I had a meeting over Skype with Andrea Rossi on July 20th 2017 in which I conducted an interview. Mats Lewan published an earlier interview with Rossi here which focused primarily on issues surrounding the recent litigation with Industrial Heat and the subsequent settlement which was done so well, that I felt it was not necessary to cover the same ground.
Below is a transcription of the interview.
As you look back over the last four-and-a-half years in which you were in partnership with Industrial Heat, what are you thoughts?
I have good memories of things I made positively with them, as well as, unfortunately also bad memories. It has been a very important, huge, rich experience, scientifically speaking.
What will be the effect of the settlement on your work going forward?
It affects a lot because, first of all, since we worked together beside Industrial Heat I made only a research and development work, because based on the agreement we had, they had the burden of the management of the business.
Now the situation is completely different for me because now I return to be, for all the world, not only the chief scientist of research and development, but also the chief executive officer of what will be the development of this technology in terms of its application in the industrial environment.
So my responsibility is changed completely. Also my freedom of movement. Now I am completely free to move around. Before the litigation I had a restricted area of behavior that was limited to my operation of a scientific and technological character. Now I have wider responsibilities – I think I am prepared for this.
Running a business and running a science and research program, for most companies, it’s not the same person doing that, right?
Well it is true, once they are already developed and consolidated, but in the beginning it is not true, because you think of the model of Microsoft. Mr. Bill Gates, at the beginning, I would say that he covered all the four bases, and was the pitcher and the batter, too.
To do what you want to do, which is to disseminate this technology worldwide, is going to take huge resources, financially, would you agree?
Yes.
You’re a very small company at this point, as far as I can tell. So how do you get from where you are now, to where you need to be, as far as a business plan, or commercial partnerships are concerned?
My friend, does a general explain his strategy before the beginning of a battle? I am perfectly aware of my limits, and am perfectly aware of the fact that we need to move in a system, and I am working to find the right system to move in. I cannot tell you the strategy, but I can tell you the first move.
Our first move will be the presentation of the E-Cat QX that will be made around the end of October. That will be our first official, I think, strong move. And then the rest will come. I have a precise strategy; as with every strategy, it forsees many that things will change on the battlefield in the course of operations, like when you play chess. You know the theme you are going to play, but you still don’t know where the music will lead you.
Let’s move to the E-Cat QX – What is the difference between the E-Cat QX and the early E-Cats?
I cannot tell you this now, because to answer properly to your intelligent question I would have to give an intelligent answer, and not a reticent one. And I prefer to delay the description of the E-Cat QX to when we make the presentation.
I would say that the patent that we have covers the essentials of it, but there are substantial differences. The COP is higher, the efficiency is higher, and I am very proud of the work that my team has made on this issue. A proper description will be made when we make the presentation. A main difference is the dimension. The dimension of the E-Cat QX is extremely smaller, so the density of energy is very, very high which I think will lead to applications in fields like jet engines. But this is field of research and development that has to be developed.
If you are commercializing the E-Cat, you have to start somewhere. Which applications do you think it will be easiest to start with?
Production of heat for industrial applications. The industrial applications are necessary because it is where we have the certification. For the domestic applications we still do not have the necessary certification. But, the production of heat in all industries where heat is basic for their production. For example: cement works, oil refineries, food industries, heating of the buildings of industries – simple heating – because in half the world you have to heat where you work for at least four or five months of the year. The most immediate product that we make is just heat. We can heat air, we can heat water, we can heat oil, we can heat whatever and we can also gain very high temperatures because the E-Cat QX reaches in its core very high temperatures. So basically, when you heat something you cannot overcome the temperature of the primary, we have a primary that has a pretty high temperature. We can have a primary of over 1000 degrees Celcius.
A heat exchanger has a primary and a secondary. The primary is where you have the heater. For example in a boiler you have a burner, and the smoke of the burner is the primary. The secondary is the water which is outside of the cylinder where the burning of the fuel happens. In our case we have the primary temperature of the burner, because a normal burner has a temperature of about 1500 degrees Celcius in the core of the flame, and we reach that temperature in our reactor.
A lot of people talk about the ability to generate electricity with the E-Cat because of concerns about carbon emissions and so forth. Does your technology have the ability to replace fossil fuels for the generation of electricity?
I hate the term “replace” because the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear “replace” is people who remain without jobs. So I would be very cautious about using this term. But I believe that it is opportune that all the energy sources integrate in time, intelligently. And for sure, the primary temperature that we reach in the E-Cat, we can heat the steam up to the 550 degrees Celsius that are necessary to have efficiencies of around 35-38 per cent with the Carnot cycle. So yes, we can be an intelligent source, without replacing anything. The planet will become always more and more thirsty for energy, so without burning jobs we can just implement our capacity to produce energy in an environmentally friendly way. Now the best available technologies for the burning of coal can allow for the burning of coal without pollution, and without creating desperation sites in places like certain towns in Pennsylvania that risk to become like ghost towns. I don’t think this is an intelligent way to do things.
