Lewan has blogged a report on the Rossi DPS (Dog and Pony Show).
Mats has become Mr. Sunshine for Rossi. His report on the Settlement Agreement bought and reported without challenge Rossi’s preposterous claims, and it appears that he has never read the strong evidence that Rossi lied, lied, and lied again, evidence presented in Rossi v. Darden as sworn testimony, Rossi’s own emails, etc.
So what do we have here?
Rossi … asked me if I would take the role as the presenter at the event. I accepted on the condition that I would not be responsible for overseeing the measurements (which were instead overseen by Eng. William S. Hurley, with a background working in nuclear plants and at refineries).
Rossi loves experts with a nuclear background, which will commonly give them practically no preparation to assess a LENR device, but it’s impressive to the clueless. See [JONP May 13, 2015] Mr. Hurley apparently falls into reporting Rossi Says as fact without attribution, I’ll come to that.
Although I would not oversee the measurements, I wanted to make sure that the test procedure was designed in a way that would give a minimum of relevant information.
He succeeded, it was a minimum or even less! As to input power, at least. In fact, there are indications from the test that the QX is producing no significant excess heat.
(I think he meant to write “at least a minimum,” but “minimum” in a context like this implies “as little as possible.” He needs an editor.)
From my point of view, already from the start, it was clear that the demo would not be a transparent scientific experiment with all details provided, but precisely a demonstration by an inventor who decided what kind of details to disclose. However, to make it meaningful, a minimum of values and measurements had to be shown.
Mats compares the demo to an extreme, a “transparent scientific experiment.” Given a reasonable need for secrecy, under some interpretations of the IP situation, that wouldn’t happen at this point, Mats is correct on that. However, by holding up that extreme for comparison, Mats justifies and allows what is not even an interesting commercial demonstration, an indication of significant XP, but only a DPS where XP appears if one squints and ignores available evidence. Mats is making the best of a bad show. Why does he do this?
On one hand, I may think that it’s unfortunate that Rossi chooses to avoid some important measurements, fearing that they would reveal too much information to competitors. On the other hand, I may understand him, provided that he moves along quickly to get a product to market, which seems to be his intention at this point.
Rossi could have arranged for measurement of the input power, easily, without any revelation of legitimate secrets.
Rossi could have been selling power, not to mention actual devices, years ago. Rossi has claimed to be moving to market for six years, but only one sale is known, to IH, in 2012, delivered in 2013, which returned the sold plant (and the technology, which, if real, would be worth billions, easily) to him as worthless in 2017. Rossi is looking for customers for heating power, he claims. If his technology has been as claimed, he could readily have had totally convincing demonstrations in place, delivering real heat, as measured and paid for by the customers, but instead chose to try to fake such a sale in Doral, Florida, essentially to himself, with measurements as arranged and reported by … Rossi.
Lewan here reports Rossi’s motives as if fact. He’s telling an old story that made some sense five years ago, perhaps, but that stopped making sense once Rossi sued Industrial Heat and the facts came out.
Lewan presents a pdf with an outline of Gullstrom’s theory. This is like many LENR theory papers: attempting to answer a general question, regarding LENR, how could it be happening? There have been hundreds of such efforts. None have been experimentally verified through prediction and confirmation. Such “success” as exists has been post-hoc. I.e., theories have been crafted to “explain” results. This, however, is not the scientific purpose of theory, which is to predict. There is no clue in the Gullstrom theory that it is actually connected with experimental results in any falsifiable way.
Page 6 of the pdf:
Main theory in 3 steps
Short on other theories
Experiment
Comparision theory to experiment
Future
In “Experiment” he has, p. 34:
Observations:789
Energy production without strong radiation.
Isotopic shifts
Positive ion current through air
He does not title his references, I am doing that here, and I am correcting links:
7. The Lugano Report
8. K. A. Alabin, S. N. Andreev, A. G. Parkhomov. Results of Analyses of the
Isotopic and Elemental Composition of Nickel- Hydrogen Fuel Reactors. The link provided to a googledrive copy is dead. There are similar papers here and here.
9. Nucleon polarizability and long range strong force from σI=2 meson exchange potential, Carl-Oscar Gullström, Andrea Rossi, arXiv.
