There are a number of reasons to be extremely skeptical of this but I have not followed the CMNS discussion, so there could be more to it than meets the eye.
The patent is among the poorest written and drafted that I have ever seen. It is essentially worthless in the USA but as for Europe, who knows. The paper is better but far from convincing. Given that Arata was doing the same thing nearly a decade ago with nickel hydrogen, and given Mills' went through the so-call "gas phase" devices in the late nineties, and given Bush/Eagleton - all of which are either precedent or patented - how can they claim an novelty? Moreover, how can they not mention them as prior art? Simple, Watson - they cannot fully distinguish what they are doing from that earlier work - except that they may have gotten better results. Most worrisome - have they failed to follow the past history of the field? Too bad for them, if they have gotten better results from an old invention - as it may leave a large federally funded R&D contract as the only way to move ahead. They already claim $100 million from DoE, but that contract, which is real, is unrelated to the fusion experiments, and has deliberately been conflated by Rossi's association with a company that contracts out administrative work. Sources have said that not a dime of DoE money has been earmarked for her patent. Bizarre claims and red flags everywhere. Jones From: Jed Rothwell Several people have called this to my attention in the last week: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Rossi-Focardi_paper.pdf Jones Beene pointed out the patent for this here: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2009125444 <http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2009125444&IA=IT2008000532&DISPLAY=D ESC> &IA=IT2008000532&DISPLAY=DESC Apparently this has been a source of lively discussion at CMNS. Sources tell me there is more to it than meets the eye, and not to dismiss it. The claimed energy gains in Table 1 are extraordinary. The output/input ratio for 6 runs was: 415, 205, 80, 197, 203, 179 Table 1 is confusing. I gather the first row shows total energy for one day, May 5, 2008. Input was 0.2 kWh, and output was 83 kWh. That would be average power of 3.4 kW (83 kWh / 24 hours). Row 4 appears to be for Feb. 17, 2009 through March 3, 2009. That's 14 days, or 336 hours. Output power is 1006.5 kWh, which is average energy of 3.0 kW. I have had some doubts about previous reports from Focardi, because they have not been independently replicated as far as I know. However, it is difficult to imagine that such large ratios could be an error in calorimetry. They use 3 kinds of calorimetry, including flow calorimetry, which is described on p. 3. They don't call it "flow calorimetry" and they do not report critical parameters such as the flow rate and Delta-T, which is a little annoying. - Jed
