In August, I wrote about the Italian engineer Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (E-Catalyzer), which promised cheap and abundant energy for our global future through an apparatus that, it was claimed, brought about low energy nuclear reactions.

A small amount of nickel powder, reacting with hydrogen gas, with a secret catalyst present, and an initial kick start of electricity, apparently produced huge amounts of energy relative to the input:

http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2...aug/rossi-reactor.cfm


Rossi was then publicly demonstrating only a small scale version of his experiments. The apparatus could fit on a kitchen table. Throughout this year, he held several presentations in front of scientists and journalists, but without revealing the catalyst or allowing them inside the "black box", with the catalyst, for the understandable reason he did not want his idea stolen. However, as experts said, the combustion chamber was so small, no chemical substance had that energy density. It had to be a nuclear reaction of sorts.

Many scientists, both present and from a distance, were cautiously supportive, including Nobel prize winner Joseph Hall. One prominent NASA scientist even though it would be a game changer for the world's energy provision - though there were a few sceptics, notably Stephen Krivit from New Energy Times.

Politely and tightlippedly, the middle aged, elegrantly dressed Milanese Rossi promised curious outsiders (including myself) that a 1MW reactor would be ready by the end of October.

Rossi had a deal with a Greek greentech company, Defkalion, to commercialise it. Good for Greece, we thought. Then, in September, news filtered through that the deal was off. Oh dear, Rossi was obviously a scam, and another pie in the sky scheme had bitten the dust. But no: after a short period of media silence, on 28 October, Rossi demonstrated a larger experiment, capable of producing half a megawatt, in a large hangar in Bologna. It consists of many E-cats wired up in parallel. A fair video and account (in English) here:

http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter...gi/article3303682.ece


Some are still sceptical. Here is Krivit:


http://blog.newenergytimes.com...tions-are-not-enough/


And here is a pro-Rossi rebuttal


http://pesn.com/2011/10/30/950...Rossi_is_a_Fraudster/


Anyway, the intriguing thing: he has a new costumer. It has been speculated that it is Google's greentech arm. Possibly DARPA , the Defense Advanced Projects Agency, the US body responsible for new technology for use by the military. Its current projects include a thought-controlled prosthetic arm, a flying armoured car and a program for identifying EEG patterns for words and using this technology for covert communications, telepathy to you and me. I tried Mats Lewan, the journalist who works as Rossi's spokesman, but got no comment. The customer's representative, present at the demonstration, was a man named Domenico Fioravanti. Intriguingly, he seems to be a colonel....

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Pelle Neroth -- EU correspondent