Wired.co.uk Tries to Drum Up Excitement Over Cold Fusion

It has been over 2 months since Andrea Rossi's disputed demonstration of his 1 MW E-Cat reactor in Bologna. Since that time he has been taking orders and putting people on waiting lists for the 1 MW hot water reactor, and making plans for smaller hot water reactors -- even for a future electricity generating version of the E-Cat.

UK Wired recently published a story about the rumoured upcoming business competition between Andrea Rossi's old Greek partner Defkalion, and Rossi's own company.

Cold fusion, otherwise known as "low energy nuclear reaction" (LENR) technology has yet to gain any scientific respectability. This hasn't stopped Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies launching its own range of cold fusion power plants, rivals to Rossi's E-Cat. In a press release (.pdf), the company announced they would be selling a range of units under the name Hyperion, from small domestic boilers to industrial power plants.

They have a detailed specification document for its product (.pdf) and say the launch is due early 2012. Unlike Rossi, it invites independent third parties to test its products and report the findings "under agreed protocol." Its customers will not be bound by non-disclosure agreements, whereas Rossi's dealings have been highly secretive.

Defkalion used to have a close working relationship with Rossi. Originally the company was to produce thousands of E-Cats a year from a factory on Xanthi using Rossi's design under licence. The relationship broke up in August, for reasons which have never been fully disclosed. The company has persevered with a cold fusion device of its own, which it insists has been developed independently and also that Hyperion is more stable than Rossi's E-Cat.

Like the E-Cat, Hyperion will initially be used for producing heat only, with electricity generation following. The first will be a one-megawatt device, the same scale as the one in Rossi's demonstration in October.

Curiously, Rossi does not accuse Defkalion of stealing intellectual property. Instead, he insists that it has never known the details how the E-Cat works. He says it cannot make its device operate without his secret catalyst, which it was hoping to acquire. "There are clowns saying they have a technology copied from us, actually they have just a moke up (sic), waiting for the piece of info they need to make a real copy," Rossi wrote in his Journal of Nuclear Physics blog, congratulating himself for outwitting them.

However, Defkalion spokesman Alexandros Xanthoulis told Swedish science magazine NyTeknik that they know exactly what the catalyst is. In a piece of subterfuge, a spectroscopic examination was carried out on an E-Cat being while it was being tested without Rossi's knowledge. However, to maintain "fair play", Defkalion's scientists say they developed their technology without using this information.

The lack of a patent means that (if this is not a hoax) the secret is potentially worth billions. Hence Rossi does not want anyone to repeat his results or see the kernel of the E-Cat. So long as he has paying customers he is happy for the rest of the world to dismiss the technology as not worth investigating. _Wired.co.uk

If you want to put your name on a waiting list to purchase an E-Cat from Rossi, go to ECAT.com, and fill out the online form.

The website for competitor Defkalion is defkalion-energy.com. It does not appear as if the Greek company is ready to take orders, as of yet.

The dark horse competition for LENR / Cold Fusion is Brillouin Energy Corp. Brillouin has not announced any upcoming demonstrations or finished products. The company is aiming to license its product technology to individual manufacturers by region.

Rossi does not seem to be making any friends or many admirers with his shadowy and unorthodox approach to business, testing, marketing, and manufacturing. He appears to be in serious need of assistance from professionals, if his technology offers as much promise as he claims.

More -- I almost forgot the recent Forbes article: 2012 The Year of cold Fusion. In that article, Mark Gibbs links to a sceptical blog article by an astrophysicist: The Physics of why the e-Cat's Cold Fusion Claims Collapse. In that blog article, physicist Ethan Siegel demonstrates why Nickel cannot be converted to Copper by the addition of a proton. But Brillouin, at least, is claiming to convert protons to neutrons by the catalytic addition of an electron. It is the resulting neutron which they say is added to the Nickel atoms.

Brillouin’s proprietary electronic pulse generator promotes proton-electron capture reactions. The pulses change some of the protons in metal to neutrons, and surrounding nuclei subsequently captures these produced neutrons. The subsequent neutron capture reactions generate heat, and because the pulses are controlled the thermal output from Brillouin’s proprietary technology safely provides clean heat on demand. _Brillouin

Presumably the secret catalyst which both Rossi and Defkalion claim to be using, does something similar.

Finally, there is the dark-dark horse of unconventional proton reactions: Blacklight Power. In the Blacklight approach, protons are converted to "hydrinos" rather than neutrons, causing release of heat energy (or alternatively electricity). But Blacklight aims to totally re-write basic theories of chemistry and physics, which is a greater ambition than even Andrea Rossi appears to be shooting for.

Meanwhile, a number of academic researchers continue to study the chemistry and physics of what is called either "lattice assisted reactions," "low energy nuclear reactions," or "cold fusion." Several researchers have reported observing both anomalous heat and transmutation isotopes, so until these results can be explained, total scepticism would seem to be uncalled for.