There is a vast array of experimental reports on LENR. The lack of high-energy gamma radiation is widely reported, but it is crucial in such reports that significant excess heat be present. The Lugano report showed no radiation, and showed isotopic shifts, and a later analysis at Upsalla showed the same shifts, but in both cases, the sample was provided by Rossi, not independently taken.
With the Lugano report, the measurement of heat was badly flawed; there was no real control experiment, and the Lugano reactor was made by Industrial Heat, which later found major calorimetry errors in the Rossi approach (used at Lugano), and when these errors were corrected, that design did not work.
Parkhomov considered his own work “replication” of Rossi, but he was only following up on a vague idea that nickel powder plus LiAlH4 would generate excess heat. His first reported experiment was badly flawed, and the full evidence, (what was available) showed no significant excess heat. He went on, but his claims of XP have never been confirmed, in spite of extensive efforts. And the heat he reported became miniscule, compared with Rossi claims.
And then Gullstrom cites his own paper, co-authored with Rossi, which includes an “experimental report” which was similar to the DPS, making the same blunders or omissions (or fraudulent representations). And all this has been widely criticized, which critiques Gullstrom ignores.
None of this is actually connected with the theory. The theory is general and vague. The only new claim here is:
Positive ion current
New experimental observation: Li/H ratio in plasma is related to
output energy.
Output power is created when negative ions changes to positive ion
kinetic energy in a current.
Neutral plasma→ number and speed of positive and negative ions
that enters the plasma are the same.
COP: Kinetic energy of positive ions/kinetic energy of negative ions.
Non relativistic kinetic energy:
Σ(m+v2/2) / Σ(m–v2/2)
♦ Neutral plasma gives: Σ(v+2/2) = Σ(v–2/)
This seems to be nonsense. First of all, he has the kinetic energy of the positive current as the sum of the kinetic energy of the positive ions, which will be the sum of, for each ion, mass times velocity squared divided by two. But he appears to divide this by the kinetic energy of the negative ions. The positive ions would be protons, plus vaporized metals. The negative ions would be electrons, for the most part. much lighter. The velocities will depend on the voltages, if we are talking about net current. The voltage is not reported.
Then with a neutral plasma (forget about non-neutral plasmas, the charge balance under experimental conditions is almost exactly equal), he eliminates the mass factor. Sum of velocities is meaningless. The relationship he gives is insane … unless I am drastically missing something!
♦ COP is related to m+/m− i.e. in the range mLi/me= 14000 to mH/me= 2000.
So he is “relating” COP to the ratio of the mass of the positive ions to the mass of the electron. Of course, this would have no relationship to most LENR, because “plasma” LENR is almost an oxymoron. This relationship certainly does not follow from the “experimental evidence.” But then the kicker:
Measured COP in the doral test are in the range of thousands.
Li/H ratio are reduced with the COP.
This is rank speculation on Gullstrom’s part. The “Doral test” was extensively examined in Rossi v. Darden. The test itself was fraudulently set up. Rossi refused to allow access to the test to IH engineering, even though they owned the reactor and had an agreement allowing them to visit at any time. And had the COP actually been as high as is claimed here, the building would have been uninhabitable, if there were no heat exchanger, which would have been working hard, noisy, and quite visible, but nobody saw it. Rossi originally explained the heat dissipation with explanations that didn’t work, so, eventually, faced with legal realities, he invented the heat exchanger story, and I’m quite sure a jury would have so concluded, and Rossi might have been prosecuted for perjury.
He avoided that by agreeing to settle with a walk-away, giving up what he had claimed (three times $89 million). This is legal evidence, not exactly scientific, but it’s relevant when one wants to rely on results that were almost certainly fraudulent. Mats has avoided actually studying the case documents, it appears. Like many on Planet Rossi, he sets aside all that human legal bullshit and wants to see the measurements. Except he doesn’t get the measurements needed. At all.
Before a detailed theoretical analysis is worth the effort, there must be reliable experimental evidence of an effect. That evidence does exist for other LENR effects, not the so-called “Rossi Effect.” The exact conditions of the Rossi Effect, if it exists at all, are secret. Supposedly they were fully disclosed to Industrial Heat, but IH found those disclosures useless, in spite of years of effort, supposedly fully assisted by Rossi.
