The E-Cat loses steam

The "Energy Catalyser" (E-Cat) is a device that has been reported by two Italian scientists to be able to solve the world's energy problems by means of a nuclear fusion reaction. Unfortunately, there are serious doubts about these claims. In the figure above (from a paper by Peter Ekstrom ) you see one of the problems with the E-Cat: the trickle of the steam produced by the device in operation is way too small to indicate that it actually produces energy. (This post was published on "The Oil Drum" on 27 July 2011)

 

Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi have recently claimed the development of a device (the "energy catalyser" or "E-Cat") able to produce useful energy from low temperature nuclear fusion reactions. If it were to work as reported, the E-Cat would be a true revolution not only in science, but also in everyday life. We would have a simple device able to produce plenty of low cost energy without generating significant pollution and we could say good-bye to the energy crisis and to global warming as well. In a previous post of mine on "The Oil Drum," I examined the E-Cat leaving open the possibility that it was a real fusion device. Here, I re-examine the question on the basis of new data. It looks now very unlikely that the E-Cat can work as claimed.

The E-Cat idea is rooted in the early work by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons who, in 1986, had claimed to have succeeded in fusing deuterium nuclei together ("cold fusion") and in obtaining an abundant source of cheap energy. However, the claims of Fleischmann and Pons were based on flawed experimental measurements and it turned out that there was no such thing as cold fusion in their setup. That didn't deter other scientists from looking for similar phenomena; a search that continues to this date. Rossi and Focardi have reported that they have been able to fuse nickel nuclei with hydrogen ones at low temperatures, generating copper nuclei and useful energy in the process. Accdording to their claims, the reaction must be started by providing some energy to the reaction cell, but the excess heat produced may be 30 times larger or even more.

The initial reactions to the claims by Rossi and Focardi were of cautious interest (for instance by myself and by Kjell Aleklett) or even of straight endorsement (e.g. by Hanno Essen and Sven Kullander ). However, these initial reactions were based mainly on the statements by the inventors of the E-Cat. In science, there is a shared belief that when a colleague tells you of something he/she has done, you don't assume right away that the measurement is wrong, a hoax, or a scam designed to make money. However, when the measurement is important; when it is crucial for the development a new theory or disproving an old one, then it must be shown in detail that it was correctly performed and that it can be independently repeated. Of course, inventors don't have to show how exactly their invention works, but it is in their best interest to show that it works.

So, let's examine the situation of the E-Cat as it stands at present. No direct evidence for a nuclear reaction inside the device has been reported, as would be, for instance, the emission of gamma rays. The only evidence available is indirect and it comes from the large amount of excess heat that is claimed to be produced by the reactor. As the only basis of the claim of nuclear reactions taking place, the excess heat (if any) produced by the reactor should have been measured with extreme care and with all the necessary precautions necessary to insure that it is significant. Unfortunately it appears that this is not the case. The set up for the heat measurements looks inadequate and amateurish; the results are unclear and repeatability has not been demonstrated. It appears legitimate to think that the claim of "cold fusion" by Rossi and Focardi rests on poor evidence, or even or no evidence at all.

A reasonably reliable calorimetric measurement of the heat produced by the E-Cat could be performed by cycling cooling water inside an insulated tank and measuring the temperature of the water. Knowing the amount of water, it would be possible to obtain a first estimate of the heat produced. That, in itself, would still not be enough. The heat measurement would have to be validated by replacing the E-Cat with a resistor and then measuring the power needed to heat the water at the same temperature as with the E-Cat in action. But the crucial test would be a "blank" one in which it would be shown that there is a significant difference in the heat generated by a functioning E-Cat and by a device where the "catalyser" is absent.

It is clear, however, that the inventors of the E-cat did nothing of that sort. They didn't close the cooling cycle, they let the steam vent out and they estimated the amount of heat created by assuming that all the water passing through the E-Cat is vaporized. That's obviously a very poor set-up that guarantees large errors simply because there is no way to be sure that all the water is vaporized. Yet, it is clear from this movie that this is the way the measurement was interpreted.

