As I predicted on Thursday night, promoter Andrea Rossi’s final demonstration of a series of boxes of pipes and wires did not light any bulb or turn any motor. Again, he failed at science, and he failed to deliver a technological device.

Rossi reported on his Web site that Italian engineers with an unknown affiliation gathered data on behalf of an unidentified customer. Rossi uploaded a technical report written by an unknown author and a data file to his Web site. He also reported that, as a result of the data, the unidentified customer accepted delivery of Rossi’s device.

New Energy Times reader Terry Blanton looked closely at the signatures on the technical report and observed that there was something fishy about them. It looks like Rossi tried to make it look like he crossed out the name of the customer, but it’s still possible to see through his redaction. In the place you would expect to see the name of the customer, it says the word “customer.”

In response to my article yesterday, “Energy Catalzyer: Extraordinary Scams Require Extraordinary Claims,” New Energy Times reader John W. Ratcliff asked some good questions.

Ratcliff asked, “Are we to believe [Rossi thinks] he can embezzle millions of dollars of investor capital, somehow manage to transfer these funds to a hidden account of his own, and get away with it?”

These are good questions. I answered most of them at the end of my article Rossi’s 11th Test, 11th Failure when I wrote, “I believe he doesn’t have what he claims. I believe he knows it. I believe he’s hoping that, if he can just get enough money, he can eventually make it work.”

Rossi is not stupid; far from it. He is an extremely intelligent, strategic, articulate, charming and creative man.

On Jan. 20, 2011, when I had an open mind and assumed the best of Rossi, he wrote to me, “You help me now; I will help you forever.” He offered to fly me over to Italy, and I told him that was wrong, I could not accept his offer. He then offered to drive four hours round-trip to pick me up at Milan airport, and I told him no, I’ll take the train down to Bologna. Eventually, I agreed to let him buy me a sandwich and pay for a taxi ride back to my hotel.

Visually, Rossi exhibits absolute confidence. Yet listen carefully when I interview him on camera and ask him a crucial question: He is vague, he stutters and he is logically inconsistent, even within a 12-minute period.

I asked him whether he had a specific moment of discovery in his low-energy nuclear reaction research.

“Yes, because I burned a finger,” Rossi said.

“Can you tell me more about that moment?” I asked.

Rossi replied, “Yes, uhh, because, umm, I was, uh, uh, working with a, with a small reactor which was made of, uh, umm, of copper, was made of copper, uh, and with a small lead shielding, and I was giving energy with a resistance, uh, giving, eh, some sort of temperature. At a certain point, the, the temperature raised very suddenly, and, uh, and I had in my, the, the, uh, left finger of, uh, of, uh, the, the, the, the finger of, umm, uh, the index of my left hand, umm, sit on a, a part of this small reactor which was as big as this, and I burned the top of the finger.”

Ratcliff asked, “What end game is there for Rossi in the ‘hoax’ hypothesis other than jail or court, penniless and disgraced?”

Note that prison, bankruptcy and disgrace have never been deterrents for Rossi. See his prior fraud convictions and imprisonment.

Now look back at the timeline. Rossi built his story slowly and strategically, first getting the buy-in from retired University of Bologna professor Sergio Focardi, who had reached his senior years and had, until Rossi came along, never realized his dreams of “cold fusion.”

Then Rossi gained the confidence of an active University of Bologna professor, Giuseppe Levi, who believed the Rossi claim on first sight.

“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 Rossi found an ally in technology journalist Mats Lewan, who paid little attention to things like control experiments or published papers. Lewan proved to Rossi that he would promote him uncritically, publishing without checking facts, like Rossi’s claim of a major research payment to the University of Bologna.

