Anyone heard of this?

The E-Cat, or Energy Catalyzer, developed by Andrea Rossi.

Apparently, it's something along the lines of cold fusion, and is either a huge hoax or will soon be changing the world as we know it. There is supposed to be a 1MW plant coming on line in a couple days, so I guess we'll know more then.

 

It's interesting that he can't really explain how his device works.
What's stranger, his bi-product from fusion is worth about half of what the nickel alone would sell for. He can't even make a profit on his resulting material due to the expense of the ingredients.
But, I guess if it really doesn't take much of either constituent to give off copper and a decent amount of energy, we'll see how it turns out.

 

To be honest with my degree it's quite common for my lecturers to tell me "we don't know how this works, just learn it for the exam". Accurately probing how and why something is happening is sometimes more difficult than doing something and observing the results.

This is interesting, I'll keep my eye on it.

 

I have my doubts about this. I mean, I've never heard of it before, and how come other scientists and engineers aren't all over it? They got pretty excited about a neutrino travelling 0.0002% faster than the speed of light, so you'd think that a brand new cold fusion process would have got some coverage. I suppose it's possible that his discovery is so left-field that nobody is taking it seriously, and he'll astonish the world. But... no.

A pity really. I could really do with a convenient and limitless energy source right now.

 

That's exactly why it's interesting. For all we know it's MAGIC (read; as of yet unrecognizable science)! Also, he put something together himself in a way that's beneficial to man, and doesn't quite understand how what he built does what it does. This is the exact opposite of the aeolipile, by Hero of Alexandria. He built the steam-powered device and knew how it worked, but wasn't sure how steam-power could directly benefit mankind and labeled his idea a curiosity.
The downside is, if the catalyst is real and enough of the things are placed worldwide, copper will decrease in value and nickel will become even more expensive, further increasing the price of certain compositions of stainless steel.

 

Yeah, if it turns out that this actually works, it will take approximately 18 months for someone to discover an alternative combination of ingredients which are cheap and widely available.

 

Hydrogen is already pretty cheap as a fuel, but nickel is so chemically reactive it's almost never found as a pure metal in the earth's crust. He may have simply stopped looking when the reaction he desired worked with nickel, meaning it might not be too much longer until something else is found to work.
Or, perhaps he did try other materials and nickel was the only thing that did work.
If anything, I want to see his research.

 

I think the important thing to note is that if this is legit, it could usher in a new era of steam-powered tech. The clockwork spider and automaton could finally be a reality!

 

It would also usher in an era of people making gigantic steampunk arachnid doomsday machines from Wild Wild West.

 

I remember reading something about Fusion a couple of years ago, don't remember if this is the same though.

 

I remember reading about this.

And if I recall, the guy has no idea how it works, and refused to take out a patent on it or something, and the only 'scientific journal' that had published it is run by one of the creators.

I'm not going to read it again to get up to speed though, because it just smacks of bullshit.

 

I'm just looking forward to solid copper pennies that are numismatically worth more than the materials they're stamped out on.

 

I can't think of a better way to get to work.

 

Well, today is the day. Apparently there is a reporter from AP present at the test, so we'll see what hits the news tomorrow. Should be interesting to see how it plays out, either way.

 

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