Following up on a post on the Journal of Nuclear Physics yesterday regarding his hopes for a natural gas driven E-Cat, Andrea Rossi commented further today. Peter Fosberg stated in a new post that “I have yet to hear Rossi say that he can produce electricity with good enough efficiency. Do you have other information? I agree that the Rossi effect is in its infancy, and will likely be improved a lot over time.”
Andrea Rossi commented in response:
We are working on this issue; as you say, the E-Cat will be improved a lot over the time. I think that to to gain a strong efficiency for the production od electric power we need to use gas instead of electricity, for the reasons you correctly explained in your comment yesterday. If we take in consideration the results of ITP and integrate them with the ratio 3:1 = thermal energy: electric energy, we can see that there is still a COP >1, but we are pursuing more strong effect.
It seems likely to that Industrial Heat’s work towards commercial plants at this point is done for the purpose of providing heat rather than electricity — where they can find a way for customers to realize energy savings sufficient to make investments in E-Cat plants make sense economically.
I expect R&D for this technology to be continuous, and as with every technology we use today to be improved over time. I am sure we’ll see efficient electricity production from E-Cats (or similar from competitors) at some point, but it’s going to be necessary to be able to crawl, then walk, before running.