COP was not measured in the DPS. The estimate that was used in the Gullstrom-Rossi paper is radically incorrect. Indications are that actual COP in the DPS may have been close to 1. I.e.., no excess heat. The reason is that there was obviously significant input power not measured, it would be the stimulation power that would strike the plasma. That this was significant is indicated by the needed control box cooling. There is, then, no support for Gullstrom’s theory in the DPS. To my mind, given the massively flawed basis, it’s not worth the effort of further study.
Back to Lewan:
However, if I were an investor considering to invest in this technology, I would require further private tests being made with accurate measurements made by third-party experts, specifically regarding the electrical input power, making such tests in a way that these experts would consider to be relevant. (See also UPDATE 3 on electrical power measurement below).
Lewan is disclaiming responsibility. He seems to be completely unaware of the actual and documented history of Rossi and Industrial Heat. Rossi simply refuses, and has long refused, to allow such independent examination. He’s walked away from major possible investments when this was attempted. He claimed in his previous Lewan interview that he completely trusted Industrial Heat. But he didn’t. It became obvious.
I would place stronger requirements on such testing by investors. The history at this point is enough that an investor is probably quite foolish to waste money on obtaining that expertise, the probability of Rossi Reality is that low. I would suggest to any investor that they first thoroughly investigate the history of Rossi claims and his relationships with investors who attempted to support him. Lewan really should study the Hydro Fusion test that he documented in his book, there are Rossi v. Darden documents that give a very different picture than what Rossi told Lewan and Hydro Fusion.
Rossi Lies.
And “experts” have managed to make huge errors, working with Rossi.
The claims of the E-Cat QX are:
He means “for,” not “of,” since reactors do not make claims.
– volume ≈ 1 cm3
– thermal output 10-30 W
– negligible input control power
– internal temperature > 2,600° C
– no radiation above background
– at the demo, a cluster of three reactors was tested.
This is all Rossi Says. Some of it may be true. It’s likely there was no radiation above background, for example. In any case, Lewan is correct. These are “claims.”
“Control power” is not defined. Plasma stimulation is an aspect of control power, and was not measured, and was obviously not “negligible.” The current that was actually measured was probably a sense current, not “control.”
If a voltage sufficient to strike a plasma was applied (easily it could be 200 V or more), the ionization in the plasma will reduce resistance (though not generally to the effectively zero resistance Rossi claims) and high current will flow at least momentarily. If there is device inductance, that current — and heating — may continue even after the high voltage is removed. (If the power supply is not properly protected, this could burn it out.)
The test procedure contained two parts—thermal output power and electrical input power from the control system—essentially a black box with an unknown design, connected to the grid.
Always, before, total input power was measured. It was certainly measured in Doral! — but also in all other Rossi demonstrations. (And sometimes it was measured incorrectly, Lewan knows that.) Here, Rossi not only doesn’t measure total input power, which easily could have been done without revealing secrets (unless the secret is, of course, a deliberate attempt to create fraudulent impressions), but he also does not measure the output power of the control box, being fed to the QX. This is, then, completely hopeless.
Measuring the thermal output power was fairly straightforward: Water was pumped from a vessel with cold water, flowing into a heat exchanger around the E-Cat QX reactor, being heated without boiling, and then flowing into a vessel where the total amount of water was weighed using a digital scale.
So far, this appears to be reasonable. I have no reason to doubt the heating numbers. The issue is not that. By the way, this simple calorimetry wasn’t done before. Many had called for it. So, finally, Rossi uses sensible calorimetry — and then removes other information necessary to understand what’s going on.
A second method for determining the output power was planned—measuring the radiated light spectrum from the reactor, using Wien’s Displacement Law to determine the temperature inside the reactor from the wavelength with the maximum intensity in the spectrum, and then, Stefan-Boltzmann Law for calculating the radiated power from the temperature.
These two results would be compared to each other at the demo, but unfortunately, the second method didn’t work well under the conditions at the demo, with too much light disturbing the measurement.
