Ongoing discussion of Rossi issues on lenr-forum

As is normal on lenr-forum, “topic” is an excuse to write anything that comes to mind. In the Rossi v. Darden developments thread:

BBCK777 wrote:

“all could be solved by a good sincere test” There is no such thing, critics will always find faults in “test”. The only “test” is a customer making money using LENR.

What BBCK quotes apparently does not exist on lenr-forum.com. What he is saying is standard Planet Rossi cant. It’s preposterous.

Yes, there are critics who will find fault with anything. What does that have to do with the possibility of a “good sincere test”? With the possibility that it would solve some problems in some list? (“All that” is vague, but would have presumably been specified in an original comment). 

If “a customer making money” were the only “test,” there would never be customers and there would never be devices for them to use, for the most part. Yes, “In Mercato Veritas” is Rossi’s saying (an ECW post on Rossi adopting this motto in June 2014. Reading that post in the light of what we now know was happening in 2014 is fascinating. Planet Rossi was massively confused…

The concept of “test” used here is primitive. Rossi created “demonstrations,” not tests, generally. A sincere “test,” to be distinct from a demonstration, which can be sincere and downright wrong or misleading, would be one where the controller of the test wants to know if a device works or not, is not trying to prove that it is bogus, but also isn’t trying to prove that it works. It’s an investigation, and anyone considering investing in further development of a product would want this. Relying on “demonstrations” would be done only to make a decision to take the next step, arranging for true, independent testing. Rossi always avoided that, and Industrial Heat knew that, and knew the possible implications. They decided to go ahead, because they only way that they could actually arrange independent tests — i.e., independent of Rossi — was to buy the technology, and that is what they did.

This was the market, in action. Somehow Rossi neglected that they were customers of his, and thought about someone using power, i.e., a chemical plant, would be a true “sincere test,” though a heating plant would have been far more straightforward, and apparently that is what Industrial Heat wanted.

Rossi’s behavior in 2014-2015 reminds me of a saying: The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.

If the customer were actually paying for power that they measured, this would certainly created believability, but only if there were no suspicion that the “customer” was really Andrea Rossi or someone with a hidden motive. $30 thousand per month sounds like a lot of money, but the appearance has become that Rossi was fishing for $89 million with it.

The Lugano team was “sincere,” I trust, but the test was not “good.” Problem is, being a professor does not necessarily qualify one to be a test engineer! That team had, as far as I can tell, no experience in measurements like what they did, and they made some newbie errors.

Industrial Heat stood to make billions of dollars in profit if the Rossi technology worked. They had high motivation, then, to “crush the tests,” as Darden put it. That means to create certainty, so that they could then raise the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to move to the next stage in development. Without success in those tests, their own tests, they could not access their funding sources without misleading them.

“In Mercato Veritas,” yes, and the market has told us the truth, that the Rossi technology is not useful, not yet, if it isn’t total fraud, which is possible.

JedRothwell wrote:

BBCK777 wrote:

There is no such thing, critics will always find faults in “test”.

I am not a critic in the sense you have in mind. I would be satisfied with a properly done test. So would the people at I.H. They would have paid Rossi $89 million for a properly done test. He knew what they demanded. If his device worked, he would have done a proper test, and he would now have the money. It would have taken a few hours, not a year.

For the record, properly done tests are defined by the ASME and written into the Florida regulations for boilers. There is no question about what these tests consist of. Hundreds of thousands of HVAC engineers are trained to perform these tests. If the claims were true, any one of these people could produce irrefutable proof the machine works as claimed. This proof would be so rock solid you could bet your life on it. You do bet your life on it, every time you go into a building with a boiler. Before the ASME was founded in 1880, people were killed every day by exploding boilers in buildings, factories, ships and elsewhere.

BBCK777 wrote:

The only “test” is a customer making money using LENR.

Nonsense.

Jed wrote in one word what I said in many, above. My experience, though, is that one-word comments tend to be “preaching to the choir.” However, those who are attached to some point of view will reject long, explained, and even sourced comments, just as easily as one-word ones. I write for those who seek to expand understanding, not because I necessarily know more, but because I explore with my writing and invite others to explore with me.

oldguy wrote:

The testing of the technology to see if LENR is “real” is not what is really at question within the legal suit.

He is correct. I must have said this a dozen times.

The question is did the test fulfill the legal requirements of the contract. That was it the GPT, was it agree to, did they follow the protocol, will there be some sort of verification that the ERV signed off on it or gives witness to the report, where the taxes paid, and so on.