Even a poor experimental set-up can still tell you something if you use some elementary precautions. Simply using two E-cats, one "active" and the other without the catalyst, it may be possible to see a difference if the excess heat exists. But Rossi has refused to address the question of a blank test. It may be worth mentioning at this point that the downfall of the 1986 "cold fusion" claims by Fleischmann and Pons started when they could not demonstrate to have peformed a blank test in their experiment.

Overall, Peter Ekstrom has a convincing point when he shows that the E-Cat is not producing any excess heat. As an answer Rossi could find nothing better than calling Ekstrom "a clown". This answer was subsequently deleted from Rossi's blog, but it can still be found on the web, for instance here. This is just an example Mr. Rossi's general attitude regarding those who criticize him. To all this, we may add other suspicious elements. Steven Krivit has correctly described several of the weak points of the claims by Rossi and Focardi. Then, we may add that the measurements made in Sweden showed that the copper purportedly created by nuclear transmutation in the E-Cat has the same isotopic composition as natural copper. That is simply not possible.

Of course, all this does not prove that the E-Cat cannot work as described, but the burden of proof rests on the inventors and it is clear that they are far away from being able to show that their device is an energy producing machine based on nuclear fusion. It seems that the E-Cat story is rapidly moving to the realm of 'pathological science' . Grand claims of scientific revolutions supported by little or no evidence, ambitious recipes on how to save the world by some miracle machinery, gobbledygook masked as scientific theorizing, ad hominem insults to non-believers, etc.; it is a well known pattern. From now on, we may expect to see another wave of conspiracy theorizing related to the E-cat. That, too, shall pass.

Nuclear Fusion: the elusive genie

The recent announcement by two Italian researchers of a new method of attaining energy from nuclear fusion has brought back hopes of an easy and inexpensive way of generating energy. It is almost if the nuclear genie that Walt Disney had created in the 1950s is back with new promises of energy "too cheap to meter." But what exactly do we expect from fusion? Why do we think it could solve our problems? Perhaps, these possibilities have been much overrated.

Maybe it is because of the brightness of the sun. Maybe it is because of the awesome power of the "hydrogen bomb." Or, maybe, it is the abundance of hydrogen in the oceans that makes us think of it as an inexhaustible fuel supply.  Whatever the case, the concept of "nuclear fusion" has a nearly magic ring to it. Touted as the ultimate solution to all of our problems, the dream of nuclear fusion is nicely summarized in the slogan coined in the 1950s: "energy too cheap to meter".

And, yet, dreams have a way of shattering when confronted with the hard reality. Fusing two hydrogen nuclei together, the way used by the Sun to produce energy, turns out to be extremely difficult to do on earth; even though we try to do it along an easier route that uses the isotopes of hydrogen called "deuterium" and "tritium."

There are good reasons for this task to be so difficult. Two atomic nuclei face a formidable electrostatic barrier that repels each other as they get closer. We tried just about everything possible to overcome that barrier. With the "tokamak" machine, atoms collide inside a plasma that reaches extremely high temperatures. In inertial confinement fusion, pellets of frozen deuterium-tritium mixtures are bombarded with laser beams and electron beams. Exotic particles called muons have been generated expressly to lower the repulsion barrier that keeps nuclei separated. And then, there is piezo-fusion, sono-fusion, bubble-fusion, the "fusor" machine, the fusion of boron with hydrogen in the so called "plasma-focus" technology, the "H-bomb" and, finally, the large number of claims of "cold fusion" (or "LENR" - low energy nuclear reactions).

Many of these devices work; in the sense that they generate observable fusion events that appear as emissions of gamma rays or neutrons. The problem is that we could never manage to attain a flux of fusion events large enough to repay the energy needed to start it. There have been many claims of "anomalous heat" in LENR, but no clear demonstration that fusion reactions were involved.