Rossi Says. In fact, the method is badly flawed, even if it had worked. Lewan does not mention the theoretical problems, or, at least, the arguments made. The Gullstrom-Rossi paper has been criticized on this basis.
The method for measuring electrical input power was more problematic. The total consumption of the control system could not be used, since the system, according to Rossi, was using active cooling to reduce overheating inside, due to a complex electrical design.
Understatement. Even if “active cooling” was used — a fan in the control box — total consumption could have been measured, it would have supplied an upper limit. It was not shown, likely because that upper limit was well above the measured power output. All that was necessary to avoid the problem, to reduce the measured input power to that actually input to the reactor — which would then heat the reactor — would be to actually measure input voltages, including RMS AC voltage with adequate tools. If that data were sensitive, this could have been done with a competent expert, under NDA. But Rossi does not do that. Ever.
The “complex electrical design” was obviously to operate in two phases: a stable phase, with low power input to the reactor, and a stimulation phase, requiring high voltage and power. The supposed low input power was during the stable phase, the stimulation phase was ignored and not measured. There are oscilloscope displays indicating, clearly, that AC power was involved, not just the measured DC power.
[Update 4]: One hypothesis for the overheating issue is that the reactor produces an electrical feedback that will be dissipated inside the control system and has to be cooled [end update]
There is no end to the bullshit that can be invented to “explain” Rossi nonsense. It would be trivial to design a system so that power produced in the device would be dissipated in the device (i.e., in components within the calorimetric envelope). Any inductor, when a magnetic field is set up, will generate back-EMF as the field collapses, which, to avoid burning out other components, will be dissipated in a snubber circuit.
This problem actually indicates possible high inductance, which would not be expected solely from the plasma device. However, to imagine a “real problem” with a “real device” that, say, creates a current from some weird physics inside, this could be handled quite the same. Voltage is voltage and current is current and they don’t care how they were generated.
Otherwise the high power supply dissipation is from what it takes to create those fast, high-energy pulses that strike the plasma — and, a nifty side-effect — heat the device, while appearing to be negligible, because they only happen periodically.
At this point of R&D of the system, the total energy consumption of the system is therefore at the same order of magnitude as the released amount of energy from the reactor, and it, therefore, makes no sense to measure the consumption of the control system. Obviously, this must be solved, making a control system which is optimised, in order to achieve a commercially viable product.
Right. So 6 years after Rossi announced he had a 1 MW reactor for sale, and after he has announced that he’s not going to make more of those plants, but is focusing solely on the QX, which he has been developing for about two years, he is not even close. That power supply problem, if real, could easily have been resolved. And it was not actually necessary to solve it at this point! Measuring the input to the power supply would not have revealed secrets (except the Big Secret: Rossi has Zilch!), so this was not a reason to not measure it. Sure, it would not have been conclusive, but it would have been a fuller disclosure, eliminating unnecessary speculation. Rossi wants unnecessary speculation, it confuses, and Rossi wants confusion.
And then actual device input power could have been measured in ways that would not compromise possible commercial secrets. After all, he is claiming that it is “negligible.” (Negligible control power probably means negligible control, by the way, a problem in the opposite direction. But I can imagine a way that control power might be very low. It’s not really relevant now.)
Instead, the aim was to measure the power consumption of the reactor itself. Using Joule’s law (P=UI), electrical power is calculated multiplying voltage across some device with the current flowing through the device. However, Rossi didn’t want to measure the voltage across the reactor, claiming that it would reveal sensible information.
“The aim.” Whose aim? This is one way to measure input power. It is not the only way. In any case, this was was not used, because “Rossi didn’t want to.” A measurement observed by an expert, using sound methods — which could be documented — need not reveal sensitive information. But this would require Rossi to trust someone also trusted by others. That is apparently an empty set. I doubt he would trust Lewan. There are also ways that would only show average power. Any electronics engineer could suggest them. Quite simply, this is not a difficult problem.
He would measure the current by putting a 1-ohm resistance in series with the reactor and measuring the voltage across the resistance with an oscilloscope, then calculate the current from Ohm’s law (U=RI), dividing the voltage by the resistance (being 1 ohm). Accepting to use an oscilloscope was good since this would expose the waveform, and also because strange waveforms and high frequencies would make measurements with an ordinary voltmeter not reliable.
