November 27, 2013 – Want to be the first to own a cold fusion power plant? You can pre-order the E-Cat one megawatt LENR courtesy of Andrea Rossi for delivery early in 2014. The cost – $1.5 million. At least that is the scuttlebut that appears on his ECAT website where you can learn more details and place your order.
The E-Cat he is delivering combines 106 small LENR units similar to ones that Rossi has demonstrated in the past. The 106 are contained in a 6 meter (20 foot) long container (see image below) and are hooked together in parallel. Each E-Cat features three cold fusion reactors measuring 20 x 20 x 1 centimeter (approximately 8 square inches and less than 0.5 inch in height). The reactors combine treated nickel powder and pressurized hydrogen gas and after receiving a jolt of electricity begin to generate the heat that has been called cold fusion.
The 106 LENRs contained in this E-Cat require a feed of 200 kilowatts of power at start up and continuously to sustain the cold fusion reaction. The claimed energy yield at 1 megawatt is 500% over the energy input. Of course what the plant is actually generating anomalous heat, not electricity. It is that heat that becomes the energy source to drive a steam turbine connected to a generator.
If you order online today expect delivery in approximately 4 months.
I don’t want to throw cold water on this but with plans to ship in four months isn’t it about time that Rossi made his E-Cat unit available for independent review? That’s one of many reasons that I remain a skeptic. RAnd I am still waiting to hear from the Australian company that was going to make a 10 kilowatt home version of the E-Cat available to its customers over a year ago.
The ExtremeTech site asks the question will we finally know if what Rossi has created is real or “snake oil?”
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Sounds goofy. Supposing the ecat gadget works as claimed, which is highly doubtful in itself, 200 kW of sustaining electrical energy is produced thermally by burning NG at a common efficiency of 33% heat to electricity, then 600 kW of high grade NG heat is consumed to produce 1000 kW of low grade ecat heat. That hardly sounds like a COP > six. It’s actually more like 1.666, and that only after investing more than $1.5 million in a highly problematic e-cat machine. The grid price of the 200 kW of sustaining power at $0.10 kWh is about $20 hour; say $500/day. Natural gas is presently trading for about $3.65 mmbtu; that is to say $12.50 buys 1000 kWh worth of raw heat from NG. About $300/day invested in natural gas buys the same amount of heat the megawatt ecat produces for $500/day. Why not just make all the heat from NG and save $200/day of operation and deny Rossi the $1.5 million ecat front money? The low-grade heat 1 mW ecat might start to make economic sense if the actual COP is better than 20/1. At 6/1 it’s a non-starter. Is there anyone out there with $1.5 million who is so innumerate as to think paying 66% more for low-grade heat is a good deal?
Points well stated.