary Anti-Gravity II is almost mistitled, for the first half of the book is a condensed survey of the major sources of energy in use today from the perspective of a miner and engineer who has worked directly in the field.

The world’s current power source is met just about wholly by burning fossil-fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil. Describing each of these fuels by its method of extraction and the processing needed for commercialization, he also shows how these techniques are leaving an ecological disaster for generations to come, though he seems willing to lose the battle in order to win the war. In weighing the consequences of extracting natural gas with the ecological damage it causes, Znidarsic supports the use of natural gas over coal.

Frank Znidarsic monitors smokestack emissions in 2011.
If you are interested in what kinds of pollution are emitted by coal-fired power plants, and the complex solutions attempting to make the emissions cleaner, this book gives a concise summary of the current methods applied to this problem. He describes how costly clean coal technologies are not quite the bargain they are advertised as.

Not limited to fossil-fuels, Znidarsic also describes a brief history of nuclear accidents, including the Fukushima-Daichi Reactor #4 explosion. Referencing M. King Hubbert‘s landmark June 1956 thesis of Peak Oil in which he predicted that nuclear power would provide Earth with a technological future, Znidarsic states that cold fusion will supplant any near-future hot-fusion technology, quoting as support Jed Rothwell‘s observation that “the introduction of a new technology often follows major advances within an existing technology”.

Frank Znidarsic and Yuri Potapov at Los Alamos
Marshall McLuhan describes this as technological reversal, when one technology “flips” into another through speed-up, the way a series of photographs, brought together in rapid succession form a movie.

William Draper Harkins gives personification to this idea. Born in Titusville, Pennsylvania where the American Oil Age began, he suggested that we might get our energy by the fusion of four hydrogen atoms to make a helium atom, using Albert Einstein‘s mass-to-energy equivalence.

The second half of Elementary Anti-Gravity II is a modern science lesson, including the associated math to derive the quantum condition for cold fusion to occur. Students of physics will enjoy his algebraic derivations and the unique perspective on quantum mechanics and relativity, as well as the answer to how anti-gravity fits in.

Frank Znidarsic graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1975. He is currently a Registered Professional Engineer in the state of Pennsylvania. In the 1980’s, he went on to obtain an A.S in Business Administration at St. Francis College. He studied physics at the University of Indiana in the 1990’s. Frank has been employed as an Engineer in the steel, mining, and utility industries. Frank has been investigating new sources of energy for twenty years. His papers have been published in numerous places including Infinite Energy Magazine and the Journal of New Energy. His work was documented in a series of videos by Seattle4Truth which you can view here.

Q&A with Frank Znidarsic

CFN You have been working in the fossil-fuel industry for years. What is your current position and what kinds of things do you do in your job today?

FZ Today I am retired, however, I am looking for commissioning contracts at power plants.

CFN Can you describe how energy returns from fossil fuels have decreased over the last century?

FZ Yes, the returns on energy were larger when the environmental costs were not considered. We use so much energy today that the environmental costs are paramount. We cannot go back to the old way of doing things, and clean energy is expensive.

CFN Talk a little about the environmental damages caused by mining practices. Is it possible to clean up the damage, and restore habitat to wildlife?

FZ Yes, strip mines can be reclaimed and water can be treated. However, I don’t believe that it is possible to restore lost streams and wells, or to stop the flow of acid water from abandoned mines. And no one really knows what all of the carbon that was released into the atmosphere will eventually do.

CFN Fracking pollutes water tables to the degree that some water supplies are combustible, and can be lit on fire right out of the tap. Wildlife has died as a result of poisonous chemicals that the industry has been allowed to keep secret. Yet it’s true that natural gas burns cleaner than coal or oil. Do you really think the benefits of natural gas outweigh the damages?

FZ Yes. Gas produces half the amount of carbon dioxide per kilowatt and the majority of the deep gas wells have caused no problems at all. I am hoping that the new wells remain in production for a long time.

CFN You’ve stated that carbon-capturing systems for coal-fired power plants can use as much as 25% of the power generated by that coal. What do you see is the future of clean coal?

FZ The price of natural gas has been unstable. Unstable prices upset the investment markets. The price of coal has been stable. On this basis, the use of coal must be continued. I don’t know if our economy can sustain the costs associated with carbon capture. I am not sure that the Earth can sustain its environment without it.

CFN Can you describe your idea of cold fusion in layman’s terms? How does this relate to anti-gravity?

FZ Yes, just as soft iron increases the strength of the electromagnetic field, the active areas in a cold fusion cell appear to increase the magnetic component of the strong nuclear force. This force is known as the nuclear spin orbit force. This increased spin orbit component tends to flip nucleons and induce Beta decays. Remarkably the same condition seems to increase the intensity of the gravitomagnetic field. I have found that this condition is fundamental to the quantum jump. I am anxiously awaiting comments on my Amazon book page.

CFN How sure are you that cold fusion will be able to provide power to the planet for a technological human future? What time-frame are we looking at, years or decades?

FZ It hard to say when could fusion technology may emerge. I have been waiting since 1989. In comparison, the production of deep natural gas arrived quickly and surprised many in the energy industry.

As with any revolutionary technology, the result rides on the shoulders of the prior work of others. The technology has now reached a point were experiment, theory, and finance are coming together. I am hoping that Dr. George Miley or Andrea Rossi will surprise us soon with commercial units. I expect commercial cold fusion products within five years.

CFN Thank-you!

FZ My pleasure.