This is the basic issue in the primary lawsuit, but there are also claims of fraud, alleged misrepresentation by Darden and Vaughn, which are actually separate issues, though most of the basis for Rossi’s claim of fraud is that they didn’t pay when, allegedly, it was required, which is legally very weak. And then there are other issues, such as the full transfer of the Rossi technology to IH, which was an underlying condition of the Agreement at the point of payment of $10 million, preceding the GPT.

Remember that Rossi brought the case against IH and they should be considered innocent until the preponderance of evidence brought by Rossi shows they were at fault. So far, I see little evidence of that so that IH should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

That’s a standard in criminal law, not in civil matters. There is no presumption of “innocence,” and generally “guilt” is not an issue. The standard is the preponderance of the evidence.

What evidence has Rossi published in the exhibits? Was there any report by the ERV? and so on.

It is not necessary to prove a case to maintain a lawsuit, one must allege a case, and one must allege that evidence exists, or could exist. There was a report by Penon, allegedly the ERV. That’s acknowledged by IH.

We sit here, kibbitzing, and we notice that there are piles of evidence on the IH side, and very little on the other. Rossi responds to evidence that seems highly suspicious, with language like “the email speaks for itself,” and then he denies the implications that IH draws from it, which are the same that we will draw from it, most of us, and probably the same that a jury will draw, if it comes to that and there is no contrary evidence. But legally, Rossi can do that at this point, it is more or less expected. Because there are public relations aspects to the case, bearing on Rossi’s future, if he has clear evidence, he might have asserted it. Legally, though, he can sit on it, as far as anything made public. He must reveal what evidence he has in discovery, to IH, not necessarily to the public, or risk sanctions.

JedRothwell:

oldguy wrote:

The testing of the technology to see if LENR is “real” is not what is really at question within the legal suit. The question is did the test fulfill the legal requirements of the contract.

That is a narrow way to look at it. If a properly done test had been performed, it would have taken a few hours. I.H. would have gladly paid the $89 million. They told me that, and I am sure they mean it. As I said, a properly done test is easily defined, and has been since 1880s.

This is classic Rothwell hyperbole. It’s not exactly wrong, it’s just pushed to an edge. In this field, if there is any possibility of fraud, a few hours may not be enough (though maybe, it depends on specifics). But his basic idea is totally correct here. I would think, as well, that a one-time test of a single device would not be enough for $89 million. It would definitely encourage an investor to do more testing.

Rossi insisted on a 1-year test of a huge device. I.H. wanted a short test of a single heater.

The problems with this test were described in Exhibit 5. Not only did this test fail as an “ERV,” it failed by every sane standard of science and engineering. The data was nonsensical, impossible, and in places, obviously fake. To believe it, you would have to think the test was performed in a vacuum with equipment that magically produced the same numbers day after day. You would have to be crazy to accept such outrageous nonsense. This is about as far from an actual test as anything could be.

He means “GPT.” Let’s put it this way: The data that Jed refers to is obviously not accurately measured and recorded data. It is, indeed, highly suspicious. See 0029-5_exhibit_5, Queries from Murray to Penon, which refers to the preliminary reports (not the “ERV report,” which had not been issued yet).  This is just one of a number of issues raised:

At different points in time during the assumed 350 operational days of the “test” you were measuring, a number of the reactors were turned off (apparently for repair). At even more points in time, different units within the reactors were either turned off or simply disabled. Yet there does not appear to be any impact on the mass flow rate in the system. How is that a credible outcome?
In fact, from June 30, 2015 through July 27, 2015, the effective flowed water in the unit was, according to your daily valuation report for that period, 36,000 Kg/d on each and every day, without deviation. See Exhibit B. How is that plausible? It should be virtually impossible to have that level of consistency even over just a one-week period, let alone a one-month period.

IH Fanboy wrote:

[…] The agreement dictated a one year test. That is probably why Rossi insisted on one year.

This is backwards. The GPT, in fact, could have been anything that the parties agreed upon. The GPT could have been waived, if IH were otherwise satisfied. If IH wanted a short test, why was Rossi averse to that? I can think of a number of reasons, based on various scenarios as to how he was thinking. He was clearly looking for something “spectacular” to vindicate him. 1 MW sounds impressive, and it is. However, it is also not so easy to test, it made everything complicated, and it would not actually provide the engineering data needed for assess commercial practicality. Consider: if the plant required a full-time operator to keep fixing stuff, it wasn’t ready for commercial application. It was, on the face, two plants, not one. What if a reactor only worked for 30 days, so Rossi was constantly replacing them? The GPT, the way it was run, would provide no data on the crucial reliability issue.

