Lewan was there, where was the Pony?

Lewan has blogged a report on the Rossi DPS (Dog and Pony Show).

Reflections on the Nov 24 E-Cat QX demo in Stockholm

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(mv2/2)
♦ Neutral plasma gives: Σ(v+2/2) = Σ(v2/)

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.

 

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

25 thoughts on “Lewan was there, where was the Pony?”

  1. I once thought that the Lugano tests showed good promise, after all several Swedish scientists where after all risking their reputations by even looking at LENR. The main evidence appeared to be in the analysis of the ash, which clearly indicated something was going on. Unfortunately the results were not official published. Perhaps the ash looked to be unexplainable. If anyone has read the dialogue between Darden and Rossi regarding the Lugano test(in the trial documentation) you will see that Darden was not keen on the testing and warned Rossi not to reveal the secret formula. Rossi assured Darden that nothing would be revealed. This suggests to me that the ash that Rossi handed over to the Swedish team did not in fact come from the tested cells. This is just one more reason never to trust Rossi again.

    1. One reason swirling in an avalanche. The suspicion was that Rossi salted the sample and the ash. It’s a reason not to trust Rossi. It is not a proof that the Rossi Effect was completely fake, but that no evidence touched by him could be trusted. The Lugano scientists were completely naive, it is embarrassing. Led by the nose. Rossi did this over and over. It was visible by the end of 2011.

      I am reviewing arguments from 2011 and on about Rossi. Cold fusion research supporters were arguing “it is possible that ….” On moletrap, later, I pointed out that “anything is possible,” and a moletrapper pointed out a contrary rule: “Almost nothing is possible.”

      However, possibility doesn’t make it likely. If we look at all the evidence we have, reality — or what we may sanely treat as reality — can become clear. Sometimes we don’t have enough evidence.

      We often attempt to ascertain reality when we don’t have a need to know, but we are looking for answers that will confirm our world-view. Dedicated skeptics, pseud0-skeptics, if you will, form strong opinions based on lack of evidence, and weak inference, and a host of “reasons” that do not actually indicate reality. It can be expensive to investigate, and I would not blame anyone for not investing what it would take to find out. Let those who think something is possible enough to be worth investigating make that investment if they choose.

      Industrial Heat made the investment, and apparently knew it was quite a long shot. I have roughly estimated that if there was one chance in a thousand that the Rossi Effect was real, it could have been sane to invest that $20 million, because the expected payoff from developed reality could be worth a trillion dollars per year. When one makes bets like that, one sanely expects to “lose” most of the time. It doesn’t mean that the investment was a “mistake.” I would have placed the odds higher than one in a thousand. Maybe one in a hundred. The issue was quite complex, dealing with an apparently paranoid inventor, whose paranoia with what may have been a real invention, his Petrol Dragon fiasco, led him to prosecution and massive losses. Rossi’s failures with Petrol Dragon had to do with development, not underlying reality, and then what Rossi did to try to keep it all together.

  2. The 50 minute mark of demenstration was interesting.
    A.R. tells Mats he can not be close to test.
    I think it is an example of how controling person AR can be.
    Hurley looks at Mats and smiles like he might have gotten the
    same treatment.Fabiani smiles a little to.

    1. To be fair, there were high voltages present. (Which is hilarious given the impression created that the input was low-power.) What is the best on-line presentation of that video?

    2. Fabiani once claimed the Rossi had called him an IH spy, and threw him out of the Doral site, now we see him sitting by Rossi, the best of pals, it’s nonsense!

      1. Rossi many times told the story of Fabiani being an “IH man” on the spot in Doral. So, maybe he believed it. Fabiani, however, proved loyal to Rossi, refusing to turn over his raw data, at substantial personal cost and risk. So it is not at all surprising that Rossi forgave him.

        I’m more interested in the other side. Fabiani knows that Rossi was lying. (Among other things, no massive heat exchanger in the mezzanine). So he would readily infer that Rossi continues to lie. His reputation is forever blackened. The Lugano scientists are taking similar risks. Lewan’s reputation is toast. Some of Rossi’s previous supporters have survived with only a little smoke damage, because they didn’t lie and support obvious deception. I think of Ampenergo, who made money on the whole affair, I suspect.

