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MOD EDIT: Before posting in this thread you must read this post.
Updated on February 9, 2012. Information about LENR has been added and the article was updated to reflect current events.
I wanted to start a discussion about this, as I find it extremely interesting. This thread is about the energy catalyzer (aka e-cat) invented by A. Rossi, and by extension, about LENR in general. The e-cat is supposedly a commercially viable LENR heating device. LENR stands for low energy nuclear reaction and is a more technically correct term for cold fusion. The e-cat carries out a nickel-hydrogen reaction that creates thermal energy without the problems that nuclear fission has (harmful radiation, radioactive fuel and waste, safety concerns). Essentially, LENR could solve our energy crisis - a very extraordinary claim. While the story could be an intricate and well executed scam, there is a large amount of circumstantial evidence pointing towards it being real, which makes me hopeful.
Some background on LENR
LENR has largely been ignored by mainstream science due to an unfortunate series of events in 1989 involving the two original discovers, Fleischmann and Pons. Nevertheless, small scale research went on. You can learn more about the history of LENR in this cbs news report on cold fusion or in this talk with Edmund Storms.
In more recent times there has been a surge of interest in LENR. In 2009, the US Defense Intelligence Agency released a report which stated that worldwide interest in LENR was increasing and that more and more researchers claimed to achieve important experimental results.
Dennis Bushnell and Joseph Zawodny from NASA have spoken in support of nickel-hydrogen LENR. Here is Dr. Zawodny's video and the following is a NASA presentation on LENR
Dennis Bushnell has called LENR the "most promising energy alternative" in an interview (transcript)
SPAWAR (US Navy) has also been investigating. They have released a rather long and very technical video (and somewhat boring) about their findings here (note that LANR is yet another name for LENR).
George Miley, University of Illinois. In 2011, he reported that he has constructed a LENR device that continuously produces several hundred watts of energy.
Prof. Piantelli, University of Siena, Italy. Piantelli originally discovered the anomalous energy production in nickel-hydrogen and conducted research on it with his colleague Prof. Focardi, which was hired by Rossi.
Mike McKubre, SRI. In October 2011 he gave a presentation on LENR, watch it here
Francesco Celani, INFN, Italy (the Italian national institute of nuclear physics). He has replicated Ni-H LENR and kindly provided this non-exhaustive list of excess heat in LENR experiments (document in Italian)
Dr. Eugene Mallove and Dr. Mitchell Swartz, Jet Energy, Inc..
Thermacore, Inc. conducted a study for the USAF in 1993 with positive results.
Yoshiaki Arata demonstrated anomalous heat and helium production at the university of Osaka in 2008. A report is here.
These are just some of the researchers. The archive http://www.lenr-canr.org has a large collection of articles and papers on the subject.
Essentially, when considering the totality of the evidence, one comes to the conclusion that LENR is a real phenomenon. Rossi's claims are suddenly a lot less extraordinary in light of this. However, there is a difference an unreliable experimental and a commercially viable device. One of the biggest problems in LENR is that consistent results results are difficult. Rossi claims to have solved that and to have achieved much higher energy output than his competitors.
The e-cat story
Rossi has given several demonstrations of the e-cat to invited physicists and experts. None of the tests were long or controlled enough to confirm Rossi's claims, but nobody has ever found evidence of deception. The attending experts seem cautiously optimistic, though they agree that independent testing is required to prove it. While that would offer definitive proof, it make sense from a business perspective to not disclose too many details and information. Information would invariably become available to outsiders if independent testing were performed (and as we can see from the list further above, there are many just a few steps behind Rossi that could easily take advantage of any leaked information). In fact, information has apparently already leaked! Rossi contracted the greek company Defkalion to produce e-cats but the deal fell through - a few months later, Defkalion announced that they would make and sell their own Ni-H LENR heater, named Hyperion. More details on Defkalion later.
Two of the invited experts were Hanno Essen, member of the Swedish Skeptics Society and Sven Kullander, physicist at Uppsala university. Essen writes:
In some way a new kind of physics is taking place. It’s enigmatic, but probably no new laws of nature are involved. We believe it is possible to explain the process with known laws of nature,” a statement made by Essen on the process that he has observed himself. He also added that “We checked everything that could be checked, and we could walk around freely and have a look at most of the equipment
Kullander writes:
Any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production
The Swedish technology magazine NyTeknik has complete coverage of the e-cat story and tests in English.
Two older videos made in 2011. The first one is from an e-cat demo in Bologna, Italy, in spring 2011 (press cc for English subtitles), the second is more of a general overview with some interviews, also from spring 2011
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +
In the meantime Rossi has launched the official e-cat website at http://ecat.com
The demo on October 6 2011 showed more evidence of excess energy production.
On October 28 2011, Rossi demonstrated a 1 MW plant consisting of over 100 smaller e-cat cells in parallel. This test is controversial because it was supposedly a validation test for an unknown customer whose identity has not been disclosed.
Since then, no more public demos have been made. None of the tests performed so far have been able to offer definite proof, however arguably that would not necessarily be a wise decision from a business standpoint - at least for now. Rossi plans to build and sell e-cats for industrial and home use. He has an agreement with National Instruments to build control devices for his e-cats. He had also planned to let the University of Bologna perform R&D on the e-cat, but this didn't happen. The university nevertheless has declared that it is willing to validate the e-cat even without such a contract. As far as Rossi goes, we can only await for the story to unfold further.
A competitor appears
I briefly mentioned the greek company Defkalion earlier. They had worked with Rossi for a while and then the cooperation stopped. In winter 2011 they announced that they were making the Hyperion, which is their version of the e-cat. So far, they have not performed any public demos. Recently however, they have called for independent scientific and business organizations to validate their technology. Read the press release. Summary by Nyteknik.
