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Brown's Visit to Bologna

Appendix 22 to New Energy Times Report #3

By Julian Brown

Andrea Rossi gave me a personal demonstration of a group of four of his devices working in parallel at his premises outside Bologna on July 8. I saw essentially the same setup reported in June by Steven Krivit.

I didn't like the tone of Krivit's June 16 report, and I had arrived in Bologna full of optimism and a desire to prove to myself that the doubters were wrong.

I am afraid that I now fully share Krivit's opinion.

There are a number of reasons for this. Here are a few.

As has been pointed out numerous times, the dryness of the steam/water vapor is crucial to the viability of Rossi's device.

Imagine my astonishment and disappointment on finding that Rossi makes no attempt to monitor the dryness of the output and that no appropriate equipment was visible on the premises.

It follows that Rossi cannot possibly know whether he has 1, 2, 5 or even 10 percent unvaporized phase by volume. Passive observers like Krivit, Essen, Kullander and me have even less chance of determining this crucial parameter.

Even worse, since the output tube went straight through a hole in the wall to be vented/flushed outside, it could have been pure hot water, and nobody, least of all Rossi, could possibly know.

Basically, the whole setup defies even approximate quantitative calorimetric analysis.

Another odd thing was that Rossi pumped up the electrical power for a minute or two shortly before turning it off and showing me that the water kept an output temperature of 100.5 Celsius for a couple of minutes.

This gave me the impression that it was a performance for my benefit, not the rigorous testing procedure that the photos of him as the technician sitting in front of the PC appeared to suggest.

The clincher for me is that Rossi made a point of telling me that he is vaporizing 15 liters/hour. BUT the peristaltic pump was exactly the same one he uses in all demonstrations, and it was pulsing about once every 2.5 seconds. I make that 3 liters/hour, only 20 percent of what Rossi told me.

And yet this small flow was being shared among four devices. That isn't much of a stress test, is it?

The small [vertical pipe] will result in a small overpressure and a boiling temperature > 100 Celsius, so I am not impressed by 100.5 Celsius.

I must admit that I didn't reach these dismal conclusions all at once. It took about three days of pondering what I had seen before all the pieces of the puzzle dropped into place.

This may explain why Rossi has been able to convince so many qualified people. You don't want to believe it is just a gross and extremely simple circus trick.
 
He certainly has a charming manner; I liked him, and I would never suggest he has criminal intent. My hunch is that he did make a discovery that goes beyond the level achieved by Francesco Piantelli and Sergio Focardi but that he got too enthusiastic too soon, before he had done due diligence. Rossi is trapped in the web of commitments and claims he has made. A tragic figure really. 

Brief Biography of Julian Brown
Brown graduated from Oxford University in physics and was an experimental atomic physics researcher there from 1981 to 1989. Since then, Brown states that he has been an employee of the European Patent Office. He is not a patent examiner and has nothing to do with Rossi's patent application.

Brown released a copy of his trip report to E-Cat News on July 17. Someone named Paul Story asked Rossi about it on his blog:
Source: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=497&cpage=16#comments

Here is the reaction from Rossi on July 17:

Rossi edited his post (without saying so) on July 18:

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