The Sept. 7 and Oct. 6 tests were not just other mundane tests of Rossi’s device. They were Rossi’s test to see whether Lewan would turn a blind eye to the pre-heating phase and uncritically watch more steam demonstrations even though Rossi (and Lewan) clearly knew that a sub-boiling test was the best way to remove doubt about Rossi’s claim. Lewan passed Rossi’s test, and that gave Rossi the confidence to use his new configuration yesterday.

After 10 months of giving Rossi the benefit of the doubt and more, Lewan today confined himself to reporting data given to him by a new third party, engineer Domenico Fioravanti, who has an unclear association with an unspecified, and quite possibly fictitious, customer of Rossi’s. Of all the pre-show hype about all the foreign academic dignitaries who would stand as witnesses to the Rossi miracle, Lewan’s story quotes not one.

“Neither Ny Teknik nor any other of the guests had any possibility to check the measurements made,” Lewan wrote. “The invitees could only observe the plant in operation for a few brief moments.”

Rossi’s case is certainly extraordinary, and his claim is so bold that many people cannot imagine that he would pull off a scam this big for so long. Or that he would pull the wool over so many people’s eyes. But he has. A blog commenter using the name “Penny Gruber” nailed it:

“Rossi is a convicted [criminal guilty of] serial fraud. His discovery is that, with enough chutzpah, one can convince a number of people that an electric tea kettle is a new kind of nuclear reactor.”

Fortunately, nobody appears to have given Rossi much money. But Rossi has abused the honest and sincere fans who have given him their moral support and encouragement. There is nothing wrong with wanting a new source of clean nuclear energy or wanting liberation from the petrocacy. I hope Rossi’s fans will remember their own dreams and desires for a better world and continue their enthusiasm for legitimate low-energy nuclear reaction research and technology.

On Oct. 7, promoter Andrea Rossi gave a public demonstration of his “energy catalyzer” in his showroom in Bologna, Italy. This was his 11th attempt and his 11th failure to show unambiguous evidence of the release of heat in excess of the input of electrical energy.

Journalist Mats Lewan of Ny Teknik wrote a technical report and presented data on Rossi’s behalf. Lewan also wrote a news story about his own report and Rossi’s test.

I wrote an article the next day based on Lewan’s news story.

In my article, I stated, based on data reported by Lewan, that Rossi’s device demonstrated a net energy loss rather than a gain. When I read Lewan’s news story, I understood that Rossi heated the E-Cat with an electrical resistor for about four hours before the test began.

Here is what Lewan wrote: “As in previous tests, the start-up was affected by heating the E-cat with an electrical resistor at about 2.7 kilowatts, this time for about four hours.”

Lewan mentioned nothing about heat output measurements during this phase. I assumed that the well-insulated device was retaining the heat and there was no flow.

Before I published my article, however, I sent my calculations and conclusion to Lewan. In his reply, Lewan said nothing about any heat output during the heating phase. In fact, he denied a net energy gain for the overall test.

“I don’t think I reported a net energy gain. I only reported the energy developed during self-sustained mode,” Lewan wrote.

According to Lewan’s report, the energy balance in the heating phase was irrelevant. As I pointed out in my article, this was his mistake.

But I made an assumption that there was no appreciable heat output during the heating phase. This was my mistake, and I should have stated that assumption.

I went back to Lewan and asked him to help me and my readers complete this equation:  (31.5  + x)  [Output]  –   (38.88 + 1.44) [Input] =  – 8.82, where “x” is the possible heat output during the heating phase.

I made three successive requests, and Lewan gave me three successive ambiguous answers and failed to provide me with the missing value. (See communication log below.)

My conclusion is that Lewan and Rossi made no flow measurements that would allow them to directly calculate the energy output during the heating phase.

My speculation is that the energy input during the heating phase was a significant contributing factor to Lewan and Rossi’s published claim that the device “ran in a completely stable self-sustained mode for over three hours.”

My first concern is that Rossi, as well as Lewan, knew specifically that the applied energy in the heating phase was required to support their claim and that they were both not forthcoming about it.

