According to information obtained by New Energy Times on Thursday and last fall, it appears that Andrea Rossi, the inventor of the Energy Catalyzer, deliberately misplaced thermocouples to give false readings of excess heat.

Yesterday, New Energy Times reported that back in October, Roland Pettersson, a retired analytical chemist from Uppsala University, identified a major flaw in Andrea Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer demonstration.

Even though Pettersson identified the flaw, and knew it would have been a “piece of cake” for Rossi to mount the thermocouples correctly, Pettersson failed to recognize its significance. Instead, he maintained his faith in Rossi’s E-Cat.

Pettersson said that Rossi misplaced thermocouples, the key components that provided the data for Rossi’s second version of his Energy Catalyzer. But Pettersson thought that Rossi had just been sloppy and hasty, as he told New Energy Times in a Nov. 18, 2011, telephone interview.

“Well, I think it’s very simple: Because this is the easiest way to [do it], to put the thermocouples there,” Pettersson said. “If you want to put it into the flow you must make some kind of T-connection. If I get the chance, I will do that work. In fact, it’s a piece of cake to do that.”

On Thursday, New Energy Times spoke with Pettersson again. He said that Rossi repeated the same procedure again on Feb. 20, 2012.

“It was only a demonstration. Just the same as in October.” Pettersson said.

Pettersson’s observations support earlier critique given by LENR researcher Brian Ahern, who wrote an e-mail to the CMNS list on Oct. 9, 2011, in response to the news of Rossi’s Oct. 6, 2011 demonstration.

“This test was an intentional deception, as usual,” Ahern wrote. “He mounted the thermocouple such that it responded directly to the heater and not the actual temperature of the hot water. This was not an oversight. He used this trick in February [2011] with Levi.

“This is why the power appeared to go up when shutting off the power. The liquid heat transfer exceeded the vapor and the thermocouple temperature rose as it did not reflect the fluid characteristics as much as the location of the external thermocouple.

“Mounting thermocouples externally is also absurd. A T-type fitting to place it in the actual flow costs less than $20.”

But did Rossi know anything about thermocouples? In fact, he was an expert, as he wrote on his blog on May 21, 2011.

“I know very well the thermoelectric issue, because I made a patent exactly for high temperature [thermoelectrics],” Rossi wrote. “I worked for years, from 1996 through 2000 in this field, and applied them to engines, power generators, boilers, I worked [on contracts] for the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense in this field, through Leonardo Technologies Inc. … I made with my hands thermocouples with a very particular directional fusion I had invented, obtaining a 100 Watts set very, very good, tested in the University of New Hampshire in 1998.”

New Energy Times confirmed Rossi’s statements about a patent. On Sept. 16, 2003, Rossi was issued U.S. patent US6620994 B2 for a thermoelectric generator.

While the patent was still pending, Rossi and his colleagues were able to obtain a Department of Defense contract with the Army to do further development on the thermoelectric devices. Strangely, the novel results observed at the University of New Hampshire could never be repeated. Not one of the devices Rossi had agreed to deliver under contract worked.

Source: Next Big Future

Steven Krivit is the editor of the New Energy Times. Krivit is an authority on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENRs), and has spent the past decade thoroughly and scientifically studying LENR phenomena.

The entrepreneur Andrea Rossi has claimed to have invented a LENR device capable of producing far more energy than it takes in. In an interview with Sander Olson for Next Big Future, Krivit discusses the absence of scientific evidence to support Rossi’s claims, the questionable nature of the demonstrations that Rossi has given, and the reasons why he is a skeptic of Rossi.

Click here to go to article

After 23 years, researchers at the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, Calif., have been ordered to stop their low-energy nuclear reaction research.

On or about Nov. 9, 2011, Rear Admiral Patrick Brady , commander of SPAWAR, ordered SPAWAR researchers to terminate all LENR research. The order came seven days after Fox News published a story about Andrea Rossi’s Oct. 28, 2011, demonstration of his Energy Catalyzer. New Energy Times discussed the Fox News story on Nov. 9.

