As you probably know, mankind is facing one of the biggest challenges of its time : how to produce clean energy without wasting the Earth’s natural ressources, while producing enough energy to actually keep the world going?
We’re currently heavily relying on fossil fuels (around 70-80%), and nuclear power (6%) to sustain our consumption, but none of these options can actually keep us going, there’re always side effects : pollution and nuclear wastes for the most, not even mentionning that yes, we’re running low on fuels, that is a fact. Should our consumption continue on its way, Earth’s ressources on oil will be gone by 2050, as well as nickel (2048). This last point will start to make sense as you read the following.
The good thing about nuclear energy, is that there’s plenty of it, and that it doesn’t waste our remaining ressources. Using fission process, we don’t need a lot of atoms to create huge energy outputs, but it requires strict protocols and safety measures to do it “safely”. Still it is a very risky way of producing our energy, as history proved us many times.
But, what if we had discovered another source of energy? One that isn’t dangerous for our natural ressources? One that everyone of us could safely have at home? Well, that’s what E-Cats are all about.
Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat (for Energy Catalyzer) is a power source generator that presumably uses cold fusion to achieve its amazing results. While not wanting to reveal how these are exactly made, Andrea Rossi gave out some intel we are glad to share. E-Cats are power units that can be combined to create a power source of the desired range. For instance, the 1MW plant consists of 106 single units combined together into a shipping container (quite practical to deliver and stack). These a being tested in specific companies.
I said “presumably uses cold fusion” because cold fusion is a concept that is usually considered a fantasy by the scientific community. Very few people believe in its existence, and the vast majority simply ignores it. However, further analysis tends to relate E-Cats to that “impossible” nuclear reaction.
Indeed, E-Cats are not as new as they may sound. Andrea Rossi’s research teams have been working on it for several years now, and while the first prototypes of E-Cats were supposed to have 10 000 times the energy density of gasoline, the latest analysis would give it more like, well, just 1 million times the energy density of gasoline… They have been doing displays during the year 2011, destined to researchers, journalists, and the scientific community in general. But how do they do? Well, it needs a little explanation.
The difference between cold fusion and standard fission process used today is that with cold fusion, the reaction happens at a much lower energy range. Basically, while we have to spend huge amounts of efforts to protect the current reactors (because the neutrons produced by the reaction are at such a high velocity), it’s not a problem for cold fusion.
The produced neutrons are next to harmless, so it’s easy to protect people from it. Putting the generator into a box made of lead will be enough protection for the power source! The other main difference is that while standard fission tears atoms apart, cold fusion fuses hydrogene and nickel atoms together. If you remember your chemistry lessons, you may notice two things : first, the energy produced will be astonishing. Second, the atoms produced by the fusion will mostly consist in copper. Quite convenient isn’t it? However, as I mentionned earlier, mankind is also running low on nickel, but maybe it would be worth saving this nickel for the E-Cats, since it is considered that 10% of the worldwide nickel production would suffice to sustain the entire Earth’s need for energy.
And the best part : due to the low energy and the low velociy of the produced particles, no radioactive waste! The copper will be usable in our industry, and the nickel used could be recycled at around 80%! And these power sources will certainly be available at home! (see image below)
To be more precise, third-party researchers were allowed to run series of tests onto an E-Cat unit, and their observations are detailed in a report available for download (see link in sources section).
What mainly comes out of it is that, first, the energy output of this device is simply amazing. “These values place the E-Cat beyond any other known conventional source of energy”, researchers said. The process, of course, costs a little bit of energy to start, but how much exactly? Well, the first prototypes fuel cost are about 1$/MWh (1$ per megawatt-hour), whereas common coal power costs around 100$/MWh.
And second, the six reputable researchers that realized these tests also analyzed the nickel state, before and after the reactions. And they realized that there was an isotrope shift, from a mix of Nickel-58 and Nickel-60 to almost entirely Nickel-62, a reaction that “cannot occur without nuclear reactions (ie fusion)”.
If you’re still not convinced of the potential consequences of this discovery, consider this for a moment :
– NASA also made research about Hydrogene-Nickel fusion (see this article)
– Moreover, after the mentionned report was published (March 2013) and then submitted to the Arxiv pre-print server (usual way of doing in the scientific community), report form Sifferkoll shows that “a” big bank downloaded the report immediatly after it had been made available. And elsewhere, the morning Glasgow University decided to sell its fossil fuel investments…
The world is changing, and the race has already started.
Sources:
All images come from www.extremetech.com