Mats Lewan reports on Rossi, and Defkalion

Reporter Mats Lewan of the Ny Teknik magazine has published a book about the cold fusion researcher Andrea Rossi. The book is titled An Impossible Invention. It is available in English, Swedish and Italian. You can read the first chapter or order the book here.

Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson published a comment at Nature.com describing the book:

The highlight of the week was the publication of Mats Lewan’s book ‘An Impossible Invention’, subtitled The true story of the energy source that could change the world. The author, a science and technology writer, has been investigating the controversial Rossi reactor or E-cat in depth in the 3 years since its initial presentation in Bologna in January 2011.  . . 

Besides following the course of developments in detail, Lewan gives much attention to the question of whether the device is genuine, or whether fraud is involved. One important event was a long-period investigation [by ELFORSK], published at arXiv:1305.3913, providing strong evidence of the production of anomalous heat.  . . .

This fascinating book provides the answers to many questions about the E-cat, and should be read by all skeptics.

(Quoted in full here.)

In his blog about the book, Lewan revealed that the video demonstration test performed by Defkalion Green Technologies during the ICCF18 conference in July 2013 was invalid. The flow rate was measured incorrectly, because the flow meter was affected by backflow. Subsequent tests showed that the meter sometimes measured as much as 1 L/min when the valve was closed and flow was zero. The instruments indicate spurious excess heat of up to 17 kW where the actual power is 2.5 kW.

The video demonstration test was performed in Italy by a join-venture company Defkalion Europe (DE). Luca Gamberale of DE discovered the problems with the test and wrote about them in his Final technical report on the Defkalion GT calorimetric protocol. As described in the report, when DE discovered the problems, they “immediately stopped/froze all negotiations with both Italian and foreign companies to protect their clients.” DE is now defunct.

Lewan’s blog entry and his discussion with Gamberale reveals even more problems with Defkalion.