From: Ken Deboer
Ø Regarding the 'shell' of various LENR reactors, I wonder if someone could recap or comment on what the history has been and what some of the considerations and rational were behind them. Most reactors have been built around steel if I'm not mistaken, and some of glass. The new Rossi model is of alumina and I wonder what led him to that? In his eulogy to Focardi, Rossi mentioned the “eureka” moment where the two of them the discovered the hot-cat principle. This happened when they were using the nearly abandoned ENEA nuclear lab at Brasimone, Italy. This would be the rough equivalent of Oak Ridge in the USA on a much smaller scale. They tried several types of ceramic tubes at the Lab for purposes of high temperature experiment. The tubes had been used for plumbing in the Italian liquid fuel fission reactor R&D. That program had been abandoned by this time, and they essentially "borrowed" the Lab and the tubes. Previously, I had thought that the SiC tubes were more important for the success of the hot cat than the alumina tubes, and that is because of the monochromatic IR spectrum of SiC - but now it appears to be that alumina is more important - and this could related to porosity…. Some of the story is here: http://www.e-catworld.com/2013/06/22/sergio-focardi-dies/ BTW - Rossi was not relating this as an idle story. It was part of his tribute to Focardi, and AR was intending to show by anecdote the high level connections of Focardi within ENEA, where he was greatly respected. They had free reign to the lab. Rossi removed this story from his own site, apparently - maybe it gave away too much information… or maybe he thought he would face a problem with the Italian justice system or WIPO - if it became known how they had made the discovery, using a restricted National Lab for personal purposes. By the way, since the original hot-cat has both SiC and alumina tubes, and since its performance was actually better than what was seen at Lugano --- if Rossi can be believed --- then it is possibly that the best tactic for improving on the dogbone would be to go back to the earlier work and combine the best features of both. HOWEVER, that should not happen until one of two further replications of the dogbone have happened. There are some who do not trust the Russians, and particularly the University of Parkhomov (which was formerly a propaganda tool). Jones