You have said in the past that one of your goals, in addition to creating a new form of energy, is to create jobs.
Yes.
In what areas do you see your technology providing employment opportunities for people?
Apart from the manufacturing of E-Cat, that will be robotized — robots make low level work, but robots create high level jobs for young people that will have to reach a high level of instruction to have a job (I don’t think this is bad, I think this is good) – and if energy becomes more competitive, this automatically generates a cascade of jobs in every sector where energy is consumed.
So you are thinking about indirect employment as well as direct employment?
Sure.
You have mentioned in the past “robotized factories” – how advanced are your plans or progress towards robotized production of your E-Cat QX reactors?
It is very advanced. I have made a study with ABB, and we are very advanced with that, and when the industrialization will be made it will be made necessarily with robotized construction lines because the QuarkX can be conceived only with a robotized production line, because the QuarkX is a very small module, it is a module of between 10 and 20 Watts. So you need to be able to assemble many of them; it is unthinkable to do this job only with manual work. The basic assembly must necessarily be made with robots. I have also seen already a factory that has the kind of robots in operation to do other things, and you can see tens of thousands of pieces coming out. And also, and this has been a big pleasure, I have seen in this factory there are many guys working, guys that have to improve themselves, because now, instead of making a fatiguing work with risk also to their health, they make a work which is smart.
Can you tell me how much the materials would cost to make a Quark – just materials?
I would say, just raw materials, 1-2 cents per Watt.
This afternoon was the first time that I had become aware of a new paper that you have written with Carl-Oscar Gullström, that has been published on Arxiv.org.
It is an update that a paper that Oscar and I made several months ago, March if I remember correctly, because we gave that work to some peer reviewers who asked us to upgrade many points, and we worked again on it. Carl-Oscar Gullstrom is a very intelligent physicist, he is very young, and we will work with him. He is very strong, he is very intelligent, theoretically very prepared. He comes from a Swedish school of physics – I like him very much, I like to work with him.
The physics in the paper is very complicated, I do not understand much of it, honestly, but does what he describe match your understanding of what is happening in the E-Cat?
We have much more work to do for what concerns the theoretical issues. I think that path can bring to a theoretical explication, but as you have seen we consider this just the beginning of a long path because we are still distant to have reached a point where we can say we have found the theoretical explication of this effect.
In the past you have worked with Dr. Norman Cook
Yes, the work of Norman Cook is perfectly reconcilable with ours. Now, in this period, my friend Norman Cook, my supposition is that this litigation has kind of created in many persons a fear of making some mistake sustaining one or the other party, so many people decided to stay out of the ring and let the two boxers exchange punches of every kind, see the blood spit out, and say “let them fight, and we will go in the ring when all will have been finished”. So my sense is that now the litigation is finished it will be easier for me to work with my friend Norman Cook.
I am sure you were aware that in the paper that was published this week was included a picture of your QX reactors. So now it’s not so much of a mystery what they look like. I noticed that two different ones were show, right? One with a heat exchanger, and one without.
The one without the heat exchanger is not an E-Cat QX. The E-Cat QX is the green one.
What is the other one?
The other one is a tool that I use to make experiments.
I see, so that is not what a QX will look like.
No, the QX will be smaller than bigger things like the green box you have seen.
There was a technical question regarding the measurement of the input power for the QX. You have a 1 Ohm resistor with .105 V input. Is that the only resistance that is measured – is there resistance in the reactor?
No. We have measured only that resistance [the 1 Ohm resistor] because that is the only resistance we have in the circuit. If the E-Cat has a resistance, that makes our calculations more conservative, because, as you well know, the resistance goes in the denominator when you make the calculus of the amps. You have volts as the numerator, and the resistance as the denominator. So the bigger the resistance, the smaller is the amount of amps.
To be conservative, since the datum of the resistance of the E-Cat QX is confidential, we just do not consider the resistance. Because correctly we should have to make the sum of the resistance of the resistor that has been put in the circuit, and the resistance of the E-Cat. So we should have amps = volts/R1 (the resistor)+R2 (the resistance of the E-Cat). But we do not consider the resistance of the E-Cat, we consider it as if it is a perfect conductor, and we only consider the one 1 Ohm to make the calculation of the amps.
To make the measurement very easy is the fact that the electricity is direct current; we use only direct current, so there are not all the complications connected with frequencies, etc.
Also in the photograph are shown two meters. What is each measuring?
We use two voltmeters to make a double check. The difference of the measurement is the margin of error of two different voltmeters ( several mV )
You talk about your presentation being your opening shot. You have said in the past that you can run the E-Cat QX from a battery producing direct current.
Yes, yes, we can run it with a battery – we need 24 Volts. So basically we can put two car batteries in series.
Well for the purpose of the presentation, myself and many other people think you need to use batteries to make things simpler than using AC from a mains source.
Okay.
Would that be easy to do?