This is simply an ordinary current measurement. The oscilloscope is good, if the oscilloscope displays are clearly shown. A digital storage scope would properly be used, with high bandwidth. Lewan is aware that an “ordinary voltmeter” is inadequate. Especially when they are only measuring DC!
But, as mentioned, knowing the current is not enough. Rossi’s claim was that when operating, the reactor had a plasma inside with a resistance similar to that of an ordinary conductor—close to zero. Electrically this means that the reactor would use a negligible amount of power, but it was just an assumption and I wanted to make it credible through other measurements.
This claim is itself quite remarkable. Plasmas exhibit negative resistance, i.e., resistance decreases with current (because the ionization increases so there are more charge carriers), but it does not go to “zero.” Consider an ordinary flourescent light tube. It’s a plasma device. Normal operating voltage is not enough to get it “started.” One it is started, with a high-voltage pulse, then it conducts. A normal tube is, say, 40W. At 120VAC, this would be about 1/3 A RMS. So the resistance is about 360 ohms. This is far from zero! But a very hot, dense plasma might indeed conduct very well, but how much energy does it take to create that? The measurement methods completely neglect that plasma creation energy.
The basic idea Rossi is promoting is that he creates a hot, dense plasma, and that it then self-heats from an internal reaction. That heating is not enough to maintain the necessary temperature, so it cools, until he stimulates it again. This takes an active control system that may sense the condition of the reactor. And that makes what Lewan suggests quite foolish!
My suggestion, which Rossi accepted, was to eliminate the reactor after the active run, replacing it first with a conductor, then with a resistance of about 800 ohms as a dummy, to see how the control system behaved. The conductor should provide a similar measurement value as with the reactor if the reactor behaved as a conductor. Using the 800-ohm resistance, on the other hand, should show whether the control system would possibly maintain the measured current, expected to be around 0.25A, with a higher resistance in the circuit. At 0.25A, a resistance of 800 ohms would consume about 50W, which would be dissipated as heat, and this could then explain the produced heat in the reactor without any reaction, just from electric heating.
The problem is that this is not a decent set of controls. The control system is designed to trigger a plasma device, which will have, before being triggered, very high resistance. Much higher than 800 ohms, I would expect. Lewan does not mention it, but the voltage he expected across the 800 ohm resistor would be 200 V. Dangerous. Lewan is looking for DC power. That’s not what is to be suspected.
By the way, an ordinary pocket neon AC tester can show voltages over 100 V. I would expect that one of those would light up if placed across the reactor, at least during triggering. Some of these are designed to approximately measure voltage.
Lewan is not considering the possibility of an active control system that will sense reactor current. His test would provide very little useful information. So the behavior he will see is not the behavior of the system under test.
[UPDATE 3]: I now think I understand why Rossi wouldn’t let us measure the voltage across the reactor. Rossi has described the E-Cat QX as two nickel electrodes with some distance between them, with the fuel inside, and that when the reactor is in operation, a plasma is formed between the electrodes.
Right. That is the description. What we don’t know is if there are other components inside the reactor, most notably, as a first-pass suspicion, an inductor and possibly some capacitance.
Most observers have concluded that a high voltage pulse of maybe 1kV is required to form the plasma.
Maybe less. At least, I’d think, 200 V.
Once the plasma is formed the resistance should decrease to almost zero and the control voltage immediately has to be reduced to a low value.
Yes. Or else very high current will flow and something may burn out. This is ordinary plasma electronics. “Almost zero” is vague. But it could be low. Rossi wants the plasma to get very hot. So the trigger pulse will be longer than necessary to simply strike the plasma. However, there may also be local energy storage, in an inductor and/or capacitor. A high current for a short time can be stored as energy, then this can be more slowly released.
Normally, and as claimed by Rossi, the plasma would have a resistance as that of a conductor,
Calling this “normal” is misleading. He would mean “when very hot.”
and the voltage across the reactor will then be much lower than the voltage across the 1-ohm resistor (measured to about 0.3V—see below). Measuring the voltage across the reactor will, therefore, be difficult:
Nonsense. It might take some sophistication. What Lewan is claiming here, is remarkable. This would be difficult to measure because of the high voltage!