Fox contributor John Brandon wrote that a SPAWAR representative attended the demonstration and measured and verified the test. Brandon also wrote that SPAWAR may have been the customer to whom Rossi sold his 1 megawatt device on Oct. 28, 2011 – the same device still sitting in Rossi’s garage in January.

According to sources who are familiar with the commander’s orders but not authorized to discuss them, Brady gave the following instructions to SPAWAR researchers:

1. Immediately cease all LENR research at SPAWAR.
2. Return any unused funds for LENR research.
3. Withdraw any pending proposals for LENR research.
4. Do not publish additional scientific papers on LENR research.

According to the sources, Brady also issued instructions to cancel one of two existing cooperative research and development agreements for LENR research between SPAWAR and JWK International Corp., a private company in Annandale, Va.

New Energy Times sent the list of instructions to James Fallin, the director of public affairs at SPAWAR San Diego, and asked for confirmation.

“In response to your recent query,” Fallin wrote, “while I won’t discuss details of our internal decision-making processes, I will confirm SPAWAR plans no further low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research. There are other organizations within the federal government that are better aligned to continue research regarding nuclear power. We have taken initial steps to determine how a transition of low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research might occur.”

According to one of the sources, the rationale that Brady used was that LENR work was not part of SPAWAR’s mission. According to Brady, the source said, its mission is in information dominance, and energy is not part of that mission. New Energy Times read the response from Fallin to the source today.

“It’s bullshit,” the source said.

Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, says that energy is a fundamental part of the Navy’s mission. In a talk on Oct. 13, 2011, Mabus said that the Navy pioneered the use of nuclear technology for its ships and that it has continued to do pioneering energy work.

“This is what we do,” he said. “We change the way we use and produce energy, and we’re doing it again, and we’re at the cutting edge, which is where the Navy has always been on energy use.”

If Brady is thinking of moving LENR research out of SPAWAR and over to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., that makes little sense because NRL has had a very poor track record in LENRs.

SPAWAR has an impressive track record of more than two dozen original LENR research papers published in peer-reviewed journals. NRL has none.

Brady took command of SPAWAR Aug. 6, 2010, when Rear Admiral Michael C. Bachmann retired.

“For many years, Admiral Bachmann had been extremely supportive, scientific and open-minded about LENR research at SPAWAR,” one of the sources said.

The Bologna Facts

Brandon did not go to Bologna, Italy, to attend the Rossi demonstration. He obtained information about the Oct. 28, 2011, Rossi demonstration from Sterling Allan, who runs a Web site called Pure Energy News Service. Allen is also a sales and business associate of Rossi’s.

Brandon, citing Allen, identified researcher Paul Swanson as the SPAWAR representative who attended the Oct. 28, 2011, demonstration.

According to Fallin, Swanson did not travel to Bologna on official SPAWAR or Navy business, and he paid his travel expenses out of his own pocket.

Swanson did not attend the Oct. 28 demonstration. Rossi had claimed that this demonstration was performed so the “customer” could verify his device. Instead, Swanson attended the Oct. 6, 2011, demonstration.

In his story, Brandon also borrowed and republished a two-year-old quote from another SPAWAR LENR researcher. The quote was irrelevant to the Rossi story, but Brandon’s inclusion of it gave the misleading impression that the researcher’s work was relevant. That connection may have contributed to the commander’s decision.

One of the sources told New Energy Times today that he was concerned about the implications of this type of reaction.

“Imagine the impact on the Department of Defense if a foreign power could effectively cancel a research program by embarrassing some of its top brass,” the researcher said.

A LENR researcher who was aware of the commander’s orders wondered whether he had been influenced in part by the internal factionalism in the LENR field. The SPAWAR researchers’ reports of energetic alpha particles disprove the D+D –> 4He hypothesis.

“The commander’s reaction seems extreme, over the top,” the researcher said. “It makes me wonder.”

[March 1, 2012 Correction: We have removed “neutrons” from the statement about SPAWAR researchers’ reports.]