The only case where fusion is said to produce energy is the "hydrogen bomb" or "H-bomb." But even this device turns out to be overrated in terms of fusion power. There simply doesn't exist a "hydrogen bomb" intended as deriving its explosive power directly from fusion. All existing nuclear bombs are based on the fission of uranium or plutonium, although most are "two-stage" weapons in the sense that they use the fusion of deuterium and tritium as a way to create a neutron flux that increases the fission yield.

So, there is no evidence that we ever came close to obtain useful energy out of nuclear fusion. There remains the example of the Sun. It is up there, so bright; why can't we obtain something similar, here? But, maybe, even the power of the sun has been somewhat overrated. Here are some considerations on this point by the Italian nuclear physicist Luigi Sertorio. He has 50 years of experience in the field and in a recent interview he compared the search for fusion to the search for perpetual motion. To check his numbers, you may go to this link.


Luigi Sertorio on Nuclear Fusion. (translated from Italian)

It is obvious that, as a scientific theme, nuclear fusion on earth is an interesting phenomenon, be it inertial fusion by laser or magnetic confinement fusion. That, then, it can be made to work, is another story. When they say, "fusion is the energy of the sun; man wants to replicate on earth what happens on the sun", it is a hoax; it is due to ignorance. Those who say this should not pass the entrance exam for college. Stars produce a power of one tenth of a thousandth of a watt (10E-4) per kg. Do you realize what this means? A car engine produces something like hundreds of watt per kg. There is a ratio of one million in favor of a car or a scooter in comparison to the sun. So, when we want to make a terrestrial fusion machine that produces power, we are very far away from the way stars work. 

Stars are fusion energy machines that work at extremely low specific power. What happens inside stars is the minimum that exists in nature. And the funny thing is that stars work for billions of years. What we want to do on earth in terms of nuclear fusion is completely different. It is supposed to be one million, ten million times more efficient in terms of energy per kg. Nature said that when she wants to do nuclear fusion she does it in stars. She taught us how it can be done. Man says: "thanks a lot, mother nature, I want to do something completely different." And mother nature says, "All right, big head, now let's see what you can do!" I hope I shall live long enough to see the Lawrence Livermore lab in California shutting down. It has been gobbling up money for 30 or 40 years, maybe half a century, and it makes "boom, boom", these big booms, but no fusion comes out of it.

To finish this story, physics should go on - it must go on. Any idea can be pursued, until the physics community says "enough. It doesn't work, it makes no sense, let's look for another way." Science has always been going on in this way. Some people look for perpetual motion because they haven't understood that there exist some thermodynamic principles that exclude perpetual motion. I can tell you that it happened to me to be the referee for papers proposed to editors, or to journals such as the “Nuovo Cimento.” Someone in his solitude had found the perpetual motion machine. All right, as a physicists who knows of thermodynamics it is my duty to tell to this gentleman "go read papers which are based on physical principles and stop looking for perpetual motion". But it is not stuff that should be forbidden. If someone wants to look at this subject - and he doesn't bother us too much - let him look for perpetual motion. If someone wants to look for inertial fusion; look for it - fine. But don't use up too much money and don't ruin the California budget because you want to look for inertial fusion. But it should not be condemned. Already Cardinal Bellarmino and the Church have condemned research. It is research that, at some point, must say to itself. "Stop, this direction is not the good one. Let's look for another one."


So, what is that we are seeking for, exactly? What miracle do we expect to receive from fusion power? It looks like we are looking for some magical lamp buried in the sand, out of which a magic genie will come out and save us from ourselves. We started looking in the 1950s and it seems that we haven't grown up, yet.

Cold fusion and the energy problem

Italian Version

Back in 1989, "Newsweek's" front cover featured the apparatus that Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons had claimed to be able to fuse deuterium nuclei into helium and produce usable energy. It was just a case of pathological science, but the search for a simple way of harnessing fusion power continues to this day (image from Jeanemanning.com)

Last week, I posted on "The Oil Drum" a comment on the announcement by two Italian researchers, Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi, of a breakthrough in an energy-producing device that they dubbed "Energy Catalyser" (or "E-Cat"). According to their claims, the device produces energy by means of a low temperature nuclear fusion reaction that involves nickel nuclei reacting with hydrogen ones. The EROEI of the device is claimed to be very high - at least of the order of 30, taking into account that the heat generated is said to be  "100 times" larger than the input electrical power.

