A discussion thread repository for solid evidence items on Rossi and Industrial Heat's world changing LENR technology:

http://youtu.be/m-8QdVwY98E

http://youtu.be/YrTz5Bq6dsA

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notbannedyet,
See http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a18673/cold-fusion-essay/ and follow the link to Huw Price's essay given at the end.
Possibly you will then understand.

Dec 23, 2015 at 2:14 AM | Unregistered CommenterAdrian Ashfield
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ECat module from Rossi's comedy videos above?:

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/water-jacket-heater-0-6kw-1kw_60203431761.html

Whenever I have posted a reference to cold fusion (or “LENR”), when it has been relevant to the subject being discussed, there is almost always someone who comes up with “but there must be neutrons; it defies the laws of physics”. And yet these are the same people who emphasise the importance of data over theory when it comes to global warming.

The only reason I have followed the sorry tale of cold fusion over the past 26 years is that I was fortunate enough to have been a student of Martin Fleischmann, a true scientist in every sense of the word. I am sure that without that insight I would have followed the crowd and believed cold fusion to be junk science. But just like many people’s journey to discover the nonsense of the global warming scam, it needs time to do your own research. Those who have discovered that the establishment view is not always true are best placed to discover that data trumps theory in the field of cold fusion. Nullis in verba.

The significant LENR reports come from Rossi and Brillouin. Both refuse to produce any third party data. Rossi has been imprisoned for fraud on multiple occasions. In this country he failed to produce any thermoelectric devices after predicting great results.

We have no reason to anticipate any worthy results and LENR will wither for lack of progress.

drjohngalan - please watch the two videos I posted at the top of the thread paying careful attention to the experimental apparatus on display and then look at the water jacket heater I posted in post three. I would like to know if you think Rossi is a "true scientist"?

not banned yet – I have no idea, and I have never met Andrea Rossi. The proof (or otherwise) of his E-Cat technology should come from the current tests being conducted in the USA. The company where the tests are being run can decide whether or not what Rossi has done has made them money. Nothing to do with measurements and calculations of energy in / energy out, but simply the cost of the heat produced by the E-Cat for their process compared with what it would have cost using conventional heating. Mats Lewin’s book on Rossi is worth reading. Clearly, he is a complex character, making him his own worst enemy at times, and he has many critics. I am prepared to wait and see.

My post concerned the science. There are processes, which are nuclear in origin, that take place in solids or liquids at low temperatures. I would be surprised if anyone looking at the evidence for these processes could conclude that every single measurement of excess heat, tritium production, transmutation, etc. is based on “junk science” done by “charlatans” – the language used about Fleischmann and Pons. Edmund Storms’ books contain many references.

In a strange way, scientists currently working on cold fusion (and even those just prepared to acknowledge its existence) have a lot in common with people such as Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Bob Carter and Fred Singer. In the face of being labelled deniers (of the conventional theories of physics) they are prepared to continue to do the science, trying to understand these strange phenomena. There is a possibility of a new source of energy which the oil companies, the utility companies and the green zealots (strange bedfellows!) would all view with horror. Perhaps it is no wonder that progress has been so slow. The “cold fusion is junk science” meme is even more established than the “97% consensus” one and just as ill-founded.

drjohngalan - thanks for your comments. However I'd like to press the point over the specific experimental step up Rossi presents in the YouTube videos. Have you watched them both In their entirety?

Great, talk about cold fusion, ufoology, zombies, or anything else for fun. But please don't drag the climate contention into it.

not banned yet: yes, I spent a not very enjoyable twenty minutes or so watching those videos (and the picture of a heat exchanger) and Rossi does not come over well. However, the current tests’ criterion of success or failure does not rely on any of that; it will simply be on whether any commercial advantage has been achieved. It follows therefore that any issue about Rossi’s scientific credentials becomes irrelevant – either he has made a commercially viable device or he has not.

