A test of Andre Rossi’s controversial low energy (cold) fusion process has ended in a litigious mess. Either there has been a major breakthrough or Mr. Rossi will soon be facing criminal charges for fraud. Here is what we know at present.
Rossi’s company, Leonardo Corporation, entered into a licensing agreement with a hedge fund for his e-cat cold fusion reactor. A company named Industrial Heat was setup to handle this license. The terms of the agreement with Rossi were:
An upfront payment of one and half million dollars. A payment of ten million dollars upon a successful replication of Rossi’s device. A successful replication seems to have meant that Rossi provided plans and instructions and a third party replicated and tested the device without coming into contact with Rossi. The device was required to produce excess heat for 24 hours. A payment of 89.5 million dollars after an industrial sized (1MW) plant completed a successful one year test at a third party facility and with third party verification. Basically, use the device to smelt aluminum or something for a year. (One rumor has it that it was used to melt gold for casting into bars).Two additional facts should be listed.
Rossi has a conviction in Italy for fraud and tax evasion. This arose out of an attempt to reprocess industrial waste into fuel that failed to produce fuel, but did cause substantial environmental damage to the local water table. Somebody has paid for a well-designed website, news.newenergytimes.net that seems to exist solely to attack Rossi and accuse him of fraud. To put it mildly, some of the attacks seem to be weak.The device passed the step two test. The problems came in step three. The investors were tardy in identifying a site for the test. Rossi’s company arranged one. The company contracting for the plant insisted that they not be identified as they did not want to get involved with the PR mess surrounding cold fusion.
Rossi is claiming that the test was successful, and produced an output of fifty times the input energy. Rossi further claims that the customer was happy with the device and has ordered three more.
The third party selected for verification has, according to court documents, issued a report confirming this claim. If true this would fall into the category of things that can be unambiguously proven. If you hook up a 100 watt battery to something and it produces five kilowatts of heat, then something is going on.
Industrial Heat has issued a press release saying that they have been unable to substantiate any of Rossi’s claims.
Leonardo Corporation has sued Industrial Heat both for breach of contract – non-payment , and for attempting to file patents on Rossi’s technology in Industrial Heat’s name. The suit does not seem to have been served on Industrial Heat or other named parties yet.
The most likely situation is that the “customer” for the one year test was some form of fraudulent front company established by Rossi. This is complicated by the fact that Industrial Heat has other cold fusion investments. They may be hesitant to call Rossi a fraud, at least until they run additional due diligence and are sure nothing else works.
Today, the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project reported that, while they have been unable to detect a clear excess heat signature, they have detected the production of neutrons under conditions where Rossi and IH Patents say that heat production should start. An earlier test noted the production of hard X-Rays. Rossi worked eighteen hour days for a year during the one year e-cat test. He lost substantial weight. It’s possible the Mr. Rossi is acting erratically due to the effects of radiation poisoning. This does not mean that the e-cat produces useful amounts of heat.
Somebody other than Mr. Rossi might be engaged in fraudulent behavior. This includes IH, who may be doing what Mr. Rossi is accusing them of or the third party actor behind the site attacking Rossi.
My personal feeling is that the court should appoint a special master to build one of these mythical devices that produces 50 times more heat than its input energy. Bring it to the indicated conditions with a 100w power supply. Then attach it to a modified 5kw oven. Put a frozen goose into the oven. Whether or not the goose is done in the specified time proves who’s goose is cooked in court.