Since the Hyperion is based on the e-cat, a validation of the former would validate the latter as well.
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very nice, its about time something good happens with all the money floating around in the higher ups.
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Yeah i read about this in a newspaper some weeks ago. I'm still on the fence as to how big of a discovery this is (i.e. if its real AND an viable source of energy for industries and so on). But it seems to have a lot of promise and really interesting. Stable and repeatable fusion procedure would greatly improve humanity's situation on this planet and with such an abundant source of alternative energy my ears will finally get some rest from the hysterical global warming people. But it seem like most papers and scientific journals (im just guessing here) are waiting this one out to see what happens. Maybe because everybody got so heavily burnt when those two scientist declared they controlled nuclear fusion back in the 80s (or whenever it was), which was a faux.
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Like most, I'll reserve my comments until it's proven working or fake later on. Though any new, alternative sources of energy are always great.
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It is definitely interesting, but also sounds too good to be true.
No one but Rossi & Focardi have seen the insides of their machine yet.
Essen and Kullander reported, "Any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production."
The most exciting part to me 
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On July 27 2011 03:01 Aphasie wrote:
Maybe because everybody got so heavily burnt when those two scientist declared they controlled nuclear fusion back in the 80s (or whenever it was), which was a faux.
This is described more in detail in the following video. From 1:10 onwards it talks about the history of cold fusion with commentary from Focardi and others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRry6a3U0Cw
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This thing happened in my university? o.o
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Well if these gents are for real then HOT DAMN!
But the entire "you aren't allowed to see the mechanism at work" approach leads me to think that they are either frauds or have discovered/engineered something so simple that there is no way it could ever be patented. I'll believe it once somebody has cracked one of these black boxes open and shared what he finds with the world.
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Wow! If this is right then this could do a lot to creating a cleaner future for the human race!
I have my fingers crossed on this one 
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I remember seeing this maybe last year. From what i remember reading up about it, this is a scam. There are many interests in this project from notable con artists and in general, there is a lack of peer reviewed papers in notable scientific journals.
Of course this was probably a year ago and i don't really remember too much about it.
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This was posted already somewhere last year. they promised a working reactor in a few months. Still nothing so far. And they still havent revealed any mechanism. Still smells like bogus to me.
Though I would love to be proven wrong. And maybe they are just protecting their commercial rights. Only time will tell
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On July 27 2011 03:48 Marradron wrote:
This was posted already somewhere last year. they promised a working reactor in a few months. Still nothing so far. And they still havent revealed any mechanism. Still smells like bogus to me.
Though I would love to be proven wrong. And maybe they are just protecting their commercial rights. Only time will tell
There have been several demonstrations of reactors in operation.
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On July 27 2011 04:02 Traeon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2011 03:48 Marradron wrote:
This was posted already somewhere last year. they promised a working reactor in a few months. Still nothing so far. And they still havent revealed any mechanism. Still smells like bogus to me.
Though I would love to be proven wrong. And maybe they are just protecting their commercial rights. Only time will tell There have been several demonstrations of reactors in operation.
These were black box demonstrations. Till they reveal the mechanics there might as well be a batery inside producing power.
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Ya I remember this last year as well. Still no proof it works the way they say it does.
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On July 27 2011 04:04 Marradron wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2011 04:02 Traeon wrote:On July 27 2011 03:48 Marradron wrote:
This was posted already somewhere last year. they promised a working reactor in a few months. Still nothing so far. And they still havent revealed any mechanism. Still smells like bogus to me.
Though I would love to be proven wrong. And maybe they are just protecting their commercial rights. Only time will tell There have been several demonstrations of reactors in operation. These were black box demonstrations. Till they reveal the mechanics there might as well be a batery inside producing power.
Could be something better, like Schrodinger's cat hooked up to a gerbil wheel. If you look at it, it stops working, so best to keep it running and the operations unobserved.
This does sound like it has some really cool potential though.
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Cold Fusion is HIGHLY subject to discussion in the community. It's probably not something similar to a fusion since the mechanism of fusion is quite well understood. However since schrödinger equations can't be solved for Nickel, it could also be an new phenomenon.
We will see, however since they produce heat, they will face the usual problems, so it's not anything revolutionary.
When you will hear about someone having discovered something which has supraconductivity properties at ~77K, then you will be able to enjoy a near endless supply of energy.
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The investors are ready to invest 200 million euro in a factory in Greece to produce it, NASA and other companys are claiming it makes sense, and the best part is that the scientists (Rossi and Focardi) are seeking for a global patent...i guess that kind of invention would pull Italy out of recession, and maybe end some wars?
I for one actually like the slow and scientific progress they are making. They are not showing it public in case of having errors that would slip them by and they would not have the time to fix it.
They might be the new Tesla.
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On July 27 2011 04:04 Marradron wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2011 04:02 Traeon wrote:
There have been several demonstrations of reactors in operation. These were black box demonstrations. Till they reveal the mechanics there might as well be a batery inside producing power.
The attending examiners are people who know their stuff and obviously thought of this possibility. Based on the power input and output and reactor chamber volume, it's possible to exclude such things.
Essén and Professor Emeritus at Uppsala University Sven Kullander, also chairman of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Energy Committee, both participated on 29 March as observers at a new trial in Bologna of the so-called ‘energy catalyzer’, which could be based on cold fusion, or LENR, Low Energy Nuclear Reaction.
Any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production
I'm pretty sure chemical process includes batteries.
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece
This guy here also says the February test ran too long for any known fuel or battery that could be fit into the chamber: http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_proof_frames_v401.php (10. Discussion)
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Anyone who believes this should go ahead and invest with them. If they're for real, this will change the world. But you know what they say...
A fool and his money are easily parted.
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EPT
