The following is a statement just released by five of the professors (all Swedish) who were involved in the 2012-2013 testing of the E-Cat, and who were listed as authors on the May 2013 report. This is an edited Google translation from the original Swedish which was published in Ny Teknik magazine today.
Andrea Rossi, the inventor of the E-Cat reactor, has been portrayed as a deceiver in a number of programs in science radio entitled The blind belief in cold fusion. Additionally blamed were Uppsala and KTH researchers for being accomplices to Rossi’s work with his E- Cat invention, which was claimed to be an outright scam because it does not have detailed knowledge of how it is designed and whether it works.
Incidentally the programs incorporated a variety of factual errors that reinforces the impression of an unserious party submission concerning Rossi as a person as well as the LENR field of study (cold fusion) . There is therefore reason to comment on the motives and the role we have had in the experiments with the E-Cat reactor and to clarify with what is an accurate description.
Already in 2011 during a visit to Bologna, where we monitored a test experiment with an E-Cat reactor, revealed indications that a significant heat development took place. It was considerably larger than one would expect from a purely chemical combustion.
This result was sensational and it gave reason to follow the further development of E-Cat reactor. In particular, as Rossi was in April 28, 2011 granted an Italian patent for his invention. For a couple of additional tests in Uppsala and Bologna emerged, however, no results from which any firm conclusions could be drawn. The test in Uppsala defaulted because of a ruptured chemical weld.
In the autumn of 2012 Professor Giuseppe Levi at Bologna University and his student Evelyn Foschi did a test experiment in Ferrara with a new development of the E-Cat . This experiment was conducted independently of Rossi in the sense that all measuring equipment belonged to Levi, and he himself did all the analysis of the measurement results.
These results again showed an anomalous heat production. This prompted us to work with Levi do a longer test under rigorous conditions, which was done in March 2013. Our obvious starting point is that it is only through careful experimental testing that it is possible to determine if the E-Cat reactor works or not.
The result of this longer test also showed a clear indication of anomalous heat production. The experiment and the results are described in the article ” Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device,” arXiv : 1305.3913 .
The main conclusion of this article is that the results indicate that an anomalous heat production has taken place in such quantities that it can not have chemical origin. In contrast, in the article no speculation was made about the likely sources of heat production. In particular no connections were made to cold fusion, which can not be done without knowledge of reactor fuel isotopic composition before and after combustion.
The conclusion is that new tests must be partly to clarify whether an anomalous heat production actually takes place and also investigate whether a change in the fuel’s overall isotopic composition takes place.
We assessed the results of Ferrara experiment to be interesting enough to continue testing experiments. Such tests have now been carried out and the results will be reported in a new scientific article.
Bo Höistad , Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Physics
Torbjörn Hartman , Radiation Protection Officer, Svedberg Laboratory
Roland Pettersson , retired lecturer in Physical and Analytical Chemistry
Lars Tegnér, physical chemist
all at Uppsala University
Hanno Essén , associate professor of theoretical physics and a lecturer at KTH