The high voltage pulse risks destroying normal voltmeters and measuring the voltage with an oscilloscope will be challenging since you first have to capture the high voltage pulse at probably 1 kilovolt and then immediately after you would need to measure a voltage of maybe millivolts. [end update]
Lewan is befogged. We don’t really care about the “millivolts” though they could be measured. What we really care about is the power input with the high voltage pulse. The only function of that low voltage and the current in the “non-trigger” phase is to provide information back to the control unit about plasma state. When the input energy has been radiated — in this test, conducted away in the coolant — the plasma will cool and resistance will increase, and then the control box will generate another trigger. The power input during that cooling phase is negligible, as claimed.
But the power input during the triggers is not negligible, it is substantial, and, my conclusion, this is how the device heats the water.
That high voltage power could easily be measured with an oscilloscope, and with digital records using a digital storage oscilloscope. (Dual-channel, it could be set up to measure current and voltage simultaneously.) They are now cheap. (I don’t know about that Textronix scope. It could probably do this, though.)
At the demo, 1,000 grams of water was heated 20 degrees Celsius in one hour, meaning that the total energy released was 1,000 x 20 x 4.18 = 83,600J and the thermal power 83,600/3600 ≈ 23W.
The voltage across the 1-ohm resistor was about 0.3V (pulsed DC voltage at about 100kHz frequency), thus the current 0.3A. The power consumed by the resistor was then about 0.09W and if the reactor behaved as a conductor its power consumption would be much less.
I continue to be amazed that Planet Rossi calls “pulsed voltage” “DC.” What does 0.3 V mean? He gives a pulse frequency of 100 kHz. Is 0.3 V an average voltage or peak? Same with the current. And Lewan knows better, from his past criticism of Rossi, than to calculate power by multiplying voltage and current with other than actual DC. What is the duty cycle? What are the phase relationships?
Basically, this is an estimate of power consumption only in the non-trigger phase, ignoring the major power input to the reactor, enough power to heat it to very hot plasma temperatures and possibly to also create some continued heating for a short time.
Using a conductor as a dummy, the voltage across the 1-ohm resistance was about 0.4V, thus similar as with the reactor in the circuit. With the 800-ohm resistance, the voltage across the 1-ohm resistance was about 0.02V and the current thus about 0.02A. The power consumption of the 800-ohm resistance was then 0.02 x 0.02 x 800 ≈ 0.3W, thus much lower than the thermal power released by the reactor.
The power supply was operating in the non-trigger mode. The plasma at 800 ohms is still conductive. What happens as the resistance is increased? What I’d think of is putting a neon tester across the reactor and pulling the 800 ohms. I’d expect the tester to flash, showing high voltage. Unless, of course, someone changed the reactor programming (and there might be a switch to prevent unwanted triggers, which could, after all, knock someone touching this thing on their ass. Hopefully, that’s all.).
These dummy measurements can be interpreted in a series of ways, giving a COP (output power/input power) ranging from about 40 to tens of thousands. Unfortunately, no precise answer can be given regarding the COP with this method, but even counting the lowest estimate, it’s very high, indicating a power source that produces useful thermal power with a very small input power for controlling the system.
Lewan has not considered interpretations that are even likely, not merely possible. His “lowest estimate” completely neglects the elephant in this living room, the high voltage trigger power, which he knows he did not measure. Lewan’s interpretations here can mislead the ignorant. Not good.
At the demo, as seen in the video recording, Rossi was adjusting something inside the control system just before making the dummy measurements. Obviously, someone could wonder if he was changing the system in order to obtain a desired measured value.
His own answer was that he was opening an air intake after two hours of operation since the active cooling was not operating when the system was turned off.
It is always possible that an implausible explanation is true. But Rossi commonly does things like this, that will raise suspicions. Why was that air intake ever closed? Lewan takes implausible answers from Rossi and reports them. He never questions the implausibility.
My own interpretation here of what happened does not require any changes to the control box, so, under this hypothesis, Rossi messing around was just creating more smoke. Rossi agreed to the 800 ohm dummy because he knew it would show what it showed. The trigger resistance might be far higher than that. (But I have not worked out possibilities with an inductor. That circuit might be complex; we would not need to know the internals to measure reactor input power.)