        (I have no information on whether or not they have returned it or made a deal with IH: IH probably wanted to keep the license, just in case. However, the U.S. license would revert to Ampenergo, my opinion, and the Settlement Agreement, between Rossi and IH, could not modify the original agreement without Ampernergo’s agreement, and they were explicitly excluded as a party to or subject of the Settlement. A Court Order could have cancelled that, but … there was no Court order and Ampenergo was not a party to the lawsuit, Cassarino merely being a witness. So IH could readily surrender their rights to Ampenergo, which could enforce them through the original Agreement. And those rights cover the QX.

        There may be some new agreement between Ampenergo and IH, where Ampenergo keeps the $5 million or so they were paid, and Ampenergo shares rights and revenue, should such arise. Otherwise IH could, in fact, sue Ampenergo for recovery. From what I’ve seen, both sides would prefer to agree than fight.

        1. It was never a matter of forgiveness, Fabiani was never an IH spy, as we can clearly see now Fabiani was always Rossi’s wingman. They played out an elaborate charade to convince a court that Fabiani, who was in fact being paid by IH. was some sort of impartial witness. The only real representative of IH at Doral was West, and his expertise was purely electrical. Since the trial never took place, expect to see the Rossi, Fabiani and Penon crew re-emerge for further tests in the future.

          1. It simply doesn’t have to be that complicated. After the test shut down, IH started pressuring Fabiani to deliver the data they owned. At that point, Rossi would not want him to have access to the Plant. So Rossi kicked Fabiani out. Rossi is mercurial and dramatic.

            I have no reason to think that Fabiani lied about that. But Fabiani was, as I said, loyal to Rossi. He was not a “spy,” which implies secrecy.

            How would he have testified in court, under penalty of perjury? Did he perjure himself in his deposition? I don’t know and I have not studied the matter with diligence, since it is a minor part of the story.

            In his deposition, he comes off as evasive. Pace nails him for spoliation of evidence.

            Rossi seems to be playing an end game. Mats remains loyal, apparently. IH could, by the way, sue Penon, but I doubt they would consider it worthwhile. If someone really wants to know the truth, let them come up with the money to ascertain it.

            End games can go on for a long time. Consider Rossi as a performer, like a stage magician. How long will people continue to watch with interest?

    1. I think they spent about half of it in 2015-2016, and then they had substantial legal expenses. I think there is money left. I have not heard that they “folded,” only that they did close the lab. But much of what they were doing was funding other investigators. I hope to talk to them soon.

  3. I have two more comments submitted by Paul Bedichek. I have unapproved them. Mr. Bedichk may obtain copies by request. This is an edited version:
    —–
    Paul Bedichek 2017/11/30 at 12:12 am
    Abd,I also like to hear quotes from you by [deleted], as even in a group internationally known for their lack of intelligence. he is an outstanding example of stupidity raised to an art form. You could make us laugh by using quotes by him that show just how far a human can fall from any semblance of wit.
    The thing with Rossi is we all know he has nothing but unthinking dupes so the subject gets a little long in the tooth.

    The purpose of this blog is not to expose or humiliate stupid people. The person in question is old and may be senile. As part of the pursuit of the purpose, “bloggers” may vent, it’s human. Bloggers earn the right to “frank expression” by creating useful resources. Author rights are given here to people expected to make positive contributions — which includes sane and thoughtful skepticism, which is a positive force when not combined with reactive cynicism and stupidity.

    Yes, the Rossi story gets “long of tooth.” Nevertheless, this is still news in the LENR community. Contempt for persons like the one targeted by this post is not pursuing our purpose. Even if it seems totally justified. The world is full of stupid people. What is interesting is how such a world can still reach the heights of human experience.

  4. Paul Bedichek 017/11/30 at 12:06 am wrote:

    Is [redacted] a complete moron, he certainly sounds like one, or is he getting compensation from Rossi? There was once a Lenr outfit that used Pd foil who were not criminals, based in Boulder Co called CoolScience, I assumed they wisely moved on to real science after wasting their time in that field, anyone have a story about them? I was prepared to be interested had they ever reported positive results.

