Hanno Essén, a theoretical physicist and a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, told New Energy Times on Friday that he is more interested than ever in Andrea Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer invention.
Sven Kullander, a professor emeritus at Uppsala University and chairman of the Swedish National Academy of Sciences Energy Committee, has remained silent.
Essén’s Current Perspective
On March 8, 2012, New Energy Times asked Essén whether, considering all that has and has not transpired in the past year, he had any update to his previous endorsement of Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer. Essén wrote back the next day. He said that, since he first learned about the Rossi E-Cat in January 2011, the independent tests he has seen have given him more confidence in it than ever.
Essén’s Initial Perspective
Technology journalist Mats Lewan, with Ny Teknik, published a news story on Jan. 21, 2011, about Essén’s perspective about the E-Cat.
“It looks interesting,” Essén said, “just that it is reproducible, that they actually built a solid unit.”
Essén had written a paper in 2006, “Catalyzing Fusion with Relativistic Electrons,” never published, in which he proposed a theoretical explanation for “cold fusion.” According to what Lewan wrote, Essén thought his hypothesis could explain the physical phenomena in Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer.
But Essén had never seen Rossi’s experiment and had read no journal paper about it. How did he gain such confidence so quickly? He got it from Giuseppe Levi, a professor of physics at the University of Bologna.
Levi’s Initial Perspective
Levi, in turn, developed confidence in Rossi’s device from what he heard from Sergio Focardi, a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna Physics Department whom Rossi had befriended.
In an Italian public television broadcast May 5, 2011, Levi discussed his early impressions about Rossi’s device during 2009-2010.
“Focardi kept on giving us results which were more and more thrilling, with energy multiplication factors which were increasingly higher. We were all rather curious,” Levi said.
Then, on Dec. 16, 2010, the first day Levi saw the device for himself, he was convinced. He told New Energy Times what it was like for him in a June 14, 2011, video interview.
“I was feeling like somebody that has arrived on a new island,” Levi said. “Imagine you are traveling on a boat and you see an island that was not on the map. And you just traveled, and you are walking on a new island, and the island is almost completely not known, and you want to tell it to everybody. Then you go back and say, ‘At this coordinate, there is a new island.’ And, of course, you have people saying, ‘Look on the maps; there is not an island there. You are mistaken, you were in the wrong position, and so on.’ But I was quite sure of what I have seen.”
Essén and Kullander Embrace E-Cat
On Feb. 23, 2011, Essén and Kullander told Lewan that the public has to embrace Andrea Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer.
Sven Kullander and Hanno Essén in Ny Teknik video
Essén and Kullander hadn’t seen the E-Cat. The only detailed technical report they had on the energy measurements was from Levi.
“Another physicist, Giuseppe Levi, was allowed to test the process independently, measuring input and output power,” Essén said. “And it seems repeatable. And there is a device. And now it has been tested for a longer time.”
Essén believed that Levi, working on Rossi’s device, in Rossi’s garage, under Rossi’s control, had independently tested Rossi’s device. Essén also apparently thought that Rossi was a physicist. As it turns out, Rossi’s only real university degree is in philosophy.
No Output Power Measured
In Levi’s first test, on Dec. 16, 2010, he didn’t measure output power. He measured only output temperature, which could reasonably be used to calculate only the possible excess heat up to the boiling point but no higher. For the remainder of his excess-heat claim from the steam phase, he based his calculation on a dubious assumption and extrapolated his data from that assumption. He saw a few puffs of steam and took Rossi and Focardi on faith that all of the water they pumped into the device was vaporized. This was an ill-advised and, as it turns out, critical assumption. Levi apparently paid little attention to the black hose that was sending some of the unvaporized water down the drain near him. Levi also made no steam quality measurement.
In Levi’s second test, on Jan. 14, 2011, little was different except that a chemist hired by Rossi came and used a device to measure steam dryness. The chemist attempted to measure the steam coming not from the output but from an auxiliary port that could be opened with a valve. By doing so, not only was the obvious problem of the overflow water overlooked again, but also the chemist used an inappropriate instrument for his measurement. Consequently, the steam quality measurement was meaningless. In Levi’s third test, which he ran for 18 hours on Feb. 10-11, 2011, he told Lewan his final conclusion but gave Lewan no report. When New Energy Times asked Levi for a report or data from that experiment, he refused and said he did not intend to release it.
