Report of Pordenone Meeting from Aldo Proia

Many thanks to Aldo Proia, for sending this detailed report of the Pordenone meeting.

Dear Frank,

As you asked some days ago, I send you a few lines about the meeting organized in Italy by the Technological Pole of Pordenone, which has been an extraordinary opportunity to illustrate the E-Cat technology to a top level public composed of big companies listed on the stock exchange, medium-sized companies, stakeholders, journalists of major national media.

The meeting has been a real success! Eng. Rossi has made a very good impression to the audience, also to the most skeptics, like Franco Battaglia, professor at the University of Modena, in the past opponent of the cold fusion: he has proven to be opened to this revolutionary invention. The final round-table debate has been replaced with many questions to Rossi from the skeptics and from the public.

The requests to participate in the event have been so numerous that the local organizers have generously granted the access of extra audience to a second room connected through a TV cable. The event has been sponsored by the Technological Pole itself and by the regional council Paolo Santin.

The general manager of the Technological Pole, Eng. Franco Scolari, has very kindly offered to Rossi and to us of Prometeon the opportunity to have an office in their new building. So, I would like to thank him for the hospitality and for the good organization by its staff. Thank you also to the collaborators Gino Becevello and Federica Grebello, who have made this event possible.

Rossi has shown to the audience an E-Cat, which was on the table, so anyone could see it up close. His coworkers – the electrical engineer Fulvio Fabiani and the designer Arch. Gianvico Pirazzini – have described in good detail the engineering of the E-Cat and the future marketing of the 1 MW low temperature plant. The Hot Cat in the course of development has been illustrated too.

Regarding the last important test performed on Hot Cat, you have read and widespread the report released from Rossi, anticipating in some way the document that will be released and signed from an independent third party. Here below I would underline some important points regarding such a report.

But, first of all, I would like to clarify some general aspects regarding “self-sustaining” referred to an E-Cat apparatus. When an E-Cat is in “self-sustaining mode”, it means that the reactor absorbs zero energy in input: so, a power meter registers only the electricity needed for the controls, i.e. a few watts.
Well, you can run an E-Cat in: (1) continuous or (2) intermittent self-sustained mode.

The first case is used sometimes for the experimental work but never in front of an audience, as it is unstable, but very impressive because you can reach high COPs: 100-200. So, it is not used in the E-Cats on the market, which operate in an intermittent self-sustained mode with a (guaranteed) COP 6, a very safe and stable condition. I have seen the E-Cat working for long periods in this last modality.

An E-Cat working in intermittent self-sustaining mode is substantially similar to an electric iron, because it alternates phases of on-off regarding the electric input power, but with the difference that an E-Cat produces heat by itself even when it does not absorb electric power.

As the last test on Hot Cat aimed to obtain a (very) conservative estimate of its COP, it was conducted in intermittent self-sustained mode, the same used in a real product. Not considering at all the energy output dissipated by convection and conduction – which accounts for at least a 10-15% more – the measurements clearly show that the guaranteed COP 6 is fully satisfied also for this type of E-Cat!

Indeed, Rossi said that the duration of self-sustained mode, in this test, has been of 218 hours, not 118 as appeared in the first versions of the report for a typo, and the produced energy cited in the document has been cut of 30% to subtract all the possible margins of error. This means a minimum COP near 12.
Please note the simplicity of all energy measurements, made with a top class instrument for the electric input and a thermal camera also used in the military field – and with a 1% accuracy – for estimating the radiative component of the thermal output. Prudently, a below-unit emissivity has been assumed, instead of the correct value “1” for a black body, so the calculated COP is clearly underestimated.

The other very interesting result of this report is the so-called “energy density”, given by the net energy produced (3268 kWh) divided the “active mass”, estimated in a conservative way in 20 grams. So, the energy density is (3268 : 20 =) 163.4 kWh/g, i.e. 163 MWh/kg, which – again – is an underestimate.

For a comparison, the energy density of fossil fuels is typically in the range 9-15 kWh/kg, and the natural Uranium in a light water fission reactor has an energy density of 123.0 MWh/kg, lower than the E-Cat charge! Now, each of us can easily draw his conclusions: mine, is that mankind has “a new fire”…

Kind regards,

Aldo