And whatever Rossi has done does not detract from the fact that low energy nuclear reactions are real. Whether or not they result in a source of energy that is commercially viable remains to be seen. To obtain information, in a similar vein to climate science, you do not go to Nature or Scientific American.

Hunter: people who are prepared to accept that there might be something in the concept of cold fusion/LENR are to be equated to believers in UFOs and zombies? Are there echoes of "climate change deniers" being called “flat earthers” here?

drjohngalan - I'm afraid I disagree with your comments about the criteria for success or failure of any LENR trial which has Rossi's involvement. My opinion is that the man is a hoaxer and I think that "commercial advantage" can include hoaxes - Enron immediately comes to mind as one example. Wrapping up a scientific hoax within a commercial hoax has a long history and my opinion of Rossi is that he and his associates will continue to promote their scam until the bitter end. If you want recent high stakes examples of this, look at Lance Armstrong and co's systematic cheating in sport.

I am not offering an opinion on LENR - I have not studied it and I reserve judgement. You mentioned that you had studied under Martin Fleischmann and that you respect him as a true scientist. Again I'm not passing comment on him as I've not researched him to any depth. However I have put some time into checking out Rossi's activities and I am firmly of the opinion he is a con artist whose association with LENR can only hinder genuine efforts to explain or advance the field.

Martin A - IMO the abstract of the June 2014 NASA report linked here is worth reading:

http://nari.arc.nasa.gov/node/259

The report's references section looks to have a reasonable literature base for follow up.

From reference 25:

https://indico.cern.ch/event/177379/

22 March 2012 LENR overview:

https://indico.cern.ch/event/177379/attachments/231603/324018/CERN220212_2203.pdf

Martin A: in addition to the references already given, a good overview paper is this one:

https://drmyronevans.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/cs-1.pdf

It includes some discussion as to why some of the early attempts at replication of the Fleischmann and Pons experiments did not work. It also has a good, but not too long, reference list.

An early (Dec-89) paper I liked was this one:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900008108.pdf

Firmly holding the view that “nuclear” products – He3 and neutrons – must be the result of deuterium-deuterium fusion in palladium, they found none. However, to quote (page 14), “One can only speculate about the source of heating which occurs when D2 and not H2 is removed from the Pd.” As referred to earlier in this thread, NASA is still working on LENR.

not banned yet: I concur with Sagan’s view that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Any results from the testing of the E-Cat will have to stand extreme scrutiny. But rather than write Rossi off as a “hoaxer”, I am prepared to wait and see. Have you read Mats Lewan’s book?

@drjohngalan:
Your words are strange:

"There is a possibility of a new source of energy which the oil companies, the utility companies and the green zealots (strange bedfellows!) would all view with horror."

Why would oil companies, well funded, sitting on lots of reserves, be concerned about other power sources? If other power sources become useful and therefore a threat to their profitability, they would just invest in the new said areas, they have the funds to do so.

Similarly why would utility companies not like a new power source? even more daft, they would invest and make money!

It seems that people who do not understand how business works, just, do not understand how business works :-)

I hope LNER etc is 'proven' and becomes a useful method of generating electricity, we need

@Steve Richards. I admit my words might seem strange – UFOology and zombies notwithstanding. However, imagine a (much over-used word, but correct in this context) paradigm shift, a disruptive technology – a scenario where an energy source almost too cheap to meter is available: buy a car fuelled for life – no need to visit a petrol station:
http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Rothwell_FQXI_submission_es.pdf

1. Oil – clearly, it depends upon how much of the oil market could be substituted. A tiny proportion of a barrel of crude ends up as the raw material for petrochemicals; the vast majority is fuel in its many guises. LENR, if viable, could replace most of these fuels. What happens to the oil company’s balance sheet if its “lots of reserves” are suddenly priced at a tiny fraction of what they were before?

2. Utilities – if each house and factory could have its own LENR-powered heating and electrical supply, the utility companies would become redundant – what would their assets be worth?

