Cold Fusion Boiling Competition

It seems Defkalion is serious about independent testing. In a press release this week, the company invited "requests from internationally recognised and reputable scientific and business organisations interested to conduct their independent tests."

Would-be testers will have to visit Defkalion's laboratory in Athens, where the company is making available two Hyperion power units, one "live" and the other inert, for comparison. Defkalion say that the live unit will achieve a coefficient of performance of at least 20, in other words putting out 20 times as much energy as goes in to heat it. It's a bold move, especially compared to Andrea Rossi who has kept independent testers at arm's length from his demonstrations. It remains to be seen whether the tests really will dispel doubts or if they will raise more questions than they answer.

It's been an exciting few weeks since Andrea Rossi demonstrated his one-megawatt E-Cat power plant with apparent success. Critics still believe that the test was a sham, the mystery customer is a fake, and there is no concrete evidence the technology works. Rossi has been busy since then, and the E-Cat bandwagon is rolling onwards. But now he has rivals in the cold fusion business. Is this evidence that the technology is real and can be replicated? Or just that someone else wants a piece of a possible scam of the decade?

Cold fusion, otherwise known as "low energy nuclear reaction" (LENR) technology has yet to gain any scientific respectability. This hasn't stopped Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies launching its own range of cold fusion power plants, rivals to Rossi's E-Cat. In a press release (.pdf), the company announced they would be selling a range of units under the name Hyperion, from small domestic boilers to industrial power plants.

They have a detailed specification document for its product (.pdf) and say the launch is due early 2012. Unlike Rossi, it invites independent third parties to test its products and report the findings "under agreed protocol." Its customers will not be bound by non-disclosure agreements, whereas Rossi's dealings have been highly secretive.

Defkalion used to have a close working relationship with Rossi. Originally the company was to produce thousands of E-Cats a year from a factory on Xanthi using Rossi's design under licence. The relationship broke up in August, for reasons which have never been fully disclosed. The company has persevered with a cold fusion device of its own, which it insists has been developed independently and also that Hyperion is more stable than Rossi's E-Cat.

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Like the E-Cat, Hyperion will initially be used for producing heat only, with electricity generation following. The first will be a one-megawatt device, the same scale as the one in Rossi's demonstration in October.

Curiously, Rossi does not accuse Defkalion of stealing intellectual property. Instead, he insists that it has never known the details how the E-Cat works. He says it cannot make its device operate without his secret catalyst, which it was hoping to acquire. "There are clowns saying they have a technology copied from us, actually they have just a moke up (sic), waiting for the piece of info they need to make a real copy," Rossi wrote in his Journal of Nuclear Physics blog, congratulating himself for outwitting them.

However, Defkalion spokesman Alexandros Xanthoulis told Swedish science magazine NyTeknik that they know exactly what the catalyst is. In a piece of subterfuge, a spectroscopic examination was carried out on an E-Cat being while it was being tested without Rossi's knowledge. However, to maintain "fair play", Defkalion's scientists say they developed their technology without using this information.

The lack of a patent means that (if this is not a hoax) the secret is potentially worth billions. Hence Rossi does not want anyone to repeat his results or see the kernel of the E-Cat. So long as he has paying customers he is happy for the rest of the world to dismiss the technology as not worth investigating.