November 27, 2013 – Want to be the first to own a cold fusion power plant? You can pre-order the E-Cat one megawatt LENR courtesy of Andrea Rossi for delivery early in 2014. The cost – $1.5 million. At least that is the scuttlebut that appears on his ECAT website where you can learn more details and place your order.
The E-Cat he is delivering combines 106 small LENR units similar to ones that Rossi has demonstrated in the past. The 106 are contained in a 6 meter (20 foot) long container (see image below) and are hooked together in parallel. Each E-Cat features three cold fusion reactors measuring 20 x 20 x 1 centimeter (approximately 8 square inches and less than 0.5 inch in height). The reactors combine treated nickel powder and pressurized hydrogen gas and after receiving a jolt of electricity begin to generate the heat that has been called cold fusion.
The 106 LENRs contained in this E-Cat require a feed of 200 kilowatts of power at start up and continuously to sustain the cold fusion reaction. The claimed energy yield at 1 megawatt is 500% over the energy input. Of course what the plant is actually generating anomalous heat, not electricity. It is that heat that becomes the energy source to drive a steam turbine connected to a generator.
If you order online today expect delivery in approximately 4 months.
I don’t want to throw cold water on this but with plans to ship in four months isn’t it about time that Rossi made his E-Cat unit available for independent review? That’s one of many reasons that I remain a skeptic. RAnd I am still waiting to hear from the Australian company that was going to make a 10 kilowatt home version of the E-Cat available to its customers over a year ago.
The ExtremeTech site asks the question will we finally know if what Rossi has created is real or “snake oil?”
Related articles across the web
Related Posts
High Speed Internet Coming to Space
Canada is Becoming a Nuclear Fusion Hotbed
Earth Day 2024 And The Atmosphere Is Raining Microplastic
Will AI Disrupt the Practice of Medicine? Absolutely
The Saga of Honeybee Colony Collapse is Being Questioned
Transforming Coffee’s Future With Bioreactors And Cell Power
Conversations About AI: Three AIs Explain Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine
Wearable Technology and the Advent of Artificial Intelligence
Sounds goofy. Supposing the ecat gadget works as claimed, which is highly doubtful in itself, 200 kW of sustaining electrical energy is produced thermally by burning NG at a common efficiency of 33% heat to electricity, then 600 kW of high grade NG heat is consumed to produce 1000 kW of low grade ecat heat. That hardly sounds like a COP > six. It’s actually more like 1.666, and that only after investing more than $1.5 million in a highly problematic e-cat machine. The grid price of the 200 kW of sustaining power at $0.10 kWh is about $20 hour; say $500/day. Natural gas is presently trading for about $3.65 mmbtu; that is to say $12.50 buys 1000 kWh worth of raw heat from NG. About $300/day invested in natural gas buys the same amount of heat the megawatt ecat produces for $500/day. Why not just make all the heat from NG and save $200/day of operation and deny Rossi the $1.5 million ecat front money? The low-grade heat 1 mW ecat might start to make economic sense if the actual COP is better than 20/1. At 6/1 it’s a non-starter. Is there anyone out there with $1.5 million who is so innumerate as to think paying 66% more for low-grade heat is a good deal?
Points well stated.