JedRothwell wrote:

[…] I have heard that Rossi insisted on that part of the agreement. It was his idea to make it a 1-year test. From a scientific or engineering point of view, there is no reason to make it 1-year. A few hours or a week would be better by far. The machine was not a practical commercial prototype, so there is no point to seeing whether it stands up to practical applications. Even if it actually worked it would still be about a billion dollars away from being a practical machine.

It appears so. Eventually, one would do longer-term tests. Setting up an $89 million payout based on a single test, poorly defined, and depending on a single person’s report, was downright weird. Where did that come from? What Jed has “heard” is likely. This was Rossi’s idea of something that would be conclusive. A megawatt for a year! Just think of it! Couldn’t possibly be fake!

Except it could, if the test could be arranged with no independent supervision, and with the heat dissipation hidden. Rossi had gotten away with controlled demonstrations for years. He insisted on it. IH, however, waved enough money under his nose to induce him to deviate from his normal mode. I think he concluded that they were deluded idiots and would fall for his faux “in mercato veritas” setup. Did it ever occur to him that the problem of heat dissipation would become obvious? When this was raised by his friends from ECW, his first answer was as if he’d never thought of the problem with any depth. “Endothermic reaction.” Later, he modified that to make it a little more sensible, but …. still avoiding the problem, just declaring an answer that seemed to be enough to satisfy Planet Rossi.

He lies, it’s obvious. He makes up whatever he wants people to think and states it as fact.

oldguy wrote:

yes, there is no reason for a 1 MW trial either. In fact, a 1 or 2 kW would likely be a better test since it would be easier to run concurrent controls and have controlled operating and heat dump conditions.

Also, there is no need for steam generation. Good flowing water or other working liquid working fluids are much more reliable for heat measurements compared to phase changes.

We have been saying this since 2011. Basically, instead of testing a hundred units all together, run many tests of individual units, whatever the convenient manufactured size is. If it’s 1 KW, that’s what one would test. Quark-X units are claimed to be 10 W each. That’s easy to test with accuracy. Then the reliability of a reactor assembly made of many units can be calculated. When products are specified as having a ten-year life, it is done from many individual much shorter tests. It can be wrong, in some cases, if there is some unexpected long-term decay of materials, etc. 

(10 W is not so easy to test if it is required to raise the reactor temperature to, say, 1300 C. It then gets a bit more complicated, and one might want to amalgamate some units to create a stronger elevation above possible noise. See COP is a red herring – what matters is reality of an effect )

Shane D. wrote:

Just so no one reading gets confused, […]

Someone who does not become confused reading about Rossi v. Darden is not paying attention.

[…] the original agreement called for Rossi to start the GPT (1 year test) with the 1MW (the plant) “immediately” after it arrived at IH’s facilities in NC. As we all know, that did not happen, with Rossi blaming IH, and IH blaming Rossi. 2 years later, Doral was described as a 2 year lease of the plant (1MW) to JMP. From the Term Sheet:

“IH will provide all maintenance on the 1 MW Plant during the 2 year rental period”

0029-17_exhibit_17 , the Term Sheet. Rossi does ascribe the delay to IH failure, see IH Answer Merge with Rossi Claims, paragraph 60, and then, for IH claims, see Rossi Answer Merge with IH Claims, paragraph 64. Bearing on this is one of the points in the Rossi email proposing the move to Florida: “Your proposal to put the plant in a factory owned by yourself at least until recently is dramatically less convincing.”

From what Dewey has said about this, there was a factory where the plant could have been installed, but it had previously been owned by IH, and so would be “less convincing.” Less convincing to whom? Rossi is wanting to grandstand before the world. A “real chemical plant” would be more “convincing.” What appears from the evidence I’ve seen is that the delay was largely due to the Plant not being ready for a GPT. And then from this mail that Rossi rejected the IH offer. There is no mention of any “test” in the Rossi proposal, nor in the Term sheet, and little of it makes sense with the power sale being also a GPT.

oldguy wrote:

shane
yes, my understanding is that IH owns the device in FL and was to conduct maintenance on it. Yet Rossi prevented IH’s representative access.

It now sits padlocked to both IH and Rossi. But I would worry that some may have gotten un-authorized entry into it after it was sealed and locked. I would think that pics and videos of the device would become evidence.