There are many possibilities, and to know what actually happened requires more information than I have. But the need for control box active cooling is a strong indication of high power being delivered to the QX.
[Update 2]: Someone also saw Rossi touch a second switch close to the main switch used for turning on and off the system. Rossi explained that there were actually two main switches—one for the main circuit and one for the active cooling system—and that there were also other controls that he couldn’t explain in detail. [end update].
Clearly this comes down to a question of trust, and personally, discussing this detail with Rossi for some time, I have come to the conclusion that his explanation is reasonable and trustworthy.
That’s it. This is Lewan’s position. He trusts Rossi, who has shown a capacity for generating “explanations” that satisfy his targets enough that they don’t check further when they could.
Rossi appears, then, as a classic con artist, who is able to generate confidence, i.e., a “confidence man.” Contrary to common opinion, genuine con artists fool even quite smart people. They know how to manipulate impressions, “conclusions,” which are not necessarily rational, but emotional.
The explanation for touching the power supply might be entirely true, and Lewan correct in trusting that explanation, but this all distracted him from the elephant: that overworked control box! And then the trigger power. How could one ignore that? A Rossi Force Field?
Here below is the test report by William S. Hurley, as I received it from Rossi:
This part of this report is straightforward, and probably accurate.
Energy produced: 20 x 1.14 = 22.8 Wh/h
But I notice one thing: “Wh/h.” That is a Rossi trope. It is not that it is wrong, but I have never seen an American engineer use that language. Rossi always uses it. An American engineer not writing under Rossi domination would have written “average power: 22.8 W.” Or “energy produced: 22.8 Wh” (since the period was an hour). As written, it’s incorrect. Wh/h is a measure of power, not energy. It is a rate.
But this part of the report is bullshit, for all the reasons explained above:
Measurement of the energy consumed ( during the hour for 30′ no energy has been supplied to the E-Cat) :
V: 0.3
OHM: 1
A: 0.3
Wh/h 0.09/2= 0.045
Ratio between Energy Produced and energy consumed: 22.8/0.045 = 506.66
So this calculation uses the 50% (30 min out of 60) duty cycle stated (which was not shown in the test, as far as I have seen). Without that adjustment, a factor of two, the “input power” would be 90 mW. Again, “energy consumed” is incorrect. What is stated is average power, not energy. This shows lack of caution on the part of Hurley, if Hurley actually wrote that report.
But this totally neglects the trigger power, as if it didn’t exist. One could supply any waveform desired at 90 mW without a lot of additional power being necessary. Hurely presumably witnessed the triggers, they generated visible light. Does he think that was done at 0.3 V? On what planet?
(Planet Rossi, obviously.)
The energy “consumed” was not measured! How many times is it necessary to repeat this?
However, with a power supply with about 60W of active cooling, according to the Lewan slide, that the power supply was producing all the measured output power is plausible.
To sum up the demo, there were several details that were discussed, from the problematic electrical measurement to observations of Rossi touching something inside the control system just before an additional measurement was being made (see below). [Update 1]: It was also noted that the temperature of the incoming water was measured before the pump and that the pump could possibly add heat. However, the temperature did not raise at the beginning of the demo when only the pump was operating and not the reactor. Rossi also gave the pump to me after the demo so that I could dismantle it (will do that), together with a wooden block where a 1-ohm resistance was mounted, which he also advised me to cut through (will do that too). [End update].
The touching and the pump issue were probably red herrings. But, yes, what where they thinking, measuring the temperature before the pump instead of after? One of the tricks of magicians is to allow full inspection of whatever is not a part of the actual trick. A skilled magician will sometimes deliberately create suspicion, then refute it.
In the end, I found that there were reasonable explanations for everything that occurred, and the result indicated a clear thermal output with a very small electrical input from the control system.
Lewan was aware of the problems, but then fooled himself with his useless dummy. Just a moment’s thought, it would take, to realize that there is energy going into the reactor, at high voltage, occasionally, and then this would make it very clear that the real input power wasn’t measured.