Yes, absolutely. I am using batteries in my laboratory now. Luckily, the trial is finished — luckily it is finished, because it is not just the trial, it is the preparation of the hearings – 8, 10, 12 hours with the attorneys to do something that has nothing to do with my work. It was a pain. So now I am in my factory every day, and among the many things that I do is also do experiments with batteries. There is no difference at all, we can use batteries.
Okay, well I would recommend that because I think it would make a lot of people feel more comfortable.
No problem.
I have just one question about the settlement document. There was a section in there that talked about the fuel formula. It was restricted information for just a few people.
Yes.
In there it said there parts (a) and (b) for the fuel formula . (A) was hydrogen, lithium aluminum hydride, lithium and nickel (or other element in column 10 of the periodic table) — which are described in your Fluid Heater patent. And then there was b) which was an “Additional Element”, and there was no mention of this in the patent. So what does this mean for your patent if you do not include that Additional Element?
Because a patent is valid when an expert of the art is able to reproduce an effect with the information given in the patent. Now there are many people who are expert in the art who have reproduced the effect using information in the patent. So my patent is valid, it has been validated practically in all the world for this reason, because replications have been made. And some very important replication, I suppose, is going soon to be disclosed. But also very important replications have been made from people who have just read my patent and reproduced. Obviously, this Additional Element increases the efficiency. In fact, all the replications that have been made started from Lugano had a COP that is between 2 and 3. The Additional Element makes the efficiency much higher. So this is a difference between a patent and the know-how.
So would you consider the Additional Element as a trade secret?
Yes. This is why we demanded that the settlement agreement had to be written so that all that must remain a secret.
What is the size of Leonardo Corporation, as far as the number of employees these days?
In these days employees of Leonardo are actually six persons. The dimensions of our factor at Doral are approximately 7000 square feet, there is another laboratory that is out of there – for now this is our dimension.
Let me say this, because I am proud to say this. We are working pretty much on the 1 MW plant that has worked for one year, because probably you know that after the 16th of February 2016, the plant has been sealed by the parties, and it was in a land of nobody, like the land between the two Koreas. Basically nobody could enter there. We put our locks, they put their locks, and to enter, as in the safes of the banks, you needed two keys, etc., etc. So, it was tragicomic.
Now, I got my key, their keys also had been given back to me, I have opened everything, and now we are dismounting everything, opening all the reactors. The big ones that worked pretty well, and the small ones that never worked, because at the beginning they had many problems. Now we are going to open all of them to study. It will be very interesting, the analysis. Also the isotopic analysis of the powders of the four reactors that worked, and also the degradation that happened in one year. So now we will have precise data about how the powder became through one year, etc. In the small ones it will be very interesting to understand now why the heck they did not work, as if in some of them there was simply no charge. Because they were connected in a way that was necessary for coordination. So now I am disassembling the plant in thousands of small pieces to be analyzed because this is technology, this is how technology is made.
Ok, a change of subject. Do you have commercial interest – people who are aware of what you are doing, and interested in your work?
Yes, I do.
Let’s say I am an oil refiner and I learn about your technology from the presentation, and I think this is something that could make my process much more efficient. How do I incorporate it in my system – what’s the process?
Well the process is pretty simple. You buy the plant and the plant becomes yours, and you use it. We will put some conditions like parts that cannot be removed. Like sometimes the car makers make prototypes of cars where they put the seals in the box of the engine so that you cannot open it and they give it to you and say you go, and they give the car to you for very cheap. So you go, and now and then you have to bring the car to them so they can test what happened inside the engine, etc., etc. We will make something like that. So basically our plant will be partially sealed where the charges are, for example, where only we will be able to put hands, and you use the plant, and we assist you.
By the way, probably you have some kind of magic capacity in your mind, some psychic capacity emanating from your brain, because the day after tomorrow I meet an oil refiner. So I don’t know you are some sort of (inaudible)
No, you mentioned it [oil refining] earlier in the interview.
Ah, that’s why you know!
Ok, what if you are a manufacturer, a technologist, and you wanted to manufacture products that incorporated your technology. Is it going to be possible for people to license this technology and pay you a royalty?
What do you mean, license the technology?
I mean you give them the formula and they go ahead and make their own products, and pay you a royalty.
I got it. Everything is possible, it depends on the agreement. You know we have just exited from an experience with a license, and we have learned the hard way how important it is to make proper agreements. Everything is possible, anybody can license anything – good contracts are necessary. Now we have also a strong legal team, because in any case in this war we have selected a very good legal team, so now we have a legal team that is pretty much experienced in the field, and so the contracts that we are going to make will be less naïve than the agreement that I signed in 2012.
So would you say that you are open to cooperating with other industries in cooperative ways?
Absolutely.
I know that during the one year test and after that, you mentioned a few times that it had had an effect on your health. How is your health now?
Perfect. I had problems. I had problems for many reasons. Also consider that for one year I worked from 5:00 p.m. to 10:30 a.m. the next day, sleeping from 11:00 a.m. – you sleep a few hours, you have also to read, you have to make some sport, so you sleep 3-4 hours each day. For one year and with many other factors, yes I had something serious, but I am completely healed. The last analysis had shown that there is nothing left.