    Coolessence. They are mentioned here. See their web site, still up, which explains what they did. This is worthy of coverage. The description, implying that other scientists are “criminals” (Rossi is not a scientist) is offensive, however, they did not move on to “real science,” they shut down. They donated their library (to Infusion Institute, by the way, I’d estimate the value of the publications they gave us as several thousand dollars, thanks!) The web site claims: “The company was originally formed to rigorously examine repeated experimental reports of so-called ‘cold fusion’ (low energy nuclear reaction – LENR), generally manifesting themselves in the form of unexpected or ‘excess’ heat, from a number of scientists around the world. Over the past 12 years the Coolescence team has replicated the most celebrated of these experiments, with no positive results that have not been attributable to measurement artifacts or chemical effects.” The Coolessence work has been privately discussed for some time, but I cannot reveal material from those discussions. I will cover what I can in future postings, and I hope to meet the principals in Colorado when I am there for ICCF-21 (whether they attend or not).

    That was a noble effort. There was a comprehension problem manifest in that summary. They did not “replicate” the “most celebrated of these experiments,” i.e., the most important or strongest results; they failed to replicate. A goal would have been to actually replicate the experiments, i.e., get the same results (which would include making the same mistakes, not “cleaning up the experiment,” which some attempt to do — that would come later — then to demonstrate that these anomalous results were artifact, by controlled experiment. They did this, if at all, only to a small degree. Mostly they failed and then provided “prosaic explanations” for some of the reported results from others. The strongest work they did not attempt to replicate, this would be the heat/helium evidence. That effort is under way in Texas. I hope to have publishable reports from it soon.

    Abd, please tell us a story about different hucksters like Brillion or BLP.

    Do not expect to find more than passing mention of BLP here. They are not a LENR company, and this is not “freeenergyscams.com.” For humanity’s sake, I hope they have found a real effect and can find a way to commercialize it, but I consider it quite unlikely; that’s just my opinion, not “fact.” I am aware of reasons to think that work is phony. That is not proof. And that’s all I have to say now about BLP. For me, it’s a waste of time. Btu they produced the most spectacular demonstration video I have ever seen, the one where the screen turns completely white and someone is heard shouting something like “Oh My God! Turn it off!”

    As to Brillouin, this is a legitimate company, working on LENR, and funded. I have studied the report issued earlier this year. I did not necessarily agree with the analysis of the results by Tanzella. See my study at SRI Brillouin HHT report It is offensive to call them “hucksters.” If this behavior is continued, this user will be effectively banned. I have met Robert Godes and am convinced he is sincere (though I think his theory is in error), I have known Tanzella for years, and met both of them at SRI in 2012. SRI is not in the business of promoting bogosity and flim-flam. Disclosure: Infusion Institute was funded by a person who is an investor in Brillouin. That funding actually requested on that I privately review their web site, but then this was postponed by the donor. I remain willing to serve this person with study and analysis as requested. My study, analysis and reporting may be supported by anyone, but is not for sale. i.e., it must be independent. (I have been accused of being paid by Industrial Heat. Not one penny, so far, and nothing promised or even suggested.)

    About the time of AR’s beginning there was an outfit that used to ask for used tools etc that sounded very far out. Focus Fusion. They keep making progress with verifiable milestones reached and intelligent wealthy investors. They make for an interesting story. The simplest, cleanest energy, of course comes from fission reactors, and advanced reactors, much better than the type in use today, are the most intelligent energy research of this type. Wind and solar are improving and actually produce ,current.

    Generally, however, it’s not our story. Focus Fusion is working on hot fusion, not LENR. Infusion Institute and this blog are focused on LENR and related news and analysis. I have covered Krivit’s yellow-journalist critique of JET and ITER — hot fusion projects, allegedly “boondoggles,” because Krivit is a personality in the LENR field. The Infusion Institute goal is science, not “energy” or even “fusion energy.” If Focus Fusion is successful, more power to them! Or from them, as the case would be. But it’s not our interest. The “promise of limitless energy” distracted many in the history of cold fusion. The first and foremost question should have been the reality of the effect, and its association conditions or results, or a demonstration of artifact, i.e., “no reason to think that the effect is real.” (As happened with N-rays and polywater.) The “energy promise” was hype and then turned around as rhetoric against LENR, on the idea that people were “blinded by promises of free energy.” That’s a classic pseudoskeptical argument, pseudoscientific.

    1. Thank you so much for the lengthy reply on Coolessence,that was so long ago that I read of them, and I could tell right away they were legitimate,plus I used to attend CU!
      The story that I remember ,was that this female scientist went to them as a skeptic, to disprove their claims, but ended up staying there and working there for years, it was exciting as a possible avenue to Lenr results.To go to their website and learn they had only just shut down after so many years of work.is a touching.
      You’re quite correct about insulting remarks,I do myself no favors and do not show an intelligent side to label people “stupid”,but it is still highly entertaining to see how much faith the believers have with such scant evidence.
      I’ve always had great respect for SRI and thought this lent a lot of weight to McCubre’s opinions but straighten me out, isn’t he a Rossi apologist? Or do I have the whole story wrong?

