The coming year has some momentum from 2011 in fields that have high potential.  Cold Fusion, better called LENR or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, fuel cells and small fusion all have prospects that may well give us peak lab results and even some market exposure.

The most interesting and controversial is LENR, the better description for cold fusion that is showing no less than three attempts at commercial marketing.  Due to the oversight of the estimable Al Fin finding a UK Wired magazine article built up with some tidbits, takes us even further into some expectations.  The most striking observation Wired’s David Hambling makes is revisiting the news of Mr. Rossi’s visit to Massachusetts on a look at production facility sites for producing the E-Cat.

Rossi visited the Massachusetts State House at the invitation of State Senator Bruce Tarr. He met government officials and scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts and Northeastern University to discuss in general terms the prospects for setting up E-Cat manufacturing in the region.  The strike comes from history – MIT personnel were leading destructors of the eminent Fleischmann and Pons work.  A generation has passed, but the notice of such behavior and unprofessional conduct cannot be overlooked.

The State Senator’s interest has also come up in the Republican nomination chase with candidate Mitt Romney saying to the Washington Examiner,  “I do believe in basic science. I believe in participating in space. I believe in analysis of new sources of energy. I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with – with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that. We somehow can’t figure out how to duplicate it.”  Whoever briefed Romney blew it, but the matter is on the presidential race’s table.

Across the pond it seems the Brits are taking Rossi seriously as well.  The website FreeEnergyTruth filed a Freedom of Information request that showed the Department Of Energy And Climate Change is following developments, and even met with Swedish physicist Sven Kullander, one of the few to study the E-Cat.  The Department is sitting tight, waiting for peer-reviewed publication of experimental results before committing themselves.

On the marketing front the E-Cat has a well-designed official website, ECAT.com where orders for a one-megawatt industrial unit can be started and registrations of interest without cost, in a home heating heater for delivery in 2012 to 2013.  The proposed heat source is a 10-kilowatt home unit that will be available for €4,000, and the makers want to see how great demand is at this stage. ECAT.com’s operators are taking every measure to avoid any suggestion of fraud: industrial customers will test their units before purchasing. Payments will be made through an escrow account with a full refund if the products do not perform as described.  That’s pretty confidence inspiring.

Back in August the first E-Cat production deal blew up with the Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies.  Defkalion is launching its own range of cold fusion power plants in rivalry to Rossi’s E-Cat.  The Greeks are highly motivated to keep going, with Rossi or without and have gone ahead with a cold fusion device of its own, which it insists has been developed independently and also that their Hyperion named model is more stable than Rossi’s E-Cat.

In what has to be a duplicitous position, a Defkalion spokesman allowed that a spectroscopic examination was carried out on an operating E-Cat 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.  Its reasonable to expect that without a patent issued, there will come a day of a “lawyer’s tax” on units to offset the competitive pricing advantage.

There is still Randall Mill’s BlackLight Power to keep in mind.  BlackLight is very deep into the research using Dr. Mill’s hydrino theory.  So far they are proposing three systems for energy release, one an electrochemical method ala a fuel cell and two thermal designs.  The progress of the past year is unknown, but the fuel cell differs in that water is the fuel rather than being the effluent.  The thermal designs are thought to be quietly signing new customers, some of which are utility grade.  Here the controversy isn’t being allowed to get any coverage – at all.

2012 may just be the year that LENR or the old cold fusion moniker gets real legs.  It looks like it won’t be possible to fail to deliver units and surely one customer or another will want the world to know it’s the most green company in history.  Stay tuned . . .


Comments

9 Comments so far

  1. Benjamin Cole on January 3, 2012 12:33 PM

    LENR?

    It would be the first time in history that a successful new product was introduced, after every attempt to independently verify that it worked flopped.

    If LENR works, then please openly, transparently, and publicly demonstrate a replicable experiment. Show others how to do their own replicable experiments in their own labs with their own equipment.

    Why all the mumbo-jumbo, if you have got something that works?

  2. BFast on January 3, 2012 4:06 PM

    New Energy, thanks for the thoughtful article. It is clear that 2012 will be the make or break year for Rossi style cold fusion.

