Andrea Rossi Biography – The E-Cat Fusor Story

Andrea Rossi, the e-cat fusion developer, is an Italian inventor who has a Masters Degree in Engineering from Milan University . During his twenties, he already started to produce plants to recover energy from waste heat from organic waste and similar sources. At the age of 22, he started his own company in the field of energy. He has always been interested in the production of energy and in the last forty years, he has worked in this field.

It was in 1988 when Fleischmann of the University of Southhampton and Pons of the University of Utah, applied to the United States Department of Energy for funding towards a larger series of experiments on what was popularly called cold fusion. Up to this point they had been funding their experiments using a small device built with $100,000 out-of-pocket money.

The grant proposal was turned over for peer review, and one of the reviewers was Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University. Jones had worked for some time on muon-catalyzed fusion, a known method of inducing nuclear fusion without high temperatures, and had written an article on the topic entitled Cold nuclear fusion. Fleischmann and Pons and co-workers met with Jones and co-workers on occasion in Utah to share research and techniques. During this time, Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable excess energy, because it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone.

They felt that such a discovery could bear significant commercial value and would be entitled to patent protection. Jones, however, was measuring neutron flux, which was not of commercial interest. This findings will have a great influence on the young Andrea Rossi.

In mid-March of 1989,  the Pons and Fleichmann paper was published  by the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. Their  announcement drew wide media attention. The 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductivity had caused the scientific community to be more open to revelations of unexpected scientific results that could have huge economic repercussions and that could be replicated reliably even if they had not been predicted by current theory. Cold fusion was then proposing the counterintuitive idea that a nuclear reaction could be caused to occur inside a chemically bound crystal structure.

However,  the US Department of Energy formed a panel to investigate cold fusion, which is also called low energy reactor. They subsequenly issued a report in November 1989 that concluded that  theresults did not present convincing evidence that useful sources of energy would result from the phenomena attributed to cold fusion.This put an end to Pon’s and Fleischmann’s application for DOE funding.

Mr. Rossi was already working in the energy field at that time. He was fascinated with the Pons and Fleischman discovery and tried to replicate their effect with electrolysis too. Althoug he did not  did not succeed at that time, the seed  in the development of the fusor E-Catalyst, i.e. e-cat, has been planted. He continued working on the E-cat in between his other contracts in power plant production. In 2007, Andrea Rossi arrived at the very critical point in his research and concentrated his time on his invention.

He also hired Sergio Focardi, a physicist from the University of Bologna who is an acknowledged expert in field. The physicist’s work on nickel hydrogen reactions proved to be invaluable. As a consultant to Andrea Rossi, Focardi tested if Rossi’s process actually worked.  After some experiments, the process is deemed plausible and Focardi was tasked to address the safety aspect of the invention. They also looked into the aspect of protecting the environment from the radiations, and to thermalize the radiations to in order to produce heat.

An application in 2008 to patent the device internationally had received an unfavorable preliminary report at the World Intellectual Property Organization from the European Patent Office. It was noted that the description of the device was based on general statements and speculations. They also cited numerous deficiencies in both the description and in the evidence provided to support its feasibility. They also found incompatibilities with current scientific theories.

in April of 2011, however,  an application was approved by the Italian Office for Patents and Trademarks. The agency issued a patent for the invention, valid only in Italy. The E-Catalyst’s International, European, and U.S. patent applications are still pending up to this time.

In 2009, Mr. Rossi introduced to the public a process and a device called the E-Catalyst. This is a revolutionary  process in energy production and is also called low energy nuclear reactions. It could be a breakthrough invention since it can solve some of the energy problems of our planet.

The method does not use or produce radioactive materials. It utilizes nickel and hydrogen. And  when the reactor is turned off, after twenty minutes, every kind of radiation is thermalized. What is left  are metals like nickel and some copper. The radiations that is produced here are contained inside the box of the reactor which is shielded by lead. These gamma ray radiations are in the range between 50 and 200 KEVS (kiloelectronvolts), which are very low energy radiations.  It also has a maximum life of twenty minutes, because they are completely thermalized, which also means that they are transformed into heat. The fact  this reactor does not use radioactive materials and do not leave radioactive materials  makes it a safe nuclear reactor.

Before going public with his e-cat fusion invention, Andrea Rossi had also manufactured a boiler, using this method, that has heated his factory Fariera, a small town in Northeast Italy. Since this boiler has heated the factory for about a year, they were able to make experiments in an actual working reactor. The reactor in Fareira reactor is similar to the modern E-Cat that they are making and has a module of about 20 kilowatts. It provides heat to an area that measures about 1000 square feet

Fareira is a very cold area in Italy where winter can  go on for the duration of  five months in a year. With temperatures  ranging from 6 to 10 celsius degrees. The reactor was able to provide heat to the office and factory for one year. This result encouraged Andrea Rossi to make the other modules that has been tested by other scientists.They are now in the process of building a one megawatt plant .