      1. You do. He is not a Rossi apologist. He wrote a report on the Lugano test in which he said that the results looked good, but he also then pointed out the huge problem: no control experiment, which would have revealed the problem with how they were doing calorimetry. He also had said he was not an expert on that technique, but he’d been asked to comment. Lugano fooled the “independent professors,” and it did look good, but some recognized immediately the problems, and what McKubre pointed out was right on.
        I don’t think Coolessence was making claims. But I don’t know their early history. They did not pick the strongest or most important work to replicate. Cold fusion research is full of pitfalls. It’s a very difficult effect and minor changes can destroy the effect, apparently. Heat/helium is the only work that thoroughly bypasses this problem. Mistakes can still be made.

  5. I have two more comments submitted by Paul Bedichek. I have unapproved them. Mr. Bedichk may obtain copies by request. These are edited versions:
    —–
    Paul Bedichek 2017/11/30 at 12:12 am
    Abd,I also like to hear quotes from you by [deleted] ,as even in a group internationally known for their lack of intelligence ,he is an outstanding example of stupidity raised to an art form. You could make us laugh by using quotes by him that show just how far a human can fall from any semblance of wit.
    The thing with Rossi is we all know he has nothing but unthinking dupes so the subject gets a little long in the tooth.

    The purpose of this blog is not to expose or humiliate stupid people. The person in question is old and may be senile. As part of the pursuit of the purpose, “bloggers” may vent, it’s human. Bloggers earn the right to “frank expression” by creating useful resources. Author rights are given here to people expected to make positive contributions — which includes sane and thoughtful skepticism, which is a positive force when not combined with reactive cynicism and stupidity.

    Yes, the Rossi story gets “long of tooth.” Nevertheless, this is still news in the LENR community. Contempt for persons like the one targeted by this post is not pursuing our purpose. Even if it seems totally justified. The world is full of stupid people. What is interesting is how such a world can still reach the heights of human experience.

  6. You are a splendid writer Abd, and even more thoughtful and succinct (not to let that go to your head) I lurk most of these days but I like the comedy of the Rossi show. That man has some Jim Jones power. While I am still a believer in Pd based work. I demand somewhat more proof now. I am not sure what possesses some very intelligent folks that can so easily be fooled. After so long I am more WTF? at this point. I really enjoy Simon and Tom (?) they are passionate but quite honest. Even the other side that I think are gullible are not being educated even while quite intelligent. Cross it off then move on. We are in a loop with Rossi. With many website bound by this circus, well you have to enjoy the show.

      1. I’ll be there with bells on. I have a son who lives in Colorado Springs and an old friend in Ft. Collins, and … I have money left over from Florida, I think it’s enough to travel to Texas and Colorado even if I make that two separate trips.

  7. Abd – it seems to me that you’ve fallen for Rossi’s sleight of hand. Since the voltage measured was across the sense resistor, and the current was therefore known because the resistance was 1 ohm, then the measurements that are stated as the QX input power are in fact simply the power dissipated in the sense resistor. The actual QX power was never measured at all, so any statements about how much power it consumed are invalid. It seems that Hurley accepted that lie too, and signed his name to it. Just can’t get the staff nowadays….

    A plasma power supply will be protected, and will happily take a dead short or an open circuit, and some look at the output impedance to adjust the output voltage. Stops you burning a sputter-gun if the gas pressure is too high and you get arcing. It may however not have been that sort of power supply, and wild speculations are cheap. Still, given that 0.3A running current and 20W output, if they’d used a resistor of around 220 ohms rather than the 800 ohm one during the “testing” of the power supply then they may have seen a somewhat higher voltage than 12V, and maybe as much as around 65-70V. Or of course when Rossi flipped the internal switch he changed the mode of the supply. Net result is that Mats’ test with the 800 ohm resistor gives no useful information.

    The bits that Mats was allowed to take away and inspect (pump, resistor, mounting block) will obviously be kosher, and I wouldn’t expect much of a rise in temperature of the water in just going through the pump, so people can test that as much as they like. If they find some rise, then it will be a small correction to the claimed >500 COP and maybe stop people from noticing that the QX input power wasn’t ever measured.

