I have heard some people express surprise about Andrea Rossi’s own expressed surprise regarding the strong isotopic shifts in the Lugano E-Cat test report. In this report, analysis of the ash after a 32 day run of the E-Cat reactor showed a very significant changes in the isotopic makeup of the nickel powder used in the fuel, with a very large shift to the isotope Ni62.
Rossi has said that he and his colleagues are trying to understand why such a change a large change was reported, and today he explained a little more about this on the Journal of Nuclear Physics in response to a question about nickel enrichment, which Rossi had mentioned before the test results.
Rossi stated:
As a matter of fact, the enrichment system is the process made by means of the ECat. Nevertheless, the results from the test have gone well Beyond what we found before during our internal R&D. As I said, now we are studying how to reconcile, but during these last days we arrived to understand possible explications; much more study is necessary, though.
So it’s not that the enrichment itself was a surprise, it’s just the amount of enrichment that was measured, that seems to have surprised IH. The interesting thing to me is that they don’t seem to be challenging the results on the grounds that the sample might have been too small, or contaminated somehow. Maybe Industrial Heat has never had the kinds of sophisticated analysis used in this test (SIMS, ICP-MS) used on their own samples.
Anyway, it seems that the nickel enrichment process is a key component in the workings of the E-Cat — and perhaps is an important clue to anyone trying to understand the theory behind the E-Cat reaction, or trying to replicate it.
