Andrea Rossi : Cold Fusion, LENR, E-Cat, Energy Catalyzer

So, a lot has happened in the media since I made my last blog post about Andrea Rossi's alleged cold-fusion device 'The Energy Catalyzer'.  After 9 months of complaining from the Free Energy movement that no mainstream media coverage was being done, that now seems to be getting corrected.

Numerous articles have come out this past week, many of them, in fact most of them, not entirely dismissive.  A few are even optimistic and hopeful in tone.

Since my last post Rossi supposedly did a demonstration of his 1mw device, which he claimed produced 1/2 a MW.  He released data that, on paper, looks like the device produced a lot of energy.  However, that's only if you believe what he says.  And, frankly, pretty much no one does.

The entire thing could quite easily be a hoax or scam.  Just like a good magician uses misdirection and outright lies, Rossi could be doing the same thing here.  Only independent replication will ever be completely convincing.  Some will not be convinced, even after LENR power plants are running all over the planet, until there is a scientific explanation in theoretical physics to account for the phenomenon.

No demonstration of Rossi's has ever lasted more than a few hours; so obviously a demonstration of continuous operation for weeks would be much more compelling.

Probably my biggest sticking point is that, to date, Rossi has not produced so much as a milliwatt of electricity from any of his devices.  The technology to convert heat or steam to electricity is well established and it should not pose a major technical problem for Rossi to configure an E-Cat so that it converted the output heat, or steam, to usable electricity.

Why is this important?  Because to run his device optimally he needs a certain amount of electrical input.  However, if he could feed that input from electricity generated from the output, he could create a closed system and forever end the debate about whether or not he truly has an over-unity self-sustaining reaction.  Let's put it this way, I would find such a demonstration a lot more compelling.  Certainly more interesting than arguing about wet steam, dry steam, and other issues of measurement which have created so much controversy to date.

Personally, I will be convinced that the technology is real at the time it has been independently replicated in multiple laboratories over a period of time.  Of course, if Rossi continues to sell devices then, theoretically, proof could come from his customers who would stand as independent replication and verification of the device.  However, conclusions we might draw from this are limited as much of the device remains black boxed even to licensed 'customers'.

Of course what everyone is all excited about is the potential of this technology to transform our society and free us from the need for petrochemical solutions to our energy needs.  Sadly, it doesn't appear that Rossi's proprietary approach is helping much there.

Right now he is building his E-Cat's in a labor intensive and very low bandwidth way.  Given his current rate of production it would take one hundred million years for him to produce enough E-Cat's to free us from other sources of energy production.

At a certain point, he has to open the product up to mass production on a massive scale.  I understand he wants to retain his intellectual property and the best way to do that is to obtain patents and then license the technology far and wide.  Maybe that is his plan.  Time will tell.

Another way the technology might reach the masses is if it is independently replicated by other scientists and engineers and they publish those results in the public domain.  This isn't completely far fetched.  Half of the challenge in engineering and science is simply knowing that something can be done.  It wouldn't be surprising if other mechanisms for achieving commercial processes in LENR were developed in the years to come.

Ultimately only competition, mass production, and a heavy investment by industry is going to achieve the capacity necessary to transform the energy infrastructure of this planet.

But, we must remember, this is all predicated on the notion that what Rossi has is real and not a hoax.  Most people believe it is a hoax.  And, considering the way he is approaching his project, I don't see him dissuading many of that opinion any time soon.

Some of the people most upset about Rossi are those who are already part of the LENR community today.  They fear, and rightly so, that if Rossi is proven to be conducting a hoax then there is no chance of LENR ever being taken seriously ever again.  It's the parable of crying wolf all over again.

Rossi has a lot to answer for.  If he is sincere and has truly made the breakthrough he claims, then I wish him all the best in the world and I encourage him to license his technology as fast as possible to get it into as many people's hands as he can.  The potential market for this technology is measured, literally, in the *trillions* of dollars.  I don't know how much money Rossi wants to make, but there are larger moral issues as stake here.  If his technology is real, it stands to improve the quality of life for the entire population of the planet, it stands to lift us out of our current economic crisis by creating millions of jobs and injecting trillions of dollars of new economic activity into the world economy.  It can go a long way towards stemming climate change and preventing the continued rape of our planet with oil wells, oil spills, coal mining and frakking.

As you can see, the stakes are very, very, very high.

And, if he is conducting a scam, I hope he rots in jail for a very long time.

Which is it?

Time will tell.