    The other speculations as to the HV spikes put into the QX to fire it are unbased. A sufficient spark to fire a plasma doesn’t need a lot of energy, but just needs to exceed the breakdown voltage and have enough mJ of energy to provide a thread of ionisation that the main current then follows. Since the QX energy input wasn’t measured, then we also can’t tell what power was used for the ignition. Since ignition was in fact seen around every 8 seconds or so then even a high-energy spark wouldn’t need a lot of watts to drive it. Certainly not as much as 20W, anyway, and likely a couple of orders lower.

    The net result of the DPS is that we now know that the device can output around 20W, but we don’t know how much power it takes from the wall to produce that. Given the 50W power supply with a 10W fan, though, the best guess is that the system has a COP of around 0.35 and not >500.

    1. What you wrote at the beginning I have said many times, and even asked “how many times do I need to say it.” The input power was not measured. I also wrote that about the experiment reported in the Gullstrom and Rossi paper. Sheesh

      Rossi is not using an ordinary “plasma power supply.” This is the basic point: not only was the input power not measured, it was very likely high enough to explain the water heating. You are correct that it does not take a lot of energy to strike a plasma. But Rossi does not want to just strike it, he wants to make it so hot that it stays plasma for a little time. The clue to “a lot of energy” is the heating problem in the power supply. Actually, Simon, it is said that there was 60 W of active cooling. Because some things are badly written, perhaps that meant 60 W total power input to the supply, but Rossi clearly refused to allow input power measurement, making it more likely that the “60 W cooling” was actually about the fan cooling itself.

      The bottom line is that no matter how it’s sliced, the DPS was a bust, showing almost nothing that was not already known, and definitely not demonstrating the high COP claimed, and those who wrote about COP without having input power measurements were just plain nuts. I don’t care what degrees or positions they have. Given what we saw, this thing could easily have no XP at all.

      Okay, you used the figure of 8 seconds for the ignition cycle. If output heating is 23 W average power, and if no power is input other than with the trigger pulse, and there is a pulse every 8 seconds, then suppose each pulse is a millisecond. That would require a pulse power of 185 KW. At 1000 volts (a figure Mats suggested), that would indicate a current of 185 A. Pretty high! However, if the pulse lasts longer, lower power and current are is necessary. How long was each zap? If it was 100 msec, the power input would be 1.85 KW, and the current 1.85 A. There are many variables to mess with.

      What I suspect Rossi is doing is getting the plasma really hot by not merely striking it but by allowing high current for a controlled time. It then takes some time to cool down….

      The system must have a COP of 1 or higher (unless it is storing energy!) COP of less than 1 can appear if there is unmeasured heat loss, that’s due to a measurement error. In this case, if we include the power supply in the COP calculation, and then neglect the air heating with the fan, yes, we’d come up with a COP of maybe 0.3, a wild guess. I suspect the input power (to the supply) is higher than 60 W. The actual power input to the QX will all show up as heat, one way or another, and the water cooling arrangement will probably capture the bulk of it.

      1. Abd – if we propose that the running voltage of the plasma is around 70V, and that the effective resistance of the plasma is around 220 ohms (both reasonable values), then the plasma would dissipate around 20W and just needs to have an occasional low-energy higher-voltage pulse to re-ignite the plasma if it drops out. The current would be 300mA as seen, and the heat output would be fairly constant. Since that voltage across the QX was not measured, and the input power to the power supply wasn’t measured, all the measurements tell us is that 300mA was on average passed through the QX. I can’t see what the ‘scope is actually set at and thus what the waveform is (may be AC coupled and thus seeing the noise on the power supply output) so basically I’m ignoring it as a red herring. Generally for HV generation we’ll be using an oscillator and some sort of transformer, followed by smoothing and sensors for voltage/current control, and the DC output will have some ripple at the oscillator frequency. I think Rossi is showing this ripple as misdirection – something to confuse the issue. “Look, the control isn’t as simple as you think!”