Unverified rumors are that Rossi has used some of IH’s properties from that original device in “developing” his new systems. That may greatly complicate things for him.

In Planet Rossi and that neighborhood — which includes us — speculations are stated and then become rumors and then are quoted by others as fact. By the terms of the Agreement, IH has rights to the IP developed by Rossi on the Quark-X, it’s a “competing” device. Even if the principles were entirely new, it would be a competing device.

Note to self: if negotiating a $100 million agreement, consult an attorney and listen carefully. It is not necessarily a bad deal; if Rossi had played it straight, he’d have gotten $100 million for his “secret,” which he had said, previously, he would accept (and he could still get that if he drops the silly suit and instead negotiates with them — of course, if he has a real technology), in return for essentially half the world market).


there were some assenting sounds, then:


IH Fanboy wrote:

oldguy wrote:

Yet Rossi prevented IH’s representative access.

As I understand, IH had at least one representative there on a near-daily basis through the duration of the one year test.

Rossi has made this claim many times, that there were two “IH men” there. These would be Barry West and Fabiani. The person denied access wasn’t merely a “representative,” it was their engineer. This was unthinkable if this had been a GPT. But if it was Rossi’s sale of power that he had arranged, it was, perhaps, tolerable, though downright unfriendly. Rossi, in one of his few informative Answers to the IH counter-complaint, paragraph 81, has “Plaintiffs further admit that Mr. Joseph Murray was denied access to the plant on one occasion in 2015 because it appeared that Mr. Murray had improper motives, including but not limited obtaining information [sic] to be passed on to a competitor for Leonardo, for wanting to visit the Plant.

I’ve noted about this that it betrays that Rossi had secrets to conceal there. If Rossi believed that Murray was a spy for other interests, without IH permission, he has just admitted that he had secrets withheld from IH. Reading that, I was astounded that his attorney permitted it.

Shane D. wrote:

That would be Rossi’s friend Fabiani. IH hired him in 2013 I believe. Paid him a little over $10,000/month.

Search Rossi Answer Merge with IH Claims for “Fabiani” for details. It could refer to Fabiani or West, but … IH is suing Fabiani for breach of contract and for conspiracy to defraud. We hear very little about West. He is a party of interest named in the IH disclosure we got to see because of the discovery dispute (one of the exhibits to doc. 70), and I expect he may have some witnessing for the court to consider if it comes to that. Like, deliveries to and from the plant, the temperature in the warehouse, noise (ventilation fans?), etc.

IH Fanboy wrote:

This is what Rossi said about Murray:

“About the meeting of Tuesday, you obviously can come when you want, while Joe Murray cannot enter in the factory of JM because, as I have explained to Tom during the visit with Brian Mc Laughlin, I do not allow anybody, except for the personnel already reciprocally authorized, to approach the plant before the tests on course will have been completed.”

I can sort of understand Rossi’s position. An apparent APCO guy (Brian McLaughlin) had already visited Doral with Darden, and I think the spidey-sense in Rossi was probably elevated–that a sabotage was possibly underway.

On Planet Rossi, Rossi’s classic paranoia is validated, ratified, and justified.

Industrial Heat does serious business. Need a lawyer, hire Jones Day. Need public relations advice, consult APCO. The very fact that IH moves in that world is considered highly suspicious on Planet Rossi. Did McLaughlin visit, as IHFB claims (based on the Rossi comment)? McLaughlin is not named in the list of visitors. He was, according to DE 70.1, Interrogatory No. 1, an “outside consultant” to IH, and a “former Director at APCO Worldwide.” It is not clear that McLaughlin was working for APCO in what he has done for IH, it may have been done independently. In the IH answer to Interrogatory #5, ibid, there is no listed visit with McLaughlin, nor by Darden between his first visit, February 9, 2015, and his second, August 21. Overlooked? Or the visit was not allowed?

So by the Jul 13, 2015, Rossi email, the Murray rejection, and possibly earlier, Rossi was already treating IH as an adversary. That was only five months into the “test.” 

JedRothwell wrote:

LENR Calender wrote:

According to the licence,the 1 year test was not the test meant to assess whether the machine was producing excess heat or not. The plant validation was supposed to have occurred with the $10 million test. It was a 24 hour test.

I do know anything about the $10 million test, so I cannot comment on it. There were severe problems with the 1-year test. I.H. complained about these problems from the start. The data I saw from it showed that the 1-year test was a farce and a fraud.