    Mr Cole, currently there are a dozen separate sources, including such names as: MIT, SRI, and the USAF who have produced Nickel + Hydrogen LENR devices. Rossi has no motivation to “prove” his technology. It is better for him if he releases a product before the scientific community latches on. However, these other sources, these scientific sources, who already have their names attached to this technology are the ones who should put up or shut up. For a list of replicators with links, see http://nickelpower.org/2011/12/30/replicators-as-if-december-30-2011/

  3. Benjamin Cole on January 3, 2012 6:11 PM

    BFast-

    Nothing would make me happier than abundant and cheap power. Bring it on. We have been saying “bring it on” to the cold fusion guys for two decades.

    But these links you provide prove nothing, and moreover I note that for 25 years or more various characters have been claiming they succeeded with cold fusion, only to yet have not a single independently verifiable and functioning cold fusion power source.

    Everything is as muddy as it was in 1986. And there is still more mumbo-jumbo, secret deals, cloak-and-dagger whispers etc etc etc.

    Really, if you have something that works, bring it on, and let us replicate it.

  4. Brad Arnold on January 5, 2012 5:10 AM

    The discussion seems to be when LENR will be successfully commercialized. I would like to go further, and get into what LENR means to our future.

    “Total replacement of fossil fuels for everything but synthetic organic chemistry.”

    “Enables whole new approaches to all of NASA’s missions – we can affordably get off this rock!”

    Both quotes from Dr. Joseph M. Zawodny, NASA

  5. Craig Binns on January 12, 2012 10:07 PM

    Bfast

    At one stage 2011 was going to be the make or break year for Rossi. Commercial sales and visits to production sites, etc … remember? Now it’s 2012, surprise, surprise. Let me look into my crystal ball and predict that by the end of this year we’ll be told the make or break year is 2013. And so on and on.

    It is clear that Rossi is dishonest, and it is overwhelmingly probable that his machine is phoney, and that he is a swindler. Now, as Benjamin Cole rightly demands: if you’ve got LENR, bring it on. If Rossi’s contraption works; he has pretended to heat a factory with one for a year – and that is a lie. But if he’s got one now – let him bring it on.

    By the way, where’s my old friend Mario the Tuscan Optimist? Still backing Rossi?

  6. Craig Binns on January 12, 2012 10:28 PM

    Brad

    You say “The discussion seems to be when LENR will be successfully commercialized. I would like to go further, and get into what LENR means to our future.” and then you start fantasising about space travel.

    Fantasise as much as you like (it’s fun), but the situation in the real world is worse even than you think. Not merely do we not know when the e-cat will be successfully commercialised (Rossi says it has been, but few sane people believe him) we don’t even know if it works at all, because he won’t let it be freely examined by qualified people. We know that if it gets wired up to the local power supply it can emit puffs of soft steam for a while but, hey, so can my electric kettle!

    And even that’s not the main problem, which is that LENR, cold fusion (call it what you will) has never been shown to work in a manner acceptable to the scientific community. Nothing – no useful, reliable source of energy – has ever emerged from it.

    So before we fly off to Mars we have some very high hurdles to jump here on the ground.

  7. GreenWin on May 22, 2012 12:58 PM

    Here is some of the latest news from Blacklight Power on their CIHT cell. They have independent written verifications from a number of respectable scientists.

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/47515855

    Still they have to scale up to something greater than 1.5kW for a residential CHP system. Microwave ovens generally require about 1.4kW when they run full tilt.

    But with Defkalion, e-Cat and Brillouin all bringing heaters to market – it’s pretty hard to not see some kind of commercial LENR in the next couple years.

  8. Marc Bell on July 25, 2012 4:53 AM

    Cold Fusion is real, however it is not fusion. Not enough neutrons are produced for the substantial excess heat that is produced.My uncle, George Jura, tenured professor at UC Berkley, worked on the A bomb and H bomb went to Utah to see the Pons and Fleishman device, said it produced substantial excess energy, and that it was a “previously uncharacterized electro-chemical phenomenon”. Uncle George W as the most careful experimental scientist and you did not want to play chess, or dominos or cards with him.

  9. Dallas on December 30, 2013 7:16 AM

    The diary could suspend to ONE HUNDRED staples that analyze between 0.

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