        If the QX is sealed, as it heats up then the plasma conditions will change and it’s likely that the plasma will extinguish unless the voltage/current is adjusted. What I’d expect to see there is that the plasma would run for some seconds and then stop until the system has cooled down enough to bring the pressure back to being favourable for the plasma to start again. I can see precisely this intermittent operation on sputtering where the target heats up too much (I don’t have cooled targets here). For this intermittent-type operation we’d see the current through the sense resistor changing, and going to zero for some time during the cycle, but if the power-supply was set to constant-current operation then it would remain constant during the time the plasma was lit. The voltage across the QX would be variable and cyclic. It’s still easy to see that the 300mA supplied (and measured) can easily explain the 20W or so measured by the heating of the water, and that the HV sparks/pulses don’t need to be high-power to account for the power dissipation seen. You think that the HV triggers are supplying the majority of the power, but this is not necessarily so and the plasma at 300mA can produce that amount of heat (or more).

        For COP, if the total output was measured then yes it would have to be 1.00 and could be above that if the QX produced any extra heat. However, since the only measured output power was from the QX and the heat from the power supply would be regarded as waste heat, then the COP for the system will be less than 1. Generally for COP calculations we only look at the output we’re actually using and not at the outputs we can’t use. Here, 50W or 60W input and 22.8W output are the relevant figures, with the actual input not being measured.

        I’ll quote the bit you wrote that prompted my comment about sleight-of-hand:
        “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.”

        This isn’t input power being measured. It’s only the power dissipated in the sense resistor, and not in the QX. At other points you say that the input power wasn’t measured, but here you seem to accept that it’s input power being measured but that the calculations are cocked up. Maybe I’m being too picky here, but I feel it’s important to emphasise that none of the measurements shown tell us anything about the power input to the QX. It’s totally unknown. That’s the central point about why this DPS is a failure. Bullshit indeed.

        We don’t need to speculate that those skinny wires had to carry several kV or a few hundred amps at times. 300mA at 70V constantly would be more than enough, with an occasional 100mJ or less of higher voltage (maybe 200-400V) to fire up the plasma when needed. Adjust the values as needed to cope with 50% or so duty cycle. If you could look inside the box you may even find a standard plasma-lamp driver. I was looking up Sodium lamp drivers, but they seem mostly to run the lamp on AC to save money. Still, there may be a lab version that uses DC and is off-the-shelf. Somehow I can’t see Rossi designing his own power supply.

        1. quoting you:

          I’ll quote the bit you wrote that prompted my comment about sleight-of-hand:
          “But this part of the report is bullshit, for all the reasons explained above:

          Notice: this entire section of my study is prefaced with “this part of the report is bullshit.”

          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.”

          And again, “input power” is put in quotation marks. That’s what he called it. Since I have already said, over and over, that input power was not measured, I am now talking about what Hurely (or Rossi) called “input power.”

          This isn’t input power being measured. It’s only the power dissipated in the sense resistor, and not in the QX.

          You noticed! This point, by the way, was made on Ecatworld long ago, regarding the same claim in the Gullstrom paper. There are Rossi followers who make the same point, a tad frustrated with the “error.” The idea is, I think, that “since the resistance is close to zero, there is practically no power dissipated in the QX, so the ‘input power’ is the power dissipated in the 1 ohm resistor. Basically, confusion leads to more confusion. The way that one would know the resistance is by measuring the voltage across the QX, which was not done, that’s the whole point. Then there is the issue of “input power” not being constant, not “DC” as claimed. It’s a horrible mess.

          An actual control experiment would be a QX, identical in every respect, except missing some critical element that makes the alleged XP go away. Rossi would provide this as a control, and would not be expected to disclose the difference. And no touchy the power supply! But Rossi does not do “controls.” Ever. When it happened accidentally at IH, an unfuelled reactor was showing major XP, using Rossi calorimetric methods (this was an HT, Lugano-class reactor, I think), and they opened the reactor in Rossi’s presence and found it was unfuelled, Rossi stormed out angrily with “The Russians stole the fuel!” Of course, this is an IH report. In order to sustain the Planet Rossi ideology, an extensive conspiracy theory is needed. The world is full of “snakes,: out to steal his technology. Some of them even pay for it, to fool him. The snakes!

          It’s all stupid, because … if the Rossi Effect is real, all the bloviation will not help him. It’s just people who want to be right. The ranks are thinning, leaving only “true believers” who may remain loyal long into the future, from what has happened with free energy scams in the past. Supporting Rossi’s blatant frauds (or “errors” if one wants to be kind) will not help him. The Swedes have allegedly been working to confirm the Rossi effect for years now. Not only do they not respond to critique of what has been published, they do not report what they have found. At some point, they become responsible for continued confusion.