But Essén knew none of this. He took on faith what Lewan printed. For his part, Lewan simply reported what Rossi, Focardi and Levi told him.
A month later, on March 29, 2011, Essén and Kullander went to visit Rossi and see his device for the first time. In their travel report, they wrote that “the only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production.”
That Rossi paid for their trips to Italy didn’t help. In a July 15, 2011, interview with New Energy Times, Essén acknowledged that that he should have seen 11,200 liters of steam per hour exiting from the Energy Catalyzer when he looked at it, but at the time he did not think about it.
“I must admit,” Essén said, “I was thinking that I must check that the water is not draining out. I had this vague feeling that the water inlet flow wasn’t that fast, that the steam could be consistent with it, especially after some condensation in the hose. But we should have looked more into that, obviously, but there was not enough time.”
Kullander Overlooks Criticisms
On July 30, 2011, New Energy Times published an extensive report that included analyses from two dozen scientific and engineering experts. Many of them analyzed the steam flow from Rossi’s device seen in a New Energy Times video. These analyses showed that the steam coming out of Rossi’s device was not consistent with Rossi’s claim of an energy gain of six but that it was consistent with the amount of electrical energy Rossi was putting into the system.
On Nov. 23, 2011, Kullander gave a public lecture at Orebro University in Sweden. In his slides, he failed to mention substantial scientific criticism of the Energy Catalyzer.
The title of Kullander’s lecture was “Tomorrow’s Nuclear Power – It Becomes Cold or Hot?” Most of his slides, however, were about the Energy Catalyzer.
The only critical comment Kullander made in his slides was about the way Rossi measured the steam quality. But by July 30, 2011, the question of steam quality measurement was irrelevant for two reasons. First, Rossi’s colleagues used an instrument that was incapable of measuring steam quality. We documented this extensively in Report #3. We showed that the device Rossi’s chemist used was designed for measuring humidity in air, not for measuring steam quality. Second and far more important, their measurements were made on an auxiliary port, and this allowed them to completely overlook the liquid water that flowed out of the E-Cat into the black output hose and disappeared down the drain. Observers could have identified this oversight. They could have asked Rossi why they didn’t see more than a few light puffs of steam coming out. But they didn’t.
In many of Kullander’s slides, he presented information that appears supportive of Rossi’s energy claims, and he appeared to accept Rossi’s claims as valid. On March 6, 2012, New Energy Times sent Kullander a list of five significant criticisms that other scientists and engineers had identified with the Energy Catalyzer. We asked Kullander why his slides mentioned one largely irrelevant critique of a mass versus volume measurement of steam but did not show anything about the five substantial criticisms.
New Energy Times spoke with Kullander the next day to inquire about a possible response from him. He said that he had received our email but he had not read it. New Energy Times asked whether he could respond within the next day. He said he would try. He sent no response.
Essén Overlooks Crucial Alternative
On March 8, 2012, New Energy Times asked Essén for an update: “Considering all that has and has not transpired since [last year] and considering your failure to look for 11,200 liters of steam exiting from the Energy Catalyzer when you were there, is there a revised comment you would like to make on this matter?”
Essén wrote back the next day.
“Considering all the tests (apart from Kullander-Essén) I am aware of, at least two other, rather different, independent tests that give consistent results, either not involving steam or measuring it quantitatively, and other information that I have had since I first came across the Rossi E-Cat, I find it more interesting than ever.
“I am not aware that there have been any measurements of the amount of steam that contradict Rossi’s basic claims. Visual inspection cannot determine amount of steam since only condensed steam is visible.”
New Energy Times asked Essén whether there was possibly an alternative explanation to his previous conclusion.
“How did you know that unvaporized water was not, either continuously or periodically, flowing down the black hose and into the drain?”
Essén did not respond.