My comment was neutral - I was, and I am still rather sceptical but I leave a door open to the possibility that there exist physical phenomena that we still know little or nothing about. My idea was, mainly, to start a discussion and I was not disappointed. The commenting section of TOD is a real a Juggernaut that works as a bullshit-demolisher machine. If you have time, do give a look to the more than 250 comments on the E-Cat; provided by a group of really smart (IMHO) people.

Overwhelmingly, the reaction has been a sceptical one. Most commenters do leave a door open to the possibility that there might be something in the E-Cat that could make it a true revolution in energy production. But, on the whole, the idea has been classed as "pathological science" in view of some typical characteristics: obsession on secrecy, claims based on unknown phenomena, promises to be fulfilled someday but not now, etc. Personally, after reading this series of comment, I came out more sceptical than I was before (and I was sceptical from the beginning). As I said, let's leave a door open to possibilities we don't know about ("unknown unknows" as it became popular to say). But I won't bet on seeing the "atomic genie" reappearing out of Rossi and Focardi's apparatus to solve our energy problem.

Besides, what do we mean, exactly, as "solving the energy problem"? Here, the discussion on TOD took a very interesting angle, with some people clearly spelling out the fact that if - by some miracle - we were to have cheap energy in abundance, "we'd torch the place." In other words, we'd continue destroying everything, from fertile soil to non-human species, as we have been doing during all of human history - but with especially high intensity during the past few centuries. "Greenish" said "I still see "peak energy" for humans as a feature and not a bug." My comment on this point was:

I had been thinking about the promise of the Kitegen, you know, if it were to work as promised it would give us a lot of cheap electric power. The kitegen has the advantage of working on known physical principles but it is not obvious that we know all the physical principles that exist in the universe. So, suppose that we have cheap electric power in abundance; maybe the kitegen, maybe this thing by Rossi and Focardi, then what happens?

Well, supposing a BAU scenario, the simulation has already been performed in the first edition of "The Limits to Growth" in 1972. We grow, we grow, and we grow even more. And then we crash as the result of pollution, just like bacteria in a Petri dish. It is a much worse disaster than the one where we crash because we run out of energy. 

Personally, however, I don't think the future will be this kind of BAU. The development of cheap electric power would give us that window of a few decades that will be enough to replace human beings with artificial creatures - it is already happening on the battlefield and it is not going to stop there. I think we won't have a chance to destroy the planet - we will be replaced much earlier.

As you see, this is a hugely interesting point. The future is not set - we still have a series of branching possibility that may lead us to the conquest of the Galaxy or back to the Olduvai gorge. Surely to be discussed. For the time being, here is the post on TOD. Some links to further material on the E-Cat are at the end

The return of cold fusion?

Posted by Ugo Bardi on May 20, 2011

Back in 1989, during the craze of the “cold fusion” announcement by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, a colleague of mine told me about the theory he had developed. It was based on quantum mechanics, he said, and it would explain everything that had been observed in cold fusion on the basis of an adjustable parameter.


Alas, in the real universe parameters cannot be adjusted at will as in the memory of a computer. Cold fusion proved elusive; I myself spent some months at that time with a home-made contraption that should have produced it; looking for the helium atoms that should have been created. I found none and I was not the only one who was disappointed. At that time, practically everyone who had a physics or chemistry lab available tried. But nobody could reproduce the claims about fusion taking place in an electrochemical cell, not even the authors of the claims themselves. So, the idea of cold fusion died out rapidly; surviving mostly in the dreams of crackpots and conspiracy theorists. A few serious scientists kept working on it; there were more claims scattered over the years and a whole new term “LENR” (low energy nuclear reactions) was coined to describe the field. However, after more than 20 years it seems clear that it is not possible to obtain useful energy by cramming deuterium atoms into palladium, as Fleischmann and Pons had tried to do.