3. Green zealots – their whole ethos is to dismantle capitalism and return us to the Stone Age. The last thing they would want is an abundant and cheap energy supply that would enable the world’s poor to have a decent standard of living.

I am a director (firstly MD, now Non-exec) of a company I founded 18 years ago.

I also hope that cold fusion/LENR becomes a useful energy source and will not continue to be – to quote Martin Fleischmann not long before he died – “a missed opportunity”. I hope this field will become what it should be: an exciting new branch of science, open for anyone to pursue, not the “reputation trap” (reference in the second post above) it is at the moment.

drjohngallen - no, I've not read Lewan's book. I have read the free first chapter and I was not impressed. Let's agree to differ - I remain convinced Rossi is a hoaxer but I continue to reserve judgement on LENR.

Wrt measuring radiant power with thermal imaging techniques, this article and comments looks to be a useful reference:

https://gsvit.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/tpr2-calorimetry-of-hot-cat-performed-by-means-of-ir-camera-2/

Thank you for the various references. I skimmed through them rapidly trying to find something that I could read in detail that would either give some theory as to why cold fusion might be a possibility or else details of some experiments that showed detectable release of energy. Maybe my skimming was too rapid but I did not find anything.

@drjohngalan:

"Utilities – if each house and factory could have its own LENR-powered heating and electrical supply, the utility companies would become redundant – what would their assets be worth?"

With 26 million dwellings in the UK alone, the engineering required to produce this number of power units, that could generate 30kW 24//7 reliable, cost effective and safely is immense and costly.

Oil/energy companies would be well placed to perform the design/development/production of this vast number of power units.

Steve Richards - I think auto, IT or white goods manufacturers would be a better fit for delivering a hypothetical LENR source. Oil and energy companies are into resource extraction, conversion and distribution.

Martin A, you might try starting with Phonon models for anomalies in condensed matter nuclear science
Peter L. Hagelstein and Irfan U. Chaudhary

Hagelstein also discusses his model of how it might work in the MIT 'Cold-Fusion' lecture series he and Mitchell Swarz presented (~15 hours total, available on you tube), as well as experimental data by Swarz and their explanations why others were unable to reproduce the effect. Deuterium Evolution Reaction Model and the Fleischmann–Pons Experiment Peter L. Hagelstein I'm not sure if those are the best references, but they were the ones that looked most appropriate after a quick look.His model is not the only one, of course, and he did mention some others in the lectures but I can't recall their names offhand. [Hagelstein also earlier won awards for his work developing the x-ray laser, but was then cast out into the darkness for not abandoning cold-fusion when told to do so.]

There were also some other intriguing results reported, such as a Russian guy who recently claims to see multiple +2 fusion products by irradiating palladium deuteride with gamma rays. I also learned that the reason Fleischman-Pons first did their experiments because other researchers already knew that there was something awkward or difficult about certain electrochemical experiments with Pd/D2 that were not observed with Pd/H2.

Whatever opinion you go in with, or take away, I found it fascinating and more credible than Rossi, who was barely even mentioned in the lectures.

@Steve Richards. I worked for BP. Diversification for them was not a success (BP Coal, BP Minerals and BP Solar are the ones that come to mind). On that basis I do not think that oil companies would be particularly well-suited to the imaginary world of manufacturing, installing and servicing cold fusion-powered energy sources.

drjohn,
Please don't get me wrong: I would be thrilled to be proven wrong about LENR, and Faster Than Light travel, and Star Trek level medical care.
Of the three I just listed, I see LENR as the one well proven to be completely impossible.
It's dead, drjohn.

Hunter: “… LENR as the one well proven to be completely impossible.
It's dead, drjohn.”

Of course, I will bow out gracefully on receipt of the scientific proof to which you allude. However, if it comes in the form of “theory says it cannot happen” then that will not do.