Breathless in Bologna: Waiting for E-Cat

Final Update 2100 EDT: This "after-test" report contains a lot of details about the events surrounding today's test, including videos. File download of test report from Rossi Another report on the happenings in Bologna today from Mats Lewan. The customer was running the test, according to Rossi, but now everyone understandably wants to know who the customer is. In other words, until we know who the customer is there will be more questions than answers, just like after the previous tests. It is still too early to celebrate.

Update 1500 EDT: A cryptic Twitter from Peswiki claims that the customer is satisfied with the test and is shutting down the reactor. Results: 470 kW in self-sustain over several hours. H/T Brian Wang Nextbigfuture

Update: Very little information is coming out of the test, other than that it is proceeding, in the presence of multiple observers, including an AP press observer and various scientific observers. The test itself is being carried out by a secretive US industrial concern, which is not allowing any photographs of its engineers who are carrying out the test...

A final report on the test is expected sometime tonight or tomorrow, but occasional updates may trickle down the pipe on one or another of the update links below.

In a matter of hours, Andrea Rossi's 1 MW LENR E-Cat reactor will be tested by "a large industrial entity" which has contracted with Rossi to buy the device if it meets specifications. Rossi has communicated that he is ready for the test.

Meanwhile, professor Sergio Focardi has affirmed on video that the E-Cat device will revolutionise the entire world of energy over the next 150 years. Here is further information about the work of James Patterson, the inventor of a parallel LENR system with some similarities to Rossi's device.

Here are some speculations from Mark Gibbs on how a working E-Cat -- and similar devices -- might change the world:

1. Where today you use petroleum products for motive energy (for example, to propel cars, trucks, and planes) you will be using steam engines or Stirling engines. In theory you’ll be able to drive across the country for cents. What will that do to the trucking industry? The shipping industry? Aviation?
2. With the demand for gasoline falling overnight and petroleum becoming needed primarily as feedstock for plastics, the US would immediately become self-sufficient in crude oil. What will happen in the Middle East without the huge flow of cash from the Western hemisphere? How will world politics be changed?
3. An E-Cat system could power your house or office making the existing grid obsolete. What would it mean to make your personal and corporate electricity and gas bills nearly zero?
4. The cost of manufacturing would fall very quickly with energy removed from the equation. If you are in manufacturing of any kind, this will affect you enormously. How fast could and how would you rework your corporate strategy to become competitive in a market where prices suddenly plummeted (note that the suddenly reduced cash flows would play havoc with the finance structures of many corporations). _Mark Gibbs

Here is an interesting video discussion by Edmund Storms on the potential of certain biological micro-organisms to catalyse the isotopic transmutation of radioactive isotopes to non-radioactive isotopes. If such LENR transmutation reactions take place within micro-organisms, then such microbes would have to be considered the smallest self-contained nuclear reactors on the planet.

There is a distinct "Alice in Wonderland" flavour to this entire episode, which will grow even stranger and more surreal should Rossi's 1 MW E-Cat actually pass its test. Since the test is being administered by a skeptical customer who is contractually obligated to hand over a large amount of cash if the reactor lives up to its advance billing, a passing grade on this test will mean something.

Al Fin energy analysts have remained skeptical throughout these proceedings, and yet up to this point, Mr. Rossi has basically done everything he said he was going to do. Wait and see.

Updates on E-Cat test
More updates at this link. Also check at Ecatnews.net, eCat Economics and Governance, or E-Cat World.