My second concern is that Rossi, as well as Lewan, knew that complete accounting of the energy balance was the most legitimate way to support their claim and that they chose not to do this.

My third concern is that, in the absence of a complete and clearly measured energy balance and in the absence of a schematic clearly showing the placement of all components, Rossi can too easily deceive others or himself. For example, he could locate a thermocouple in a place that would give a false reading, which would cause an overestimation of heat output. All temperature measurements would be meaningless.

This most recent test of Rossi’s illuminates the obvious question: Why has Rossi continued to obfuscate the details of his device which could be very helpful for substantiating his claims?

I believe he doesn’t have what he claims. I believe he knows it. I believe he’s hoping that, if he can just get enough money, he can eventually make it work.

Oct. 8 and 9 Communication Log Krivit – Lewan

Measurement of Energy Output in Heating Phase
SK: Can you please tell me the kj of heat released during the heating phase? And tell me how you derive it?
ML: You have it all in my pdf report. Energy (kJ) is obtained by multiplying power and time (actually integrating power over time, or rather dt). If you use watts and seconds, you get joules (not kilojoules).  Power is obtained by multiplying current and voltage (amperes x volts = watts). Current and voltage for each interval can be found in my report.
SK: Let me be more specific with my question: How did you measure the kj of heat released during the heating phase?
ML: The same method as during the self-sustained phase. Delta T of the water in the secondary circ. Although I didn’t specifically report it. But the values to do it are in the pdf report (T values in the 2nd circ; flow was the same).
SK: In your news story, you provided simple and straightforward information about measured power output and time during the second phase, and measured power input and time for both phases. Some of my readers have assumed that there was significant power output during the heating phase. If this is the case, there is a major omission. One last time, can you give me a simple and straightforward answer about average measured power output and time during the heating phase, or total measured energy output during the heating phase? And if not, why not?
ML: Let me repeat – the energy output during the start-up phase can be calculated from the data I provided in my pdf report. The output was significant and of the same order as the input energy. This is why I didn’t focus on this interval of the process. If you need help to calculate this, you can have a look at the graph attached. It’s made by a reader according to basic rules of physics, as I explained to you above, and I consider it accurate.

Measurement of Flow in Heating Phase
SK: I don’t see any evidence that you measured rate of outflow of primary circuit during the heating phase. Have I missed this information?
ML: I measured the flow rate in the 2nd circuit continuously, output flow in the primary circuit only twice, as written in the pdf report.
SK: Do you know for a fact whether water and/or steam was flowing out of the device during the heating phase, and if so, how do you know this?
ML: I know steam was entering the heat exchanger when the internal temperature in the E-cat reached about 100 degrees, as I felt the heat from the output hose from the E-cat = the input hose in the primary circuit in the heat exchanger. It was clear that steam was flowing, and as I have already seen a similar experiments with the same object when I also measured the output flow, I base my assumption on the output flow in the primary circuit on this.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/06/e-cat-cold-fusion
By David Hambling

Excerpt:

Surprisingly enough, Rossi’s most severe critic is Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times. Krivit has had years of experience at looking at all sorts cold fusion devices which have been claimed to produce power. His team have carried out a very thorough analysis of Rossi’s demonstrations and they have their doubts.

“According to my analysis, his claim has no scientific credibility,” Krivit told Wired.co.uk. The device he claimed to heat a factory in Bondeno seems to exist only on paper.”

Krivit’s analysis looks at the amount of steam that actually comes out of the device and the way it is measured. He concludes that the E-Cat does not have nearly the output he suggests, and may not even be producing excess energy.

Krivit’s answer to the question of whether Rossi’s demonstrations support his claims is: “Definitely no.”

There is some irony at work here: we apparently have a number of mainstream scientists backing an outlandish project which investors are putting money into, while the most vocal critic comes from the world of cold fusion.

Who’s right? The only way to find out will be to watch out for what Rossi does later this month.