There is substantial detail in the IH countercomplaint about the Validation Test. It became apparent to me in reviewing the Rossi complaint and the IH Answer, that IH had decided to give Rossi whatever he wanted, “within reason.” That meant that they were not going to reject the Validation Test even though they had possible reasons for that, as detailed. Rossi always had some excuse for not performing as promised or expected. They wanted to find out the truth, to be certain about it. So they went ahead.

LENR Calender wrote:

Obviously you have the right to have doubts on the validation test.

I do not know a thing about it. Unless it was the Lugano test, in which case I know it was inadequate.

No, he is not talking about Lugano, which had no effect on the Agreement. Lugano tested a reactor made by Industrial Heat, this was after the Validation Test, after the IP transfer and the move of the 1 MW reactor to North Carolina.

LENR Calender wrote:

But my point is that the 1 year test wasn’t meant to valiadate the plant. It was meant to show that the plant could perform for 350 days out of 400 at a certain COP.

There was no rational reason to show that the plant can run for 350 days out of 400. Rossi wanted to do that. As I said, that is like proving you can fly a 1911 Wright airplane from New York to California. You can, but it takes 3 months, 75 stops, and 16 crashes, and you have to replace nearly every part of the machine by the time it gets there.

Apt analogy. Many have noted how the GPT was very poorly designed, and, then, that the actual “test” was very different from what would have been imagined from the original Agreement. and from what would have been imagined from the Second Amendment. Any change would have been possible by agreement of the parties, but given the nature of the Agreement, with three major parties, that would necessarily be in writing (as the Second Amendment specified. That it was so different and in the apparent absence of a written agreement, that the “test” as run makes little sense, for so many reasons, is all strong circumstantial evidence that Doral was not a “GPT,” no matter how many times Rossi Says it was.

In his Answer to the Countercomplaint, he continues to insist that IH agreed to the GPT. See the Merge document, paragraph 64:

Pursuant to the Second Amendment to the License Agreement, the Guaranteed Performance test was to commence at a mutually agreeable time. Notwithstanding the Second Amendment to the License Agreement, the Guaranteed Performance Test was not commenced sooner because Defendants failed to locate an adequate facility for the Guaranteed Performance test as well as the requisite governmental approvals in North Carolina. Moreover, Defendants waived any requirement that the Guaranteed Performance test be completed within a specific period of time and expressly consented to the Guaranteed Performance test which was conducted between February 2015 and February 2016 in Doral, Florida.

So he continues his insistence that the delay was from IH failure to locate an adequate facility, in spite of his email comments showing that IH did offer a facility in North Carolina. Notice that the difficulty, if there was any, was the scale of the test. It’s not easy to handle a megawatt of steam. This was all a difficulty created by the insistence on a megawatt test, i.e, of an assembly of many reactors, when engineers would want to know individual reactor performance, from which assembled performance would easily be predictable. Then he claims that IH “expressly consented” to the test, but has not asserted any evidence that matches that description.

oldguy wrote:

One part of the test that many seem to miss is that it was to start “immediately” not in some unlimited unknown length of time.
That is, the device should be ready for a long test in the “here and now” and not take some more unknown development.
There is a deference in technology that works today and that which may work in some future time.

I’ve mentioned this many times. Rossi claimed to have — and “demonstrated” — a 1 MW Plant in 2011. This plant was supposedly sold to a military customer, but never left his facility. It is the Plant sold and delivered to IH. It appears that it was not ready for a “GPT.” The Plant actually tested, we think, was entirely new, and the design had gone through an intermediate step, the “Six Cylinder Unit,” which is what was mentioned in the Second Amendment. Rossi never bothered to get a Third Amendment, but installed, in Florida, the new set of four “250 KW” “slabs” plus the 1 MW unit for backup. Backup for a sale of power makes complete sense. For a GPT, no sense at all!

I think it fairly obvious that the GPT design came from Rossi. It doesn’t make sense from an engineering perspective. Yes, longevity tests, but this is not how to perform them! 

 

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

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

2 thoughts on “Ongoing discussion of Rossi issues on lenr-forum”

    1. Thanks, Brian. I am suspecting that Penon has been served, since he was not dismissed from the case. You mean “ERV report.” If Rossi v. Darden goes to trial, it would necessarily be introduced by Rossi, or else forgeddaboudit. There is, however, a strong possibility that the primary suit will be dismissed. If IH does not get a default judgment against Penon, I’d also expect that IH would introduce it. However, of course, I haven’t seen it. The critiques we have seen are of the preliminary reports.

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