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Youth keeping the new energy movement alive with constant creations investigating non-conventional science by Ruby Carat October 29, 2010

“Explaining LENR”

A new idea of what creates the cold fusion reaction has been articulated by Edmund Storms of Kiva Labs. Storms describes his hypothesis with the simplest terms in the updated Student’s Guide to Cold Fusion [.pdf] and in a recent paper submitted to the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science called Explaining LENR. [.pdf]

There are three distinct parts to his model.

1. The Nuclear Active Environment NAE of a crack or hollow is formed.
2. Hydrogen enters the NAE.
3. Applied power at the resonant frequency of the NAE/hydrogen combo turns mass into energy.

Storms does not say what nuclear mechanism is at work, only that it is instigated by resonance.

Peter Gluck, one of the earliest scientists to look into cold fusion/LANR/LENR, and what he has termed LENR+ for the new commercial products now being engineered, asked how this proposal answers seven crucial questions, and got Storms to answer. Re-published here from his blog EgoOut is their exchange.

Question #1: What are the consequences if the New Theory is successful?

Storms: The consequences of my theory being correct are twofold. First, the ability to replicate LENR at robust levels will improve. Once the required cracks can be manufactured on demand, the energy could be made on any scale, from that required to power a computer to a space craft.

Second, the phenomenon can be applied to solving the solar defect of neutrinos. This will cause a new understanding of the Standard model. But right now, we can only hope.

Question #2: What about the completeness of the New Theory? Is it a “transtheory”?

Storms: The model will be a “trans-theory” only to the extent that it is acknowledged as plausible and worth exploring. This acceptance is not assured at this time. As for whether one or many theories are required depends on how many ways Nature has to cause LENR. I assume only one basic method is possible. Therefore, only one theory is needed, i.e. the correct one. We will have to wait until the proper tests are made to determine which theory is correct. My model shows exactly which tests need to be done.

Question #3: Is the theory valid for all the existing LENR systems?

Storms: I base my model on hundreds of observations that show several very robust patterns of behavior. These behaviors include both the presence and absence of expected behavior. I rely on using a large number of combinations of behaviors, all of which are consistent with the logic of the model.

In addition, the model can be applied to both deuterium and hydrogen systems using any method for causing LENR. Of course, less support for the idea exists in the hydrogen system, which makes it the ideal system to use as a test of the predictions.

Question #4: Does the New Theory explain the serious problems of control, characteristic to all the LENR systems?

Storms: Control is a problem that the model addresses. I assume the rules controlling chemical behavior apply to the process that precedes the nuclear reaction, regardless how the nuclear reaction operates. Once the preconditions are understood, the controlling variables can be identified and used in the same manner they would be used to control a chemical processes. In other words, chemistry determines the rate of the nuclear reaction.

Once the required conditions are formed, the nuclear process occurs very rapidly and without any additional effort. This is similar to how energy is made in a gas furnace. The rate of energy production is determined by how fast the fuel is applied, in this case D+, and the subsequent flame does its thing without any additional effort or control.

Question #5: Does the New Theory explain the huge enhancement of energy achieved in the LENR+ systems of Rossi and Defkalion?

Storms: Rossi has succeeded in increasing energy production by finding a way to create many active cracks in the fine nickel powder. Presumably the powder has just the right size to support exactly the correct size crack. As a result, the concentration of NAE is higher than Piantelli was able to achieve in solid nickel. The secret of the process involves the method and/or the material that needs to be added to Ni to cause the cracks to form.

Question #6: Piantelli had a self-sustaining cell working for some 4 months and Rossi speaks about an active life time of the material of 6 months. It seems Ni is not destroyed but transmuted. My guess from the very start (1993 paper) was that the active sites are formed in some way by “surface dynamics”- the movements of the atoms at the very surface of the metal – many degrees of freedom.

If the NAE are active cracks in the metal and many/more active cracks mean more energy, then isn’t LENR an inherently destructive process? Is there is a concurrent process by which the structure of the metal is rebuilt, the “wounds” are healed or is the metal, in a certain sense, ‘sacrificed’, structurally speaking?

Storms: I propose that a limited and relatively constant number of active cracks can form because these result from stress relief. Once all the stress is relieved, no more cracks can form. Of course, most of the cracks made this way will be too large to be active, so that only a small number of NAE sites are making the detected energy.

The life time will be determined by variables independent of the number of active sites. For example as deuterium accumulates in the E-cat, the reaction rate will drop because the less active tritium formation reaction will start. When deuterium is used to make helium, the helium will accumulate and block access to the active sites for the deuterium.

I do not believe that any significant transmutation takes place. All measurements of this process show that this reaction is rare, except for the claim by Rossi.

Question #7: Based on the New Theory, what would you recommend as a strategy for the LENR field? On what should research and development focus as much as they can; palladium-deuterium Pd-D systems or nickel-hydrogen Ni-H systems?

Storms: This question involves politics, which makes it difficult to answer. On the one hand, the Pd system has a great deal of experimental support while the Ni system can apparently produce significant power, but based on very little understanding of the process.

If the crack model is correct, the metal is not important except that it be able to form active cracks and dissolve D or H as the required reactants. In fact, Ni might be a better host for the D reaction than Pd because it is cheaper and the D is more active than H because each D makes more energy than each H.

So, my advice is not to focus on the metal but on understanding the process. Once the process is mastered, the claims will be accepted regardless of the metal used. In fact, I think neither Ni nor Pd is the best host for the reaction.

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A Crack in the Code by Ruby Carat May 24, 2012

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