          (we do not help the cold fusion field by focusing on alleged suppression conspiracies, even if there is some level of conspiracy out there. It’s basically irrelevant, unless one is handling actual — and illegal — suppression, which would be situational. The rejection of cold fusion was an information cascade, no literal conspiracy required.)

          At other points you say that the input power wasn’t measured,

          You noticed.

          but here you seem to accept that it’s input power being measured but that the calculations are cocked up. Maybe I’m being too picky here, but I feel it’s important to emphasise that none of the measurements shown tell us anything about the power input to the QX. It’s totally unknown. That’s the central point about why this DPS is a failure. Bullshit indeed.

          You noticed.

          What I was doing was looking at the very sloppy description. Even if the “input power” had been measured and was what he reports, there are still these issues….

          We don’t need to speculate that those skinny wires had to carry several kV or a few hundred amps at times. 300mA at 70V constantly would be more than enough, with an occasional 100mJ or less of higher voltage (maybe 200-400V) to fire up the plasma when needed.

          There are two problems: the continuous power (not actually measured, but pretended) and the trigger power (Not only not measured, but mostly ignored, and, my idea, probably much higher.) Skinny wires can carry high voltage. If the voltage is high enough, there could be safety issues, depending on the actual insulation used. Actual breakdown voltage (i.e,. for conduction through insulation) can be quite a bit higher than specifications, I’ve tested this as a tech. Thin wires will only be a problem if the power dissipation in the wires overheats them, and if the pulse is narrow enough, the wires will not overheat, even with fairly high currents. All Rossi needs to do is occasionally dump some energy into the device. The details may prove elusive. Or he could continuously supply energy (as AC power, not measured). Or a combination. The overheating problem with the control box is a strong clue that major power is being used. Levi and Rossi had a conversation about the measurement of the coolant temperature being before the pump. I saw it (in Italian) and then couldn’t find it. As I recall, Levi: “They will notice.” Rossi: “The hell with them.” to my mind, this was all red herring. But maybe. Rossi might use more than one trick.

          Adjust the values as needed to cope with 50% or so duty cycle. If you could look inside the box you may even find a standard plasma-lamp driver. I was looking up Sodium lamp drivers, but they seem mostly to run the lamp on AC to save money. Still, there may be a lab version that uses DC and is off-the-shelf. Somehow I can’t see Rossi designing his own power supply.

          What I see is him experimenting with creating a plasma, and then attempting to make it as hot as possible. This could explain the James Bass conversations with Rossi about a very small high-voltage transformer. (that was in 2015, when Rossi was first developing the QX.) So he would need to control high voltage and pulse width. If he could find something off-the-shelf, sure, he might use it. But I doubt that he could find just what he needed. He could have consulted with an electronics engineer. Maybe even Bass. If Bass was not asked, he would not tell. And not all possible questions were asked.

          1. Abd – my apologies for misreading your explanation. I wouldn’t have described Hurley’s calculations as “a lack of caution”, though, but as totally wrong and as a mistake that a qualified engineer should simply not make. The Swedish scientists who appeared to have been present and tacitly supporting Rossi also seem to have accepted that error as being true, which reduces my estimate of their competence.

            As regards the input power, there’s a comment by Bob Higgins at https://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg115668.html that would back up the high-power pulses idea. It is however possible to produce the 20W or so from 300mA at 70V with an occasional low-energy strike voltage, and this is a simpler explanation. Not enough information to choose between the explanations, so it’s a matter of opinion as to which is closer to the truth. Still, it is likely that some metals would condense on the walls of the tube and short it out, thus needing a pulse of low-voltage and high current to “blow the fuse” and get it back into the plasma.

            If Rossi has something real, he’s not managed to prove it.

            1. I stand uninpressed by Hurley’s qualifications. My general point is that it is totally obvious that additional power is being dumped into the device by the unmeasured strike voltage. It is also possible that this power is also input at lower voltage for a longer period. It is useless to put much effort into attempting to determine this from the thin information we have. What the DPS shows is that Rossi has again set up misleading demonstrations. We already knew that.

              I see no excuse. His desire for commercial secrecy does not require him to lie and mislead. A public demonstration was not a commercial necessity. And if he is going to give a demonstration, he could have readily done it without the input power lie.

Leave a Reply