The 2009 patent application applied for by Andrea Rossi  claims  a method and apparatus for carrying out nickel and hydrogen exothermal reactions with production of copper.  Although the patent cites previous works on cold fusion, Rossi also asserted that it is not cold fusion, but rather LENR, Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction system.  Here, the hydrogen is heated at a given temperature with a simple resistor. When the ignition temperature is reached, the energy production process starts where the hydrogen atoms penetrate into the nickel and transform it into copper.

In January 14, 2011, a demonstration of the e-cat fusion fusor was monitored by independent scientific representatives of the University of Bologna with physicst and researcher Giuseppe Levi. It was reporte in Ny Teknik,  a Swedish technology magazine that in a period of one hour, it produced approximately 10 kilowatts of net power after it was loaded with one gram of nickel powder hat is pressurized with hydrogen. This proddes Levi to conclude that the power and energy produced is impressive. He also stated that the Energy Catalyzer might be working as a new type of energy source.

This e-cat invention also recieve some skepticism,  Discovery Channel analyst Benjamin Radford wrote, citing a physorg.com column, that the method is fishy.  On the other hand, Levi, in an interview with Ny Teknik, stated that what has impressed him was that it produced 10 kW of measured energy output, and this output is completely repeatable. He alsdo urged an experiment with continuous operation for at least one or more days.

Another test that lasted for a period of 18 hours, was performed in Bologna,  in Februaru 2011, by Levi and Rossi, which was not open to the public. The process was ignited by 1,250 watts for five to ten minutes, and power was then reduced to 80 watts . Cooling was supplied by tap water and flow volume was monitored. As again reported by Ny Teknik,  at the start of the experiment, the temperature of the inflowing water was seven degrees Celsius. For a while the outlet temperature was 40 degrees Celsius.

It had a flow rate of about one liter per second, which equates to a peak power of 130 kilowatts. The power output was later stabilized at 15 to 20 kilowatts. In this experiment, Levi stated that all chemical sources are now excluded.

Another e-cat test was done In March 29, 2011 by two renowned Swedish physicists. They were Hanno Essén, an associate professor of theoretical physics and a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology. And Sven Kullander,  former chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society and Professor Emeritus at Uppsala University. He is also chairman of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Energy Committee.

They participated as observers in a test of a smaller version of the Energy Catalyzer. This test ran for six hours with a power output estimated at 4.4 kW. Total energy produced was about 25 kWh. Essen and Kullander later reported that any chemical process should be ruled out for producing 25 kWh from whatever is in a 50 cubic centimeter container. The only alternative explanation they can give is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production.

Two more e-cat demonstrations were held in July 2009. The first one was covered by the Italian 24-hour all-news State-owned television channel Rai News.  In this demonstration, an Ny Teknik author attended and tested for some previously noted possibilities of fraud. He calibrated the ammeter, measured the water flow by weighing and calibrated the temperature-sensor probe to confirm that all water is converted to steam. The result was a measurement that showed a net power of between 2.3 and 2.6 kilowatts. The input power was pegged at 300 watts.

By this time, Andrea Rossi’s e-cat invention has attracted a lot of attention. The Italian newspapers Il Sole 24 Ore, Il Tempo, La Stampa,  Il Fatto Quotidiano, Rinascita, Il Resto del Carlino and La Republica reported on Rossi’s Energy Catalyzer.  Many national Italian radio stations and news magazines , and a 25-minute television documentary on Rai News, have also reported on the Energy Catalyzer. It was also the topic of a series of articles in the Swedish Ny Teknik and an article in German Telepolis.

In Greece, the  coverage appeared in the daily financial newspaper Express and on the State-owned New Hellenic Television.  In the United States it was covered in EE Times, presented in the Fox News Channel, Discovery News, the Washington Times  and in the show Coast to Coast AM. Its coverage about was also aired by the Voice of Russia where Rossi’s involvement in the Petroldragon affair was also mentioned.

Rossi and Focardi’s invention recieved a setback when it was rejected by  a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Rossi self-published  it in his blog, Journal of Nuclear Physics.  Many physicists are skeptical of the method because fusion of nuclei requires very high temperatures according to current knowledge and because fusion should produce very high levels of gamma radiation.

Peter Ekström,  a lecturer at the Department of Nuclear Physics at Lund University in Sweden, concluded that the whole story is one big scam,  which will be revealed in less than one year.  Kjell Aleklett, a physics professor at Uppsala University in Sweden also voiced his skepticism, albet, in a more diplomatic way.

In of 2011, the EV World published an audio interview with Dennis M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Bushnell identified the E0Catalyst as the most interesting and promising innovation in energy production. Dr. Kim E. Yeong, a respected physicit from the Purdue University also presented a theoritical explanation on the method.

Rossi has co-founded the company Leonardo Technologies Inc. or LTI, which he sold in 1990. The company has done contracts for the US Department of Energy before.  At present, he is back at LTI, Inc. in  Miami, Florida presumably producing his E-Catalyst apparatus there.

In a more recent development, Andrea Rossi made a contract with AmpEnergo, a US company. The latter is to receive royalties on sales of licenses and products built on the Energy Catalyzer, i.e. E-cat, in the Americas.