So, it would seem that cold fusion as a way of producing energy is something made of the same stuff dreams are made of. That was my conclusion after having worked on it and the reason of my initial reaction of total disbelief when I first heard of the claims of having attained just that dream by two Italian researchers, Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi. Yet, in physics there are no absolutes: everything known can be disproved and, in the end, it is the experimental reality that counts. So, I noted that Rossi and Focardi, unlike Pons and Fleischmann, seem to be able to reproduce their result according to several reports that appear reliable. Then, a friend and colleague of mine went to visit Focardi. My friend is not an easily duped person and he went there ready to debunk the hoax. He came back rather perplexed, saying something like, “well, there may be something in this story.”

So, what is happening? Have we really made a giant step forward in our quest for a clean and abundant form of energy? Nuclear fusion, after all, is a common physical reality – it can be made to occur in the laboratory in a variety of ways and not just with the giant machine of the “ITER” project which attempts to reproduce the reaction that takes place in the sun. Another kind of fusion is well known and almost commercial: it is the version where a nucleus of boron and one of hydrogen react to form three helium nuclei in a high energy plasma. This system goes under the name of “plasma focus” fusion. It could be used to generate soft x-rays, or neutrons when deuterium is used in the place of hydrogen. But can it be used to generate energy? Some people claim that it can; but surely it has to be difficult because the technology was invented in the 1960s and so far no energy producing prototype seems to be around.


Still, the “plasma focus” technology may be the prototype of a different class of fusion machines which don't try to fuse hydrogen isotopes together. They, rather, try to fuse protons (hydrogen nuclei) with heavier nuclei. Boron is the choice in plasma focus, but there are other possibilities. What Rossi and Focardi have claimed is that they have been able to fuse a proton with a nickel nucleus. It is a reaction that could, indeed, produce large amounts of energy. The problem with this idea is that there is a tremendous electrostatic barrier that prevents the positively charged proton from entering the positively charged nickel (or other) nucleus. Overcoming these electrostatic barriers in a practical device, usually, requires the use of high energy plasmas which need much more energy to be created and sustained than it can be obtained from fusion. Yet, if it were possible to reduce this potential using some kind of “nuclear catalyst,” then one could tap fusion as an energy source. It can be done and it has been done using exotic particles known as “muons,” which act as catalysts, indeed. It is an extremely complicated process which takes a lot of energy to create and maintain. Yet, at least it shows that “nuclear catalysis” is possible.


This is what Rossi and Focardi have claimed to have been able to do with their device that they called “Energy Catalyser”. They don't claim to be using muons but, somehow, they claim to have been able to activate and maintain the nuclear reaction of hydrogen with nickel by providing much less energy than the reaction then generates. They claim that the EROEI of the device could be around 30 or even larger once the thermal energy generated by the reaction is converted into electrical energy.


So, have we found the magic trick to get abundant and clean energy? Could people go back to speak of electric power “too cheap to meter” as in the heyday of nuclear energy? Perhaps, but it is too early to tell. There are several details that just don't click together in Rossi and Focardi's claims (see, e.g., the article by Kjell Aleklett cited below). If we have to reconcile the energy catalyser concept with what we know of nuclear physics, we have to think of some truly exotic phenomenon that takes place in the reaction chamber. In physics, the experiment reigns, but the possibility of the experimental error is always present. That's why no claim can be considered as validated until the relative experiment is independently reproduced. That will take some time, you can't do physics in a hurry, but in the end we will know.


Some references on the “Energy Catalyser”


Kjell Aleklett's article. http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/rossi-energy-catalyst-a-big-hoa...


Wikipedia has a good page on the story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer


More info


http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-italian-scientists-cold-fusion-video...


http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_A._Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Gener...


http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3111124.ece


http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/


http://www.express.gr/news/business/434458oz_20110316434458.php3